Commissioner Cook
Councilmember Hiller
Councilmember Hiller
You both vote on JEDO. One of you is my county commissioner. One of you is my city councilmember. That is why this is going to both of you and not into another staff graveyard.
On May 6, 2024, Molly Howey sent me GO Topeka’s own list of what they booked as “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. I published it. It is still sitting there. Read it as JEDO voting members, not as guests at their podium.
What they called economic development included Juneteenth celebrations, church dinners and back-to-school events, an NAACP banquet, YWCA banquets and scholarships, peace-and-justice sponsorships, Alvin Ailey camp, a Brown Foundation anniversary, “For the Culture KS,” Mana De Topeka, New Mount Zion, Bring Back the Blvd, Oakland Garden, Living the Dream, Women of Excellence, Kansas Chamber conference tickets, Discovery Center kindergarten, and pitch-contest prize checks dressed up as development.
That is not a jobs program. That is a patronage list.
The half-cent sales tax is taken from people buying groceries, parts, and pizza. JEDO’s deal with GO Topeka is supposed to buy economic development: payroll, investment, sites, deals that widen the tax base. It is not a municipal United Way with a government credit card.
Kansas law does not give you the cover you think it does.
Local retailers’ sales tax is authorized by K.S.A. 12-187 et seq. Voters must approve it. The purpose goes on the ballot. KDOR’s own rule is simple: general-purpose local sales tax may be used for any lawful purpose; special-purpose sales tax may be used only for the purposes stated to the voters. JEDO’s levy was not sold as a charity pot. It was sold as economic development.
Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 says a city or county may use sales-tax proceeds for economic development if the electorate approved that use. It also says public funds must serve the public welfare, and courts defer to the governing body on that finding. That is the loophole GO Topeka lives in: call a banquet “vitality,” call a church dinner “talent,” and hope JEDO never asks the next question. The AG did not say banquet tickets are economic development. The AG said you have to own the finding. You two now own it.
Attorney General Opinion 2017-015 is even closer to home. It concerned Shawnee County’s earlier half-cent. The AG tied spending to the ballot list and the interlocal agreement. Excess after those purposes were met could fall to general funds. That opinion is not a license to bury civic donations inside an annual contractor lump and call the lump “ED.” Howey’s list is not leftover money after a bridge was built. It is the program.
Kansas is stingy the other direction. Most charities still pay sales tax on what they buy unless a specific exemption applies. 501(c)(3) status is not an automatic sales-tax holiday. So the state will tax a nonprofit when it buys tables and linens, then JEDO lets a contractor use other people’s sales tax to buy that same nonprofit a sponsorship. Tax the charity on the way in. Baptize the donation as “development” on the way out. That is not law. That is a racket with letterhead.
The contract is tighter than the statute. GO Topeka is not supposed to spend grant funds except as specified in the annual budget JEDO approves. If sponsorships were stuffed into a line called grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships, you did not approve economic development. You approved a black box.
And love is the point. Nobody who cashes a $2,500 or $10,000 “sponsorship” walks away thinking GO Topeka is a problem. They walk away thinking GO Topeka is generous. That is how you build a cheering section. That is how you get rooms that clap when the quarterly slideshow comes on. That is how you get people who will defend the machine that just wrote them a check — including the candidates that machine prefers. You do not need a smoke-filled room. The transaction is the mechanism. Public money in. Political goodwill out. Recipients do not bite the hand that funds their banquet.
If those groups are worthy, they can raise private money. If GO Topeka’s private board wants to pass the hat among its own directors, fine. What they may not do is launder a sales tax into charity and then brief JEDO as if Juneteenth catering and banquet tables are the same species as a plant expansion.
Wednesday night they spent an hour on $20,000 gymnastics equipment and a moving company’s TV ads and called it rigor. Then the public had four minutes to talk about land bought with that same tax, sitting under a data-center play, with GO Topeka holding the paper. You both sat there as voting members. You now own the contradiction.
I want three things from each of you, in writing, as my elected officials and as JEDO votes:
- A plain statement whether you consider banquet sponsorships, church events, and cultural celebrations to be economic development payable from the half-cent tax. Yes or no. Not a paragraph about “community vitality.”
- A demand that GO Topeka separate, forever, true deal incentives from contributions/sponsorships — and that JEDO stop approving a lump that lets them hide the second inside the first.
- An answer on who authorized using tax-bought land and tax-funded goodwill as if they were GO Topeka’s private inventory.
Government has no moral license to tax a cashier in Topeka so a development contractor can buy affection. Kansas sales-tax law requires a purpose. The ballot stated one. The contract requires a budget. Banquet tables are not that purpose. If JEDO will not say so out loud, it is not an oversight board. It is an applause track.
I expect a reply from both of you. Not a forward to staff.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment