In 2017 we called for an amendment to Kansas Statutes to prevent so-called “seat swapping” in the state.
We did so after a pair of incidents in Crawford County — one in Frontenac and one in Arma — in which someone either already on a governing board, as in Frontenac, or — more egregiously— who had lost an election, as in Arma, was appointed to an open seat with two or more years to run.
We asked the local legislative delegation to spearhead this. Moreover we joined with other newspapers in Kansas to investigate this sort of cronyism and found that, disturbingly, these incidents were not isolated.
