Huge salaries for the top managers in city and county government are among the factors driving out-of-control property taxes in the State of Kansas.
For example, Prairie Village — a small, land-locked community of about 23,000 in the Kansas City Metro paid City Administrator Wesley Jordan $243,390 in 2025. But Jordan has three deputy/assistant administrators under him: Deputy City Administrator Nicole Marie Lee and Assistant City Administrators Meghan Buum and Timothy Schwarzkopf, with combined salaries of $533,511.
Each of those deputy or assistant administrators also has multiple managers who report to them, such as the director of public works, the parks and recreation director, etc.
Meanwhile, Salina, with approximately double the population, makes do with a two-person management team at half the cost.
In fact, Prairie Village spends $33,797 per 1,000 residents on its top-tier management, which is more than six times as much as Overland Park, with a population exceeding 204,000.
Spending drives property taxes, and Kansas ranks next to last nationally in the number of local government employees per 10,000 residents. According to the Kansas Policy Institute’s 2025 Green Book, Kansas has 493.9 full-time equivalent positions per 10,000 residents; only Wyoming fares worse.
KPI owns the Sentinel.
Kansas has about 145,000 local government employees, but would only have 109,000 at the national per-capita average. At an average all-in cost of pay, benefits, etc. of just $55,000, local spending (and property taxes) could be about $2 billion less.
KPI CEO Dave Trabert says the Legislature must first pass assessment and mill rate limits to stop runaway tax increases, and then look at ways to restructure local government and reduce the need for so much property tax.
“75% of voters support a fixed-rate assessment limit, and 82% want a mill rate limit allowing them to veto tax increases above a certain level. Both absolutely should be passed now to stop the bleeding. That buys some time to then examine the whole of local government structure and funding options so property taxes can be significantly reduced.”
Property taxes far outpace inflation and population growth
Local elected officials’ spending decisions drive property tax increases, and as the chart below shows, property tax increases have far outpaced inflation and population growth for decades.
Overland Park has seen property taxes increase 521% since 1997, while inflation plus population growth is just 142%. Prairie Village has seen a 343% increase over the same timeframe, which almost four times more than inflation and population growth.
Vance Ginn, a senior fellow at KPI and former chief economist in the White House Office of Management and Budget, told the Kansas Legislature in 2024 that the issue was spending — something that has not changed since.
“Unfortunately, in Kansas, there’s too much that’s being spent,” he said at the time, noting Colorado has a “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” which has helped restrain spending.
“TABOR, as it’s called, is a spending limit that limits the growth of the budget to no more than population growth plus inflation, which is a good measure of the average taxpayer’s ability to pay for government spending,” Ginn said at the time. “Now it’s been weakened a little bit over time by some courts and by politicians and things of that nature, but it still has been able to hold their spending to population and inflation and keep taxes down lower than it otherwise would be.”
