Sometimes property tax lids, internet sales tax and state funding problems are better discussed over orange juice and cinnamon rolls.
Local legislators, Riley County commissioners and department heads held their annual legislative breakfast in the commission chambers Thursday morning.
Representatives Sydney Carlin, Susie Swanson, Tom Phillips and Ron Highland were present.
Riley County Commission Chairman Ron Wells has often expressed his less-than-cheerful feelings about the state legislature and Topeka, but said after the breakfast that Riley County legislators aren’t the problem.
“We have very good legislators,” he said. “They seem very attentive and absolutely concerned in helping Riley County with our problems with the state impact on our budget here locally.”
Leaders discussed their push for an internet sales tax in the state and also the impending property tax lid, which will require local governments to get voter approval to take in any tax revenue above the rate of inflation that comes from increased property values.
County and city leaders have not been shy in their opposition to the tax lid, which Highland admitted was pushed through the end of the last session in a last-ditch effort to pass the state’s budget bill.
Most analysts have said the property tax lid was added so legislators could save face after sales taxes were hiked to fill the budget shortfall, which became evident following Brownback’s 2012 tax cuts.
“Yeah, it was added in,” Highland said. “It was slipped in. Those things happen at the 11th hour. Those things happen all the time, and it was put in in such a way that if you voted against it, then everything went down in the dumper, and we’d had to start all over again and we’d still be in session.”
The lid was originally set go into effect this fiscal year, but was amended to begin in 2018.
Wells, though, said he’s worried that might change again.
“The Kansas Farm Bureau is reportedly going to push to have the tax lid pushed up as early as 2016 or 2017,” he said. “So, that’s very discouraging, but at least we have these members on our side and they’ll keep us informed once they get back in session.”
Highland said there is a senator with a repeal bill ready to go concerning the tax lid, but said taxpayers need to be considered along with counties.
“We all have to talk to our constituents — the real taxpayers out here in the world — and you have to weigh that,” he said. “Is it going to be in favor of the counties, or is it going to be in favor of the taxpayer?
“Because the taxpayers are feeling it, especially in the rural areas because of the property taxes and they’re saying enough is enough — we want to have a say. And they do have a say, but many of them don’t vote, and that’s their problem.”
County and city officials have argued cuts in state funding have led to property tax increases and Phillips — who has voiced his opposition to the tax lid — said many of the problems discussed during the breakfast go back to the culture in Topeka.
“There’s a philosophical viewpoint inside the State House that we have to change how government operates and the size of the government,” Phillips said after the meeting. “And the way you do that is that you stop the amount of revenue that comes into the state. And that’s what’s driving these challenges that we’re facing.
“When you only have so much money to operate on, you’re forced with cutbacks and changing the mission of government, and that’s ultimately what this is all about.”
During the meeting Swanson said a big problem in Topeka is humility.
“We think we can’t do anything wrong,” she said.
