I read with great interest Roy Wenzl’s story this morning about Wichita business leaders who have formed a PAC to oppose Karl Peterjohn for Sedgwick County Commission.
Peterjohn, a Republican, said the group’s criticism and endorsement of Democrat Marcey Gregory in the race for the District 3 seat was disappointing.
I found this quote from Harvey Sorensen, the chairman of the chamber board, especially telling:
“That committee is basically a room full of Republicans,” Sorensen said. “And we went in there with the assumption that we’d probably come out of there supporting Karl for election, because he’s well known for supporting low taxes. But we were frankly shocked at what he told us.”
I understand where the business leaders are coming from, that Peterjohn’s anti-tax stance would go beyond fiscal conservatism and harm local businesses and future growth.
However, I wonder if this public stance will do more harm than good. Might Joe Sixpack, as Sarah Palin would say, do the opposite of what business leaders think should be done just out of spite?
I’d be interested in your opinion.
26 Comments
I don’t see a problem raising taxes and outsourcing engineering to India. It is a global economy.
Blog regulars will recall that we had a conversation several weeks ago about the potential for a business vs. anti-tax crowd showdown in Wichita.
The national economic outlook is even darker now than it was then, with other posters on this blog today urging citizens and businesses to go into “strong defense” against a coming recession.
Which leads me to pose one question: If we can all agree that Wichita needs a recession-resistant economy – and given the narcissism of today’s world, I know all of us can’t – then how in the world can we argue against ANYTHING that solidifies the future of aviation in Wichita?
If we’ve learned anything from the past eight years, it’s that reckless governmental spending is a recipe for economic disaster. So from that standpoint, taxpayer vigilance is a good thing.
But we must guard against any sort of a “me first” anti-tax obsession that elevates the tax bill of the individual over the overall economic good of the community.
Well said, Mr. Wilson.
Has Mr. Peterjohn ever owned/run a business?
For that matter – has he ever had a real job?!
BTW –
“But we must guard against any sort of a “me first” anti-tax obsession that elevates the tax bill of the individual over the overall economic good of the community.”
Sounds like John McCain and more deficit spending!
The Council/Commission need to set a not-to-exceed dollar limit so that if it is exceeded it goes to the voters. I might even accept a Visioneering type commission to review and approve with dollar limits as well.
I continue to hear all this @#$% about how wonderful the Aviation Center is going to be. Maybe, and I am not opposed to having an Aviation Center. But make no mistake, I am absolutely, 100% opposed to a $54 million dollar facility built at Jabara airport. There are very large, empty facilities all over this community that a facility like that could be housed in that is much, much cheaper with better access for all trainees.
Yes, I support Exploration Place. But isn’t it nice when displays like the T-Rex, Titanic and Body exhibit add so much $$$ to the coffers? Perhaps the business model can be revisited? Maybe some redesign on the interior so when I do attend an exhibit it’s not like walking through the security rope lines at a major airport?
Can we just scrap Cowtown and develop some nice restaurants/hotel/meeting place along the banks of the Arkansas? If someone wants to tour a working farm they can drive to Garden Plain, or all the other land in the Wichita city limits zoned “Urban Agricultural” in which the owners pay pennies in property taxes. (An Eagle expose’ on that would be quite welcome)
Can museums be expected to meet 75% of the income targets? Since it is a museum does that mean we continue to finance with no accountability?
How about a yearly budget on TIF’s? A five/ten year plan?
Having just returned from NBAA I am sorry to say I was disappointed in the exhibit promoting Wichita. With this communities talents and resources we should do much better.
Visioneering is a great idea. Period. Get people involved. Discuss ideas. Debate. Fantastic.
I want compromise. I want it at a federal, state and local level. This community needs to re-invest in itself but we cannot continue throwing dollars at pennies. And that is EXACTLY what’s going on here.
And BTH, as much as I agree with you on most issues, your political bent is not one. Added taxes for the rich like myself (Obama’s opinion, not a sub-chapter “S” business owners opinion) along with additional wealth re-distribution will add many, many more to the unemployment lines.
For that I am sure.
As always, all the best.
I think Karl Peterjohn is an asset to our community. We need people like him and his group to be a good watchdog and help inform our community.
That is Karl Peterjohn’s strength, being a watchdog on government spending and tax policy. But dogs don’t make for great masters, and a watchdog on the helm of the county’s steering wheel will make for a ship’s captain that is too afraid to move it out of port.
Mr. Peterjohn needs to watch the cargo and the fuel, but he doesn’t need to be at the wheel.
We don’t require accountants, law firms, hospitals or other professions to train their workers. Why shouldn’t we have a pool of trained workers for an industry? Chasing jobs out of Sedgwick County will not lower taxes.
For the past few years, the naysayers have tried to control the community. They hate the Arena, they hate the aviation training center, they hate Old Town, they hate the aviation companies. They want the community to dry up. I am glad to see others speak up for what is good and right with Wichita. We can’t be afraid of the NO people like Karl, or allow the unstable Craig Gabel in office to control the future of our community. We need elected officials who keep us competitive, keep jobs here and make living here a good thing.
Jerry – good points. Years ago I railed against the evisceration of Vo-Tech. I wanted to see us build on EXISTING resources – Vo-tech, area community colleges and WSU. I had visited the existing facility near Mid-Continent and was impressed by it. Unfortunately nobody wanted to listen when those proposals were made.
Also, our post-secondary training opportunities need to be more than aviation. As I have said before we need a more diversified economy.
Good comments on museums. As a Zoo member I agree that these facilities need to be at least partially paying their own way. However, I would also note that at least some of these do serve a ‘non-paying’ public – for example school trips to the Zoo. So, I have no problem with my tax dollars supporting them – within reason.
Finally, a comment about taxes in general. The choice I have been given to get the hundred BILLION to give AIG is to either pay it through taxes or leave it for my grandchildren. I’d rather do ‘pay-as-you-go.’ Our 11 TRILLION debt scares me.
bth I completely agree. I have a bad feeling our national debt is a few bills north of 11 trillion! I do believe that everyone should pay taxes, regardless of income. People need a vested stake in government, just as people need a vested stake in their mortgages.
If only election day was April 15 and we wrote our candidate on the back of our check to the IRS…
Or let our grandkids vote since they are the ones getting the IOUs.
I understand your concerns, Dan. Let’s just hope that the voters do not equate ‘business owner’ with ‘bad guy.’ We need to keep people working and I think we’re all hoping that the voice of business owners will be heard and respected. It’s important to consider that these sentiments are coming from small biz people as well — hopefully the electorate will connect the dots.
This is really about moderation, I think. Governmental spending oversight shouldn’t be categorically disdained. It can certainly be accomplished, while at the same time remaining mindful of the competitive, and oftentimes incentive-rich, economic development world we live in.
Marcy Gregory is a business owner. And, as mayor of Goddard, she has kept taxes low. I think she walks that ‘moderate’ line between spending wildly and not spending at all. I will be voting for her next month.
What a great discussion. Keep it up.
So what govt spending oversight is taking place now?
Bill, can you give me one example?
Do you really think Spirit leaves $8 billion in stranded investment In Wichita if Peterjohn wins?
Karl Peterjohn is by far the best qualified political candidate in his race for Sedgwick County commissioner. Mr. Peterjohn is recognized by all governmental participants including our State Legislators as one of the best informed of state and local tax specialists.
Karl heads a group of citizens who are concerned by lack of oversight of Kansas and Sedgwick County tax spending, called Kansas Taxpayers Network. His dues paying members are voluntary and not a tax-supported arm of the government.
I have found Karl to be a very positive person. He and his wife recently adopted two young children into their family. I believe they are members of a Quaker/Friends church in Wichita.
Frankly the taxpayers of Sedgwick County need Karl as a county commissioner to finally get some oversight on the gigantic waste of our tax dollars on such projects as the new 1/2 billion dollar white elephant downtown arena, INCREDIBLY BEING BUILT WITHOUT PARKING. Its an authentic “bridge to nowhere.”
We desperately need someone to give oversight to the proposed multi-million dollar technical training school for the aircraft industry to be paid for by millions of dallars from Sedgwick County taxpayers. INCREDIBLY it will be built on the northeast corner of Sedgwick County outside of the boundaries of the USD 259 school district away from the center of populations it is being built to serve. Everyone knows it is piecemealed pile of trash designed to draw more taxes from the middle class Sedgwick County taxpayers.
In this time when our national debt has ballooned to over 10 trillion dollars mostly financed by the Chinese government … people in this country must finally stand up and say, no more, stop this bloating of the American treasury on all levels.
And at a time when corporate leaders are being paid grotesque amounts of pay for no more or no less production than most American workers … why do we care what Jeff Turner, head of Spirit Company, says about our local political leaders. He is involved in draining tax dollars from Sedgwick County for the school for aircraft workers that I am told by insiders should be financed by the airplane manufacturing companies themselves.
When I returned to Wichita about 10 years ago, I marveled at the lack of office tower buildings in downtown Wichita containing any evidence of Boeing, Beech or Cessna. In any other city in America with as many large corporations operating in its city, you would see skyscrapers rising high over the city containing the banners of these companies. But not in Wichita.
The situation in Wichita is reversed. Even though Wichita is a “company town,” the emphasis of the corporate management is to soak the middle class taxpayers as a revenue source for their companies. Jeff Turner, CEO of Spirit, is a good example.
This is a prime example of the old adage, “Take from the many according to their god given ability and off the sweat of their hard working backs … and give to the few according to their personal needs regardless of whether they contribute anything of value to the process.”
It has been interesting as well watching the attacks on Gabel. Unlike the ones on Peterjohn these have absolutely nothing to do with the issues/ I’d like to see a little more discussion of those. As a business owner at least Gabel has some experience with budgets etc.
My predictions for the election:
259 bond – loses
Peterjohn – wins
Gabel – loses
Tiahrt – wins but Betts ‘beats the spread’
Roberts – wins big
These are not necessarily what I want to see but are my predictions.
My point is that it’s within the rights of citizens – and the expectations of their elected officials – to oversee government spending.
However, that oversight can’t be allowed to morph into an anti-tax hysteria. One of the reasons the U.S. has been plunged into the current financial mess, I think, is a distinct shift in individual attitude: from the greater good to “I’ve got mine, so I don’t care about you.” Few statesmen, from the grounds roots on up. Just profiteers.
Whether you like the aviation companies or not, the reality – fact, not supposition – is that there are multiple municipalities with substantial war chests ready, able and willing to drop them on the plane builders to recruit them from Wichita.
If you think we’ve got problems now …
Lonny needs to stick with plumbing. The reason you need a trained pool of workers is because no matter how much pork is being passed out to businesses, that pool of workers is the BEST incentive your community has to offer.
And Wink? “When I returned to Wichita about 10 years ago, I marveled at the lack of office tower buildings in downtown Wichita containing any evidence of Boeing, Beech or Cessna.”
Heheheh. When I was practicing economic development in Texas, I heard Governor Mark White say the state was aggressively pursuing Boeing to move operations from Wichita to Dallas because…
“Boeing is such a great company, it deserves to be in a town whose tallest building is NOT a Holiday Inn”.
I have talked to Craig Gabel several times at his great family restaurant, Mike’s Restaurant. Its on south Broadway near Pawnee and the busy Wal-Mart out there.
Craig Gabel is an entrepreneur, a risk taker, an activist, a fellow with a lot of ideas for improving our county government. I wish he was also a Catholic priest or Presbyterian minister but, alas, that’s not the case. But he is certainly head and shoulders above the current axing by the Wichita EAGLE staffers.
His opponent, Tim Norton, is “Mr. Fluff.” Tim is always politically correct, draws his county check every month, no new ideas worthy of discussing. Tim Norton is a nice guy, a fellow you wouldn’t pick out of a crowd. Tim’s main claim to employment before the County was with Target Stores as a supervisor of door greeters, etc.
I happen to live in Tim’s county commissioner district and, true to form, have never seen him since he became a county commissioner. His claim to be a “people person” is of course flat out false.
Very little is known about Tim’s background other than he ran for mayor of Haysville, a job nobody wanted at that time. During his term, a tornado occured in Haysville and south Wichita. At that time, I was spending some time in Haysville and I noticed many citizens thought Tim made a lot of mistakes in dealing with the tornado.
But Tim leveraged this job into the Sedgwick County Commissioners job where he regularly tests the wind mostly from his fellow county commissioners to see which way to vote. Of course, to protect his status as one of the “good old boys,” Tim votes for every tax increase and expenditure proposed to the county commission.
The only way to finally break this cycle is to vote out the incumbents and get some fresh air on the Sedgwick County Commission.
So I am calling for voters to elect Craig Gabel to the County Commission in the November general election.
Bill – do you have any information about whether Peterjohn is involved with the current anti-USD259 bond issue group? Citizens for Effective Education or something like that?
I have seen nothing to suggest that he is, bth.
Thanks Bill. I had recalled his KTN being the leaders in previous bond campaigns and was wondering if they had a role this time around.
Bill, bth, if you notice, both the WEE website and Karl’s personal website have the exact same format, are hosted at the same place and there are just a bunch of similarities…
Did everyone hear that Karl is refusing to debate Marcey tonight at the chamber debate at Newman?
Amusing…