Promises of transparency were made during the recent Wichita sales tax campaign. If the city cares about government transparency, the city should implement its campaign promises, even though the tax did not pass.
During the campaign for the one cent per dollar sales tax that Wichita voters rejected in November, a city document promised that if the tax passed “The process will be transparent, with reports posted online outlining expenditures and expected outcomes.”
The “Yes Wichita” campaign promised “Reports will be measured and reported publicly.”
These are good ideas. The city, county, and state should do these things.
They should do them even though the sales tax did not pass. But that hasn’t happened.
During September, during the heart of a campaign, I became aware of a Wichita company that received a forgivable loan from the City of Wichita, and a similar loan from Sedgwick County. The company was not able to meet the commitments required in the loan document, and was required to repay the loan.
Did you know this? Did either Sedgwick County or the City of Wichita make any effort to publicize this? This seems to be the type of information the city and the “Yes Wichita” campaign said would be provided if the sales tax passed. We were promised a website. If it’s good for citizens to have this type of information if the sales tax had passed, it’s good for them to know in any circumstance.
But neither governmental agency thought citizens needed to know about the company that was not able to meet the terms of its forgivable loan. There was no website, no press release. Nothing. My efforts to obtain the information from the city were met with resistance.
It’s not like the communications staffs are overwhelmed and have no time to provide this type of information. The county’s communications director starts each commission meeting with some sort of trivia contest or other prelude that contributes nothing except the waste of time. During the sales tax campaign Wichita city staff had time to prepare news releases with titles like “City to Compete in Chili Cook-off” and “Jerry Seinfeld Returns to Century II.”
A cynical person might conclude that transparency was dangled only to get people to vote for the sales tax, not as a governing principle.