The KRA Blog

by Wayne Flaherty, Secretary
Keep Kansas Taxes in Kansas Committee

September 20, 2007

A comment on the Yael Abouhalkah editorial about KC leaders:

In this morning’s editorial Yael talks of regional responsibilities of Johnson County – but never mentions other counties. He, like so many local Missouri politicos, means Johnson County when he utters the word regional. To them, the suburbs consist only of the 19 cities in Johnson County. Four times Yael mentions regional transit - completely oblivious to the fact that Johnson County carries only 2% of regional transit riders. Wyandotte County is never mentioned while it carries 3-1/2 times (7%) as many riders as the JO. Johnson County is the target, not because of an imagined pivotal role in a regional transit system but for its money.

Yael chastises suburban mayors (meaning Johnson County mayors) with a question, “When will suburban mayors realize their job isn’t solely to preside over a nice place for people to live and shop, but to help support a thriving metropolitan area?” Sorry Yael, but presiding over a nice place for people to live and shop is exactly what our mayors should be doing. As a matter of fact, it is what the KCMO mayor and the Jackson County executive should be doing – but are not. KCMO spends its time arguing over a $2 billion light rail plan while facing a $7 billion sewer repair bill. They just voted to give the Chiefs and Royals a $2 million yearly subsidy while their $300 million Sprint Arena is still without a permanent tenant. Jackson County gives the Chiefs and Royals $3.5 million per year while having just laid off 150 county employees and borrowing money to make it through 2007. They have the worst school system in the region even though it spends more money per pupil than any other area system. Since when is it the job of governments who tend to their business to support their profligate neighbors? Johnson County is successful because it has found the correct way to govern – have many small governments that are close to, and responsive to, their citizens. Instead of emulating the success of Johnson County, our neighbors choose to seek ways to tap into our tax revenues using the thinly disguised mantra of regionalism. If there is any mending to be done let them mend their ways and stop trying to convince us we owe them something. The only regional thing these neighbors provide is a bad example of how to manage the citizen’s business. Go into the halls of government in Johnson County and you will see the people. Go into the halls of government in KCMO and you will see an army of influence peddlers, special interest representatives, and groups bellied up to the public trough.

I am old enough to remember Kansas City, Missouri when it had a vibrant downtown, alive with activity. If you wanted to shop, go to the movies, or eat at a nice restaurant, you went downtown. I also watched those same stores, movies, and restaurants that were the life blood of downtown, leave for greener pastures – the suburbs. They went there to better serve their customers by providing benefits they could not provide in the downtown environment – free parking, the convenience of proximity, and covered malls to name a few. The reasons for the migration from downtown are as valid today as they were when the migration began. Whatever I need, the free market has brought to my doorstep and will not likely take it away again. I have prudent, responsive governments looking after the common interests of myself and my fellow citizens. There is no reason for me to ever go downtown again, an attitude that is shared by many suburban dwellers.

Neither Johnson County, nor any other suburban county, has committed any act that obligates them to fund some self anointed metropolitan center that has decayed into little more than a profligate dinosaur that has lost touch with its citizens. I urge all Johnson County mayors to stay the course and continue to maintain the infrastructure, provide a safe living environment, and promote a free market business environment. To keep its citizens entertained is not the job of government, private enterprise will do that. There is no higher calling for government than to provide an environment where its citizens can live, work, and play in safety. In their search for funding, our neighbors have conveniently forgotten that fact. Pray that our mayors do not forget it.

Wayne Flaherty

by Karl Peterjohn of the Kansas Taxpayers Network. Peterjohn is the executive director of the Kansas Taxpayers Network and is a former California Department of Finance budget analyst and newspaper reporter. Reposted with permission.

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Your tax dollars are being used to push for an increase in Kansas income taxes. Do you want your tax money spent on raising your taxes?

This tax hike plan was initially reported by in the Hawver’s Capitol Report state capitol newsletter August 27. The Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) is seeking another statewide income tax hike. This tax hike would be used to provide more state tax dollars to the 296 Kansas public school districts.

What is not clear is how big a tax hike is being sought by the government school spending lobby. KASB is a large organization with over 30 employees operating out of its posh, marble floored offices with a multi-million dollar budget in west Topeka near Wanamaker Road. KASB is funded with tax dollars coming from 295 Kansas public school districts with only one district not having a KASB membership.

In the 2007 legislative session KASB registered 13 lobbyists to push for more spending and additional property tax authority during the 2007 legislative session. In addition to this taxpayer funded lobbying group, many of the KASB member school districts also have their own taxpayer funded lobbyists at the statehouse too.

This tax hike scheme would provide additional tax funds to substantially expand the already budgeted $122 million to pay off the final year of the Kansas Supreme Court’s Montoy school finance lawsuit. That budgeted amount will provide roughly $275 per pupil or over $5,000 more per 20 student classroom next year. For KASB, that is inadequate. The school districts want more money in addition to the increased local property tax increases authorized by the legislature this year for all 296 Kansas public school districts. Your tax dollars are helping raise your property taxes.

This isn’t the only fiscal battle your tax funds are helping finance. There has been a major open records battle trying to get the recalcitrant school districts funding this lawsuit to report how much money has been spent for this litigation.

Kansas taxpayers face automatic tax hikes due to property tax appraisal valuation inflation as well as higher income taxes through inflation generated bracket creep in our state income tax. KASB and other taxpayer funded lobbyists regularly fight any proposals to make it harder to raise state and local taxes in Kansas.

Many Kansans are unhappy about these tax hikes that no elected official has to vote for. More Kansans would be outraged if they knew their tax money is being spent to promote higher taxes as well as more state spending. This year the state’s General Fund budget grew 10.4 percent but that is not enough for these groups.

There are roughly 70 school districts, cities, counties, and other governmental bodies lobbying legislators at the statehouse. Efforts by legislators to stop this abuse have failed often due to the powerful push from these taxpayer funded lobbying organizations.

When the senate’s local government committee chairman Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, held hearings on a bill to stop this taxpayer abuse last year the room was filled with tax funded legislators opposing this bill. The bill was killed by bipartisan senate leadership and never even got debated on the senate floor. So taxpayers are left with this question: How much of your tax dollars are the lobbyists spending at the statehouse trying to raise your taxes?

The Lawrence Journal-World has been exceedingly busy these past few days. First, there’s the need to publish a story about Nancy Boyda’s re-election chances to try and prop up what is already looking like a failing campaign. Then, of course, somebody has to get some good publicity out about a new ‘documentary’ over the State Board of Education’s debate over evolution. I mean, it was rejected by several film festivals over the past two years, but that’s no reason not to promote it, when it has ‘the right message.’ And of course, let’s throw in a nice article about the 90% gay Metropolitan Community Church…we all need that fuzzy feeling inside, don’t we?

Now it’s the Muslim’s turn…a great puff piece about how the University of Kansas’ dining services is making special arrangements for Muslim students. And just for good measure, let’s delete 14 comments made about the story that are critical of Islam. After all, 220+ comments can be made degrading Christians and what they believe, but why should Muslims be put through the same rigors?

One has to wonder how long this will continue until the Journal-World is sued.

Sean Hannity exposes Planned Parenthood attempt to file false building permits under false corporate names to get abortion clinics built. Cases in Illinois and Texas exposed…previous patients talk…legal experts call false permits ‘fraud.’

As I listened to her story, I was stunned. I kept asking myself, why are you surprised? I’ve heard it before, the routine that a woman or girl goes through when she goes in, how the procedure works, the forms, the fees… why, then, was this story so shocking?

As she talked, I fought back feelings of rage that no one was there to protect her, that the people who wanted to protect her were kept away, that in fear of what her father might do, she went through with something she didn’t want to protect others. But she couldn’t protect the ones most vulnerable, herself and the 24-week-old child she carried. Just minutes before she testified, another witness had been answering questions and a legislator had asked him if he knew anyone who had been coerced into having an abortion. He said no. And now a young mother was standing there saying her family, by their actions and threats and physically escorting her to the clinic, had forced her to have an abortion she didn’t want. No one had planned the earlier question and this woman had not even been in the room at the time and her name kept confidential until the moment she walked to the podium.

The room was silent as she talked. She knew how far along she was, she wanted the baby, she had plans to marry and go to school, her fiancé’s family was supportive… but then her parents found out. All their dreams for her future seemed shattered. They were upset that she was too far along to have an abortion. But facing that reality, her father was slowly coming around… until her mother found Dr. Tiller on the Internet.

Her mother made her call the clinic. A secretary, who also apparently doubles as a phone counselor, asked her how far along she was, and sent her a packet. It came, with answers to every concern. It’s okay, God will forgive you, this will fix all your problems and you can go on with your life. Still, the young woman, just barely 18 years old, days away from graduating from high school, didn’t want to do it. Her parents insisted and offered bribes in the way of school financing, a car, and money. Finally, fearing for her fiancé’s family’s safety, she agreed. Her mother took her, her grandmother paid the bill. They arrived late, while a video was playing, explaining how Dr. Tiller’s father had provided abortions privately for his patients before Roe v Wade and now Dr. Tiller continues this legacy, “helping” women who “need” his services. Later that day the committee would hear of tragic stories of non-viable babies who’s parents used Dr. Tiller, but those stories didn’t change the impact of the story this young mother was telling us…

Up to this point she had seen no doctors. She was healthy, took good care of herself, and had no reason to think her baby wasn’t healthy as well. At the clinic she was given a sonogram but not allowed to see. The baby was measured and given a gestational age of 23 weeks 6 days. On her chart was written the notation: non-viable fetus. Why? No reason given. One doctor, the first she had seen or talked to in her pregnancy, then injected her baby with a drug that stopped his heart.

Kansas Law says:

When she finished speaking, one legislator asked her some questions: when did you find out your baby was listed as non-viable, have you seen the sonogram from your records, how do they compare to ones you saw with your later children. She answered that it wasn’t until she requested her records and received them this summer (four years after the abortion) that she found out the doctor justified her abortion by categorizing her fetus as non-viable. Looking at the sonogram, she saw no evidence of anything but a perfectly healthy fetus.

How can this be? Why do we have laws prohibiting late term abortions that aren’t being enforced? Who is at fault, the Board of Healing Arts? Every time they review a complaint about Dr. Tiller, they wash their hands and say, we see no problem. It probably won’t surprise you to know they are all appointees of “pro-choice” Governors. Could it be they are biased to agree with whatever justification is given for late-term abortions, even if it doesn’t meet the accepted standard of care among a majority of board certified obstetricians?

What about the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, are they charged with passing on the forms that don’t show adequate justification? They claim they just create the forms and make sure they are filled in; it’s not up to them to make sure they are filled in with justifiable information. It probably won’t surprise you to know an appointee who answers directly to our “pro-choice” Governor heads up the KDHE.

So, what about the Attorney General? The last AG who tried to investigate was met with a hostile Kansas Supreme Court (appointed by those same Governor’s mentioned above), hostile press, and thousands upon thousands of campaign dollars used to defeat him last November. Dollars provide by Dr. Tiller through his PAC, run by a woman who tried to convince the committee that without him, women would have to give birth to babies who would suffer and die. And our current AG? He’s said he’s not willing to make evaluations of whether or not something was medically justified.

Most Kansans presume that if someone is breaking the law, they will be caught and punished. They assume that if a doctor is not practicing good medicine, the Board of Healing Arts will discipline that doctor and take away their medical license if the offense is grave enough. If these things aren’t happening, are the laws actually putting people in more danger, since they trust they are protected by the law and aren’t? If Michelle was at 22 weeks or later (and she was, as her records show) and neither her life nor health was in imminent danger (and it wasn’t) and her baby was viable (and it appears the baby was likely viable), was she not harmed by the lack of enforcement of our laws? She should have been turned away, told there was no reason for an abortion. Instead, they took her money, killed the fetus, and sent her home. How is that providing good, compassionate medical care?

Blog posts are supposed to be short, this one goes on too long already, but I have to share one more thought first.

We live in an imperfect world. Sometimes babies who are perfectly healthy die. Sometimes babies have no chance at survival and die before or shortly after birth, and are mourned by the parents and families. Does speeding up the day they die really help? Is our society so afraid of dealing with pain and suffering that we would choose to end someone’s life for them rather than help them cope as best we can? And what about the babies who are said to have no hope, who defy the odds and not only survive longer than expected but sometimes go on to live healthy lives? Should we not be erring on the side of caution, protecting life, rather than protecting ourselves from the pain of seeing a loved one coping with pain or disabilities?

I know it’s not a popular thing to say in some circles, but perhaps the very children who some say shouldn’t have to live are here to change us, make us more compassionate and tolerant people. Maybe their short lives, even if they didn’t make it past birth, will inspire someone to solve the disease that took them too early. And maybe, just maybe, some of them are miracles waiting to happen. How will we know when a doctor in Wichita, claiming he’s doing the compassionate thing, is ending their lives too soon?

After listening to doctors and lawyers and lobbyists and parents over 3 days of testimony, I found myself trying to get my head around everything we had heard and realized it is actually rather simple. There are those who say quality of life is how we should determine who lives and who dies. If someone is a burden to you and serves no apparent purpose in society, it is okay to end their life. There are those who say (I heard it just this week) that if there is the possibility that someone could develop attachment disorder and later go on to murder someone, we should err on the side of “caution” and end their life before it begins, as if we can predict how an individual will respond to what they face in life. At the other end, there are those who believe all humans, whether still developing before birth or living their last moments on earth, have value because it is what makes us human.

We have the capacity to value life, unlike the animals and nature around us. The day society forgets that - and I fear we heading down that road - we are a society doomed to self-destruct.

Charlotte Esau
Executive Director
Kansas Republican Assembly