By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Commissioner Daniel Friesen let those who might be interested in becoming a colleague of his on a new five-member county commission in 2023 know that you need to be adaptable to do the job well.
"One warning is, you certainly can't predict what will be on your plate by the time you get there," Friesen said Friday. "It's a process a half a year or more before you get into the commission. You need to be ready for about anything that's thrown at you. COVID really wasn't a thing when I threw in my candidacy a year and a half ago, at least or two years now. That was a surprise to me."
There's a whole lot more to the job that isn't in the public meetings.
"The public a lot of times sees us meet publicly for a couple hours, they believe that's the commission's work," Friesen said. "That's when we get together to make decisions, but each commissioner has a significant amount of time dedicated to communicating with the public and the county administrator and staff, developing their own policy decisions, researching those items of debate that they want to bring to the commission."
It's also important to know the limits of the commission's influence.
"A lot of the county's departments are run by other elected officials," Friesen said. "Because of that, the county commission has a limited capability to change what they are doing. It's more of an encouragement than dictation that the commission can do."
As some examples, the county clerk, county treasurer, county sheriff and register of deeds are all department heads directly elected by the people. Most of those also have state statutes that require them to perform certain duties in specific manners that may or may not be cost-effective.