Voice For Liberty

Category: Sedgwick county government

  • Sedgwick County updates agenda information system

    Recently Sedgwick County implemented a new system for making its commission agendas and accompanying background material available online.

    Previously, only the agenda itself was available online. Agendas contain just a brief description of each item to be handled at meetings. If citizens wanted more information about an item, they had to travel to the courthouse to obtain a printed copy of the agenda report. This document, which might be several hundred pages in length, contains detailed information about each item. It’s the type of information that citizens need if they are to be informed about the matters the commission will consider at each meeting.

    The new system makes this information available online. It also handles the minutes and video of past meetings. You can access the system through the Sedgwick County website. Navigate to the County Commission page (the drop-down box at the top right is easy and always available.) Then in the stack of links at the right of the screen, click on Commission Meetings.

    Now if you click on any meeting on or after August 25, 2010, you’ll be in the new agenda system.

    Using the new system, I found that it took a few moments to become familiar with the way the system organizes the agenda information. Once you get used to it, you can move around the agenda and examine supporting documents easily. Background material is usually presented in small chunks as pdf documents, and it’s easy to print just the few pages that you might be interested in.

    The system also allows the public to enter comments, presumably to be read by commissioners or staff before meetings. In a nod to social media and other networks, you can share agenda items on Facebook, Twitter, and other systems. (Sample tweet: PURCHASE OF REAL PROPERTY LOCATED AT SECOND STREET AND ST. FRANCIS IN WICHITA, KANSAS. Presented by: Ron Holt, bff. http://t.co/gl22l3U)

    Besides the public face of the system, it will also be used internally by county staff and commissioners to handle agenda paperwork more efficiently.

    A fact sheet on the new agenda information system promotes its cost savings, estimated to be $15 per week in reduced usage of paper. The benefit to citizens, however, is access to agenda background information without making a trip to the courthouse. These trips were necessary, as my several recent requests to have background information emailed to me were always declined.

    While this system may save $15 per week in paper, it was undoubtedly an expensive system to purchase and implement. According to a county budget document, the five-year cost of this project is $142,594. That doesn’t include internal resources devoted to this project and its ongoing support.

    Its goals are more ambitions than what was required to provide citizens with the agenda background information, which was the one area where Sedgwick County was deficient. Many governments, such as the city of Wichita, have made this information available by simply posting the entire agenda report. That’s a simple solution that has worked, although not with all the functionality that the new Sedgwick county system provides.

  • Ranzau takes Sedgwick County commission primary

    Tonight Richard Ranzau has won the primary election for Sedgwick County Commission over former incumbent Lucy Burtnett. I spoke with the candidate at a gathering of Republicans at the Wichita Hilton.

    Richard, with 46 of 48 precincts reporting, you’re leading with 55 percent of the vote. What do you think was the reason for your victory?

    Ranzau said it was a combination of the right message and good people supporting him, and good old fashioned sweat equity.

    He said he started walking door-to-door in April, and finished on Monday, visiting 120 houses on the hottest day of the year.

    Did you know you were going to win, I asked? Ranzau said that he was getting a good response and people told him he would win, but he said it’s hard to tell what the big picture looks like.

    He added he’s taking his family on vacation for a few days, and then wil start the campaign for the general election.

    At the moment Kansas Senator Oletha Faust-Goudau is leading former Wichita city council member Sharon Fearey 50 percent to 49 percent.

  • Sedgwick County Commissioner disputes Wichita Eagle headline on audit

    This week controversy arose surrounding a request by two Sedgwick County Commissioners for more information from the county’s auditor, Allen, Gibbs & Houlik, L.C., a public accounting firm.

    The financial issue concerns the way that EMS employee pay is budgeted and its impact on the county’s budget. Commission chair Karl Peterjohn and Commissioner Kelly Parks asked questions of the county’s auditor on this matter, exercising what Peterjohn describes as due diligence. But the issue has grown to become political.

    In a Wichita Eagle news story, the county’s chief financial officer said he expected to receive a bill from the auditor for about $900 as a result of what the Eagle characterized as an audit. As this was initiated without a vote by the entire commission, some members are “irked,” according to the news article.

    Peterjohn says that the questions he asked are “within the normal scope of the contract between Sedgwick County and AGH” and that there should be no charge for answering these questions. He also notes that the auditing firm works for the commissioners specifically.

    There is disagreement as to the scope of the financial irregularity. In an email message, Peterjohn said that “[Commissioner Dave Unruh] does not believe that there is a financial problem here. I strongly disagree. The county will republish its budget because of this problem.”

    Following is a letter Peterjohn wrote to the editor of the Wichita Eagle.

    I am writing to demand a retraction from the Wichita Eagle’s July 14, 2010 headline, “Parks, Peterjohn order audit without vote.”

    We did not order an audit and the article that Ms. Gruver wrote does not state that we did. We did discuss a $300,000 discrepancy that county staff had found in the EMS Department with the county’s outside auditor Mark Dick. Mr. Dick is operating under an existing contract that his accounting firm, Allen Gibbs & Houlik (AGH) has with Sedgwick County. This sizable financial discrepancy extended back to 2007.

    The current contract that the county has with AGH goes back to 2008. AGH’s accounting work with the county goes back decades and well before 2007. The current contract requires AGH to perform outside auditing of the county’s books and related financial services. This specifically includes: “…require AGH plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable, rather than absolute assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement whether caused by error, fraudulent financial reporting or misappropriation of assets.”

    The unexpected and negative financial revelation about this $300,000 discrepancy led me to want to know if AGH would be changing their letter concerning the county’s financial reporting for last year or any previous years going back to 2007. I was also concerned that problems in one county department might extend to other departments as well as revising any of the previous audit letters issued by AGH in the past. This is especially necessary since we are beginning to work on our 2011 budget and my questions to Mr. Dick reflected these concerns on this subject.

    This is the appropriate and proper form of due diligence that is needed to be asked by any elected official who has the responsibility for the expenditure of taxpayers’ funds. My inquiry as well as Commissioner Parks may have led AGH to take action under the terms of this contract relating to county finances and record keeping.

    I asked questions. So did Commissioner Parks. Commissioners ask questions all the time without having to meet and cast votes. In the 18 months that I have been a commissioner, Mr. Dick and AGH have presented the results of their annual audit to the commission. At that time Mr. Dick has said that the auditors work for the commissioners and are ready to answer any financial and audit related questions we have under this contract.

    If there are financial discrepancies in a county department, this needs to be identified and corrected. A lack of proper and appropriate financial controls can impact the county’s bond rating and I believe that by asking my questions, along with Commissioner Parks’, for Mr. Dick were appropriate and were the due diligence that needed to be performed.

    Mr. Dick responded to our inquiry since he was not aware of this $300,000 discrepancy until we told him. Mr. Dick looked into this matter under the terms of the AGH-Sedgwick County contract. Mr. Dick then issued a letter to all of the commissioners informing us of what he had found. Commissioner Unruh then expressed his opinion about this inquiry at the commissioner staff meeting last Tuesday.

    If county records are flawed, there are provisions to cover this within the contract. These provisions include, “… establishing and maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and safeguarding assets, and for informing us of all significant deficiencies in the design or operation of such controls of which it has knowledge,” is a county responsibility. In addition the county is also responsible for, “… for adjusting the financial statements to correct material misstatements,” and “… properly recording transactions in the records.”

    My intent in asking questions is to make sure that taxpayers’ funds are being spent appropriately and proper records are being kept. Let me add that in many cases in this country public officials, both appointed and elected, have lost their jobs for financial discrepancies a good deal smaller than $300,000 or improper financial variances that are a lot less than 4 years in length. This variance will require the county to re-publish its budget.

    I believed that the questions I asked were within the normal scope of the contract between Sedgwick County and AGH. The headline that Commissioner Parks and myself ordered an audit outside the boundaries of this contract without a required vote is odious and false.

  • Sedgwick County Commission Republican candidates to speak

    This Friday (July 16) the Wichita Pachyderm Club will feature Republican candidates for the Sedgwick County Commission. While three positions are open, in one position there is no contest in the Republican primary. In district four, the candidates are Lucy Burtnett and Richard Ranzau. In district five, the candidates are Dion Avello, Jim Skelton, and Chuck Warren.

    All are welcome to attend Wichita Pachyderm Club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). You may park in the garage (enter west side of Broadway between Douglas and First Streets) and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. The Petroleum Club will stamp your parking ticket and the fee will be only $1.00. Or, there is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.

  • Sedgwick County jail programs are working

    By Karl Peterjohn, Sedgwick County Commission Chair

    While making this community as safe as possible from criminal activity is a never-ending challenge a major achievement has been accomplished in Sedgwick County. The Sedgwick County jail population growth that appeared to be rising inexorably has been reversed in the last nine months.

    This is a major success.

    The June 18 Wichita Eagle editorial and news coverage about the recent success is understated with figures that diminish instead of accurately reflecting this accomplishment. As the new commissioner I had to cast a very difficult vote to appropriate additional tax funds of $2 million to finance the growing jail population last year. The jail population had been rising throughout 2009.

    By last October we had as many as 1,760 people in the jail, work release, or in other county jails around Kansas. That month’s average was 1,736. This was much higher than the beginning of the year.

    What changed? The county has expanded a number of alternative programs including day reporting, drug court, mental health court, and around the beginning of September, an expanded pre-trial services program. The intent was to make the people involved in a variety of misdemeanors and non-appearances for court dates more accountable for these types of illegal behavior and an extra benefit would be a reduced cost to taxpayers.

    In addition, a series of articles discussed the delays in sentenced criminals in being sent to the state prison.The impact of these articles resulted in changes and has had a major positive impact on the number of people occupying the county jail. In one day last month, the number of people in the jail dropped to 1,477.

    The cost of putting a person in the jail is over $65 a day. Pre-trial services cost per person is roughly 1/10 that cost. The jail problem is not solved, but the dimension of this problem has changed significantly for the better with a population that is closer to 1,500 than 1,750. June 22 there were 1,502. This is about the same as the average number of people in the jail between 2005-to-2008. When the cost exceeds $65 a day, this translates into $5 million a year, or over 1 mill on county property taxes.

    There are no final solutions for the larger issue of crime. However, there are much lower cost alternatives that are now being used to help keep this community safe. This success by Sedgwick County has not mentioned any of these jail population figures in the editorial commentary or news coverage. There is a lot of credit that deserves to be shared with all of the people: elected, staff, and judicial who are all involved in trying to keep our community safe.

    As a county commission candidate in 2008, I spoke out against spending over $125,000 per bed for additional space in the county jail expansion proposal that had a total price tag of almost $50 million. I said that there were better options available to keep this county safe at a reasonable price. These detention figures indicate that Sedgwick County is making significant progress in utilizing lower cost detention options.

  • Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena shrouded in mystery

    Okay, maybe that’s a little over-hyped, but when arena cheerleader Rhonda Holman of the Wichita Eagle starts to question the operations of Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita, there must be something going on.

    Holman’s column of yesterday complained of lack of transparency in the arena’s operations: “But with hindsight, and with the Intrust Bank Arena open three months and generating revenue, it’s more clear all the time that county leaders gave away too much oversight authority to SMG, leaving citizens in the strange and frustrating position of having too little hard information about how their $206 million investment is doing.”

    The sudden departure of arena manager Chris Presson under circumstances that can only be described as alarming will add to the concern of citizens. Well, not all citizens. Some arena boosters simply don’t care how much of a burden the arena may become to county taxpayers, as long as they have their arena.

    The lack of transparency at the arena and some county commissioner’s lack of concern about this important issue has been the subject of articles on this site. See Wichita downtown arena open records failure, Wichita downtown arena contract seems to require Sedgwick County approval, and Sedgwick County keeps lease agreement secret.

  • Sedgwick County Commission Chair to speak

    On Friday April 30, Karl Peterjohn will address members and guests of the Wichita Pachyderm Club. Peterjohn is the chair of the Sedgwick County Commission. His topic will be “A view from the county commission.”

    All are welcome to attend Pachyderm club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). Park in the garage just across Broadway and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. Bring your parking garage ticket to be stamped and your parking fee will be only $1.00. There is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.

  • In Sedgwick County, is there slack time?

    As reported in the Wichita Eagle, the Sedgwick County Commission decided to reimburse the county for time its employees spent working on arena-related matters. The money will come from the sales tax that was collected to build the Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita. The amount of money the commission decided to transfer is $1.6 million, although according to the Eagle, the total cost could reach $2.6 million.

    Here’s something of concern to me in the story: “But he [Sedgwick County chief financial officer Chris Chronis] pushed for the money to remain in the arena and pavilions’ operating and maintenance reserve fund, which last month had just less than $14 million, because taking money out of the fund would drain it four years earlier than expected — in 2024.”

    Evidently the county has financial projections for the arena all the way out to 2018, and possibly beyond. That is a very long time into the future, and any projections about the performance of the arena over this period would be based on assumptions that can’t be estimated with anything approaching certainty.

    Projections with this precision made about events so far in the future surrounded by so much uncertainty remind me of the saying that economists use a decimal point to show they have a sense of humor.

    Back to the present: Commissioner Dave Unruh told the Eagle that the county did not hire any new staff to perform work that has an estimated value of $2.6 million. My question is this: Is this evidence that there was $2.6 million of slack time in county employee’s schedules? How were they able to get this vast amount of work accomplished? Perhaps after the arena work that has occupied $2.6 million of staff time is complete, we could hire out this staff to earn revenue for the county, as it seems they will have time on their hands.

    Regarding the contention that voters in 2004 were promised that no property tax money would be used on the arena, Unruh was quoted by the Eagle as saying: “I do think that we made a very strong commitment that all the sales tax money would be used for the arena and pavilions.”

    It seems that now Sedgwick County voters have a new concern: When politicians make a promise, do we have to ask them if this is a regular commitment or a very strong commitment? Or are there other types of commitments that we don’t know about?

  • Sedgwick County industrial land absorption

    By John Todd.

    In May 2009 the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition pressured the Sedgwick County Commission to purchase roughly 808 acres of land from the city of Bel Aire. GWEDC cited the pressing economic need for “shovel-ready” industrial development land. Fortunately, for the taxpaying citizens of Sedgwick County, this land purchase transaction was never completed. (See Sedgwick County needs to slow down, deliberate land purchase.)

    In his annual report to the Sedgwick County Commission on Wednesday, Michael Borchard, the Sedgwick County Appraiser, reported that during 2009, a total of 701,519 square feet or 16.1 acres of industrial property was added to the tax rolls. Based on the 2009 absorption rate for industrial property, the 808 acres of land would have been sufficient for over 50 years of future industrial development. This is assuming the Bel Aire land location was successful in obtaining every single industrial land transaction each year.

    This, to me, is a clear indication that the Sedgwick County staff and the GWEDC officials involved in the 808 acre proposed land transaction were trying to involve our county in a speculative land venture that was beyond their area of expertise.

    I have been hearing rumblings again that GWEDC will be pressuring our county officials into another speculative land deal in the near future in order to meet some perceived as well as speculative economic development need. I believe it is time to cut the Sedgwick County taxpayer funding to GWEDC. The citizens of this county would be better served by letting the private sector market provide the land and locations needed for future Industrial development. Speculative land development is not a proper role for government. The Sedgwick County Commission does not need the pressure that GWEDC and the news media puts them under every time some real or perceived prospect shows up, usually wanting free land with massive taxpayer subsidies attached to the deal.