Get-out-of-sales-tax-free card

The governor got it exactly right when he announced his latest $100 million in emergency budget cuts last week – this isn’t all about the deep recession. It’s also about the giveaways in tax breaks over the last several years that legislators have handed out.

If we hadn’t phased out the estate taxes and franchise fees, and if we hadn’t eliminated the sales tax on machinery and equipment, instead of facing a $400 million shortfall for next year, we would have a surplus.

The governor also hit the nail on the head when he said we have unnecessarily tripled the number of sales tax exemptions in recent years.

It is said around Topeka that all you need to get a sales tax exemption is to have a committee room and a parking space.

Any plea will do. There are no criteria. No benchmarks. No guidelines. Legislators just give away sales tax exemptions like candy, often singling out one group over others that are similar.

Chamber belongs at Union Station

If it weren’t for the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, Union Station probably would still be a decaying, boarded-up leaky-roofed white elephant.

But, thank goodness, The Chamber decided to take the leadership role in spearheading a Bistate effort that led to its renovation. 

I know firsthand, because it was The Chamber’s president and chairman who recruited me about 15 years ago, at a breakfast, to head up the Kansas part of the Bistate campaign, which passed in 1996 and provided half the funds for the renovation of the landmark, completed in 1999.

Now, The Chamber has a golden opportunity to make the struggling Union Station a financial success, by moving its offices there, along with the Kansas City Area Development Council, after its downtown lease expires at the end of this year. Such a move is under consideration, but no decision has been made.

Union Station is finally on the verge of breaking even, thanks to the strong management of George Guastello and a no-nonsense board of directors. After squandering a $40 million endowment with millions of losses each year under earlier management, Union Station lost only a quarter million dollars this year and is on track to break even next year.

But breaking even does not pay for the deferred maintenance. The building needs constant attention and care, or it will lapse back to a gray, decaying building.

So, Union Station needs to make a profit, not just break even.

Were The Chamber and KCADC to relocate their 30,000 square feet of space, at, say, $15 to $20 a foot, that could mean up to a $600,000 annual windfall for Union Station, enough to put it comfortably in the black.

There are those who argue that The Chamber belongs downtown.

But quite the contrary is true.

The Chamber is a regional chamber and is quite active in Johnson County, as well as other suburban communities. The Bistate effort merely affirmed what The Chamber had been saying all along: That it is not a downtown Chamber of Commerce. It is a Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, serving the entire region.

Even more to the point, to put it bluntly, The Chamber has a moral obligation to move to Union Station. It was The Chamber that helped make the renovation possible, but it was also The Chamber, among others, that endorsed the flawed idea that Science City alone could cover the expenses at Union Station.

That turned out to be way too optimistic, and it has taken a decade to put Union Station on its feet. Union Station now rents space to the Post Office, National Archives, Amtrak, Pierpont’s, and other companies who rent office space. The ballet also has plans to move to a site on Union Station’s adjacent land.

There are still 60,000 square feet of vacant office space available, and they need to be filled. 

Is it the role of The Chamber to help bail out Union Station? You bet it is.

The Chamber is in the unique position of making the final part of the dream a reality – a viable, self-supporting icon for the entire region to embrace with pride.

What a statement it would be for Union Station to be home to one of the most influential organizations in all of Kansas City. What a statement it would make to the entire region that The Chamber is way beyond a myopic, downtown-focused organization.

This is a match, if ever there was one.

Contact Steve Rose at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Funkhouser is my mayor, too

No wonder I cringed when Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser announced a program to improve schools by improving sidewalks around them. If I had read about this in, say, Des Moines, I would have chuckled.

But after seeing the results of a five-county survey commissioned by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, I realize why I hurt. Funkhouser is my mayor, even though I don’t live in Kansas City, Mo.

What the broad-based survey revealed is that most of us feel like we are a part of the Kansas City region, no matter where we live in the metro area, and that we feel personally invested in Kansas City, Mo., politics and schools.

As Neil Newhouse, the eminent pollster who conducted the survey, said, “Kansas City, Mo., is the barometer for the entire region.”

Governor would veto education cuts

Get ready.

Your state taxes are going up.

I don’t mean just the tax on tobacco, which is a slam-dunk to pass the Legislature. I mean other taxes, too.

How could this be, you ask? In the midst of a recession, how could tax increases come out of Topeka? And by a conservative Legislature?

The answer is, there is nowhere else to cut.

This coming year, we will have had four years in a row of cuts. We have already slashed a billion dollars from our state budget, from around $6.5 billion to around $5.5 billion.

And now we face another $400 million shortfall.

A response to Dr. Larson

Lee Larson, Ph.D., of Prairie Village, took the Shawnee Mission School District to task in a letter responding to my recent column warning of a catastrophe if the district had to cut $10 million or more from its budget, as now seems very likely.

While Dr. Larson agrees “the state formula for school funding stinks,” to paraphrase, he also thinks Shawnee Mission is crying wolf and needs to get its act together before becoming hysterical.

Dr. Larson has lived in the district for 35 years, and all three of his children went to Shawnee Mission schools. His slams at the district include the following, with responses from SM Superintendent Dr. Gene Johnson.

Writes Dr. Larson: “SM employs almost 4,000 people and only 2,000 are actually teaching. When SM starts eliminating some of the multiple layers of supervision, bureaucracy and support staffs, I will start to believe they are in trouble.”

Response: According to the Kansas State Department of Education’s Efficiency Report, Shawnee Mission has one of the most efficient administrator/teacher ratios in the state. Only 6 percent of its general budget is allocated for administration. Central office administration has been reduced over the last four years. And elementary school principals, for example, run their buildings without an associate principal or counselor.