Olathe ? The perennially controversial Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline caused a stir even as he sought to make nice with commissioners by offering to meet with them individually.

Kline sent an e-mail to commissioners, asking for individual one-hour meetings he said would help clear up concerns about how he is operating his office.

But a majority of the commission voted Thursday to reject the overture, saying the meetings could be perceived as an attempt to skirt the state’s opening meetings law – an allegation Kline faced while the state’s attorney general.

In February 2005, Kline met in private with small groups of conservative school board members and told them he would defend the board if it mandated stickers in science textbooks saying evolution is a theory and not a fact. The board did not pursue the issue.

Johnson County commissioners have instead invited Kline to an as-yet unscheduled commission retreat, which would be open to the public.

“It’s amazing to me how sensitive the community is about speaking,” Kline said in an interview Wednesday. “To me, this was just, ‘Hey, we’ve got cookies and punch – come on over and we’ll talk.'”

In his e-mail, Kline wrote that he wanted to meet individually with them – and not their lawyers – because the presence of an attorney could violate the spirit of the state’s open meetings law.

“I didn’t want them to walk into that trap,” Kline said. “I wanted to help them.”

Kline was appointed district attorney after he lost the attorney general’s race to Johnson County’s then-chief prosecutor, Paul Morrison.

He quickly frustrated some commissioners. Minutes after Kline was sworn in as district attorney, he fired seven prosecutors and a chief investigator.

Brian Burgess, Kline’s spokesman, said commissioners are hearing a lot of things that simply are not true.

“We just want to clear the air,” he said.