For the Wichita metropolitan area in August 2019, the labor force is up, the number of unemployed persons is down, the unemployment rate is down, and the number of people working is up, all by small amounts, when compared to the same month one year ago. Seasonal data shows small increases in labor force and jobs from July.
Total nonfarm employment rose from 298,400 last August to 300,500 this August. That’s an increase of 2,100 jobs, or 0.7 percent. (This data is not seasonally adjusted, so month-to-month comparisons are not valid.) For the same period, employment in the nation grew by 1.4 percent. The unemployment rate in August 2019 was 3.7 percent, down from 3.78 percent one year ago.
Considering seasonally adjusted data from the household survey, the labor force rose by 65 persons (0.0 percent) in August 2019 from August 2019, the number of unemployed persons fell by 109 (1.0 percent), and the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down from 3.6 percent from July. The number of employed persons not working on farms rose to 299,705 in August from 299,531 the prior month, an increase of 174 persons, or 0.1 percent.
The following chart of the monthly change in labor force and employment shows the rise in employment and labor force after several months of decline for both measures.
The following chart of changes from the same month one year ago shows nine consecutive months of decline in the rate of growth of both employment and labor force. The values are growing, but at a slower pace each month since November.
The following chart of changes in employment from the same month of the previous year shows some months when the Wichita MSA performed better than the nation. Over the past 12 months, the average monthly job growth for the nation was 1.67 percent, and for the Wichita MSA, 1.57 percent.
Wichita has a city code governing ethical conduct by council members, but it seems to have no teeth.
Here’s an excerpt from the Wichita city code as passed in 2008 (full section below):
“[Council members] shall refrain from making decisions involving business associates, customers, clients, friends and competitors.”
When asked about a specific application of this city law relating to former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, the Wichita city attorney supplied this interpretation:
Related to the Mayor’s participation in the item, yes, City Code advises Council members to “refrain from making decisions involving business associates, customers, clients, friends and competitors. … ” but the Code does not provide definitions or limits to these broad categories of constituents. Further, the City Code clearly requires Council members to “vote on all matters coming before the City Council except in those particular cases of conflict of interest. …” The city Code does not define what constitutes a conflict but the Council has historically applied the State law for that definition.
Applying that State law specific to local municipalities, the Mayor does not have any substantial interest in Douglas Place LLC, and therefore no conflict. Under the State ethics law, there was no requirement that the Mayor recuse himself from voting on the Ambassador Project.
Former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer with major campaign donor Dave Wells of Key Construction. Evidently, Wichita city code did not prohibit Brewer from voting to give millions in contracts and subsidy to Key.So we have statutory language that reads “shall refrain,” but Gary Rebenstorf, the city attorney at that time, interpreted that to mean “advises.”
We also have statutory language that reads “business associates, customers, clients, friends and competitors.” But the city attorney felt that these terms are not defined, and therefore the mayor and city council members need not be concerned about compliance with this law.
I wonder whose interests the city attorney represents. The people of Wichita, who want to be governed in a fair and ethical manner? It doesn’t seem so.
I wasn’t satisfied with the city attorney’s response, so I and others engaged attorneys to research the law and see if it could be clarified and enforced. We received an opinion that we, as citizens of Wichita, likely did not have standing to bring a lawsuit against either the city or the mayor. We were told that the law would probably find that we suffered no harm. A city council member might have standing, however, because if an ineligible council member voted, that would unlawfully dilute the value of other members’ votes. We attempted to recruit council members to file a suit, but couldn’t find one who was interested.
I thought that was sad. Today, city hall ethics, at least in the mayor’s chair, have not improved. As we’ve learned this week, the current city attorney says council members “are left to police themselves on that city law,” according to Wichita Eagle reporting. 1
If the city attorney’s interpretation of this law is controlling, I suggest we strike this section from the city code. Someone who reads this — perhaps a business owner considering Wichita for expansion — might conclude that our city has a code of ethics that is observed by the mayor and council members and enforced by its attorneys.
Giving that impression, though, would be false — and unethical.
Wichita city code
Sec. 2.04.050. — Code of ethics for council members.
Council members occupy positions of public trust. All business transactions of such elected officials dealing in any manner with public funds, either directly or indirectly, must be subject to the scrutiny of public opinion both as to the legality and to the propriety of such transactions. In addition to the matters of pecuniary interest, council members shall refrain from making use of special knowledge or information before it is made available to the general public; shall refrain from making decisions involving business associates, customers, clients, friends and competitors; shall refrain from repeated and continued violation of city council rules; shall refrain from appointing immediate family members, business associates, clients or employees to municipal boards and commissions; shall refrain from influencing the employment of municipal employees; shall refrain from requesting the fixing of traffic tickets and all other municipal code citations; shall refrain from seeking the employment of immediate family members in any municipal operation; shall refrain from using their influence as members of the governing body in attempts to secure contracts, zoning or other favorable municipal action for friends, customers, clients, immediate family members or business associates; and shall comply with all lawful actions, directives and orders of duly constituted municipal officials as such may be issued in the normal and lawful discharge of the duties of these municipal officials.
Council members shall conduct themselves so as to bring credit upon the city as a whole and so as to set an example of good ethical conduct for all citizens of the community. Council members shall bear in mind at all times their responsibility to the entire electorate, and shall refrain from actions benefiting special groups at the expense of the city as a whole and shall do everything in their power to ensure equal and impartial law enforcement throughout the city at large without respect to race, creed, color or the economic or the social position of individual citizens.
When pursuing a large Wichita city contract, did the winning company lobby all council members, or primarily Mayor Jeff Longwell?
The role of Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell in the awarding of the contract for the new Wichita water plant has been in the news. A recent Wichita Eagle article showed how the mayor steered the award to a company other than the company recommended by the city’s selection committee. 1
Central to the story is the relationship between the mayor and the company he favored. There was, according to Eagle reporting, a close relationship including a cash gift that was not disclosed 2 and some eerily chummy emails. 3
The mayor, however, downplayed his role. In a response from Longwell posted on the city’s Facebook page, he said he is part of a team: “A team that deliberately keeps each other in check. We question and challenge each step, and that is an intentional process designed to ensure we have the best deal for our city.” 4
Some council members agree. In the Eagle article, two council members were interviewed, Brandon Johnson (district 1, northeast Wichita) and James Clendenin (district 3, southeast and south Wichita):
Johnson and Clendenin both downplayed Longwell’s role in awarding the contract, saying the mayor is just one vote.
“You give the mayor too much credit,” Johnson said.
“Yeah, this idea that the mayor of the city of Wichita has enough power to make any decision he would like is something that I think is a misconception,” Clendenin said.
What, then, is the power of the mayor to lead or steer the council in his preferred direction?
The answer to this question holds the answer: Did the winning company (Wichita Water Partners) lobby, flatter, or gift any Wichita City Council members with anything approaching the consideration directed to Mayor Jeff Longwell?
“Before Longwell cast the deciding vote, the president of one of the Water Partners’ companies paid for Longwell to enter a $1,000-per-person charity golf tournament. … Nor did Longwell disclose the $1,000 entry fee on a state ethics form for local officials that he filed in February.” ↩
“They frequently referred to each other in emails by nicknames — Your Eminence, His Highness, Homecoming Queen, Eye Candy, Jethro and Wine Delivery Guy, after Young, the president of PEC, offered to drop off to Longwell leftover wine from a previous dinner party.” ↩
In a report looking at the economics of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, Wichita often ranks near the bottom.
Each year Brookings Institution creates an index of major metropolitan areas called Metro Monitor. The report, says Brookings, “explores the local realities of America’s economic progress, illuminating how metropolitan economies are performing today and over the past decade.” The report for 2019 is available here.
The report examines the 100 largest metropolitan areas. For 2018, the Wichita MSA ranked as the 89th largest, falling from rank 82 as recently as 2011. 1
Growth
To examine growth of a metro, Brookings considered percentage change in jobs, percentage change in gross metropolitan product, and percentage change in jobs at young firms. The nearby charts shows the results. (Some data is not available for all metro areas.)
Click charts for larger versions.
Prosperity
Prosperity looks at percentage changes in productivity, standard of living, and average wage.
Inclusion
Inclusion looks at percentage changes in median earnings, relative poverty, and employment rate.
Racial inclusion
Racial inclusion looks at change in white/people of color median earnings gap, relative poverty gap, and employment rate gap.
Looking forward
As the Brookings analysis ends with 2017, what might we find if the analysis was based on 2018 and 2019 data? Some of the data Brookings uses is not available until after a lengthy delay, such GDP for metropolitan areas. That data, which is an important indicator of a region’s economic health, is not yet available for 2018 for metropolitan areas.
Employment data is available quickly, however. The nearby chart, displaying data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows changes in the number of jobs for Wichita and the nation, displaying the percentage change from the same month of the prior year. 2 It’s easy to see the slump in Wichita in 2017. Since then Wichita has improved, with some months showing greater job growth than the nation. From January 2018 to August 2019, national jobs grew by 2.6 percent, and in the Wichita MSA, by 2.2 percent. 3
FRED, from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is a resource for examining economic data and creating charts and tables. Most of the available data is data gathered from other sources, in this case the Bureau of Labor Statistics. FRED provides a consistent interactive interface to the data, and provides several ways to share the data. Start at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/. ↩
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club this week: Wichita mayoral candidates Jeff Longwell and Brandon Whipple. This audio presentation or podcast was recorded on September 27, 2019. Todd Johnson is the moderator.
Wichita economic development officials use a convoluted method of estimating the population of downtown Wichita, producing a number much higher than Census Bureau estimates.
How many people live in downtown Wichita? The answer, according to Downtown Wichita, is 2,749.
This value comes from the 2019 State of Downtown Report, published by Downtown Wichita. 1 It is for zip code 67202, which is commonly recognized as greater downtown Wichita. While this report highlights the number of people living in downtown Wichita, it no longer reports the number of people working in downtown. 2
How does Downtown Wichita arrive at the number of residents in downtown? An endnote from the report gives the details:
The 2010 U.S. Census states the population in the 67202 area code [sic] is 1,393. Per Downtown Wichita records, 1,228 units rental units have opened in the Downtown SSMID district since 2010 when the Census was taken. Per data provided directly from the Downtown residential rental properties, the absorption rates of the market rate units has an average of 85%. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, the average size of renter-occupied units is 1.3 persons. Therefore, an estimate for the current population is 2,749. 3
What Downtown Wichita has done is to take a reliable figure (the 2010 decennial census) and extrapolate forward to 2018. (Presumably 2018, as the report doesn’t say.)
There is a problem with this approach. The DW calculation makes use of two estimates, absorption rate 4 and size of renter-occupied units. Each of these is an estimate that has its own error probabilities, and those errors compound when multiplied.
There is no need to go through this roundabout calculation, as the Census Bureau has provided an estimate for the population of downtown in 2017. Data from the American Community Survey 5 estimates that the population in downtown Wichita for 2017 was 1,587, with a 90 percent confidence interval of plus or minus 221. 6 This means the Census Bureau is confident the population of downtown Wichita in 2017 was in the range of 1,366 to 1,808, that confidence factor being 90 percent. (2018 values should be available soon.)
But Downtown Wichita says the population of downtown is 2,319, which is far — really far — outside the range the Census Bureau gives for the 2017 population. While Downtown Wichita’s population estimate is probably for 2018, it still lies far outside the range of probability, based on Census Bureau estimates.
A nearby chart plots the Census Bureau’s population estimates (labeled ACS, for American Community Survey) with the lower and upper bounds of 90 percent confidence levels. This is compared with Downtown Wichita’s population estimate. From 2015 to 2017, Downtown Wichita’s population estimates are far above the Census Bureau’s estimates. The probability that Downtown Wichita’s figures are correct is vanishingly small.
It’s curious that Downtown Wichita, if it wants to know how many people live in downtown, doesn’t simply use the Census Bureau estimate of population. That estimate is available annually in the Bureau’s American Community Survey. Downtown Wichita didn’t use that number, but it relied on the same body of data to get “average size of renter-occupied units.”
Why would Downtown Wichita use the Census Bureau for one datum but not another, especially when the Census Bureau data reports the statistic Downtown Wichita is trying to estimate in a roundabout manner?
It’s simple. DW’s calculations produce 2,319 people living in downtown. The Census Bureau estimate is a much smaller number: 1,587.
By the way, DW’s calculations start with the 2010 Census Bureau population for downtown. Of the downtown population of 1,393 that year, 253 were men living in institutions like the Kansas Department of Corrections Wichita Work Release facility at Emporia and Waterman Streets. It has a capacity of 250. 7
“Absorption is the amount of space or units leased within a market or submarket over a given period of time (usually one year). Absorption considers both construction of new space and demolition or removal from the market of existing space.” Institute of Real Estate Management. Calculating Absorption. Available at https://www.irem.org/education/learning-toolbox/calculating-absorption. ↩
U.S. Census Bureau, 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates ↩
In a new edition of a study that assesses the stringency of state school assessments, Kansas performs well.
States are free to create their own tests to measure the performance of students in their schools. There is variability in how stringently states construct their tests.
The U.S. Department of Education, through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), conducts the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) every other year. Known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” it is “the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.” 1
The value of NAEP is this, according to NCES:
Since standards vary across states, the results of the various state assessments cannot be used to directly compare students’ progress. However, by placing a state standard onto the NAEP scale, a common metric for all states, a NAEP equivalent score of that standard is produced, which can be compared across states.
The Mapping State Proficiency Standards report provides the results of this analysis. 2
From the technical notes to the report: “NAEP provided a common scale on which the stringency of the various state criteria for proficiency could be compared.” The purpose of the study is to map each state’s standards to a common standard. By doing this, we can determine whether a state uses a stringent or weak standard to evaluate students. This study does not evaluate the performance — good or bad — of a state’s students. Rather, the study evaluates the state and its standards.
In years past, the rigor of the Kansas standards have been found by this study to be low, compared to other states. 3 Then, the standards improved. 4
Now, the recently-released mapping study shows Kansas to have high standards, in some cases the highest in the nation. This analysis by NCES is based on the 2017 administration of NAEP.
In the nearby illustration taken from the NCES mapping study, states with stronger standards appear on the right end of the scale. Kansas is somewhat above the middle. For grade 4 math, Kansas ranked higher.
Click for larger.
For both grade 8 reading and math, Kansas standards were judged most stringent of all states.
Click for larger.
This is good news. It means that the Kansas tests are providing a more realistic assessment of Kansas students. Again, this mapping study measures the tests, not the performance of students taking the test. Regarding performance, when properly considered, Kansas often underperforms the nation. 5
For the second quarter of 2019, the rate of personal income growth in Kansas was near the bottom of the states, although the rate was higher than the first quarter.
For Kansas, personal income in the second quarter of 2019 was $154,820 million, an increase of 3.9 percent from the first quarter. For the nation, the increase was 5.4 percent. (These values, while considering one quarter, are expressed as an annual rate, and are adjusted for seasonality.) For Plains states, the increase was 3.9 percent. (For this data, Plains States are Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The second quarter of the calendar year consists of the months of April, May, and June.)
The increase in Kansas was forty-third best among the states.
Earnings in Kansas grew by $717 million in 2019 Q2 from Q1, although farm earnings fell by $276 million.
According to BEA, “Personal income is the income received by, or on behalf of, all persons from all sources: from participation as laborers in production, from owning a home or business, from the ownership of financial assets, and from government and business in the form of transfers. It includes income from domestic sources as well as the rest of world. It does not include realized or unrealized capital gains or losses.”
Also from BEA: “Earnings by place of work is the sum of wages and salaries, supplements to wages and salaries, and proprietors’ income. BEA’s industry estimates are presented on an earnings by place of work basis.”
In deciding to forego a presidential caucus or primary, Kansas Republicans act contrary to mainstream conservative thought.
After several states (including Kansas) decided to cancel or not schedule primary elections or caucuses, two noted conservative publications criticized these decisions. From the editors of National Review, founded by William F. Buckley:
The president says he has nothing to do with these decisions, but also that holding primaries he is sure to win would be a waste of money. The susceptibility of this argument to abuse by a ruler ought to preclude its being made.
The vast majority of Republicans approve of what Trump has done on taxes, judges, regulation, and most other issues, though they also support electoral competition. Trump would be likely to win the primaries handily, demonstrating his strength among Republicans while the Democrats tussle. His allies should want to see that, rather than make it seem as though he is too weak to face competition. But regardless of how it works out for him, Republican primary voters are capable of making the decision among Trump and the others — who so far include William Weld and Joe Walsh as well as Sanford. They deserve to be able to do so. 1
In its op-ed, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal concluded with this:
When Mr. Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, he disrupted a long tradition of Republican leadership and policy. He rejected GOP positions on trade and entitlement reform. In chief respects he abandoned the party’s hawkish stance on foreign policy. On guns and health care he has taken multiple positions, sometimes in the same week.
And — how to put it delicately? — Mr. Trump has introduced a new standard of presidential behavior, by turns abrasive, funny and appalling. These and related matters are far from settled in Republican circles, and it seems unwise to prevent the rank-and-file from debating them. If Mr. Trump is as popular with Republicans as the polls say, he has nothing to fear from letting voters show it in primaries. 2
The arguments advanced by these two stalwarts of conservative thought and opinion aren’t welcomed by some Kansas Republicans, especially 150 that are in leadership positions and voted to abstain from holding a caucus. After I shared these articles on Facebook, the reaction was almost universally negative. The consensus is that I should leave the Republican Party and find somewhere else to call home so I can vote in a caucus or primary. That doesn’t seem conducive to winning elections, and Kansas Republicans need to be concerned with winning, having lost the governorship, one congressional district, and barely winning another.
I asked one person “And are you trying to attract people to the Republican Party, or drive them away?” The response was, “I would just as soon the Republican party would avoid attracting people such as yourself.”
Some expressed concern over the cost of a caucus or primary election, but I wasn’t aware that we should be so concerned about the cost of democracy and its elections. On this issue, I repeat the observation of the National Review editors: “The president says he has nothing to do with these decisions, but also that holding primaries he is sure to win would be a waste of money. The susceptibility of this argument to abuse by a ruler ought to preclude its being made.” (emphasis added)
There are some who, correctly, note that the Kansas Republican Party had not scheduled a caucus, so there was no caucus to cancel. Therefore, no harm. Lack of a caucus is a non-issue. This type of over-lawyerly reasoning might appeal to some, but it is a distinction without a difference and solidifies power in the hands of party insiders.
Some noted that the challengers to Trump for the Republican nomination don’t have any chance of winning. Well, we hold elections on a schedule, not based on the popularity of a candidate or incumbent.
Just as important, we don’t know who all the Republican challengers to Trump might be. And, something could change between now and March when a caucus or primary might be held. Just this week serious allegations have been made against the president and his conduct in office. Whether these are true or not, the chaotic and volatile nature of Trump and his administration means there is a very real risk that something seriously damaging could emerge before next year. Kansas Republicans ought to insist on having a voice in choosing an alternative nominee.
Of note: Next year Kansas Democrats plan to hold a presidential primary using ranked-choice voting. It is no small irony that as Kansas Democrats apply new methods to vote and choose candidates, Kansas Republicans regress to the smoke-filled room.
