Voice For Liberty

Category: Sedgwick county government

  • Sedgwick County budget: there are ways to save

    Remarks delivered to a budget hearing before the Sedgwick County Commission.

    Listening to the budget hearings two weeks ago, I was struck by the reach of government into people’s lives, and to the extent that the recipients of services expect the general taxpayer to pay.

    It’s one thing when we help people who are truly not able to care for themselves. While I do not believe government is the best agent for that, it’s the system we have in place for now.

    For example: the g2goutside program, which offers recreational programs in the great outdoors. Is this a worthy goal? Sure, but this should not be a government program. It is recreation. Government should not be involved.

    Then, a farmer said a farm bureau program helps him plan his crops and their management. Commissioners, a farm is a business. If it has need for information and management consulting advice, it should pay for its own needs, just like we expect other business firms to do.

    I’m almost reluctant to say this, as these people seem to be well-meaning. But these two examples and other testimony presented that day remind me of Henry Hazlitt and what he termed the “special pleading of selfish interests.” In his book Economics in one lesson, he wrote:

    While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for then plausibly and persistently.

    Looking through the budget, it seems like Sedgwick County makes very little use of outsourcing. In fact, in 769 pages the word “outsource” or its variant is used only once. I would ask that the commissioners take notice of the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia, which outsources nearly everything the city does. It would take me a while to read the list of functions that the city outsources. This is not a small town; its population is over 90,000. We in Sedgwick County can do more with outsourcing as a way to improve service delivery at lower cost.

    I also see no reason as to why the county should be supporting Wichita State University.

    Regarding our economic development efforts: According to the recent report by the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, 517 jobs were created through the combined economic development efforts in Sedgwick County. That’s an annual rate of 1,034 jobs. That sounds like a lot, but place this number in context. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the labor force in Sedgwick County averaged 253,045 people in 2010. That means the number of jobs created by our economic development efforts amounted to 0.4 percent of the county’s labor force.

    I would suggest that this amounts to mere statistical noise; a vanishingly small number which is overwhelmed by other events.

    Furthermore, we find that despite the economic development incentives we’ve granted are often not really needed. We have two examples — one here and one at Wichita City Hall — where developers told this body that without incentives, their projects could not go forward. The Wichita example is relevant because it involved the city granting forgiveness of taxes that the country would otherwise collect.

    In these cases, despite the insistence of developers that welfare was required for their projects, the projects went ahead without it.

    Tomorrow I believe you will be dealing with another example of developer welfare given to someone at great cost to taxpayers, but now is not needed after all.

    The statistics cited above, along with these three examples, show that money can be saved on our economic development efforts.

  • Sedgwick County considers a federal grant

    Remarks delivered to the Sedgwick County Commission as it considered accepting a federal grant. The terms of this grant required that the commission hold a public hearing.

    Commissioners: With regard to the wisdom of accepting this grant.

    Milton Friedman said: “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

    Is this true? Or is it just rhetoric and speculation by the brilliant and freedom-loving economist?

    If we ask the question: Do federal grants cause state and/or local tax increases in the future after the government grant ends? We now have an answer.

    Economists Russell S. Sobel and George R. Crowley have examined the evidence, and they find the answer is yes.

    Their research paper is titled Do Intergovernmental Grants Create Ratchets in State and Local Taxes? Testing the Friedman-Sanford Hypothesis.

    The difference between this research and most is that Sobel and Crowley look at the impact of federal grants on state and local tax policy in future periods, not just the present period.

    This is important because, in their words, “Federal grants often result in states creating new programs and hiring new employees, and when the federal funding for that specific purpose is discontinued, these new state programs must either be discontinued or financed through increases in state own source taxes.”

    The same remarks apply to local governments like counties and cities.

    The authors caution: “Far from always being an unintended consequence, some federal grants are made with the intention that states will pick up funding the program in the future.”

    I realize that much of what is planned for the grant funds is one-time purchases of equipment. But one planned use is to hire a toxicologist to support what is described in the application as “timely investigation of criminal activity.” What will happen after the grant funds expire? Will we be unwilling to go back to the untimely investigation of criminal activity, if in fact that describes the present situation?

    And if that does not describe the present situation, why do we need the grant?

    From the conclusion to the research findings:

    Our results clearly demonstrate that grant funding to state and local governments results in higher own source revenue and taxes in the future to support the programs initiated with the federal grant monies. Our results are consistent with Friedman’s quote regarding the permanence of temporary government programs started through grant funding.

    …

    Our results suggest that the recent large increase in federal grants to state and local governments that has occurred as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will have significant future tax implications at the state and local level as these governments raise revenue to continue these newly funded programs into the future.

    …

    Based on our estimates, future state taxes will rise by between 33 and 42 cents for every dollar in federal grants states received today, while local revenues will rise by between 23 and 46 cents for every dollar in federal (or state) grants received today.

    I realize that some have criticized arguments that I and others have made as being only theoretical, and that as commissioners you must deal with the real world.

    But what I have presented today is not just a quaint theory. It is empirical research. It’s what has actually happened. It describes the real world.

    Not only are we taxed to pay for the cost of funding federal and state grants, the units of government that receive grants are very likely to raise their own levels of taxation in response to the receipt of the grants. This is a cycle of ever-expanding government that needs to end, and right now.

    Gentlemen, we can do better. While most people think the problem of government over-spending requires a top-down solution starting in Washington, we have to do better than waiting for Washington to act.

    Right here, right now, in Sedgwick County, home to what the Weather Channel calls the fourth-hottest city in the country, we can show the rest of the country the way. We can show the country that there is a bottom-up solution to the problem of federal spending.

  • Sedgwick County, Golf Warehouse, reveal shortcomings in procedure

    Wednesday’s decision by the Sedgwick County Commission to grant a forgivable loan of $48,000 to The Golf Warehouse is yet another example of local government relying on corporate welfare as economic development, and exposes how little deliberation is given to making these decisions.

    This subsidy was promoted by the county and TGW’s consultant as necessary to persuade the applicant company to expand its operations in Wichita rather than Indiana, where the company has other operations and had also received an offer of subsidy. The same argument had been made to the Wichita City Council in May 10th, and it was successful in persuading all council members but one to vote in favor of granting a forgivable loan of the same amount as the county.

    At the county commission meeting, commissioners received a presentation by Leslie Wagner, Director of Project Management and Development for Ginovus, an economic development and site location advisory services firm working on behalf of TGW.

    While The Golf Warehouse was started in Wichita by entrepreneurs, Wagner told commissioners that the company is now owned by Redcats, a Paris, France company. That acquisition took place in 2006, she said.

    A focus of Wagner’s presentation was how large and successful an enterprise Redcats is, with $4.8 billion in annual sales revenue and over 14,000 employees. As to TGW specifically, Wagner said it offers the largest and broadest selection of golf products in the world, and has expanded to included baseball, softball, and soccer products.

    Right away some might be inclined to ask why, with the company so large and successful, local governments find it necessary to prop up this company with public assistance.

    According to Wagner, TGW will add 105 new employees by 2015, and the company’s average annual payroll by then will be $9,995,000.

    The argument for subsidy

    In her presentation, Wagner listed the incentives offered to TGW by both Indiana and Kansas. But she did not supply the value of each incentive, which makes the comparison largely meaningless. Additionally, the list of the incentives and subsidies offered by the State of Kansas was not complete. Further, some of the incentives offered by Indiana are already present in Kansas.

    For example, one incentive offered by Indiana was an abatement on personal property tax, which Wagner indicated was a factor in favor of that state. But Kansas does not tax business personal property, that is, business machinery and equipment newly purchased, leased, or moved into Kansas. This ranges from desks, computers, and copiers to large pieces of machinery and equipment. The incentive offered by Indiana, therefore, is already in place in Kansas without companies needing to ask for it, and Wagner should not have included this as a distinguishing factor between Indiana and Kansas.

    In addition, Kansas has added “expensing,” which allows businesses to depreciate purchases in one year instead of several, which reduces Kansas state income tax. As TGW expands and makes these purchases, it will be able to take advantage of this new provision in the Kansas tax code.

    Wagner also mentioned an Indiana program called EDGE (Economic Development for a Growing Economy), which rebates employees’ state income tax withholding back to the company. We have that in Kansas, too. It’s called Promoting Employment Across Kansas (PEAK), and the range of situations where this program can be applied has been expanded by this year’s legislature. This, again, is an example where an incentive offered by Indiana and promoted by Wagner as a reason as to why the county must grant a subsidy of its own to TGW is already present in Kansas.

    Another part of Wagner’s presentation that deserves a second look is her analysis of the economic impact of TGW. Wagner said that over ten years the payroll — the wages paid to its employees in Wichita — of TGW would be $100,623,437, with a “conservative” apportionment to the county of $50,311,718.

    She then showed the commission a slide where she computed the return on the county’s investment. For the “return,” she used the $50,311,718 figure of payroll that she attributed to the county. For the “investment,” she used $96,000, which is the sum of the forgivable loans from both Wichita and Sedgwick County. (Why she used both entity’s investment but only county payroll, I don’t know.)

    Her calculations from these numbers produced a return on investment of 524 percent. “If I were making an investment, that’s a phenomenal return, and I’d make that one all day long,” she told commissioners.

    But her actual calculation should have been as follows ($50,311,718 – $96,000) / $96,000 * 100 = 52,308 percent for the rate of return, if she was looking to fluff up her numbers as much as possible.

    But even that calculation wouldn’t make economic or financial sense. The $50,311,718 is returned over a period of 10 years, so the receipt of that money needs to be spread over that time. Then, since long time periods are involved, the returns in future years need to be discounted, because a dollar expected to be received in ten years is not worth as much as a dollar received this year. I made a few other assumptions and used Excel’s internal rate of return function to compute a rate of return of 5,241 percent.

    This tremendous rate of return, of course, makes no economic sense either. The $50,311,718 used as the “return” to the county is not that at all. This money is wages paid to workers. It belongs to them, not to the county. True, the county will get some of that in the form of sales taxes these workers pay as they make purchases within the county, and perhaps in other forms of taxes. Using an estimate of that number would make sense on some level, and that is the type of reasoning the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research uses to compute the cost-benefit figures the city and county often rely upon in making decisions.

    But the figures and calculations Wagner used to make the case for TGW make absolutely no economic or financial sense. Worse than being merely absurd, they are deceptive. Compounding the error, elected officials such as commission chair Dave Unruh cited them as a factor in making his vote in favor of granting the forgivable loan.

    Completing her presentation, Wagner said “Perhaps as important, it’s goodwill. … Does the state want us to stay, does the community want us to stay, and are they willing to help us grow?” Brad Wolansky, CEO of TGW, said the loan is part of the “element of partnership” between the county and TGW, which he said was indicative of the county’s support. This is the same attitude expressed at the Wichita City Council meeting: Many of these companies requesting incentives and subsidies believe they deserve some sort of reward for investing in Wichita and creating jobs. The profits of entrepreneurs or capitalists are no longer sufficient, it seems, for some companies.

    In remarks from the bench, Sedgwick County Commissioner Richard Ranzau questioned the need for this incentive, citing the recent example of a Save-A-Lot store which will be built by a developer without incentives, after the original developer failed to acquire all the incentive he asked for. Video of his remarks and an exchange with Wagner is below.

    In his remarks, Commissioner Jim Skelton said this decision is a “no-brainer,” and that he was proud to do this for the community. Chairman Unruh said “we’re competing with someone else for this company.” He referenced the “great return” on the county’s investment, and that he could not find a reason not to support it.

    All commissioners except Ranzau voted to grant the forgivable loan, with Karl Peterjohn absent.

    City and county information not complete

    The forgivable loan subsidy granted by both Wichita and Sedgwick County is not the only subsidy TGW will receive. An inquiry to the Kansas Department of Commerce indicates that from the state of Kansas, TGW will receive $125,000 from the Kansas Economic Opportunity Initiatives Fund, $125,000 in Kansas Industrial Retraining, $50,000 in Kansas Industrial Training, $96,000 in sales tax savings, $315,918 in personal property tax savings, and $623,796 from the High Performance Incentive Program, for total incentives from the state of $1,310,714.

    These state incentives were not mentioned by the county. The value is also much higher than the City of Wichita reported in its material for its May 10th meeting when the city approved its forgivable loan to TGW. At that time, city documents reported the value of state subsidies at $275,000, a figure just 21 percent of the value reported by the Department of Commerce.

    Corporate welfare, again

    This episode, where subsidy is heaped on a company who presents a threat — real or imagined — of leaving Wichita or expanding elsewhere, represents local officials not grounding a decision on actual facts. The wild claims of return on investment made by the company’s representative simply can’t be believed. Her information about the incentives offered and available, as well as that from the City of Wichita, is incomplete or misleading.

    With some time to analyze the claims made by Wagner (and others who appear in similar situations), we can expose them for what they are. But commissioners — city council members too — often don’t have time or expertise to examine the facts. Commissioner Ranzau told me that he did not receive Wagner’s slides before the meeting. The information delivered to the council by Sherdeill Breathett, Economic Development Specialist for the county, did not appear in the new agenda system the county recently implemented. During meetings there is not time to analyze calculations or examine the claims made by presenters.

    We have to ask, however, if local government officials have the desire to examine these presentations and claims. Once the veneer of economic development hucksterism — thin as it is — is stripped away, we are left with what Ranzau has stated several times from his position on the commission bench: a simple transfer of one person’s money to another using the force of government as the agent. This reality of corporate welfare is something that officials would rather not recognize, and it’s not economic development in my book.

  • Many want to cut budgets … but

    Last week Sedgwick County Commissioners were unable to come to agreement on a level of funding for Project Access. The county needs to cut spending this year, as Commissioner Karl Peterjohn explains below. Differences in attitudes towards spending were revealed when a motion to keep spending on this program at the same level as the year before failed to advance, with two commissioners wanting to increase spending. It’s not as though Commissioners Peterjohn and Ranzau wanted to cut the program, although since the original county budget contained an increase in funding for the program, some will want to portray level spending as a budget cut.

    Project Access funding

    By Karl Peterjohn, Sedgwick County Commission

    Should Sedgwick County increase property tax funding for expanded local health care spending through the private program Project Access 37.3 percent over last year’s level? That $68,000 spending hike was the question facing county commissioners at their April 20 meeting.

    Last year, one of the reasons I cast the only no vote against the county’s 2011 budget, was it raised spending too much. The 2011 county budget increased spending over the 2010 adopted budget by $13 million taking county spending over $411 million. I warned that if the economic gurus and politicians in Washington were wrong, and the economic recovery did not occur, local governments that are dependent upon property tax would be facing even more difficult fiscal problems than we’ve had since the 2008 economic downturn began.

    That 2011 county budget included raises for county employees that totaled over $2.5 million. Some highly paid county employees received thousands in raises by this action. I voted against this increased spending last December. I was the only no vote at that time too. Neither of these votes got much news or editorial attention last year.

    Sedgwick County is now looking at having to cut $17 million from county spending due to a decline in tax revenues led by the property tax. The county is starting a voluntary early retirement program before looking at layoffs as part of a two year spending reduction effort that the commission approved recently. The tough spending decisions must begin now. This is occurring while we still face the larger challenge of trying to help our local economy and expand jobs and income in these tough times of rapidly soaring inflation.

    The inaccurate commentary on the April 24 Wichita Eagle editorial page stated that Commissioner Richard Ranzau and I were unwilling to increase funding for this program. The Wichita Eagle ran a correction April 22 on this point following their news article that ignored this salient fact and incorrectly stated what happened at this meeting.

    It is a fact that Commissioner Ranzau and I did propose a much smaller increase than the other two commissioners wanted after an initial vote to freeze spending at 2010 levels failed. Commissioner Skelton was absent for this vote and this explains how we repeatedly deadlocked two votes to two.

    The entire commission acknowledged the value of this program. However, there are limits on increasing spending to pay for personnel within Project Access at the same time the county is facing layoffs of employees in the Health Department and other health related areas. I was also concerned that more than half of the $250,000 that was sought would have been for Project Access personnel instead of for medicine.

    At the February commission retreat county staff described our increasingly troubled fiscal outlook. At that meeting I heard several of my commission colleagues express a desire to increase county spending. I asked my colleagues if there was a majority of this commission that had two new members that was willing to raise property taxes to pay for additional spending. The answer I heard at this public meeting was there was no desire by commissioners to raise property taxes.

    If this is still the case, then the Sedgwick County Commission will have to make some tough spending choices. Public Access was one of them. It won’t be the last.

    While Project Access is a small part of the county’s overall spending, if you don’t make the tough decisions with your “nickels and dimes,” you can’t make the much tougher decisions when the big bucks are on the line. That challenge will not end with Project Access but will face this commission and all local governments holding the line on property taxes later this year.

  • Economic development incentives questioned at Sedgwick County Commission

    Last week’s meeting of the Sedgwick County Commission featured a discussion of economic development incentives unlike the genial rubberstamping these items usually receive. From the bench, Commissioner Richard Ranzau was the driving force in asking the questions.

    The issue was a forgivable loan of $220,000 to be made to Apex Engineering International LLC. The company has already received approval of a forgivable loan of the same amount from the City of Wichita The company will also receive grants and tax credits totaling $1,272,000 from the state of Kansas.

    Apex, a manufacturer of airplane parts, claims it has received an offer from Jacksonville, Florida for the company to move there. The actions by Sedgwick County, Wichita, and Kansas is to persuade Apex to remain in Wichita rather than move to Jacksonville.

    Some interesting points raised by Ranzau:

    Is this an “economic emergency or unique opportunity” as claimed by the county’s economic development staff?

    Ranzau notes that our economic development policies need to address the overall climate for business, instead of picking just a few companies to grant money to.

    Ranzau questions why the county does not require collateral for the loan it is making. The answer given by staff is that this is a standard agreement and is the same that the City of Wichita uses. Staff said that the county considers the forgivable loan to be an investment.

    Financial statements have been reviewed by a CPA on county staff, and also by the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition. Other than that, the statements are private and not available to the commissioners for review.

    Ranzau made the point in that if the employees of the company would take a pay cut of $0.07 per hour for the next five years, they could finance the subsidy that the taxpayers are being asked to pay. He asked: “Why are the taxpayers of this community having to bear the burden when the average salary there is $46,000? I find it hard to believe that someone would be willing to lose their job for seven cents per hour. I don’t believe this question was ever asked, but this is the thing that should be asked. There are alternatives to this.”

    Ranzau also laid bare the motivations of politicians: “It does allow politicians to pound their chests and say ‘See, I care about jobs, because I gave your money to this person over here.’ But that’s very shortsighted.”

    The measure passed by a vote of four to one, with Ranzau in the minority.

  • Sedgwick County Commission to consider corporate welfare as economic development

    Ed. note: the two measures discussed below passed.

    Today the Sedgwick County Commission will consider two measures that, if adopted, will further establish corporate welfare and rent-seeking as Wichita’s and Sedgwick County’s economic development strategy.

    When people are living on welfare, we usually see that as a sad state of affairs. We view it as a failure, both for the individual and for the country. We seek ways to help people get off welfare so that they become self-sufficient. We want to help them contribute to society rather than being a drain on its resources.

    But local economic development officials don’t see corporate welfare as a bad thing. Instead, as these two measures — both which will likely pass — illustrate, welfare is good when you’re a business in Sedgwick County. Especially if you can raise speculation that your company might move out of the area.

    The term rent, or more precisely, economic rent is somewhat unfortunate, as the common usage of the term — paying someone money for the use of an asset for a period of time — contains no sinister connotation. But economic rent does carry baggage.

    What is rent seeking? Wikipedia defines it like this: “In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.”

    This explanation doesn’t do full justice to the term, because it doesn’t mention the role that government and politics usually play. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics adds this: “The idea is simple but powerful. People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors.”

    The deals the Sedgwick County Commission will consider are both corporate welfare and rent-seeking. Both are harmful to our community.

    The first item concerns Apex Engineering International LLC, which is proposed to receive forgivable loans of $220,000 each from Wichita and Sedgwick County. (The City of Wichita has already approved its loan.) The company will also receive grants and tax credits totaling $1,272,000 from the state. Surprisingly, no property tax exemption is mentioned for this company. The city’s material on this matter may be read at Approval of Forgivable Loan Agreement (Apex Engineering International).

    Apex will also receive $1,272,000 in tax credits and grants under programs offered by the State of Kansas.

    The second item concerns MoJack Distributors, LLC, a company that makes an accessory for riding lawn mowers. It is proposed that the City of Wichita and Sedgwick County each make a forgivable loans of $35,000 to this company. (Again, Wichita has already approved its loan to this company.) If the company maintains a certain level of employment, the loans do not need to be repaid.

    But this is not the only welfare being given to Mojack. The city also proposes a 100% Economic Development Exemption (EDX) property tax exemption. This exemption obliges the county to abate its share of property tax, too. The term would be five years, with renewal for another five years if conditions are met. The city’s material on this matter may be read at Approval of Forgivable Loan Agreement, MoJack.

    For both companies, there was the treat of moving operations elsewhere, and the incentives offered made the difference, say the companies.

    Targeted investment, or welfare

    Government bureaucrats and politicians promote programs like these as targeted investment in our region’s economic future. They believe that they have the ability to select which companies are worthy of public investment, and which are not. It’s a form of centralized planning by city hall that shapes the future direction of Wichita’s economy.

    Arnold King has written about the ability of government experts to decide what investments should be made with public funds. There’s a problem with knowledge and power:

    As Hayek pointed out, knowledge that is important in the economy is dispersed. Consumers understand their own wants and business managers understand their technological opportunities and constraints to a greater degree than they can articulate and to a far greater degree than experts can understand and absorb.

    When knowledge is dispersed but power is concentrated, I call this the knowledge-power discrepancy. Such discrepancies can arise in large firms, where CEOs can fail to appreciate the significance of what is known by some of their subordinates. … With government experts, the knowledge-power discrepancy is particularly acute.

    I emphasized the last sentence to highlight the problem of the dispersed nature of knowledge.

    Yet this week, our Wichita and Sedgwick County bureaucrats feel they have the necessary knowledge to recommend to the commissions that the citizens of Sedgwick County make investments of public funds in these two instances. All Wichita city council members were gullible enough to believe it.

    One thing is for sure: the city and the county have the power to make these investments. They just don’t have — they can’t have — the knowledge as to whether these are wise.

    We need a dynamic job creation engine

    Furthermore, we have to question the wisdom of investing in these established companies, especially a company involved in aviation, as Wichita and Sedgwick County are always seeking to diversify their economies away from dependence on aviation.

    Through research conducted by Dr. Art Hall and others, we now know that it is dynamic young companies that are the main drivers of job creation in Kansas. Hall wrote: “Embracing dynamism starts with a change in vision. Simply stated, the state government of Kansas should abandon its prevailing policy vision of the State as an active investor in businesses or industries and instead adopt the policy vision of the State as a caretaker of a competitive “platform” — a platform that seeks to induce as much commercial experimentation as possible.” (While Hall wrote about the State of Kansas, Sedgwick County is playing the same role at a local level.)

    The “active investor” role that Sedgwick County is about to take with regard to these two companies is precisely the wrong role to take. These actions increase the cost of government for the dynamic small companies we need to nurture. Instead these efforts concentrate and focus our economic development efforts in an unproductive way.

  • In Wichita, start of a solution to federal spending

    At the Sedgwick County Commission, newly-elected commissioner Richard Ranzau voted three times against the county applying for grants of federal funds, showing a possible way that federal spending might be brought under control.

    During the meeting, Ranzau asked staff questions about where the funding for the grant programs was coming from, which, of course, is the federal government, sometimes routed through the Kansas Department of Commerce. Sometimes local spending is required by these grants.

    In opposing the programs, Ranzau said that federal government spending is too high. Also, our level of debt is too high, and that the cost of these spending programs is passed on to future generations. He also didn’t see where the U.S. Constitution authorizes activity like the commission — in partnership with the federal government — is considering undertaking.

    Ranzau offered an alternative: if the commission believes these projects are important to us as a community, we could pay for them ourselves and pay for them now.

    Commissioner Jim Skelton argued that if we don’t apply for and receive this money, the federal government will spend it anyway, and someone else will receive it. “I think we can end up screwing our constituency by opposing this on the philosophy that our government is too big.”

    He said he doesn’t agree with the “rampant spending of stimulus money” and would like to see it end, but he didn’t see how refusing this money would make a difference.

    Constitutional basis questioned

    During discussion, Skelton asked county counselor Richard Euson a question: “Can you tell me about the constitutionality of this issue? How on earth can this happen if it’s not constitutional?”

    Euson was flummoxed by the question, and admitted that he was not prepared to answer the question. This is not to be held against the county’s attorney, as questions like this are rarely asked — an indication of the novelty of Ranzau’s position and how infrequently elected officials and staff consider questions such as the fundamental role of government and its level of involvement.

    The job of a commissioner, according to Norton

    In discussion about one grant program, Commissioner Tim Norton asked a question designed to make sure that Ranzau knew that the project was located in his district. On a grant for a transportation plan, Norton again asked a question designed to make sure that Ranzau knew whose district this plan would serve, referring to former commissioner Kelly Parks’ support of the program.

    These questions by Norton highlight the problem with district-based representation, where representatives of districts are expected to bring as much government largess as possible back to their districts. At the federal level this problem is illustrated by the earmarking process. Locally, we see that Sedgwick County Commissioners are assumed to be in favor of any project that benefits their districts, regardless of the overall worth of the project or its cost.

    A bottom-up solution to federal spending?

    At a town hall meeting on Saturday, I asked Kansas fourth district Congressman Mike Pompeo, who represents all of Sedgwick County, about his opinion of ground-up opposition to federal spending and debt, rather than waiting for Congress and the President to solve the problem from the top down.

    Pompeo didn’t answer the question directly, but said that from now on, each law passed by Congress will have a section that states the constitutional authority for the legislation. He also said that the federal government is involved in many areas that it should not be involved in, adding “So many times the question is ‘should we reduce this agency’s budget by three percent,’ and the proper question is ‘why does this agency exist?’”

    While the new U.S. House of Representatives is full of enthusiasm for cutting spending, here we see an example of just how difficult cutting spending will be. Local governments are addicted to grants like the three discussed above. A congressman who voted to cut programs like these will hear from the affected constituents, and would also likely hear from the Sedgwick County staff who are advocates for these projects and spending. If more elected officials would vote against these programs, that would make it easier for Congress to cut off the flow of spending.

    We should also remember that Ranzau offered an alternative: fund the programs ourselves. The problem is that we are funding them ourselves, through the roundabout trip of tax dollars going to Washington, which then sends them back, in this case in the form of grants with many conditions and restrictions on the way the money can be spent. So Skelton is correct: the federal government will spend the money anyway. But to go along means that the hole is dug deeper. More crudely, the federal government says: implement this program in our way, because you’ve already paid for it, and you don’t want to piss away your taxes somewhere else.

    Perhaps a coalition of forward-thinking local government officeholders like Ranzau and U.S. Congressmen like Pompeo can join together to bring the spending under control. It will take courage, especially from the local officeholders.

  • Sedgwick County Commissioners applauded

    This letter also appeared in the Wichita Eagle.

    We were pleased to see the Sedgwick County Commission vote this week to stop the proposed TIF district in the Planeview neighborhood. Commissioners correctly determined that approval of the TIF would have adversely affected other businesses in the area.

    Several grocery stores are already operating in that neighborhood – without government subsidies. Approving the TIF district would have hurt those businesses by forcing them help subsidize their competition.

    This proposed project is another example of letting the government choose winners and losers in the marketplace. We applaud commissioners for listening to the small business owners in the Planeview neighborhood, and for voting in favor of free markets and free enterprise.

    Susan Estes
    Field Director
    Americans for Prosperity-Kansas
    Wichita

  • Sedgwick County Commission District 4 forum

    Last night the three candidates seeking to serve the citizens of Sedgwick County district 4 as their commissioner participated in a forum at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church. The event was sponsored by the Riverside Citizens Association, assisted by the League of Women Voters — Wichita Metro.

    District 4 covers large portions of central, north-central, and northwest Wichita, and the cities of Park City and Valley Center. The current commissioner is Kelly Parks, who decided not to seek reelection.

    The candidates are Carol Bevelhymer, who is running as a write-in candidate (no campaign website available), Kansas Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau, and physician assistant Richard Ranzau.

    In this edited audio recording, the first item is opening statements from the candidates, with the speaking order being Bevelhymer, Faust-Goudeau, then Ranzau. The candidates then answer a question about a mental health unit in the Sedgwick County Jail (speaking order is Ranzau, Faust-Goudeau, then Bevelhymer). Ranzau then answers a question about eminent domain (the other two candidates declined a chance to answer).

    A question about recycling is answered by Bevelhymer, then Faust-Goudeau, then Ranzau. Then a question about an overflow shelter for the homeless during winter months is answered by Ranzau, Faust-Goudeau, and Bevelhymer.

    [powerpress]