Kansas law requires publication of certain notices in newspapers, but cities like Wichita could also make them available in other ways that are easier to use.
Legal publications in the Wichita Eagle, occupying nearly the entire page.As Wichita’s new mayor takes office, there are a few things the city could do to increase the availability and distribution of government information. An easy project to accomplish would be placing legal notices on the city’s web page.
Kansas law requires that many legal notices must be printed in a newspaper. That law needs to be changed. Newspapers resist this reform, as it might mean a loss of revenue for them. (That’s right. Newspapers don’t print these notices as a public service.)
Although the law requires publishing notices in a newspaper, it doesn’t prohibit publishing them in electronic form. If governmental agencies would make their legal publications available in ways other than the newspaper, citizens would be better served.
The City of Wichita does some posting of legal notices on its website. Under the City Clerk section, there is a page titled “Legal Notices” that holds notices of bidding opportunities. This is good, but the notices that are important to most people are not on the city’s website.
Some of these notices appear in city council meeting agenda packets, where they may be buried in 500 pages of other material.
Posting all city legal notices on the city’s website would be easy to do. It would be quite inexpensive, as the copy is already in electronic form. The notices would become searchable through Google and other methods. Interested parties could capture and store this material for their own use. Once people get used to this method of publication, it will make it easier to get state law changed.
Posting legal notices on its website is an easy way for the City of Wichita to start increasing transparency of its operations. Let’s get started, Mayor Whipple.
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club: Kansas House of Representatives Majority Leader Dan Hawkins. Representative Stephen Owens provided the introduction. This audio presentation or podcast was recorded on January 17, 2020.
Kansas spending is rising, and will probably rise at a faster pace.
Figures from Kansas financial reports show that state spending has risen, and based on approved budget, will rise at a faster pace.
The following tables and charts show actual data through fiscal year 2018. Data for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 are based on figures approved by the legislature and governor, plus estimates regarding the future economy.
In the following table, spending increases from the general fund average 7.3 percent per year for 2010 through 2020. There is a budget surplus, primarily due to changes in tax law that produced a 15.0 percent increase in receipts to the general fund in 2018.
Based on currently-approved figures, the general fund will swing from surplus to deficit in 2020.
Click charts for larger versions.
Following charts show increases in spending for the general fund and all funds spending (see below for an explanation of the funds). These charts are adjusted for inflation where appropriate, and show spending per resident, along with spending as a portion of private sector production and personal income.
The Governor’s Budget Report for 2020 explains:
The State General Fund receives the most attention in the budget because it is the largest source of the uncommitted revenue available to the state. It is also the fund to which most general tax receipts are credited. The Legislature may spend State General Fund dollars for any governmental purpose.
Special revenue funds, by contrast, are dedicated to a specific purpose. For instance, the Legislature may not spend monies from the State Highway Fund to build new prisons.
Other examples of special revenue funds are the three state building funds, which are used predominantly for capital improvements; federal funds made available for specific purposes; and agency fee funds, which can generally be used only to support specific functions related to the agency collecting the fee. The Economic Development Initiatives Fund, the Children’s Initiatives Fund, the Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund, the Expanded Lottery Act Revenues Fund, and the State Water Plan Fund are appropriated funds that function the same as the State General Fund.
The principal that “may not spend monies from the State Highway Fund to build new prisons” is often violated in practice, and example being the well-known transfers from the highway fund to the general fund.
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club, a legislative wrap up featuring Representative Brenda Landwehr and Senator Ty Masterson. This was recorded May 31, 2019.
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club: Kansas House of Representatives Majority Leader Dan Hawkins. Representative Leo Delperdang provided the introduction. This was recorded on April 21, 2019.
The City of Wichita says it values open and transparent government. But the city’s record in providing information and records to citizens is poor, and there hasn’t been much improvement.
The City of Wichita is proud to be an open and transparent governmental agency, its officials say. Former Mayor Carl Brewer often spoke in favor of government transparency. 1
Mayor Jeff Longwell penned a column in which he said, “First off, we want City Hall to be open and transparent to everyone in the community.” And the mayor’s biography on the city’s website says, “Mayor Longwell has championed many issues related to improving the community including government accountability, accessibility and transparency …”
But the reality is different. It shouldn’t be. Nearly four years ago the city expanded its staff by hiring a Strategic Communications Director. When the city announced the new position, it said: “The Strategic Communications Director is the City’s top communications position, charged with developing, managing, and evaluating innovative, strategic and proactive public communications plans that support the City’s mission, vision and goals.”
But there has been little, perhaps no, improvement in the data and information made available to citizens. The Wichita Eagle has editorialized on the lack of sharing regarding the details surrounding the new baseball team. 3
While this is important and a blatant example, there are many things the city could do to improve transparency. Some are very simple.
For example, it is very common for governmental agencies post their checkbooks on their websites. Sedgwick County does, as does the Wichita school district. But not the City of Wichita.
Until a few years ago, Wichita could supply data of only limited utility. What was supplied to me was data in pdf form, and as images, not text. It would be difficult and beyond the capability of most citizens to translate the data to a useful format. Even if someone translated the reports to computer-readable format, I don’t think it would be very useful. This was a serious defect in the city’s transparency efforts.
Now, if you ask the city for this data, you’ll receive data in an Excel spreadsheet. This is an improvement. But: You may be asked to pay for this data. The city says that someday it will make check register data available, but it has been promising that for many years. See Wichita check register for the data and details on the request.
Another example: For several years, the Kansas city of Lawrence has published an economic development report letting citizens know about the activities of the city in this area. The most recent edition may be viewed here.
The Lawrence report contains enough detail and length that an executive summary is provided. This report is the type of information that cities should be providing, but the City of Wichita does not do this.
Example from the Lawrence report. Click for larger.It’s not like the City of Wichita does not realize the desirability of providing citizens with information. In fact, Wichitans have been teased with the promise of more information in order to induce them to vote for higher taxes. During the campaign for the one cent per dollar Wichita city sales tax in 2014, a city document promised this information regarding economic development spending if the tax passed: “The process will be transparent, with reports posted online outlining expenditures and expected outcomes.” (This is what Lawrence has been doing for several years.)
The city should implement this reporting even though the sales tax did not pass. 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, because the city (and other overlapping governmental jurisdictions) still spends a lot on economic development.
Why is this information not available? Is the communications staff overwhelmed, with no time to provide this type of information?
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.” Now the city produces headlines like “Wichita Transit to Receive Good Apple Award.”
But if you want to know how the city spends economic development dollars, you won’t find that.
Most of all, the city simply needs to change its attitude. Here’s an example.
Citizen watchdogs need access to records and data. The City of Wichita, however, has created several not-for-profit organizations that are controlled by the city and largely funded by tax money. The three I am concerned with are the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, Visit Wichita (the former Go Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau), and Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, now the Greater Wichita Partnership. Each of these agencies refuses to comply with the Kansas Open Records Act, using the reasoning that they are not “public agencies” as defined in the Kansas law that’s designed to provide citizen access to records.
The city backs this interpretation. When legislation was introduced to bring these agencies under the umbrella of the Kansas Open Records Act, cities — including Wichita — protested vigorously, and the legislation went nowhere.
Recently the City of Wichita added a new tax to hotel bills that may generate $3 million per year for the convention and visitors bureau to spend. Unless the city changes its attitude towards citizens’ right to know, this money will be spent in secret.
This attitude has been the policy of the city for a long time. In 2008, Randy Brown, at one time the editorial page editor at the Wichita Eagle wrote this:
I’m fairly well acquainted with Bob Weeks, our extraconservative government watchdog. It’s fair to say that I agree with Weeks no more than one time in every 20 issues. But that one time is crucial to our democracy.
Weeks is dead-on target when he says that conducting the public’s business in secret causes citizens to lose respect for government officials and corrupts the process of democracy (“TIF public hearing was bait and switch,” Dec. 5 Opinion). And that’s what happened when significant 11th-hour changes to the already controversial and questionable tax-increment financing plan for the downtown arena neighborhood were sneaked onto the Wichita City Council’s Tuesday agenda, essentially under cover of Monday evening’s darkness.
This may not have been a technical violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act, but it was an aggravated assault on its spirit. Among other transgressions, we had a mockery of the public hearing process rather than an open and transparent discussion of a contentious public issue.
The Wichita officials involved should publicly apologize, and the issue should be reopened. And this time, the public should be properly notified.
Randy Brown
Executive director
Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government
A few years later, Brown noticed the attitude had not improved. Although he did not mention him by name, Brown addressed a concern expressed by Wichita City Council Member Pete Meitzner (district 2, east Wichita). He accurately summarized Meitzner’s revealed attitude towards government transparency and open records as “democracy is just too much trouble to deal with.”
“The City Council has stressed the importance of transparency for this organization,” City Manager Robert Layton said. “We’re honored to receive a Sunny Award and we will continue to empower and engage citizens by providing information necessary to keep them informed on the actions their government is taking on their behalf.” Wichita City New Release. Available at https://www.wichita.gov/News/Pages/2013-03-18b.aspx. ↩
Kansas law requires publication of certain notices in newspapers, but cities like Wichita could also make them available in other ways that are easier to use.
Legal publications in the Wichita Eagle, occupying nearly the entire page.
As Wichita’s new mayor takes office, there are a few things the city could do to increase the availability and distribution of government information. An easy project to accomplish would be placing legal notices on the city’s web page.
Kansas law requires that many legal notices must be printed in a newspaper. That law needs to be changed. Newspapers resist this reform, as it might mean a loss of revenue for them. (That’s right. Newspapers don’t print these notices as a public service.)
Although the law requires publishing notices in a newspaper, it doesn’t prohibit publishing them in electronic form. If governmental agencies would make their legal publications available in ways other than the newspaper, citizens would be better served.
The City of Wichita does some posting of legal notices on its website. Under the City Clerk section, there is a page titled “Legal Notices” that holds notices of bidding opportunities. This is good, but the notices that are important to most people are not on the city’s website.
Some of these notices appear in city council meeting agenda packets, where they may be buried in 500 pages of other material.
Posting all city legal notices on the city’s website would be easy to do. It would be quite inexpensive, as the copy is already in electronic form. The notices would become searchable through Google and other methods. Interested parties could capture and store this material for their own use. Once people get used to this method of publication, it will make it easier to get state law changed.
Posting legal notices on its website is an easy way for the City of Wichita to start increasing transparency of its operation. Let’s get started, Mayor Whipple.
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club: Martin Hawver, dean of the Kansas Statehouse press corps. This was recorded January 4, 2019.
Martin Hawver is the editor and publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report, the respected, non-partisan news service that reports on Kansas government and politics.
He also is the dean of the Kansas Statehouse press corps, having covered the beat (36 years) longer than any current Statehouse reporter — first for 17 years as a Statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal and since 1993 for Hawver’s Capitol Report. He is the primary reporter/writer for the news service. He also writes a column syndicated to Kansas newspapers, is interviewed about Kansas government and politics on TV and radio shows, and is a speaker for seminars and conventions.
Hawver has covered 36 Kansas legislative sessions and 14 national Republican and Democratic political conventions, plus countless statewide and local political conventions.
Hawver writes a weekly column called “At The Rail” that is syndicated to Kansas newspapers. He also turns out to be an entertaining, informative, and pretty well-known public speaker, and if your Kansas-based group is interested in political humor, government humor, or even just understanding the landscape in the ever-more-confusing world of politics, you might want to consider having Martin Hawver speak. (Source: Hawver’s Capitol Report)
