Sedgwick County should drop political stagecraft and get serious about tax relief | Opinion
The Sedgwick County Commission did the right thing last week in rejecting a proposal to link “quality of life” funding to sales tax income instead of the county’s general fund.
But it’s a victory that promises to be short-lived. The commission voted 3-2 to reject the plan, but two of those votes came from commissioners who won’t be there next month — and incoming commissioners are expected to pass it before their seats get warm.
Here’s the issue: Lots of people are upset about the constantly rising cost of property taxes. So am I.
In the past few years, real estate speculators have latched onto Wichita as a place to make bank on relatively small investments by buying and flipping property. The increased demand inflated prices, which is great for sellers.
The rising market also has raised the tax valuations on homes that owners have no intention of selling — but their property tax bills go up anyway.
It’s not just homeowners. Renters pay the tax hikes too — they’re baked into the rent.
It’s especially a problem for retirees and others on fixed incomes, who don’t have the flexibility to increase their income to offset their rising tax bills or rent.
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Dodgeball,” you might remember the five W’s: “Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge.”
And that, sports fans, is what our County Commission will almost certainly do — move some entries around on a spreadsheet and take political cover, without making any sort of meaningful improvement in our wallets.
A feel-good solution?
A little background: Sedgwick County levies a 1% sales tax, which generates about $39 million a year.
Half the money goes to roads, mostly Kellogg freeway construction, while the other half ostensibly goes to help reduce the property tax burden on taxpayers.
This year, the general fund half of the sales tax is about $19.6 million. Meanwhile, the county allocated about $13.8 million to the Zoo, Exploration Place, and 12 other cultural, recreational and arts entities.
The plan promoted by commissioners Jim Howell and Ryan Baty would state that the money for the quality-of-life organizations comes from the sales tax and not property tax.
It’s a distinction without a difference. Who cares which fund the county says the money comes from when it all came out of our pocket in the first place?
Even commissioners who supported the change acknowledged that it’s little more than PR to make taxpayers feel better about their bills.
“Things like the Sedgwick County Fair for example, or Riverfest, they may not want their property tax dollars going to that,” Howell said. “But if we tell them that property tax dollars goes to fund the Sedgwick County sheriff, and the Sedgwick County Jail, and the Sedgwick County district attorney and tornado sirens and 911, and on it goes, they don’t seem to have much problem with that type of spending.”
Added Baty: “I also understand that this is just semantics. If it’s just semantics, why does it matter?”
Then he followed that with this statement of his “first principle:”
“I truly believe that property tax dollars should go towards core functions and sales tax dollars should go to things that are not core functions. It does not mean we don’t value them, it does not mean we’re not proud of them, it does not mean we won’t support them.”
Commissioner David Dennis, who’s retiring at the end of his current term in early January, made the case that the shuffle would create an expectation among quality-of-life organizations that they should get all the available sales tax money, and it hampers the flexibility of future commissioners to make the best decisions on spending.
“We faced that when a previous commission thought that they were smarter than future commissioners and said that we had a mill levy cap,” Dennis said. “And it took a lot of political will to eliminate that because it handcuffed all future commissions, and that’s exactly what this is doing.”
Decision won’t last
Dennis was joined in his “no” vote by commissioners Pete Meitzner and Sarah Lopez.
But Lopez will also leave the commission early next month after losing her re-election bid to former Wichita City Council member Jeff Blubaugh.
Both incoming commissioners tapped public anger over property taxes as the centerpiece of their campaigns and Stephanie Wise — who’ll replace Dennis — committed to supporting the move to shift quality-of-life expenditures to sales tax.
Dennis acknowledged that last week’s decision to reject the plan will be overturned. “A month from now it will probably pass,” he said. “I figure I got it stopped on my watch.”
As political stunts go, this one is misleading, though probably not too directly harmful. It is, however, a pointless distraction from doing something real about the tax burden on county residents.
Sebelius started it
The original sin here goes back to 2005 when Kathleen Sebelius was governor and phased out property tax on business machinery and equipment, which at the time generated $200 million a year for the state and $10 million for Sedgwick County.
I remember asking Sebelius then if this would shift the property tax burden away from business and onto homeowners, and she admitted it would. At least she was honest about it.
If we’d taxed businesses their fair share these past 20 years, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. But that’s never going to happen.
So if the County Commission wants to actually do something worthwhile in the here and now, here are two suggestions:
1) Take a more aggressive stance with the city of Wichita, which gives away untold millions in city, county, school and state revenue, with property- and sales-tax abatements granted nearly every week to developers and business owners. County commissioners can’t stop all of that, but state law allows them to veto some of the more egregious giveaways.
2) Instead of fixating on property taxes, follow the state’s lead and get rid of the sales tax on food. You’ve probably seen headlines that the state is doing away with the food tax as of Jan. 1, but counties don’t have to and Sedgwick County isn’t. That would benefit everybody because we all have to eat.
Overall, I can’t say I’m expecting much, especially if the county’s accounting sleight of hand does calm and convince the public that progress is being made.
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 4:47 AM.
