Lexington’s First Civic Assembly

In Spring 2026, CivicLex will host Lexington’s first-ever Civic Assembly — jury duty for public policy — on representation, trust, & participation in local government.

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What is a Civic Assembly?

You can think of a Civic Assembly like jury duty for public policy.

A Civic Assembly brings together a representative group of residents — selected at random — to learn about a big issue, hear from experts, talk with each other, and make recommendations for how things should change. Participants are compensated for their time and are facilitated in their meetings. It’s a great way to bring everyday people deep into the decisions that shape our community.

Over the past 30 years, Civic Assemblies have been used more than 700 times around the world to tackle complex and challenging issues. They’re usually organized by governments or outside organizations that want better, more democratic ways to solve problems.

How do Civic Assemblies Work?

Step 1: Commissioning

Civic Assemblies are built to propose solutions to a complicated issue.

Typically, a government or outside organization will “commission” the assembly, by selecting a topic, funding the assembly, and kickstarting the process.

Step 2: Lottery

Civic Assemblies are built using a lottery system. Random addresses are selected across the county, and letters are sent out informing recipients that they have been selected to participate. Recipients fill out a demographic survey, and send it back confirming their interest in participating.

Typically, thousands of letters are sent out to build a 15-30 person Assembly.

Step 3: Selection

From the surveys, the entity putting on the Assembly will build several random and anonymous panels of respondents using only demographic information — these panels are the options for who would participate in an Assembly.

The panels are designed to be fully representative across political affiliation, race, age, and other factors.

One of the panels is randomly selected to be the Assembly.

Step 4: Learning

The Assembly is convened in a publicly-accessible location over several full days.

First, they start by learning about the issue they are there to address. They are presented with educational materials and hear testimony from witnesses — formal experts, people with opposing perspectives, and people who will be clearly affected by the decision.

Step 5: Deliberation

After the Assembly has heard from witnesses, they discuss what they’ve heard and what they think the best solutions would be to address the issue they’re discussing.

Throughout this process, healthy disagreement is strongly encouraged, and Assembly members are guided by facilitation to eventually produce an opinion (or set of opinions) that most or all can agree on that recommends solutions to the issue.

Step 6: Recommendations

At the end of the process, the Assembly presents its opinions and recommendations to the commissioning body, a legislative body, or policymakers and requests a response.

Sometimes recommendations from Civic Assemblies are implemented via ballot measure, lawmaking, or policymaking — but this is not up to the Assembly to implement.

What will Lexington’s Civic Assembly look like?

In the Spring of 2026, CivicLex will host Lexington’s first-ever Civic Assembly. The topic? How our government works.

Lexington’s first Civic Assembly will be focused on the question “What changes should be made to Lexington’s Charter to improve representation, trust, and participation in local government?”. The Assembly will come together across 7-8 weeks in February and March of 2026 to recommend potential changes to the Urban County Charter, which is essentially Lexington’s local constitution.

There will be 30 people in Lexington’s Civic Assembly, including two representatives from each of Lexington’s 12 Council Districts and six representatives selected from the city at large. They will be selected by lottery through a mailing of well over 6,000 letters that will sent out in October/November of 2025 to random addresses across Lexington. The Assembly members will be selected at random from this group to match the city’s demographics across age, political affiliation, race, and more.

Assembly members will be compensated for their time, provided childcare and transportation stipends if they need it, and given any other necessary accessibility accommodations.

Recommendations about changes to the Urban County Charter from the Assembly will be presented to Urban County Council, which has decision-making power over what happens to them. We are asking Council to commit to publicly and formally responding to recommendations as they are presented.

What is the Urban County Charter?

The Urban County Charter is like Lexington’s local constitution.

It’s the rulebook that outlines how our local government is set up, what it’s allowed to do, and the rules it has to follow. The concept of a city charter has been around for a long time, but they became much more formalized with the release of the National Civic League’s Model City Charter in the year 1900.

Lexington’s city charter dates back to 1972, when the city of Lexington and Fayette County merged. Since its adoption, there have been several attempts to amend the charter — some successful, some not — but it has not been formally reviewed or updated since 1998.

Previous reviews of the Charter

1987

LFUCG’s Urban County Council undertakes a review via Charter Commission — a city-led proicess.

The Commission makes several recommendations, many of which were very controversial at the time:

Extending Mayoral term limits to 12 years from 8 years
Changing how the Vice Mayor is elected — from a Council vote to a public vote

Both of these were ultimately adopted by the public via ballot referendum.

1998

Lexington’s Chamber of Commerce undertakes a public review of the charter — not a city-led process.

The Chamber assembles a Committee to review the charter, which makes seven recommendations, many of which were controversial at the time:

Eliminating the Citizen Advocate position
Lengthening District Council Terms to 4 years

The Council at the time only put one item on the ballot — lengthening Council terms. It was ultimately defeated on the ballot.

What were challenges with past Charter processes?

In early planning for this project, CivicLex reviewed dozens of news clippings and reports from previous Charter review processes. We found several recurring challenges, including:

Council’s proximity to charter review:

“The council badly needs distance from the issue. It's impossible for us to be objective." – Councilmember Pam Miller, 1987, Lexington Herald-Leader

Limited public engagement:

“We are completely destroying the charter when we don't have more public input.” – Councilmember Debra Hensley, 1987, Lexington Herald-Leader

We believe that a Civic Assembly is perfectly suited to address these concerns!

What else should you know?

Civic Assemblies are a new concept to Lexington — we’re here to answer your questions!

We know that the concept of a Civic Assembly may feel brand new, but the fact is our community sees it almost every day in jury duty. Despite that, we know it may feel a bit confusing, so we’re here to answer any other questions you may have. We’ll continue to populate the list below with questions that we receive from the public about the process.

Lexington’s first Civic Assembly is being planned by CivicLex staff and an Advisory Group of external experts:
- Catherine Annis, Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky Martin School
- Joshua Douglas, Acting Associate Dean for Research & University Research Professor; Ashland, Inc-Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law, University of Kentucky; CivicLex Board Member
- Andi Johnson, Chief Policy Officer & Director of Regional Engagement, Commerce Lexington
- Susan Lamb, Fayette County Clerk
- David Lowe, Fayette County Commission, Parks Advisory Board Member
- Christian Motley, Vice President, Partnerships and Community Impact, Results for America
- Abby Piper, Founder & Managing Partner, Piper Smith
- Martin Rivers, Senior Services Commission Member
The primary role that Lexington’s local government will play in the Assembly is in receiving the recommendations. That said, we expect that current and former LFUCG officials will be asked to provide testimony and help Assembly members understand the scope of what Charter changes could mean.
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CivicLex has spent the past year fundraising to make the Assembly possible with no local government funding.