City commissioners have scheduled for next week their state-mandated training session on how to comply with the Kansas Open Meetings Act.

Mike Kautsch, a Kansas University Law School professor and former dean of KU’s School of Journalism, will lead the training session from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 15 at City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.

The training session will be open to the public, and City Manager David Corliss said the County Commission and the school board also have been invited to attend. Several key city staff members also will be attending, Corliss said.

“We’re committed to making it a good, productive session, and I know Mike is as well,” Corliss said.

City commissioners are required to go through the training session as part of a settlement agreement reached with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general found that city commissioners violated a portion of the open meetings law by conducting a closed-door executive session to discuss a package of economic development incentives for Deciphera Pharmaceuticals.

As part of the settlement agreement, the attorney general agreed to not prosecute the case if commissioners agreed to take a training course and pay with their own money for the expense of the course.

Corliss, though, said Kautsch has agreed to provide the training free of charge.

Deciphera Pharmaceuticals – a start-up company working on developing drugs to fight cancer- last week announced that it was no longer going to accept the economic development incentives package. It also announced it had halted its plans to expand in Lawrence.