Voice For Liberty

Tag: Downtown Wichita revitalization

Articles about the redevelopment of downtown Wichita and its impact on the economic freedom of Wichitans.

  • Tax increment financing is not free money

    Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole has written extensively on the subject of urban planning, development, and tax increment financing (TIF) districts. The following article contains many points that the Wichita City Council may wish to consider as it considers expansion of a downtown Wichita TIF district at tomorrow’s council meeting.

    O’Toole was in Wichita earlier this year. Coverage of a lecture he delivered at that time is Randal O’Toole discusses urban planning in Wichita.

    The author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, O’Toole’s latest book is Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.

    TIF is Not “Free Money”

    By Randal O’Toole

    Originally created with good intentions, tax-increment financing (TIF) has become a way for city officials to enhance their power by taking money from schools and other essential urban services and giving it to politically connected developers. It is also often used to promote the social engineering goals of urban planners.

    TIF is based on the idea that public improvements to a neighborhood or district will lead developers to invest in that district. To finance such public improvements, cities are allowed to keep the “increment” or increased property taxes collected from the area. Typically, planners estimate in advance how much new property tax the city can collect and then sell bonds that will be repaid out of those taxes. The revenues from the bonds are used to pay for the improvements.

    Read the rest of the article at the North Dakota Policy Council.

  • Kansas historic preservation tax credits: the hearing

    On Wednesday, the Taxation Committee of the Kansas House of Representatives heard testimony on HB 2496, which would expand the historic preservation tax credit program. This program provides tax credits to qualified historic preservation projects. I testified at the hearing, and my written testimony is at Kansas historic preservation tax credits should not be expanded.

    The idea of tax credits confuses some people. Some may confuse credits with a tax deduction. Some may believe that tax credits are given out at no cost to the state. But in fact, the tax credits are quite costly. As I told the committee members, if the state grants a tax credit, and then does not reduce state spending by the amount of the tax credit, other taxpayers in Kansas have to make up the difference.

    That’s one of my core reasons for opposing the tax credits. Since the state does not — and is not likely to — reduce spending by the amount of credits granted, the result is a transfer of money from Kansas taxpayers to the recipients of the credits. But even if the state did reduce its spending, the result would still be a implied decision by the state that it can better decide how to spend money than its citizens can.

    Besides this, the arguments of those in favor of the historic preservation tax credits are self-serving and in some cases misleading. Some of the conferees are involved in projects that were to receive tax credits. They are not happy now that they may not get them.

    Other conferees were local units of government such as Dale Goter, lobbyist for the City of Wichita. Wichita has a big stake in the tax credits, as the renovation of the Broadview Hotel is on hold because the developers may not receive the tax credits. The developers and the city claim that the project is not economically feasible without the tax credits. We don’t really know whether this is true. When government subsidy is available, people have a way of designing project budgets in a way the requires the subsidy. Why would someone turn down free money?

    It should also be noted that the tax credits the Broadview developers are seeking — perhaps $3 million to $4 million — are on top of many millions in subsidy the city has already approved.

    The arguments of other conferees must be questioned. Brenda Spencer of Wamego, who owns a preservation consulting business, told of a project in Leavenworth that will house a company employing 400 people. This results, she said, in an annual payroll of $26 million, with resultant tax dollars flowing to the state and local government.

    The problems with this illustration of the purported success of the historic preservation tax credit program are these: Would the jobs not have been created unless there was a historic property to house the workers? Could the workers work somewhere that wouldn’t require tax credits? These jobs: are they new jobs? Were the workers formerly unemployed, or did they leave other jobs to work in the historic building? To the extent that happened, the jobs, with their tax payments to the state, can’t be counted as new.

    Christy Davis, owner of another preservation consulting firm, testified that since 2001, the tax credit program has leveraged $264 million in private dollars, which she said is a 400% return on investment for the state. The problem with this analysis (it was made by others, too) is that it assumes that none of the projects would have proceeded if not for the tax credits. It credits the program as being the only reason why this activity took place. This is undoubtedly false.

    Further, this analysis treats the state as though it were the owner of these properties. That isn’t true, either.

    Davis also testified that since work on historic buildings is 50% more labor intensive than new construction, the tax credit program has the effect of a jobs creation program. I doubt that the developers of historic preservation projects see creating a lot of jobs as a benefit. To business, workers are a cost to be controlled, not a benefit to be expanded. If the state wants to view historic preservation as a jobs creation program — meaning that more jobs are better than fewer jobs — let the state mandate that, say, power tools can’t be used on these projects. Then even more workers will be needed.

    Can we also agree that owners of firms that profit from a government program qualify as a special interest?

    Goter, Wichita’s lobbyist, also stated in his written testimony: “The return on investment for the public dollar spent on historic renovation is totally recovered in a 10 year span from increased property taxes alone. That return is shared by local and state governments through their respective mill levies.”

    This statement reveals the flaw in the reckoning used by government in making economic development calculations. To government, the return is in the form of increased tax revenue. Many citizens don’t view things the same way. For government to make an investment of taxpayer funds just so it can receive even more tax revenue is appealing to government bureaucrats and politicians who want to expand their sphere of influence and control. But not so much for everyone else.

    For me a lesson I learned from the hearing is how easily those who consider themselves fiscal conservatives can become derailed by programs like this. Olathe Representative Arlen Siegfreid, a member of the Taxation Committee as well as Speaker Pro Tem of the Kansas House of Representatives, offered written and oral testimony in favor of this bill.

    Support of this bill is at odds with his stated positions. On his personal website, under the heading “Fiscal Responsibility” appears this sentence: “However, particularly in times of economic peril, sometimes the ‘wants’ we’ve fertilized with ample resources grow to become ‘needs’ and our well intentioned investments in promising ideas and programs become the dangerous government growth that each candidate swears to defend against at all costs on the campaign trail.”

    The historic preservation tax credit program, as reported in an audit recently completed by the Legislative Division of Post Audit, has grown tremendously from its initial cost. The audit, titled Kansas Tax Revenues, Part I: Reviewing Tax Credits, identifies the historic preservation tax credit as a program that the legislature may want to re-evaluate, as the program is significantly more expensive than originally planned. The fiscal note that accompanied the tax credit legislation when passed in 2001 and revised in 2002 reported an estimated annual cost of $1 million. In 2007, the actual cost was $8.5 million.

    This is an example of a government spending program growing out of control — the type of “dangerous government growth” Siegfreid mentioned above.

    Siegfreid’s website also states: “My subsequent re-elections affirm that notion, and I’m now more committed than ever to reducing the strain government and it’s [sic] failed policies are placing on individual taxpayers — and our local businesses.”

    As mentioned above, when the state grants tax credits, other Kansas taxpayers have to pay more taxes to make up the shortfall in revenue. This is an example of the type of strain Siegfreid says he is against.

    Finally, Siegfreid has authored a tax simplification bill, stating that “Kansas tax policy is too complicated.” Tax credits are an example of increasing complexity of the state’s tax code.

  • Destination ICT rollout presents a look at the future of Wichita

    Destination ICT rollout 2010-02-22Destination ICT presentation.

    Yesterday Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting presented “Destination ICT.” This is a program designed to “attract and retain talent to Wichita.” It’s sponsored by Young Professionals of Wichita which is an initiative of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce.

    In her talk, Ryan presented evidence that knowledge workers are highly concentrated, and that a relatively small proportion of workers create much of the economic output. “Some workers have a higher economic impact on an economy than other workers.” She said that Wichita must continue to invest in knowledge-based jobs and knowledge-based occupations.

    She said that Wichita employers say that they need 3,000 professional workers over the next six to eight years. But 23 percent of the people Ryan surveyed said they are leaving Wichita in the next four years. She said this would cost Wichita $610 million over the next four years.

    Ryan said Wichita needs to use “intentional design” in which we design an ICT that “people are homesick for.”

    Ryan presented the seven indexes of a “next city” — referring to attributes, attitudes, and amenities that the “next generation” will get excited about. These are:

    • Cost of lifestyle. Can I afford to live here?
    • Earning opportunities. Many families or couples who locate to a town require two jobs.
    • Vitality. Is this a community that invests in parks, trails, and recreation?
    • Learning. This refers to career education for professionals as well as the K-12 public school system.
    • Around town. This refers both to in-town mobility as well as things like the number of flights.
    • Social capital. Does everyone feel they have a stake and a say in the community? Voting rates and crime count here.
    • After hours. What is there to do after work and on weekends?

    Ryan showed a chart, based on a survey of Wichitans, that showed “value vs. perception,” that is, how do Wichitans feel about these indexes as compared to their measured values? Consistently, Wichitans’ perception was lower than the reality.

    Wichita scores well in cost of lifestyle. Wichita scored low in “around town.” Wichita also scored low in earning opportunities. In other categories, Wichita scored about the same as its group of peer cities, which for the purposes of this analysis are Denver, Raleigh, Lexington, Kansas City, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Chattanooga, Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, and Richmond.

    Ryan said that Wichita’s low cost of lifestyle is “a key strength that can be leveraged, particularly in efforts to attract and retain Millennials who are in their early years of earning.”

    Ryan said we need to connect people to Wichita’s career opportunities. She showed two examples — ColumbusTalent.com in Columbus, Indiana, and SmartCareerMove.com in Iowa — of cities or regions that have done this. Also, she said we need to feature employers on high-traffic websites. A “robust internship culture” is valuable, too.

    She also recommended that we make Wichita a more attractive place to work and play, and that is sustainable. She mentioned — as do the downtown Wichita planners — “connectedness.” A quote from a survey participant is “There are parks [in Wichita], but there’s no way to get from one to another … there are no arteries linking the green spaces.” She said that Wichita should have many more miles of bike paths. Our bus transit system is a problem, too, as it takes a very long time to get from one place to another on a bus. She recommended a grid system rather than a hub system as Wichita presently uses.

    Wichitans also needs to convince themselves that Wichita is a great place to live. She said that most people don’t realize Wichita is as large in population as it is.

    She recommended a centralized place for finding information about Wichita such as events. She used OnMilwaukee.com as an example of such a site, noting that Wichita’s UploadWichita.com has not been updated frequently.

    She said that we need to make sure that what people are saying about our community matches the reality. Two-thirds of the people who have moved away from Wichita have thought about coming back. These are the “convinceables,” she said.

    She recommended that if people care about downtown, they should attend Saturday’s design charrette.

    Analysis

    Wichita’s advantage of low cost of lifestyle (is this different from a low cost of living?) is something that we must work to maintain. Actions by Wichita’s city council such as the creation of TIF districts make the burden of paying for government more expensive for everyone in the city except those in the TIF district. Other misguided economic development policies such as tax abatements make it more expensive for everyone but the recipient of the incentive.

    The emphasis on bicycle paths is misplaced. A recent visitor to Wichita, Randal O’Toole, said that bicycle paths are not nearly as useful as city streets for serious commuting and traveling by bicycle.

    With regard to public schools, Wichita is falling behind the rest of the country in educational freedom. Our charter school law gives local boards of education total control over the formation of charter schools, and as a result, there are very few in Kansas. Furthermore, we have no school choice through vouchers or tax credits. Many cities and states are using these programs to implement choice — rather than government monopoly — in education. Wichita lags far behind in this regard. School choice programs, by the way, could be implemented quickly at very low cost, and in fact, could save money.

    Ryan’s promotion of the downtown planning process shows a reliance on centralized government planning. This means a loss of economic freedom for Wichitans, as those who chose not to live downtown will subsidize those who do. Reliance on government planning means that more economic activity in Wichita will be controlled by bureaucrats and politicians. These classes of people have motivations different from entrepreneurs, who must meet the demands of consumers or go out of business. Bureaucrats, especially, do not face such a stern taskmaster.

    I was also troubled by other reliance on government recommended by Ryan. The parks system — which suffers, according to Ryan, from a lack of connectedness — is a creation of government. So here’s an example of a large government program that has produced something other than what is needed, or at least is not optimal. Now Wichita has a new and ambitious program to create a new generation of parks. But what makes us think that the current generation of parks planners can do better than the past?

    Reliance on websites as a way to distribute information and build community in Wichita has been problematic. Ryan noted UploadWichita.com as an example. Its most most recent story is from July 2008, and the most recently uploaded photo is from March 2009.

    More recent efforts by government-sponsored enterprises to promote the city through online efforts are sputtering, too. The Wichita Downtown Development Corporation’s blog — ironically titled Momentum — hasn’t had a fresh post since December 17, even though Wichita is in an intense period of downtown planning.

    There are some efforts such as RokICT and Naked City Wichita that promote events in Wichita. Both sites seem to be in transition at the moment, however, and are not the fresh and copious sources of information that they once were.

  • Assessment of Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena’s success premature

    Any rational assessment of the success of the Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita must realize that the arena is in its honeymoon period. Will the parade of big-name stars playing to a packed arena continue for long? Will the Wichita Eagle and local television stations continue to breathlessly announce every upcoming event?

    Until initial enthusiasm dies down and the arena has a track record of a year or more, we simply have no idea what the financial performance of the arena will be. That’s what’s important.

    This premature glowing assessment of the arena’s success is dangerous in that it leads us to believe that there is a positive role for large government projects in Wichita. Worse, people are lead to think that taxation is a good way to pay for such things. As an example, the one cent sales tax used to pay for the arena is presently touted as a model for funding other government spending, ranging from Governor Parkinson’s proposal for a sales tax to fund state government to what surely will be a proposal for a sales tax to fund the revitalization of downtown Wichita.

    Proponents say that the sales tax was painless, so why not do it again? Some were sorry to see it expire. As the sales tax that funded the arena was nearing its end, Sedgwick County Commissioner Tim Norton “wondered … whether a 1 percent sales tax could help the county raise revenue.” (“Norton floats idea of 1 percent county sales tax,” Wichita Eagle, April 4, 2007)

    But the tax was not painless. Undoubtedly, the employment landscape was shifted in Sedgwick County because of the tax, and that caused some people to be unemployed. My post Prepare for sales tax-induced job effects now reports on what happened in Little Rock when that city’s arena was built. It would be reasonable to think that similar effects happened here.

    Last year in Portland, a proposal to build a new minor league baseball stadium was found to produce a net job loss. An economics consulting firm reported: “Thus, the Lent’s project would have a net impact of a 182 job-year loss on the City’s economy (a gain of 175 from the construction less a loss of 357 due to reduced spending by households and businesses because of higher taxes).”

    It also concluded that “If those individuals who put their money into baseball via taxes are allowed to put that money into the private market, that same amount of money would actually yield more jobs.” Reportedly, Portland’s mayor “appears to have sat on” the study and was not eager to release it.

    This effect — a shiny, highly touted public works project being much more visible than private dispersed economic activity — was known long ago and explained by Henry Hazlitt in his classic work Economics in One Lesson:

    Therefore for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $1,000,000 taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project.

    We were also told that the arena would be a driver of downtown development. But in its first test, the Wichita City Council evidently didn’t believe what arena boosters told them, as it voted to grant several million dollars in subsidy to the developer of a hotel just a few blocks from the arena. Will all future development around the arena — if it happens — require similar subsidy?

  • Kansas historic preservation tax credits audit reveals inefficiency, data problems

    Yesterday the Kansas Legislative Post Audit Committee received an audit recently completed by the Legislative Division of Post Audit. The audit, titled Kansas Tax Revenues, Part I: Reviewing Tax Credits, revealed that the historic preservation tax credit program is not efficient. Further, the Department of Revenue is not accurately tracking the cost of the program.

    Historic preservation tax credits provide funds to those who wish to renovate qualified historic buildings. Last year the legislature placed a cap on the dollar amount of credits that could be issued, and that caused some developers in Wichita to complain that their projects were no longer economically feasible. The city has made expansion of the amount of available credits a legislative priority. Wichita Governmental Affairs Director Dale Goter (in plain language, the city’s lobbyist) was present at the committee hearing, as was I.

    In the audit, the historic preservation tax credit is identified as a program that the legislature may want to re-evaluate. In this case, the program is significantly more expensive than originally planned. The fiscal note that accompanied the tax credit legislation when passed in 2001 and revised in 2002 estimated an annual cost of $1 million. In 2007, the actual reported cost was $8.5 million.

    The audit also finds that the historic preservation credit is not cost-effective:

    The Historic Preservation Tax Credit isn’t cost-effective. That credit works differently than the other three because the amount of money a historic preservation project receives from the credit is dependent upon the amount of money it’s sold for. Our review showed that, on average, when Historic Preservation Credits were transferred to generate money for a project, they only generated 85 cents for the project for every dollar of potential tax revenue the State gave up.

    The audit also found that there were data recording problems at the Kansas Department of Revenue regarding the tax credits. The audit found that some tax credits weren’t recorded in a tracking database, even though the credit had already been claimed on a tax return. Over a five-year period, about $6 million in tax credits was under-reported by the Department of Revenue. This is the information that lawmakers had concerning the cost and performance of the tax credit program.

    The audit noted “The Department doesn’t have sufficient computer controls to ensure that its database entries are accurate. … Finding problems like these in a relatively small sample raises questions about the integrity of the Department’s tax credit information.”

  • David Burk, Wichita developer, overreaches

    Today’s Wichita Eagle contains a story about a well-known Wichita real estate developer that, while shocking, shouldn’t really be all that unexpected.

    The opening sentence of the article (Developer won tax appeal on city site) tells us most of what we need to know: “Downtown Wichita’s leading developer, David Burk, represented himself as an agent of the city — without the city’s knowledge or consent — to cut his taxes on publicly owned property he leases in the Old Town Cinema Plaza, according to court records and the city attorney.”

    Some might say it’s not surprising that Burk represented himself in the way the Eagle article reports. When a person’s been on the receiving end of so much city hall largess, it’s an occupational hazard.

    And when you’ve been the beneficiary of so much Wichita taxpayer money, you might even begin to think that you shouldn’t have to pay so much tax anymore.

    At the state level, you might seek over a million dollars of taxpayer money to help you renovate an apartment building.

    Burk has certainly laid the groundwork, at least locally. A registered Republican voter, Burk regularly stocks the campaign coffers of Wichita city council members with contributions. These contributions — at least for city council candidates — are apparently made without regard to the political leanings of the candidates. How else can we explain recent contributions made to two city council members who are decidedly left of center: Lavonta Williams and Janet Miller? Burk and his wife made contributions to their campaigns in the maximum amount allowed by law.

    This is especially puzzling in light of Burk’s contributions to campaigns at the federal level. There, a search at the Federal Election Commission shows a single contribution of $250 to Todd Tiahrt in 2005.

    It’s quite incongruous that someone would contribute to Tiahrt, Williams, and Miller. Except Williams and Miller can — and have — cast votes that directly enrich Burk. Politicians at the federal level don’t have the same ability to do that as do Wichita city council members. Well, at least not considering Wichita city business.

    So which is it: is Burk a believer in Republican principles, a believer in good government, or someone who knows where his next taxpayer handout will come from?

    Burk’s enablers — these include Wichita’s lobbyist Dale Goter, Wichita Downtown Development Corporation president Jeff Fluhr and chairman Larry Weber, Wichita City Manager Robert Layton, Wichita economic development chief Allen Bell, and most importantly Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer and various city council members — now have to decide if they want to continue in their efforts to enrich Burk. Continuing to do so will harm their reputations. The elected officials, should they run for office again, will have to explain their actions to voters.

    At the state level, the bill that will enrich Burk will likely be voted on in the Kansas Senate this week. Then, similar action may take place in the Kansas House of Representatives. Let’s hope they read the Wichita Eagle in Topeka.

  • Kansas historic preservation building tax credits discussed

    Sometimes on blogs people don’t take the time to read comments left to posts. Sometimes those comments provide valuable discussion and illumination of public policy issues. So here I take a moment to elevate a few comments left to a recent blog post.

    On Wednesday afternoon, a reader — we’ll call him “Larry” — left this comment to my post Kansas historic preservation tax credits should be eliminated. In that post, I argue that tax credits for the preservation of historic buildings are economically the same as a direct payment by the state to the developer, and that this practice is bad public policy that should be ceased. Here’s what Larry wrote:

    Bob, I want to understand your point of view. I do not claim to be an expert in this area so these are observations / questions.

    1. Wasn’t Wichita High School owned by the WATC and therefore tax exempt?

    2. If a developer puts, say $6M into the building to get it open the property with 68 units renting for $1000 to $2000 a month then I would assume it would have a value that in turn would generate higher taxes than the building now pays, correct?

    3. As I understand the Historic Tax Credit the person that put up the $6M and now has to pay the new property tax can take a credit of about 25% of the eligible construction cost (not all of the construction cost is eligible) against the new taxes he/she would pay to the state, correct?

    So if I have this right a building that is paying no taxes to the state has $6M spent on it and now is paying taxes into the state coffer but will pay 25% less in taxes than it would have if the building were not historic. Do I have it right? If so where is the payment you allude to being made by the state to the developer? Also don’t forget that when renovating a historical building you can not renovate it using the most economical methods but have to keep it “historically” correct and that in itself is more expensive.

    Then the reader “Pat” wrote this comment:

    Larry, you are correct in that there is no money given to the developer by the state. No payments. Typically, the tax credits are used as barter for a developer to sell the credits at a significant discount on the open market to those that need are in need of a “credit”. On historic projects, the money raised by the sale of the tax credits has to be used on certain eligible costs. The building will not pay property taxes on a reduced valuation but will pay taxes on its fair market value.

    Wednesday evening I left this comment:

    For Larry’s points 1 and 2, I’ll take his word that these are correct. I don’t think I’ve ever made a claim to the contrary.

    For point 3, the issue of the historic preservation tax credits and property taxes are entirely separate matters. The savings of 25% of building costs arising from the historic preservation tax credit is a one-time event, while property taxes are an ongoing event year after year.

    The payment made by the state to the developer is the tax credit itself, which might take the form of a document from the state containing language like “This certificate may be sent to the state of Kansas instead of a check for $1,000,000 in payment of taxes.”

    As Pat correctly notes, the recipient of such a certificate might keep it and use it to pay all or part of their taxes, or might sell it to someone at any price they mutually agree on. This ability to sell the tax credit document has been cited by WDDC president Jeff Fluhr as important.

    So how is issuing a tax credit not the same as making a payment to the developer?

    (By the way, Pat, if I knew I was getting a tax credit, I would immediately adjust my periodic tax payments to the state. It’s not necessary to wait until annual tax time to benefit from the credit.)

    Furthermore, the fact that the tax credit may be used for only certain purposes is a total red herring. If I gave you $100 on the condition that you could spend it only on a Monday, would you deny that I had enriched you by $100? Or would you contend that I had enriched you by something less than $100? I would think that you would simply shift your spending around and benefit fully from the $100 that I gave you.

    Finally, the fact that historic renovation is expensive is just like having granite countertops. It’s a premium amenity that is freely chosen by those who value it, it benefits those who choose it, and should be fully paid for by them.

    Interesting? Or not?

  • Wichita downtown planners hosting events

    The Wichita Downtown Development Corporation is holding two events in February that should be of interest to those concerned about the future of downtown Wichita and the city and region as a whole.

    The first event is the WDDC annual lecture. This event will take place on Thursday February 25 at the Wichita Scottish Rite Temple, corner of First and Topeka Streets. This year’s guest lecturer is Mr. Jim Cloar, noted for his work in the cities of Tampa, Florida (sports arena development); Dallas, Texas (Arts District Development); and St. Louis Missouri (downtown residential and retail). The lecture will focus on how to take a master plan from the vision to implementation. Opening reception will start at 5:30 pm, lecture will follow at 6:30 pm. At the conclusion of the lecture there will be a question and answer session with Cloar and the Goody Clancy team. To RSVP, email info@downtownwichita.org or call 316.264.6005.

    The second event is the Wichita Downtown Master Plan Charrette, to be held on Saturday, February 27, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm at the Wichita Art Museum. (A charrette is “an intense period of design activity.”) The Downtown Master Plan Charrette is the cornerstone event that will provide key visioning for the new downtown master plan. To RSVP, email info@downtownwichita.org or call 316.264.6005.

  • Randal O’Toole on Wichita’s WaterWalk and government planning

    As part of Randal O’Toole’s visit to Wichita, he recorded some remarks in front of a few of Wichita’s monuments to government planning. Paul Soutar of Kansas Watchdog recorded video and assembled the remarks. His reporting is Randal O’Toole on Wichita’s WaterWalk and Government Planning.