For more than an hour, the Salina City Commission and former commissioner Jon Blanchard discussed whether or not Blanchard should have been sanctioned while on the commission.
Commissioners at the time voted 3-2 to reprimand Blanchard for releasing unredacted documents to the Salina Journal that had been considered confidential. The Journal first received documents in June 2014 in response to an open records request, but much of the information was blacked out, or redacted. The documents concerned a contract between the city and the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce for economic development services.
In the documents, city leaders gave reasons for not paying to the chamber the entire amount called for in the contract.
Blanchard gave unredacted copies of the documents to Journal reporter Tim Horan in October 2017 without gaining permission from the rest of the commissioners. The Journal published stories using that information.
(Read more: News – Salina Journal)