Efforts by a local group failed to get the issue of a comprehensive development plan for downtown Lawrence on the ballot for the coming city and school board elections.

State Sen. Jane Eldredge, R-Lawrence, said she had been warned that unless she voted for a pro-General Motors bill in a key Senate committee, the flow of contributions to Kansas University’s Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, where her husband was director, might be interrupted. She made the charges during the Senate Local Government Committee’s hearing on changes GM wanted in the state’s port authority regulations. She referred to it, angrily, as “wholly inappropriate lobbying.”