The Wyandotte County Legislative Delegation will hold a community forum at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 5, at the West Wyandotte Branch Library, community room, 1737 N. 82nd, Kansas City, Kan.
The public may attend and discuss legislative issues with the local legislators before this year’s legislative session starts.
Legislators plan to return to Topeka to start the session on Monday, Jan. 11.
State Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore, D-36th Dist., the head of the Wyandotte County legislative delegation, said the biggest issue at the Legislature this year will probably be the state budget, as it continues to be in the red.
Also, she anticipates that Osawatomie state hospital will continue to be an important issue. Recently, federal officials cut off Medicare payments to the state hospital after security concerns surfaced.
While the state’s tax plan should be a big issue, she said there has been talk that it will not be discussed in the Legislature this year because it is an election year.
Recently, local legislators attended a Unified Government meeting where the UG’s legislative platform was discussed.
At the top of the UG’s legislative priorities is a repeal of the property tax lid approved in 2015. According to the UG’s legislative platform, the property tax lid “is unworkable, unnecessary, harms economic development and violates the spirit of small government, local control and the Home Rule Amendment of the Kansas Constitution.”
At that meeting with legislators, Mayor Mark Holland said that it is an erroneous belief that local governments are spending too much. He said the property tax lid was not needed because residents vote for commissioners, who then vote on a budget, and set the mill levy. The public will vote for someone else if they do not like the actions of their elected officials, he said.
With a sales tax revenue bond payoff anticipated in 2017, one of the hopes of the local officials was to reduce the property tax, Mayor Holland said.
“The state has just disincentivized us from lowering our property taxes,” he said. Local officials have to consider that if they lower property taxes this year, then because of the tax lid the next year they could not raise them again if needed. The mayor said the tax lid is anti-growth, because economic development causes growth, but local communities will be unable to increase revenues to provide services such as increased police and fire protection to serve that growth.
The UG’s second priority, according to its legislative platform, is to renew a partnership and cooperative spirit with state and local governments to address the issue of increasing property taxes caused by the shifting of costs from state government to local governments and schools. “The Kansas Legislature should not continue solving its budget shortfalls by taking revenues belonging to or legally obligated to city and county governments and should reject placing more of the burden for funding education on local taxpayers,” the UG’s legislative platform stated.
The UG’s legislative platform contained several other positions on issues.