Bill Warren issues polygraph challenge to mayoral candidate Sam Williams

Movie theater magnate Bill Warren has issued a challenge to mayoral candidate Sam Williams:

Take a polygraph to prove how you voted on the sales tax.

The wager? Loser gets to pay $5,000 to $10,000 to the winner’s favorite charity.

“It’s real simple,” said Warren, who was incensed after reading an Eagle article last week in which mayoral candidate Sam Williams said he didn’t support last November’s sales tax.

“I’ll be more than happy to meet Sam Williams, both of us take a polygraph, and let’s see who’s lying.”

Warren said that at a meeting last November, Williams told developers involved in the downtown River Vista project – Warren, Dave Burk and others – that he voted for the sales tax.

Williams has been adamant that he did not support or vote for the sales tax.

“Are you serious?” he said when told about the challenge.

“I would never respond to something like this. It degrades the whole process that we’re going through here. We’re the 49th largest city in America. We need to focus on the issues and those things that are going to help us replace 30,000 jobs that have been lost. I wouldn’t even consider degrading this process to do something like that.”

The sales tax was soundly rejected by 62 percent of voters last fall. It would have collected about $400 million over five years for streets, transit, long-term water supply and a jobs fund, which was largely promoted – and drafted – by the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Williams was chairman of the chamber in 2010, and its political action committee has endorsed his campaign for mayor. He is also the immediate past chairman of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, whose board of directors endorsed the sales tax. Williams said he abstained during the board’s vote on whether to endorse the tax.

He would not tell The Eagle how he voted on the sales tax before the primary, saying it was in the past. But last Friday, he announced to the Pachyderm Club, a Republican group, that he had voted against it.

That prompted Warren to say Williams had said he had voted for it.

Williams alleged that the businessmen who say that he voted for it have benefited financially from opponent Jeff Longwell’s tenure on the City Council, an allegation that Longwell and Warren dismiss.

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Bill Warren issues polygraph challenge to mayoral candidate Sam Williams."