Lawrence residents had best grow to love their current crop of city commissioners and school board members. They’re going to be around a bit longer than anyone expected.

A new election law signed recently by Gov. Sam Brownback will add about 10 months onto the terms of existing city commissioners and about seven months onto the terms of school board members.

“That’s pretty significant,” City Commissioner Mike Amyx said. “You can do a lot in 10 months.”

The new law has canceled the March primary and the April general elections that were set to take place for city and school officials in 2017. They’ve been replaced with a primary election in August 2017 and a general election in November 2017.

The dates for city commissioners and school board members to take office also have changed. Both city and school officials will begin their terms on the second Monday of January. Previously, city commissioners began their terms just days after the April elections, and school board members began their terms in July.

School board members who were elected in last April’s election will take their seats next month as planned. The change in terms will begin for elected officials who have terms expiring in 2017. Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew said the law reads that those terms will be automatically extended until the second Monday in January of 2018.

Whether the Legislature, however, can simply pass a law that extends the terms of elected officials is a matter of debate. There are questions about whether the Kansas Constitution gives the Legislature the power to modify the terms of other elected officials.

“There is a huge discussion going on about the terms of office part,” Shew said.

Until further notice, however, city commissioners and school board members have received extensions of their terms. Leaders with the Lawrence City Commission and the Lawrence School Board expressed concerns about the changes.

Amyx said he understands the legislators made the changes in hopes of increasing voter turnout in city and school board elections. Last April’s general election produced only a 16 percent turnout in Douglas County.

Amyx, though, said he’s not sure the change will produce much higher turnout. The change still keeps city and school elections in odd-numbered years. That means city and school board races generally will be on ballots by themselves, rather than capitalizing off of the higher voter turnout caused by gubernatorial, senate or presidential races.

There is concern that the change is a first step in adding partisan politics to the races. Currently, city and school officials don’t run a party label.

“When greater turnout doesn’t happen, lawmakers are going to say ‘we should have moved them to even-numbered years, and if we do that we should go ahead and make them partisan,'” said Shannon Kimball, president of the Lawrence School Board. “And that would be terrible for schools.”

Kimball said the new start dates for school board members also will be detrimental. By starting in January, new board members will miss out on the opportunity to craft the district’s budget during their first year in office. School budgets generally are crafted in July, right after new board members take office. She said having board members start in the middle of a school year also will limit the amount of influence new members can have on crafting school schedules and other such issues.

The change in dates also is expected to create some logistical issues for the City Commission. The city will have to decide if it wants to adjust its terms for mayor. The city’s mayoral position currently is for one year, and the mayor is chosen by fellow commissioners. Farmer’s term is scheduled to end in April 2017, and if tradition holds, Vice Mayor Leslie Soden will be elected as the next mayor. But will her term end in April 2018, or will the commission make a change at some point to align the mayoral term to coincide with new commissioners entering the commission? If extended to January, that would mean Soden, or whoever is elected by commissioners next, would have a term of a little more than 21 months.

Amyx said he anticipates the commission discussing the mayoral issue, and perhaps will consider changing how the city elects a mayor. During the last campaign, there were conversations about whether the city should go to a system where the mayor is directly elected by the people and serves a term greater than one year.

Both Amyx and Kimball said they have concerns about how the election changes will increase the length of local campaigns. The new filing deadline will be June 1, and there will be three months of campaigning between the primary election and the general election. Under the previous system, there was about five weeks between the primary and general elections.

Shew, the county clerk, said he is curious to see if there are some positives to come from the changes. He said the new schedule will give lesser-known candidates more time to build name recognition and momentum in campaigns. He also said he thinks there’s a chance the changes will produce the desired increase in voter turnout.

“It will be interesting to see if we can build a tradition of going to vote every November, no matter what year it is,” Shew said.