Sen. Michael O’Donnell tells Kansans he owns his home, pays property taxes

TOPEKA — Michael O’Donnell wants you to know he has a home of his own and pays property taxes – and paid the taxes on a home owned by his father’s church that he lived in when he ran for state Senate.

O’Donnell, a Republican senator from northwest Wichita, purchased a house in the 1300 block of High Street in August, 2013, about nine months after he took office.

He also provided The Eagle with a tax receipt and a copy of a check he wrote for $2,084 in October 2013, to pay property taxes due on a house where he lived that is owned by Grace Baptist Church, where his father is pastor.

The church house, at 1435 W. Haskell, had not previously been on the tax rolls because it was on church property and presumed to have been used for a parsonage, a tax-exempt purpose.

Questions of O’Donnell’s residency and whether he was living rent- and tax-free dogged O’Donnell’s 2012 campaign against then-Sen. Jean Schodorf in the Republican primary and Democrat Tim Snow in the general election.

O’Donnell served on the Wichita City Council at the time.

O’Donnell did not pay rent on the home, saying he worked it off in trade by doing maintenance and groundskeeping for the church.

The issue has cropped up periodically since, in a news release last year by the Senate minority leader’s office and, most recently, in Eagle letters to the editor criticizing O’Donnell during last month’s debate on a welfare bill O’Donnell carried on the Senate floor.

O’Donnell said it’s “unfortunate I allowed myself to get in a situation like that. I take full responsibility and apologize for putting the church in an unfortunate situation.”

He said he was glad to move on from “all of the drama” and “be in my own house where I’m paying my property taxes and experiencing the joys of home ownership.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 7:40 PM with the headline "Sen. Michael O’Donnell tells Kansans he owns his home, pays property taxes."