Douglas County codes appeal board member thought review would address Kobach controversy in detail

The chairman of Douglas County’s Board of Construction Codes Appeals, J. Stephen Lane, said he is confused about a disconnect between an upcoming review of the county’s building codes department and recent controversy involving a property owned by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Two months ago, commissioners said they wanted to examine the prospect of an outside consultant looking into the department, in part because of debates over whether Kobach was granted too many exemptions from the county’s building codes for his property in northwest Douglas County.

That issue with Kobach’s property was also discussed at a June 4 Board of Construction Codes Appeals meeting, along with the possibility of an upcoming third-party review, Lane said.

“The idea that I understood through talking with (Douglas County Administrator) Craig Weinaug and a county attorney representative was that this was to review primarily the Kobach situation and then also the department as a whole,” Lane said.

On Wednesday, Douglas County commissioners unanimously agreed to seek out an independent consultant to conduct a review of the codes department. However, they said the review would not explicitly examine the Kobach case. Instead, it will examine the department as a whole to outline a set of best practices and identify areas or policies that might need to be improved.

In 2014, it was discovered that Kobach was preparing a residence on his Douglas County property, although it was only coded for agricultural use. A $700 fine that would normally be issued was not brought against him, nor was he forced to tear out the structure’s floor so inspectors could take a look at already-installed plumbing. Last September, the county issued a permit of occupancy, despite there being no approved water source at the time.

Lane said he feels the errors inherent in the Kobach case warrant a more thorough investigation and it’s unclear why the upcoming review won’t take a closer look.

“I think that with the Kobach thing, there were just so many issues just glossed over and essentially ignored in that project, and that’s what the third-party review was going to look at,” Lane said.

Assistant County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said she was also at the June 4 meeting and acknowledged the Kobach case was brought up, but county commissioners decided to take another route.

“Ultimately, we were moving off the direction the Douglas County commissioners gave us, not the board of appeals,” she said.

Weinaug said he doesn’t recall discussing a specific review of the Kobach case at the June 4 meeting. Rather, he said, Lane’s version of what transpired may stem from “people with different jobs that interpreted the same events, in good faith, in slightly different ways.”

Since June 4, Lane said, he has tried to find records of the meeting, with no luck. Jim Sherman, the inspector in charge of examining Kobach’s building, was in attendance at the June 4 meeting and in charge of recording the minutes, both Plinsky and Lane confirmed. Sherman has since resigned his Douglas County position and accepted a position as a codes director in another community.

“(Sherman) hadn’t been able to get that information from the county prior to his leaving, and I haven’t been able to get the minutes from that meeting from anybody else,” Lane said.

The Journal-World requested minutes from the June 4 meeting Thursday. As of Friday evening, they were not available.

Plinsky said a recording of the meeting does exist, but that information will not become available until the record is transcribed and approved by the Board of Construction Codes Appeals at its next meeting. While the board is not currently scheduled to meet in the near future, Plinsky said, Lane does have the power to call a meeting.

If the upcoming review is not going to look more specifically at the Kobach case, Lane said, he is unsure what commissioners hope to accomplish. He noted the department underwent another third-party review in 2013 and received the highest possible marks.

That 2013 review was completed by the Insurance Services Organization as a part of standard protocol when the county adopted the 2012 version of the International Building Code, Weinaug said. The upcoming review, which will take a broad look at the department’s practices, is not necessarily redundant, he explained.

“It’s really a different issue,” he said. “The issue of whether our codes are up to date, whether we’ve adopted the current codes, is all a part of the review that took place. The review that the county commission is looking for is, I won’t say completely different, but it is something different.”

Weinaug added that inspectors within the codes department have made more mistakes than just in the incident with Kobach’s property, and the upcoming review likely will touch on all of them.

“We’re asking for what mistakes we’ve made,” Weinaug said. “We haven’t told them not to look at the Kobach case — it’s just not a review of the Kobach case.”