Tag: Sedgwick county government

  • Karl Peterjohn is Sorely Needed in Sedgwick County

    Wichita business leaders support Karl Peterjohn.

    The recent opposition by certain Wichita aircraft executives to Karl Peterjohn — a well-respected and strong candidate for Sedgwick County Commission in District 3 — is ill-informed. Peterjohn, an economist by training, has long been an advocate for fiscal prudence and has fought, on behalf of the Kansas taxpayer, against government waste, abuse and fraud. The integrity and discipline of Peterjohn are sorely needed in these days of fiscal profligacy and deserve respect.

    It is also unfortunate that the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee has chosen to support Peterjohn’s opponent, Goddard Mayor Marcey Gregory. She most recently succeeded in raising Goddard property taxes by 16.6 percent and is fiscally everything Peterjohn is not.

    Peterjohn has fought for property tax relief for business and individuals at the Statehouse since 1993. He was instrumental in initial legislation, in the 1990s, that led to the complete elimination of the business personal property tax. Peterjohn understands the importance of a well-trained work force, and that was one of the reasons he ran for the Wichita school board in 2007.

    Peterjohn opposed a 2006 property tax increase by the County Commission, which happened to include a $54 million earmark for Wichita Area Technical College to be used for an aviation technology center at Jabara Airport. Peterjohn opposed the county tax increase, not WATC.

    Peterjohn has always been and remains a strong supporter of economic growth, the aircraft industry and free-market economics. The fact that Peterjohn supports voter approval of all tax increases should be applauded.

    The letter was submitted by Colby Sandlian, John Belford, Jean Garvey, George Pearson, Don Slawson, Gerrit Wormhoudt, Cliff Sones, Johnny Stevens and Matt Eck.

  • Sedgwick County Employees Grow Faster Than Population

    Here’s a chart that shows the number of Sedgwick County residents for each Sedgwick County employee:

    Although there have been ups and downs, the trend is that Sedgwick County employee count is growing faster than the county’s population.

  • How are Tim Norton and Marcey Gregory For Low Taxes in Sedgwick County?

    Richard Taylor, President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of South Central Kansas, in a news story stated “Marcy Gregory and Tim Norton are for low taxes and they are for jobs and people.”

    I don’t know where Mr. Taylor learned about these two candidates, but stating that both are for low taxes must be based on something other than the records of these two candidates. In fact, this statement is so far removed from reality that I’m surprised a reputable news organization would repeat it.

    For Commissioner Tim Norton, he urged the citizens of Sedgwick County to vote for an increase in the sales tax to pay for the downtown Wichita arena.

    Then, as that tax was nearing its end, Norton “wondered … whether a 1 percent sales tax could help the county raise revenue.” (“Norton floats idea of 1 percent county sales tax,” Wichita Eagle, April 4, 2007) Fortunately, the other commissioners weren’t as enthusiastic about raising taxes as was Norton, and his proposal for extending the sales tax didn’t advance.

    The property tax increase in August 2006 did advance and take effect, and Norton voted for that.

    For Goddard Mayor Marcey Gregory, property taxes have increased under her leadership. It wasn’t long ago, so maybe that’s why Mr. Taylor doesn’t know about her record. But the increase was substantial: 16.6% in one year. That’s even though assessed values, and therefore tax revenues, in Goddard have been growing rapidly.

    Mr. Taylor, where did you get the idea that these two candidates are for low taxes?

  • Marcey Gregory Ad Fact Check

    A recent advertisement by Sedgwick County Commission Candidate Marcey Gregory in the October 12, 2008 Wichita Eagle contained a few points that deserve comment and clarification.

    First, the ad, as part of a checklist of attributes or characteristics of Gregory, has the item “Lower taxes.” If she’s proclaiming that we need lower taxes, voters only need to be reminded that in August, the City of Goddard, of which Gregory is the mayor, raised the property tax rate by a large amount. She supported this tax rate increase even though Goddard, as a growing city, experiences rapidly growing assessed value, and therefore rapidly rising tax collections. (See What Ray Frederick Forgot to Include about Marcey Gregory.)

    Another item in the list is “Citizen voice in property tax valuation increases — Elect, don’t appoint, the County Appraiser.” Whether this is a good idea is open to discussion. Currently, there aren’t very many elected appraisers. That might be because the most prominent city with an elected appraiser — actually several — is Orleans Parish in Louisiana, which has the same boundaries as the City of New Orleans. That city and its system of elected appraisers richly deserves its reputation for political corruption.

    Another item is “Protect and grow our tax base.” Gregory’s received the endorsement of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce and public support from some of the aircraft industry. Many of the Chamber member companies and these aircraft plants frequently appear before the Wichita City Council seeking property and sales tax exemptions. These exemptions, by removing property from the tax rolls, weaken the tax base. Does Gregory plan to eliminate these tax exemptions? That would protect our tax base — if that’s what she means to do.

    The list of items for Karl Peterjohn, her opponent, contains one item, repeated twice for emphasis: “Paid lobbyist.” It’s a convenient slur, as right now lobbyists are held in low regard. But who has Peterjohn lobbied for? The answer: the taxpayers of Kansas, working against the type of tax increases that Gregory ushered in as mayor of Goddard.

    Bob Weeks is one of the two campaign managers for Karl Peterjohn, Marcey Gregory’s opponent.

  • What Ray Frederick Forgot to Include about Marcey Gregory

    Editor’s note: the original version of this article contained an error in arithmetic, which has been corrected.

    In Sunday’s Wichita Eagle, Wichita businessman Ray Frederick wrote a letter supporting Marcey Gregory for the Sedgwick County Commission.

    In listing her qualifications, he wrote “Gregory is for low taxes.” That doesn’t square with Gregory’s recent actions.

    On August 11, 2008, the City of Goddard raised its mill levy — the rate at which property is taxed — by a large amount. As you can see in this image of the Goddard Budget Summary, the mill levy is increasing from 14.061 to an estimated 16.402. That’s an increase in the tax rate of 16.6%.

    In her defense, Mayor Gregory says that Goddard is growing rapidly. That’s true. As Goddard grows, new property is added to the tax rolls, and the assessed value of property rises rapidly. So too does the tax revenue collected. Here’s a chart of figures from the Sedgwick County Clerk’s office showing this rapid growth:

    This is something often forgotten about property taxes — at least politicians who rely on these taxes to support increased spending year after year don’t like to mention it: As new property comes into being, or as the assessor raises the assessed value of existing property, tax revenue increases.

    Bob Weeks is one of the two campaign managers for Karl Peterjohn, Marcey Gregory’s opponent.

  • Are airlines pilots the best judge of airline economics?

    Once in a while you read a letter in the newspaper that makes you wonder. A letter in the Wichita Eagle by Susan Priest of Wichita makes me wonder a few things.

    This letter reports on an overheard conversation among airline pilots. One source of their amusement is that there are no direct flights between Wichita and Oklahoma City.

    I’m not positive about this, but I’m sure that the demand for air travel between Wichita and Oklahoma City is very low. Google maps tells me that the driving time from one city’s downtown to the other is two hours and 30 minutes. The drive to a city’s airport, arriving way early to make sure you get through security, combined with the flight time and the drive from the other city’s airport to wherever your destination is — this would take much more time than that. And what do you do for ground transportation? Renting a car takes time, too.

    But what really makes me wonder is the pilot’s claim, and Ms. Priest’s evident agreement, that you can’t get good airfares from Wichita. Our government leaders would be distressed to hear that, as currently we spend $6.5 million per year in subsidy to a low-cost airline in order to artificially suppress all airfares. Is this subsidy not working?

    I have argued that the subsidy is not in the best interests of Wichita for several reasons. The post Remarks to Wichita City Council Regarding the AirTran Subsidy on July 11, 2006 summarizes the arguments and gives links to other supporting articles. Now, if people complain that Wichita airfares are not low, and if they’re still driving to Oklahoma City or Kansas City to catch flights — as the pilots and Ms. Priest claim — we have a serious problem.

  • Being Open and Transparent: A Sedgwick County Commissioner’s View

    Yesterday (August 27, 2008) I testified briefly at a meeting of the Sedgwick County Commission opposing the formation of a tax increment financing (TIF) district that will benefit a Wichita political insider. My concern that I wanted the commissioners to be aware of is was that the applicant, Wichita school board member Reverend Kevass Harding, has not acted in an open, transparent, and ethical manner.

    Commissioner Dave Unruh said that he had thought that Harding was being open and transparent. I suppose if you’re a full-time county commissioner who, presumably, thinks about these matters on a full-time basis, and you have a staff of well-paid professionals to prepare reports and other documents for you, and you have an applicant who is seeking $2.5 million in taxpayer subsidy and would do just about anything to secure that sum, you probably don’t have any problems finding out what you want to know.

    But for average citizens who don’t watch county commission meetings on television, who don’t pour over the minutes of the meetings, and who may not read the sketchy coverage of this matter in newspapers, they won’t be aware of what’s going on.

    This is another example of how many members of the Wichita City Council and the Sedgwick County Commission are out of touch with the citizens they govern. Three of the last three county commissioners to face the voters for re-election have been defeated. A fourth faces an opponent this November.

    My remarks from yesterday:

    The concern I have with the formation of this TIF district is that the applicant may be using his political connections for profit, and he has not been forthright with his constituents and the community.

    The Wichita school board, of which Reverend Kevass Harding is a member, is required, as is this commission, to consent to the formation of this TIF district. The problem is that since no vote is required by the school board, how can we ask him to declare his conflict of interest and recuse himself from discussion and a vote?

    He told the Wichita City Council that he had told city staff and his colleagues on the school board of what he was doing, but it’s not to them that he has en ethical obligation. Instead, his obligation is to the residents of Sedgwick County, the City of Wichita, and USD 259. It is to them that he has the ethical obligation to make sure that this matter is handled with openness and transparency. To my knowledge, he has not done that.

    This smacks of a political insider using his connections for personal profit.

    Furthermore, the applicant has not been responsive to community concerns over this TIF district. I am Reverend Harding’s constituent, as he is the at-large school board member for USD 259, and I am a resident of that school district. He has not returned my several telephone calls and email messages regarding this matter.

    For these reasons, I urge this commission to veto the formation of this TIF district. Let the applicant apply again, this time being open and forthright with the citizens of Sedgwick County, and perhaps this matter can be viewed differently.

  • Campaigning for my Precinct Race

    Two weeks ago, Kansas held its primary elections. As part of the primary, we elect precinct committeeman and committeewomen. It’s sort of confusing, as everyone else on the ballot goes on to face a challenger in the November general election. But for the precinct races, it ends in August.

    Earlier this year someone convinced me that being a precinct committeeman was worthwhile, so in June I filed. Some precincts don’t even have candidates, and in many others there’s only one candidate. But in my precinct I had an opponent.

    At first, I decided not to campaign. I was involved in another campaign and working hard on it. And, it was more important to me that that candidate be elected to his office than it was for me to be elected precinct committeeman. So I didn’t want to take time away from my efforts in his campaign. But someone else convinced me that I should campaign for myself and try to be elected.

    How, then, should I campaign? Everything I’ve read told me that personal contact with voters is the best way to get votes. So I made a campaign flyer, which you can download here. (Imagine this printed on both sides of a sheet of paper and folded.) It’s pretty plain — okay, painfully plain — but it says what I wanted to say.

    I obtained the voter list for my precinct, and identified the houses I wanted to visit. There were nearly 200. I planned to visit starting the Friday before the Tuesday election.

    Then, on the Thursday before the election, a mailing arrived at my home. It was a generic mailing which you can view here. You can tell that the candidates’ names and polling place location are printed separately.

    Nowhere on this piece can you identify who sent it. Kansas law doesn’t require disclosure for precinct races like this.

    So now I panicked. Could I still win? I had 200 houses to visit, and very little time. So for many houses, I just “dropped” my flyer without ringing the doorbell. But I talked to many voters, especially on a warm and sunny Saturday morning, when many people were outside working in their yards before it got too hot.

    I never saw evidence that my opponent did anything like this.

    The result? I won by 67 votes to 32 votes.

  • Tiff over Wichita TIFs

    A post titled Keeping TIFs from a public tiff by Wichita Eagle business reporter Bill Wilson on the Eagle’s Business Casual blog reveals his bias in favor of government over individual action and preference.

    My post The Wichita Eagle’s Preference For Government documents one such example from the past. In this blog post Mr. Wilson reveals more of this preference and the faulty assumptions that go along with it.

    For example, he speaks of the need to “incentivize development.” Incentives are designed to get people to do something they wouldn’t do on their own. That pretty much describes downtown development. I’m sure that Mr. Wilson is aware that there’s lots of development going on in Wichita. It’s just not where politicians such as Wichita mayor Carl Brewer and council member Sharon Fearey want it to be. Add journalists like Mr. Wilson to this list, apparently. The Wichita Eagle editorial board has been on this list for a long time.

    There’s nothing magic about downtown. The fact that people, when spending and investing their own funds, overwhelmingly choose to take action somewhere other than downtown is direct evidence of that. How arrogant is it for politicians and bureaucrats to overrule these decisions made freely by people acting in their own best interest?

    In a comment, Mr. Wilson states “I have a hard time equating TIF money with a direct government handout …” I would encourage him to read the post Wichita City Council’s Misunderstanding of Tax Increment Financing, in which the author explains how TIF financing is, in fact, a direct subsidy to developers. I would be interested to see if Mr. Wilson can develop a refutation to this argument.

    Mr. Wilson also writes of the need for “proper analysis and monitoring” of TIF district proposals. But government is ill-suited for either task. Politicians and government bureaucrats face a different set of incentives from private developers. Politicians seek to please their campaign contributers so they can be re-elected. Bureaucrats seek to preserve their own jobs and increase their domain of influence and power.

    Market entrepreneurs, however, are directly accountable to their customers through the profit and loss system. If they do a good job anticipating what customers want, and if they are able to efficiently deliver what customers want, they’ll earn a profit. If not, they either change or go out of business.

    Politicians and bureaucrats do not face such a stern taskmaster. When their decisions turn out to be faulty, the usual response is to pour more money into something that should be allowed to die. An example is the Old Town Warren Theater.