House candidate Craig Gabel pays delinquent taxes

A Wichita restaurateur seeking the District 96 seat in the Kansas House of Representatives has paid off nine years of delinquent state and local taxes, officials confirmed Thursday.

Craig Gabel, who owns Mike’s Steak House, paid $126,687.32 in delinquent real and personal property taxes and penalties in June, according to Sedgwick County Treasurer Linda Kizzire. The delinquent tax bill dated back to 2003, when Gabel said a divorce and resulting bankruptcy filing made it impossible for him to keep up with his taxes.

And on Dec. 22, he paid off a $7,637.98 Kansas Department of Revenue warrant for income taxes for 2001 through 2006.

“I knew this was going to come up,” Gabel said last week, when he announced his intention to get his taxes current.

Gabel is president of Kansans for Liberty, a conservative political group, and is the chief spokesman for the local tea party movement. He regularly appears before the Wichita City Council to protest business-development subsidies and condemnations of substandard homes. He was one of the driving forces behind the successful petition drive to challenge an estimated $2.25 million guest-tax subsidy for the Ambassador Hotel, a planned boutique hotel downtown.

Gabel said the delinquent tax bill mounted because of legal problems, including a divorce and subsequent bankruptcy.

“When you’re in that situation, you don’t have control of your property,” he said. “When I got back control of the property in 2008, there were all these unpaid taxes mounting up on the properties and the property was run down, in serious disrepair.”

Gabel and Kizzire said he began making payments on the county’s delinquent bill in 2010, which included Gabel’s personal and real property and property in the name of Gabel Oil. “He was current on that,” Kizzire said. “He was bringing in a check every two months.”

Of the county tax bill, $89,986.45 was in actual personal and property taxes, Kizzire said. Gabel paid interest and fees of $35,510.67 and penalties of $1,190.20.

Kizzire and Gabel said the payments bring him current on all his county taxes.

However, the Sedgwick County treasurer’s delinquent tax site lists one more, $675.23 owed from 2004 on property at 4875 E. Pawnee.

“It’s not mine,” Gabel said. “I never owned that property.”

Gabel said he was the financier for a start-up restaurant on the site, Fitchett’s Family Restaurant, that failed.

Kizzire said her office investigated the Fitchett’s bill and determined that Gabel is not the owner of record for the property. That listing will be corrected, she said.

“Considering how much it is, $675, I thought about just paying it off,” Gabel said. “Stay away from dealing with questions like this.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "House candidate Craig Gabel pays delinquent taxes."