City and county lobbyists are flooding the state capitol, pressuring legislators not to grant Kansans property tax relief. They tell legislators that restrictions on valuations or tax increases will lead to service cuts, as though every penny they spend is necessary.
However, research by Kansas Policy Institute (which owns The Sentinel) shows the state’s 35 largest counties and the 25 largest cities were sitting on more than $5 billion in cash reserves at the end of 2022. So while some city councils and county commissioners are literally taxing people out of their homes, they are simultaneously padding their bank balances.
Johnson and Sedgwick counties are hoarding nearly $3 billion in cash; many others also have significant reserves. There is $386 million in Douglas County, $214 million in Saline County, and more than $100 million in Finney, Reno, Riley, and Wyandotte counties just between the county government and some cities.
KPI researchers had to sort through thousands of pages of budget documents to find the information because the state doesn’t tabulate the totals for all the budgets collected. The Kansas Department of Education does so for school districts, so we know that school districts have nearly $3 billion in cash reserves. The total across all the nearly 4,000 local taxing authorities could easily exceed $10 billion.
Every entity needs some degree of cash reserves, and some of the money is legally obligated to pay off debt. Still, a mountain of data indicates that most cities, counties, school districts, and other taxing authorities could reduce tax burdens by spending down reserves and otherwise making more efficient use of Kansans’ tax dollars.
For example, dozens of school districts routinely operate with less than 12% of the coming year’s operating costs in the bank, while others hold more than 25% in reserve. More than $500 million would be made available if each district had a 12% operating reserve.
A KPI study of 2022 county spending found that some counties spend two to three times as much per capita as others with similar populations.
Kansas is also massively over-governed. Only North Dakota and South Dakota have fewer residents per general-purpose government (cities, counties, and townships) and only Wyoming has more local government employees per capita.
Several property tax bills have been introduced this year in the House and Senate that nibble around the edges of reform, but Kansans need substantive property tax relief caused by local officials taking advantage of excessive valuation increases to impose large tax hikes.
There is no excuse for property tax having increased 2.4 times the combined rates of inflation and population since 1997, and it will only get worse until legislators cap valuation increases and limit the overall tax increase without voter approval.
