From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for March 6, 1989:

Several Douglas County department heads today appealed to county commissioners to change the existing residency requirement for county employees. They said the rule, which required an employee to be a Douglas County resident within nine months after taking a job with the county, limited the pool of applicants and resulted in worker shortages. Ted McFarlane, director of the Douglas County Ambulance Service, told commissioners that the department had been understaffed for 20 of the past 37 months partly because of the policy, which had also resulted in a lack of applicants for open positions. “Those that we do get are never from Lawrence, because there are really no unemployed paramedics living in Lawrence,” McFarlane said. Pam Madl, county personnel director, said similar problems had been noted by Valleyview Care Home and by the departments of public works and data processing. Some applicants had turned down jobs because their families were established elsewhere and their spouses had good jobs in other towns, leading to a reluctance to relocate. “I think we’re losing some good employees,” Madl said. The county commission, while taking no action on the proposal, seemed opposed to the suggestion to change the policy.