The Douglas County commission meets in the historic courtroom on the second floor of the old county courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

Douglas County commissioners unanimously agreed Wednesday to seek out a consultant to conduct a third-party review of the county’s building codes department.

Two months ago, commissioners said they wanted an outside consultant to inspect the department, in part because of a recent controversy over whether Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was granted too many exemptions from the county’s building codes with his building project in rural Douglas County.

The upcoming third-party review will not specifically inspect the Kobach case, County Commissioner Nancy Thellman said. Rather, it will examine the department as a whole in an attempt to determine a set of best practices and identify any areas or policies that have room for improvement.

“It’s not so narrowly focused,” she explained. “It’s a more comprehensive review.”

Assistant County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said it’s not uncommon for governmental bodies to conduct reviews of their services. She said some of the review’s findings may address issues raised by the Kobach case but it would be “short-sighted” to focus solely on that matter.

Among the items the third-party consultant might review are:

• The responsiveness of the Douglas County zoning and codes department, including the total number of inspections, building permits and plan reviews over the past several years, and determining the length of time for plan reviews in comparison with other governments in the region.

• Fairness and professionalism of the department, including reviewing how the department can “integrate contractor and builder feedback to ensure that staff interactions are fair and professional.”

• A best-practices review examining how similar governments handle the valuation of construction permits and policies, procedures used for waiving building permit fees and policies dealing with construction that occurred without a permit.

In 2014, it was discovered that Kobach was preparing a building in northwest Douglas County as a residence, even though it was coded only for agricultural use. A $700 fine that would normally be issued in such a case was not assessed, nor was Kobach forced to tear out his floor so inspectors could take a look at already-installed plumbing.

Last September, the county issued an occupancy permit even though there was no approved water source at the time.

Kay Pettit, a combination inspector for Douglas County, said she called many of the coding inconsistencies out to Jim Sherman, the inspector in charge of examining Kobach’s building, but was ignored in Kobach’s favor.

“I don’t think you can be an inspector worth your salt and give a certificate of occupancy on a house that doesn’t have windows in the bedroom,” she said.

Sherman later resigned his Douglas County position and accepted a position as a codes director in another community.

In light of Sherman’s departure, Pettit said, she is confused about what the county hopes to achieve with the upcoming review, calling the action “punitive” and saying she fears for her job after speaking out against the Kobach case.

Pettit said the building codes department underwent a review from the Insurance Services Organization as recently as 2013 and received high marks.

“(The upcoming review) makes no sense to me at all,” she said, “because our department has recently gone through a new code adoption, and we’ve also gone through the Building Code Effectiveness Grading System, which is basically a third party coming in and seeing how well the department is doing.”

Plinsky and Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug both said they could not recall any such review, but they did not deny that one may have taken place. As of Wednesday night, the Journal-World could not independently verify a review took place.

“There’s nothing wrong with our department,” Pettit said. “It feels to me like it’s punitive. I have the nerve to complain about the way the Kobach thing was handled, and now that the guy who did it is gone, there are only four people in our department. All we need is leadership, and we do not have it.

“I don’t know why somebody won’t sit down with me and go down everything that happened on the Kobach permit and say, ‘Yes, we did this right,’ and, ‘Yes, we did this incorrectly,'” she added. “Instead, they’re going to hire a consultant to do a review when all that info they’re requesting can be spit out by our very basic software.”

The county also hopes for the upcoming third-party review to address how much discretion inspectors may use in their positions.

“What kind of discretion do other building code officials have in other organizations?” Plinsky said. “That would give me a sense of ‘do our building code officials have too much discretion or too little discretion.’ I don’t know, so I need to get a sense of what other places have.”

Plinsky said it may take several weeks to find a third-party consultant to conduct the review.

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, county commissioners:

• Unanimously agreed to donate an empty lot in the East Hills Business Park to a new business venture by the adjacent building materials company, Prosoco Inc.

The gifted lot includes less than 4 acres of land and sits between Prosoco and Kinedyne, another business to the south.

The land will be used for loading docks and access roads that will connect to Kinedyne’s building, which Prosoco plans to take over later this year as Kinedyne moves its operations to Alabama.

Douglas County commissioners meet at 4 p.m. each Wednesday at the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St. The meetings are open to the public.