A dramatic drop in the number of discrimination complaints investigated by the city this year may be good news or cause for concern.

As a budget-cutting measure, city commissioners approved the elimination at the beginning of this year of two city jobs that were responsible for overseeing and enforcing the city’s Human Relations Code. The code prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and a number of other factors when it comes to employment, housing and other areas. Responsibility for investigating discrimination complaints was transferred to the city prosecutor’s office.

That seemed like a reasonable course, but reports last week that discrimination complaints investigated by the city had dropped from 17 in 2009 to three in 2010 is raising some questions.

There are a number of factors that might explain such a drop. The most favorable would be that there were far fewer people who felt they were the victims of discrimination this year, but that doesn’t seem particularly likely. It’s also possible that the city prosecutor’s office is being far more selective than the city’s former human relations department had been in deciding which cases to investigate. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as cases that have merit still are investigated.

The other possibility that should concern city commissioners more is that the local residents may not know where to file a complaint or may be intimidated by the legal atmosphere of the city prosecutor’s office. These are issues city employees should be able to address. For instance, information about where to file discrimination complaints isn’t particularly easy to find on the city’s website — even after some misinformation was pointed out by a Journal-World reporter and corrected.

It also wouldn’t hurt for employees in the city prosecutor’s office to make an extra effort to work with people who want to file a complaint and make them feel more comfortable with the process. Even if the complaint ends up not warranting investigation, people deserve to be heard.

City leaders have traditionally taken enforcement of the human relations code seriously. The state also has anti-discrimination laws, and local residents could take their complaints to the Kansas Human Rights Commission, but Lawrence officials have maintained that it’s important for residents to have a local venue in which to address those issues.

We agree with Mayor Mike Amyx, that the city should give the new system time to work. During that time the city’s Human Relations Board also should monitor the situation and try to gauge whether the needs of city residents are being met.

It’s great that Lawrence places a high priority on local enforcement of human rights laws. That process only works, however, if people can access the information they need and the officials who can help them.