Why Gov. Laura Kelly should reject Kansas’s anti-tax bill | Opinion
Everybody hates property taxes. But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly should still veto — quickly — a new anti-tax bill that legislative Republicans just sent to her desk.
It’s an anti-democratic bill. One that would, if it becomes law, put a bare minority of voters in control of local decisions about taxing, spending and public services.
Here’s how it works:
The legislation would let voters sign a protest petition if their local governments — school districts, city and county governments — exceed their previous year’s budget by more than 3%.
Which probably sounds great to a lot of homeowners struggling to keep up with inflation. Understandable.
But there’s a problematic part: If just 10% of those local voters sign the petition then the budget “shall be deemed disapproved” and the local government has to cut the budget back to the 3% inflation cap.
That’s it. No vote by the broader community. No majority approval.
Instead: One out of every 10 of your neighbors will have veto power over your local government’s spending decisions — even if, hypothetically, those spending decisions are supported by 90% of your neighbors. All you need is a few signatures.
“This bill finally puts taxpayers in control,” Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkings said in a news release.
He’s only partly right.
The bill puts a tiny few taxpayers in control. In all likelihood, it gives the most reactionary anti-government folks among us inordinate leverage over the services the rest of us receive.
Accountability to community
It’s a recipe for chaos.
“In many cities the size of mine, you will always find 10% of people who will vote against the city budget,” Rep. Rui Xu (D-Westwood) told the Kansas Reflector when an early version of the bill passed the Kansas House last month.
He’s right.
Xu attempted to raise the bar to 20% — his amendment failed — but that’s probably still too low. A minority of voters shouldn’t have veto power over local officials elected by the broader community.
We elect city councils and county commissions and school boards to do the day-to-day gritty work of balancing a community’s tax revenues against its needs, after all.
These folks aren’t unaware that Kansans are angry about their property taxes — they have jobs, go to church, shop in their grocery stores just like you do and I promise they hear about this stuff all the time, relentlessly — but they also have to make sure that the roads get paved, the trash gets picked up and that the classrooms have teachers.
It’s tricky.
They don’t always get the balance right. When that happens, their communities can vote them out of office — with a plurality of votes, certainly, but usually a majority. Certainly much more than 10%.
Elected officials are accountable to a whole community. A tenth of voters is not. Why put them in charge?
Governor should veto
Kelly can put a stop to this. The bill fell 21 votes short of a veto-proof majority in the House, and five votes short in the Senate.
But — though she’s a lame duck — a veto might be politically difficult.
Property tax concerns seem, anecdotally, to be uppermost in Kansas voters’ minds. Vetoing relief will be unpopular.
Those pressures, incidentally, make it remarkable that Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature didn’t get around to passing legislation until the session’s final day. Policing the bathrooms used by trans Kansans apparently rated as the more urgent priority.
The tax bill that did pass is “an admission that we must do more to bring relief to Kansans who are being priced out of their homes with runaway property taxes,” State Sen. Patrick Schmidt (D-Topeka) told the Topeka Capital-Journal.
It’s still the wrong bill, however. Property taxes are a problem. Giving a mere 10% of voters the power to overrule their elected officials and the people who put them in office? That’s worse.
