mcre Media .......[Henry McClure Publisher]

The December 3, 2024 GO Topeka Full Board minutes show how the 2025 public budget was locked in before JEDO voted. GO Topeka is the contractor. JEDO is the public board that appropriates half-cent sales-tax money to that contractor. On December 3 the contractor’s own board approved (1) the 2025 Budget and (2) the 2024–2025 cash carry-forward. JEDO took up those same items eight days later. Commissioner Kevin Cook is listed as a GO Topeka board attendee at that meeting. He also sits as a voting member of JEDO. The same person helped approve the contractor budget and later votes, as a public officer, on whether that budget may spend voter-pledged sales tax. Mayor Padilla was in the room for the GO Topeka vote as well. What the minutes do and do not show: They show a lump-sum 2025 budget and carry-forward passed on a simple motion. They do not attach a recipient list for “grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar.” They do not name banquet tables, church dinners, festival sponsorships,...

Rhiannon — Below is a law-only note you can copy into an email. No personal framing. It is written so a lawyer or JEDO member can answer the spending question on the statutes, the AG opinions, the ballot/interlocal, and the GO Topeka contract. The Shawnee County half-cent retailers’ sales tax is a special-purpose tax. K.S.A. 12-187(g)(1) requires the governing body to specify the purpose or purposes for which the revenue will be used and to put a statement of that purpose on the ballot. The 2014 extension language pledged the tax for economic development and named infrastructure/quality-of-life projects. Spending must stay inside that approved purpose. Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 holds that sales-tax proceeds may be used for economic development only if the electorate approved that use . A later contractor or board cannot expand the purpose because a dinner, banquet, or sponsorship “feels like vitality.” AG Opinion 2017-015, issued to the City of Topeka on this...