The Topeka Capital-Journal
Libertarian Party considers fighting tax increases
Tax increase this year substantially higher than past 10
Posted:August 26, 2013 - 5:02pm
ByAly Van Dyke
The typical Topeka home saw its property tax bill climb by about $200 in the past decade — nearly half of which will hit just next year.
This time, Topeka homeowners are fighting back, said Earl McIntosh, spokesman for the Libertarian Party of Topeka. The party, he said Monday, is considering filing a series of petitions to fight the increases.
“It’s easy for them to raise property taxes,” McIntosh said. “But we’ve got a shrinking base of property owners, and they are paying more than their fair share. It’s unfair and it’s unsustainable.”
A $100,000 home in Topeka will add $100 to its property taxes next year after the city of Topeka, Shawnee County and the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority voted this month to raise their mill levies by a collective 8.7 mills. The other main four taxing entities in Topeka didn’t raise their taxes.
That is the single highest mill levy increase for the city’s main seven taxing entities in the past 10 years, according to past county tax levy sheets. Mill levies won’t be official until assessed valuations are finalized in November.
In response to this year’s tax increase, members of the city’s Libertarian party are gathering information to potentially petition the city’s and county’s budget, along with a few other items aimed at limiting the taxing authorities’ abilities to impose taxes. The goal, McIntosh said, is to give the public more of a voice in the budgeting process.
“It may not happen, but there’s a serious effort to look into it,” he said.
Some elected officials seemed to support the effort.
“I am a fiscal conservative, and believe the more scrutiny of budgets and tax increases by the public the better,” Commissioner Bob Archer said.
McIntosh’s Topeka councilwoman, Elaine Schwartz, said she is awaiting a clarification from the Attorney General’s Office regarding petitions against budgets. She commended McIntosh for his efforts.
“I am and always have been supportive of citizen’s input into the legislative/governing process,” Schwartz said. “I’d also comment that while being the only council member to consistently vote against spending and tax increases, I will sign the petition if and when it comes into being.”
Councilman Chad Manspeaker said he is “a proponent of direct democracy” and wished the group the best.
“The thing to keep in mind in such an endeavor, though, is that if successful, the level of service and quality of life in our city would no longer be in the hands of those the citizens have elected to represent them,” he said.
Shawnee County elections commissioner Andrew Howell indicated at least three statutes could come into play with the efforts, though which ones will depend on if and how the group follows through. Until a petition if filed, he said, he wouldn’t feel comfortable guessing how many signatures the party would need or what the process would look like.
Topeka’s Libertarian Party also is looking into what it would take to file three Topeka ordinances by petition, McIntosh said.
One would prevent the city council from raising property taxes, sales taxes and franchise fees without a public vote.
The second would require a public vote on any mill levy increases from the MTAA, the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library and, potentially, Washburn University.
Currently, the boards to these bodies are appointed by elected officials and have authority to approve their own budgets and to set their own mill levies. The transit service relies on the city of Topeka to set its mill levy cap.
“That’s taxation without representation,” McIntosh said, adding that the party completely supports those services. “We believe it’s unconstitutional, and we’re ready to challenge it.”
Archer also welcomed a review into the practice.
“I have always been a critic of unelected boards setting mill levies and raising property taxes,” he said.
The third petition ordinance would make members of the city council independent contractors rather than employees of the city, he said.
“There’s a major conflict of interest there,” McIntosh explained. “This way, they would more represent the homeowners and the people of the city better.”
Topeka’s mill levy since 2003 increased by 19.6 percent. That means the city’s mill levy has outpaced its assessed valuations by almost 4 percent, according to tax levy data.
Shawnee County, meanwhile, has increased 11.95 percent — roughly 6.44 percent lower than changes to the county’s assessed valuation.
Shawnee County and Topeka have increased their mill levies an average of roughly 0.6 mills since 2002 — meaning next year’s increase of nearly 4 mills each is several times their average.
Together, the next year’s increases are twice as high as any tax hike in the past 12 years. This year was the second highest increase since 2002, at a collective 3.941 mill jump.
Now is not the time to be raising taxes, McIntosh said. What elected officials don’t consider, he continued, are the other factors pulling for homeowners dollars, making these tax hikes more painful than ever before.
“Every day I talk with people who are homeowners and I can tell you people are hurting and hurting bad,” McIntosh wrote in a presentation before the city council. “Most people on fixed incomes can’t ever begin to keep up with all the tax increases and price increases on essentials like food, water, heat and gas. I’m telling you, homeowners can’t afford a penny more in taxes or expenses. Please get the money somewhere else.”
Final Topeka budget includes tax levy hike of 3.9 mills
Harmon proves to be swing vote on key issues Tuesday evening
Posted:August 20, 2013 - 9:24pm
ByTim Hrenchir
Topekans will see their property tax mill levy increase next year by about 3.9 mills, which would amount to an additional $44.85 in annual property tax for the owner of a $100,000 home.
City governing body members voted 6-4 Tuesday night to approve a 2014 budget that includes that increase.
Mayor Larry Wolgast and council members Karen Hiller, Denise Everhart, Michelle De La Isla, Nathan Schmidt and Richard Harmon voted in favor of the budget. John Campos II, Sylvia Ortiz, Chad Manspeaker and Elaine Schwartz dissented.
The vote came after a series of ballots in which council members defeated various budget proposals, with Harmon being the swing vote who changed his ballot from “no” to “yes” on a final proposal that included the 3.9-mill increase.
Harmon told reporters afterward he made that change reluctantly.
“We were deadlocked,” he said. “I couldn’t see any way to break the deadlock, so I switched my vote.”
Harmon said he’d suggested $3.5 million in cuts during this budget cycle that the governing body chose not to make, so he found it “very, very difficult” to vote in favor of a budget that includes an increase in the tax levy.
“I’m not happy right now,” he said.
The city’s governing body, which consists of the mayor and council members, voted 7-3 early in Tuesday’s meeting to approve a report the council crafted in various unofficial votes while meeting as its budget committee of the whole between July 22 and Aug. 12. The budget in that form would have brought about a 4-mill increase in the property tax levy.
Adoption of the report gave the body a starting point for Tuesday’s discussion.
Governing body members that evening several times voted 7-3, 6-4 or 5-5 to reject proposed budgets.
The governing body rejected a proposal to outsource Topeka Municipal Court security, a move anticipated to save $114,412 as the city would lay off four employees and hire an outside company to provide security. Manspeaker suggested the move could bring more legal costs than would be worth it for the city, which is under contract through 2015 with the collective bargaining unit representing those workers.
Council members had voted twice during budget committee meetings to support the outsourcing plan, then voted 5-5 Tuesday to reject a motion to do away with that plan.
But Harmon subsequently changed his mind, voting in the majority to reject the outsourcing with Wolgast, Everhart, De La Isla, Manspeaker and Schmidt.
Hiller, Campos, Ortiz and Schwartz dissented.
Governing body members -- after approving a committee report that included directing city manager Jim Colson to find and make $500,000 worth of cuts -- voted to reduce the amount of those custs to $346,000. That step was taken after council members noted that they’d already made $154,000 worth of personnel cuts Colson suggested.
The approved budget includes increasing from 5 percent to 6 percent of gross receipts the amount the city charges Westar Energy and Kansas Gas Service to use its right of way, thus increasing revenues by an estimated $1.18 million. Those companies typically pass along those fees to their customers within Topeka city limits.
Governing body members were told putting in place the franchise fee hike for Westar shouldn’t be a problem, but arranging one for Kansas Gas Service could be a challenge.
The governing body also voted to:
-- Reduce the fire department budget by $100,000.
-- Cut a currently filled office manager’s position in the city attorney’s office. City attorney Chad Sublet said the employee supervises one person, but formerly supervised more.
-- Eliminate a plan reviewer’s position in the public works department, an engineering technician’s position for a survey crew member in public works and a position in purchasing-finance.
-- Move ahead with plans to budget the use of $2.5 million in transient guest tax revenue while putting off until November a decision on how that money would specifically be used.
-- Restore funding for a group of 11 youth and social service agencies. The move means the city will keep funding for those 11 agencies at its 2013 level next year.
Colson initially proposed the city keep 2014 funding for all nonprofit agencies at its 2013 level. But the council at a budget committee meeting voted to remove 15 percent — or $30,664 — from the $204,428 in total funding earmarked for a group of 11 youth and social service agencies listed in a document Hiller provided the council separating city grant funding recipients into different categories.
Agencies in the grouping for which overall funding was recommended to be reduced by 15 percent are Big Brothers Big Sisters, two Boys and Girls Club programs, CASA, the Kansas Children’s Service League, the Marian Clinic, Positive Connections, Project HealthAccess, Successful Connections, Topeka Day Care learning center, two Topeka Youth Project programs and the YWCA’s health youth program.
Tuesday’s vote rejected that recommendation and put 2014 city funding for nonprofit agencies back at its 2013 level with one exception -- the city will no longer provide $75,000 for a program administered by the nonprofit group Downtown Topeka Inc. The program finances improvements to downtown buildings. Committee members made that decision last week at a budget committee meeting after being told the board of directors of Go Topeka had voted to provide $100,000 to the improvement program in 2014, apparently using revenue from a countywide, half-cent sales tax.
Kobach, Arizona counterpart sue federal commission
Sec of State says federal voter registration form should include proof of citizenship
Posted:August 21, 2013 - 1:01pm
ByAndy Marso
Facing the possibility of legal action over 15,000-plus suspended voter registrations, Secretary of State Kris Kobach struck back by announcing Wednesday his own suit against a federal election commission.
Kobach said at a news conference that he and Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, both Republicans, have filed a complaint against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission asking that federal voter registration forms issued to residents of their states include state-specific proof of citizenship requirements like the ones on state forms largely responsible for putting thousands of Kansas registrations on hold.
Kobach said the court case is "the first of its kind."
Kansas voters will be best served when the EAC amends the Kansas-specific instructions on the Federal Form to include submitting concrete evidence of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote," Kobach said.
Kobach said the lawsuit would partially preempt a suit being prepared but he American Civil Liberties Union over the suspended registrations.
“It does block many of the arguments the ACLU might wish to raise,” Kobach said.
Doug Bonney, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, said the lawsuit was "no surprise."
"We knew that he was going to do this, or at least anticipated he would," Bonney said Wednesday.
Bonney said he had not seen the complaint filed by Kobach and Bennett and could not comment on its effect until he had studied it.
Kobach and the ACLU have disagreed on much when it comes to voting laws, but both he and Bonney said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in
Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., invited a lawsuit.
"This lawsuit is pursuant to Scalia's invitation," Kobach said.
The opinion stipulated that states had to allow voter to register with Congressionally-established federal forms that require residents to swear to their U.S. citizenship but not provide written proof. But it also stipulated that states were free to petition the EAC to add the proof of citizenship requirement and, if the EAC does not act or rejects the request, take it to court.