Yesterday’s action by the Wichita City Council in approving two Community Improvement Districts signals a new era in increased intervention in free markets by Wichita politicians and bureaucrats.
CIDs are a creation of the Kansas Legislature from the 2009 session. They allow merchants in a district to collect additional sales tax of up to two cents per dollar. The extra sales tax is used for the exclusive benefit of the CID.
Although at past city council meetings some members seemed as though they might view the districts with skepticism, there was little meaningful discussion, and no council members voted against the formation of the districts.
The mayor and city council members are unable — or unwilling — to consider the harmful effects of their interventions in creating special tax districts.
Or, it might be that some strategic campaign contributions helped city council members make up their minds. While I believe that Council Member Lavonta Williams is an honest and honorable council member, we have to be concerned when campaign contributions are made by people who know they will be asking the council for special treatment and favor, as Christian Ablah did yesterday.
He got what he wanted from the council. Wichita taxpayers lost.
The city looks silly when it jumps through hoops to conform to laws that shape the way it conducts economic development. As I urged the council:
Let’s stop distinguishing between “eligible costs” and other costs. When we use a term like “eligible costs” it makes this process seem benign. It makes it seem as though we’re not really supplying corporate welfare and subsidy to the developers.
As long as the developer has to spend money on what we call “eligible costs,” the fact that the city subsidy is restricted to these costs has no economic meaning.
Suppose I gave you $10 with the stipulation that you could spend it only on next Monday. Would you deny that I had enriched you by $10? As long as you were planning to spend $10 next Monday, or could shift your spending, this restriction has no economic meaning.
The issue of high-tax districts being a consumer protection issue didn’t resonate with the council, either. There are several council members who normally would be in favor of exposing greedy merchants who overcharge people, but not in this case. Maybe it’s the campaign contributions again.
Even pointing out how the city works at cross-purposes with itself doesn’t work. We spend millions every year subsidizing airlines so that airfares to Wichita are low. Then we turn around and add extra tax to visitors’ hotel bills, with Vice Mayor Jeff Longwell and the Wichita Eagle editorial board approving this as a wise strategy.
People remember high taxes. I don’t think it’s a good strategy to establish high-tax districts designed to capture extra tax revenue from visitors to our city.
But perhaps the simplest public policy issue is this: If merchants feel they need to collect additional revenue from their customers, why don’t they simply raise their prices? Why the roundabout process of the state collecting extra sales tax, only to ship it back to the merchants in the CID?
No one at Wichita city hall wants to talk about this, at least in public.
Next month the city will hold public hearings for three proposed CIDs in addition to the two approved yesterday. I suspect that the next year will see many more proposed.
With each intervention like this — not to mention each TIF district, STAR bond, industrial revenue bond with accompanying tax abatement, forgivable loan, EDX property tax exemption, historic preservation income tax credit, and other programs — Wichita and Kansas move farther away from the principles of economic freedom that have created prosperity, and move closer to a centrally planned economy. Those have not worked out well.
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