Montgomery County Commissioners seem to be taking retaliatory action against Montgomery County Clerk Ami Standridge in the county’s revised budget, after Standridge discovered the commission failed to follow Kansas statute when voting to raise taxes.
On Sept. 29, 2025, at the regular commission meeting, Standridge explained to Montgomery County Commissioners that when they voted to raise taxes after closing the Revenue Neutral Rate hearing earlier that month, and without passing the required resolution during the hearing the tax increase was therefore unlawful, and the commission would have to pass a revenue-neutral budget before the Oct. 1 deadline.
The commission, one day later, passed a revised revenue-neutral budget, but as the chart below shows, they cut more than $38,000 from Standridge’s budget — while increasing others, some of which are substantial increases.
During the Sept. 30 meeting, commissioners said that no positions had been cut and that no salaries had been reduced, but the $38,340 cut to the clerk’s budget looks suspiciously like a salary. Commissioners also said that remaining revenue neutral would cause a “cut … in services” that “are essential to some people more than others, probably.” However, when pressed after the meeting about what county services were going to be cut, commissioners were unable to be specific beyond a hiring freeze for some departments, or perhaps road repairs taking longer.
Meanwhile, the Montgomery County Attorney’s office saw its budget increased by more than $330,000. While the courthouse general fund budget was reduced by around $267,000, the administration budget went up $226.129.
How did Montgomery County get there?
Standridge had verified on Friday, Sept. 26, after a conversation with the Kansas Department of Revenue, that the Montgomery County Commission had not followed the “required statutory steps” to exceed the previous year’s revenue-neutral rate, and that a budget meeting the 39.989 mill rate — rather than the 49.999 mill levy that had originally been passed — would have to be developed.
At the meeting, commissioners demanded to know why she had not informed them earlier, noting she was not present at the meeting where the RNR hearing was held.
That meeting was on Sept. 15 — five days before the statute requires the resolution to be passed — the day Standridge’s infant was released from the hospital after 21 days in the neonatal intensive care unit.
However, in a phone interview with The Sentinel, Standridge said that she was initially made aware of a problem on Sept. 17, but was — and still is — on maternity leave.
“I have a budget analyst, one of my employees, they help me take care of the budgets and all of that throughout the year,” Standridge said. “So as we receive budgets into the County Clerk’s Office, we have a checklist, and that checklist we created after we have received a lot of training from the Department of Administration at the state’s office. So as she was going through that checklist, she realized that she didn’t have a resolution.”
Standridge said the employee was unsure exactly what was required, and so she ordered them to contact the state for clarification.
“I went in on Friday to say hi to my staff, you know, see how they were doing and whatnot, and that’s when they started talking to me about this a little bit more, and I asked if they had heard back from the county counselor and where we were at with this process,” she said. “So I went ahead and contacted the county counselor, and he concurred with the state.”
Standridge said she asked state officials to watch the entire meeting and check the agenda. She said the state immediately said they could tell just from the agenda that the county had not followed the statutory procedure.
But even had the commission been informed of the issue on Sept. 17, rather than Sept. 26, it would have been impossible to correct the mistake by having a new hearing, as the statute requires 10 days’ notice to voters before the hearing can be held.
Standridge said she was not trying to create a problem for the county or “catch anyone off guard.”
“I’m proud of my staff, and I’m proud that we caught it,” she said. “We have a checklist, and when we started going through our checklist is when we found out that we were missing something, and then that went on to trigger us contacting the state, The state watched it, and they were like, ‘well, you don’t even have to go that far to realize that … even from the agenda, once they close that hearing it’s wrong, and they would not have had enough time to redo it.'”
