Remarks delivered to the Wichita City Council, April 15, 2008. Audio is available here.
The company that this warehouse is being built for is Cessna. In the end, it is that company that benefits from the property tax relief asked for today.
Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, I ask that you not vote to approve this request for a tax abatement, and that you cease this practice altogether. Alternatively, I ask that you adopt a practice that will help realize the costs of these actions.
It is no doubt difficult to compete with other states when they offer huge gifts to companies in order to lure them to their state. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed at a different level of government.
The matter before you now, however, is not the same. This company is not threatening, to my knowledge, to leave our area if the tax abatement is not granted. It appears they would build this facility even if the tax abatement is not granted.
The harmful effect of this tax abatement is this: When someone escapes paying taxes, someone else has to make up the difference. While the tax abatement being considered at this moment is relatively small, many are large, and when companies appear before this body week after week asking for tax favors, it adds up.
This same effect applies to the other governments that are affected: Sedgwick County, the Wichita public school district, and the State of Kansas. When one person does not pay, someone else has to pay more.
These special tax favors expose an inconsistency: business and government leaders tell us all the time that we must “build up the tax base.” Granting these tax favors destroys that base.
Now I don’t blame this company for asking for this tax favor. When councils, commissions, and legislatures indicate their willingness to grant these, businesses respond. So this company, of which I am a shareholder, by the way, is simply responding rationally to its environment.
But some of these companies that are asking for tax favors have problems with consistency. The president of this company has testified in favor of higher taxes to pay for building a facility that his company will benefit from. Now his company asks for relief from paying the taxes he wants others to pay.
As long as this body is willing to grant tax abatements and other special tax favors, I propose this simple pledge: that when the City of Wichita allows a company to escape paying taxes, that it reduce city spending by the same amount. By following this simple rule, the City can be reminded of the cost of granting special tax favors, and the rest of us won’t have to pay for them.