Redistribute county sales tax?

Three decades after Sedgwick County’s 1 percent sales tax won over voters with promises of property tax relief and a stoplight-free Kellogg, leaders at the city of Wichita are causing heartburn at the county with talk of redistributing the wealth.

It’s a worthy debate, on fairness grounds alone. But much more analysis is needed, including of how the proceeds paid to smaller cities and the sales taxes paid by out-of-county residents fit into the equation. Just raising the issue of where the total $102 million a year should be going will test the already testy relationship between the two local governments.

Credit Mayor Jeff Longwell and City Council member Pete Meitzner with starting the conversation, if not in the inclusive way county leaders might have preferred. The city’s argument is sound, as far as it goes: Because Wichitans are 76 percent of the taxpayers of Sedgwick County, surely Wichita is entitled to more than the 58 percent of the sales tax proceeds it now collects under a complicated formula set out in state law. They have their eyes on about $17.8 million more a year that the city badly needs to stabilize and improve Wichita Transit and repair streets – two of the priorities left short by the defeat of a citywide sales tax last year. One carrot they’ve offered is a regional bus system.

It’s hard to see a resolution that wouldn’t cast the county as the loser, creating a need to either raise the property-tax mill levy or – far more likely under the county’s conservative new leadership – do more of the damaging budget cutting it began last month. That prospect alone is reason for the city to move with caution. Succeeding in re-slicing the pie could invite further reductions in county spending on public health, the Sedgwick County Zoo, Exploration Place and other budget priorities for which Wichitans just voiced strong support. County officials will argue that their share is not disproportionate in that it helps fund the 911 center, the jail, juvenile justice and other countywide services.

Longwell and Meitzner say Wichita might go to the Legislature for an exemption from the formula. Though County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn cited violating the “uniform statute” as a problem, lawmakers already have made changes for Johnson, Montgomery and Phillips counties. Why not Sedgwick?

Then again, it’s a red flag for legislators when local officials are on both sides of a bill. Better to sort through the issue at home, and demonstrate that the city-county cooperation that led to the sales tax endures.

It was a major achievement to persuade 54.7 percent of voters in a mail-in-ballot election in July 1985 of the need to tax themselves another penny on every dollar, especially after five failed sales tax proposals in the previous 10 years.

Thirty years later, with commuters benefiting daily from the Kellogg expressway and other resulting projects, it shouldn’t be too much to expect current city and county leaders to work together to ensure the money is being distributed as fairly and wisely as possible.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 7:06 PM with the headline "Redistribute county sales tax?."