Ottawa County commissioners hold repeated executive sessions to interview Emergency Management Director candidates

The Ottawa County Board of County Commissioners spent most of its May 5–6, 2026, meetings in closed executive sessions to interview candidates for the county’s Emergency Management Director post. Commissioner Scott Mortimer called the May 5 meeting to order at 11:30 a.m. and moved “to executive session under the non-elected personnel exception to the Kansas Open Meetings Act to conduct Emergency Management Director interviews for 30 minutes,” a motion that Commissioner Carla Grund seconded and the board approved 3-0.

The motions recorded in the minutes repeatedly named the same participants inside those closed sessions: Chancy Smith, Dickinson County Emergency Management Director; Keith Coleman, Assistant Emergency Management Director; Tammi Cox, County Clerk; and an unnamed applicant. The minutes show multiple extensions of executive sessions on May 5 — and again on May 6 — with return times adjusted by 10, 15, 30 and 40 minutes; each motion to enter or extend a closed session passed unanimously, and the minutes repeatedly note “No action taken” following the interviews.

Board members scheduled and recessed for brief public breaks between closed sessions. On May 5 the board adjourned at 3:30 p.m.; it reconvened May 6 at 2:30 p.m. and again moved through a series of closed sessions that afternoon. One late executive session on May 6 specified that only County Clerk Tammi Cox would remain in the closed meeting, immediately before the board’s subsequent personnel motion.

The closed-session format limits what the public record discloses about the candidates and discussion; the minutes identify interview participants and session lengths but do not include applicants' names, interview content, or scoring. The commissioners’ repeated use of the non-elected personnel exception to the Kansas Open Meetings Act is consistent with state law permitting closed deliberations on individual hires, but the minutes do not record any public rationale for the repeated extensions beyond continuing the interviews.

What happens next: the minutes show that after the May 6 executive sessions the board authorized the county clerk to make a job offer (see separate report). Until the county clerk issues an offer and it is publicly reported, the record contains only the motions to interview and an authorization to make an offer — not the hiring decision itself.