By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson City Manager Jeff Cantrell says there is a clear reason the tax transparency bill is working through the Legislature.
"I think the spirit and intent of that is probably meaningful for a lot of people and would be an excellent law to have on the books if you're a resident of Johnson County, Kansas," Cantrell said. "If you own a $400,000 home, dual income family, doing everything you can to crunch out your mortgage payment, you don't want to see double-digit increases to happen in some cases three and four years in a row."
Cantrell notes that the situation is different here.
"Where it gets problematic for us and a lot of other cities in Kansas is when you're utilizing and maximizing the benefits of economic development incentives," Cantrell said. "You have opportunities to abate certain taxes, but then bring them back on to the tax logs. We then would have to go through this procedure that's pretty burdensome, to notify each individual taxpayer within the taxing district, hey, we want to bring this company back on the books and because of that, we're going to be increasing our collection."
It's more hoops to jump through and therefore more potential errors to make.
"What this aims to do is to create revenue neutrality," Cantrell said. "In effect, what it will do is hinder a lot of cities as far as adding procedural elements that actually could result in a refunding to the taxpayers if we missed a beat going down the line in one of our typical budget cycles."
The bill has already passed the Kansas Senate, but has not been voted on by Kansas House.
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