Letters on sales tax, suspended voter, Kobach, Brownback’s record

Sales tax question years in the making

The sales tax ballot question has been nearly three years in the making.

In my 2012 State of the City address, I announced plans for an extensive public engagement process to bring Wichitans together to discuss big challenges facing our community. We needed to collectively identify our needs, prioritize them and figure out how to resolve and fund them.

What followed was an unprecedented community engagement effort involving surveys, public meetings, comment cards, social media town halls and other efforts largely coming out of an engagement process called ACT ICT. We created convenient places and spaces for residents to weigh in on community priorities and help shape Wichita’s future.

You spoke. You told us you wanted to focus on the fundamentals first: a future water source, better neighborhood streets, an improved transit system, and job retention and creation to diversify our economy and help us emerge from the Great Recession.

You also told us that you preferred to fund those four community priorities through a citywide sales tax, so the Wichita City Council decided to extend the community engagement process by placing the sales tax option on the Nov. 4 ballot.

As your mayor for the past seven years, I’m proud of your response to finding solutions. But your work isn’t done.

So, please, educate yourself on the community priorities at wichita.gov/salestax, cast your vote on Nov. 4, and stay engaged so that you can help shape our future.

Thanks, Kobach

Thanks to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, I may not be able to vote this upcoming election.

I am 63 years old and was born in and have lived in Kansas my entire life. I was a registered voter the past 25 years in Butler County. I recently moved to Wichita from Andover.

Because my registration was canceled in Butler County, I am now considered a person registering to vote in Kansas for the first time and must provide evidence of U.S. citizenship. There is definitely something wrong with this picture.

I am so mad right now. I have to scramble to provide the Sedgwick County Election Office with this information, or I can’t vote. This is a shame after I have had to listen to all the mudslinging ads put on TV by all these candidates.

Thanks a lot, Kris Kobach.

Follows law

Recent media commentaries have criticized Secretary of State Kris Kobach for playing politics when Democrat Chad Taylor attempted to drop out of the U.S. Senate race. In my experience, Kobach put the law before politics.

In 2012, I ran for Kansas Senate in the 25th District as a Libertarian. At the time I signed up, only incumbent Republican Jean Schodorf and Democrat Tim Snow were running. I was displeased with Schodorf’s performance and wanted to add a fiscally conservative voice to the race.

However, in the final hours before the deadline, Republican Michael O’Donnell entered the contest. He eventually defeated Schodorf in the primary election. I had no desire to take votes away from O’Donnell in the general election, so I suspended my campaign and publicly endorsed him.

I called the Secretary of State’s Office to inquire about removing my name from the ballot, and I spoke with Kobach personally. He told me that unless I was unable to perform the duties of a state senator or was moving out of the district, I must remain on the ballot.

If Kobach were as partisan as some are saying, he would have removed my name from the ballot to help the Republican in the race. Instead, he risked letting O’Donnell lose in order to uphold the law. If anyone was playing politics in the Chad Taylor case, it wasn’t Kobach. In my opinion, he has been consistent in his desire to follow the letter of the law.

Real record

Gov. Sam Brownback is not honest about the real results of his tax cuts. He’s not being straight about why he supports the bill to create a state health care compact that could endanger Medicare for seniors. He talks a good game about his support for education, but it doesn’t square with the facts. And he’s definitely out to lunch about the state’s economic well-being.

Informed, thoughtful voters in Kansas can see his real record and actions and understand the results of what he’s doing.

Join me in voting for Paul Davis for governor. We know how he has cast his votes on these issues.

I’m a moderate Republican who is sick and tired of the Brownback experiment and who wants to pull the plug before any more danger is inflicted on our state.

This story was originally published October 25, 2014 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Letters on sales tax, suspended voter, Kobach, Brownback’s record."