Public has right to know city’s contract details

An Eagle story on Monday revealed Cargill Protein’s guarantee to the city of 700 to 750 jobs at its new Old Town headquarters could include employees hired for one day.

“Could” was the key word in the headline. Not “will.”

Nowhere in the story did it intimate that Cargill would use that provision. Nor did it say Cargill would use another provision that allow it to “annualize” salaries of part-time and temporary employees to reach a guarantee of a $66,814 average annual salary for the first three years of the agreement.

Cargill, understandably, came to its own defense. Tom Windish of Cargill said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting that “what the paper did was take one little counting measure and turn that into a speculation of bad behavior.” In Sunday’s Opinion pages, a guest column from Cargill Protein president Brian Sikes talks about the company’s commitment to Wichita and says The Eagle “inferred Cargill might attempt to shirk its promises to the community or that the public might have been misled.”

Actually, the story didn’t do either. It made clear that the agreement with the city, negotiated alongside the state, makes it possible to use those counting techniques – not probable.

The story was more about transparency. The details of the agreement had significant loopholes available to Cargill. The public has a right to know these kinds of details, and it’s a news organization’s job to report them to a wider audience.

There’s no indication Cargill will use tricky accounting numbers to reach its promises to the city about workforce and average salary. But the language in the contract is there, and that can’t be denied.

Revelations of the Cargill contract’s language come 10 days after The Eagle reported a little-known provision in the 15-year-old WaterWalk development contract that showed the city paid $41 million in taxpayer subsidies for the project yet has received nothing in the profit-sharing agreement.

The project – a mix of residential and business uses anchored by the Gander Mountain hunting and fishing retailer – will likely never show enough profit for the city to see any money because of the structure of the deal.

News of that developer-friendly deal got the community talking. On WaterWalk’s heels, the news of the potentially business-friendly details in the Cargill contract made for more public grumbling.

Make no mistake, Cargill’s decision to not only stay in Wichita, but to stay downtown is good for our city. The company could have moved to a number of cities and received plenty of subsidies to do so. Its commitment to Wichita, and becoming an anchor downtown, is a major win for Mayor Jeff Longwell and city leaders.

Plans are for a $60 million complex at the Douglas and Rock Island location that housed The Eagle until April. A four-story, 188,000-square-foot building will be home to 800 employees, and a 750-space parking garage near Waterman and Rock Island will be within walking distance of Intrust Bank Arena.

“When this building is up and running,” Longwell said Tuesday, “I guarantee you it will be a place that we drive by and show other companies, ‘Look at what this company is doing in Wichita and how they’ve grown and how they’ve invested and look at their corporate headquarters.’ … It’ll be a showpiece for our city.”

No argument there. But there also shouldn’t be an argument that the details of a multimillion dollar city contract – especially details that could bite the city later – are off limits for discussion.

This story was originally published July 21, 2017 at 3:06 PM with the headline "Public has right to know city’s contract details."