Neither Douglas County Commissioner Bob Johnson nor Mayor Sue Hack violated the state’s conflict of interest law by working to keep a start-up pharmaceutical company in Lawrence, an investigator with the Kansas Attorney General’s office has found.

Both Johnson and Hack have ownership interests in Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, a Lawrence company that city and county commissioners attempted to keep in Lawrence by offering it a package of incentives worth more than $1 million over a 10-year period.

A Lawrence citizens group – Grassroots Action – alleged that both Johnson and Hack’s involvement in creating the package of incentives constituted a violation of the state’s conflict of interest law.

But the attorney general’s office said that wasn’t the case. In the case of Hack, the attorney general’s office determined there wasn’t enough evidence that Hack had ever offered her opinion on whether the package of incentives should be approved. Absent that evidence, the attorney general’s office said it could not conclude Hack had violated the conflict of interest laws. Those laws prohibit elected officials who have a substantial ownership interest in a company from participating in the making of a contract with that company.

In the case of Johnson, the attorney general’s office determined he does not legally have a substantial interest in Deciphera. That’s because Johnson’s ownership interest in Deciphera is through a partnership that owns stock in another company, which then owns stock in another company that has an ownership interest in Deciphera. The law defines a substantial interest as being direct ownership of a company, not ownership through a series of partnerships.

Had Johnson or Hack been found to have violated the state’s conflict of interest laws, they could have been forced to resign their positions.

More details on the story later.