A routine announcement about a local businessman being named chairman of the Lawrence-Douglas County Economic Development Board included a significant footnote.

The last paragraph of the story, which appeared on the Business page of Thursday’s Journal-World noted that the 10-member board had not met since last year.

Last year? The story added that the board’s next meeting could come within the next month, but that means the board will have gone at least four months without a meeting. No wonder most local residents aren’t even familiar with what this board does.

Actually the Economic Development Board has a pretty important charge of advising the city and county on economic development matters and helping set the direction for the area’s business expansion and attraction efforts. Given the current emphasis on bringing jobs and expanded business opportunities to Lawrence and Douglas County, one would think such a board would be in the news often, but that obviously isn’t the case.

At least one City Commission candidate, Mike Dever, noted during the recent campaign that he would like to see the Economic Development Board meet more frequently and take a stronger role in the community’s business efforts. That would seem appropriate, but it would demand a significant change in philosophy and perhaps a second look at the membership of the board.

The board has a stellar roster of community leaders. According to the group’s founding guidelines, “The Board shall consist of ten members based upon positions in stakeholder institutions within Douglas County. Those entities represented include City of Lawrence, Douglas County, USD 497, Baker University, Haskell Indian Nations University, University of Kansas, Douglas County Development Inc., ECO2 and the Chamber of Commerce.”

In practice those representative are the heads of the stakeholder groups: the mayor, county commission chairman, school superintendent, KU chancellor, the presidents of Haskell and Baker, the chairmen of ECO2 and DCDI and the chamber’s president and vice chairman for economic development.

These are very busy people. Although all of them deserve to be informed and have a voice in local economic development efforts, most of them have many other responsibilities that likely prevent them from being fully engaged in those efforts, especially on an ongoing basis. If this board is to be more proactive – or at least active – perhaps it would be better to appoint “stakeholder” representatives who could give more time and attention to the community’s economic development effort.

It seems that this board could and should be an important factor in promoting Lawrence and Douglas County and setting a direction for pursuing additional jobs and business opportunities for the area. The city, county and chamber should, by all means, take another look at this board and empower it to take a more active role in the county’s economic development efforts.