Voice For Liberty

Tag: Featured

  • Kansas jobs, August 2019

    Kansas jobs, August 2019

    Employment and the labor force rose in Kansas in August 2019 compared to the two previous months. Kansas employment continued a trend of lower growth than the nation over the year, but has been stronger in recent months.

    Data released yesterday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor, shows an improving picture for employment in Kansas for August 2019. (Click charts and tables for larger versions.)

    Using seasonally adjusted data, from July 2019 to August 2019, nonfarm employment in Kansas rose by 7,900, which is 0.6 percent. Over the year, the number of Kansas nonfarm jobs for August 2019 rose by 15,500 or 1.1 percent over last August. This is using seasonally adjusted data. The non-adjusted figure is higher at 20,300, or 1.4 percent.

    Over the year (August 2018 to August 2019), the Kansas labor force is down by 2,731 (0.2 percent) using seasonally adjusted data, with an increase of 0.1 percent over the last month. Non-seasonal data shows an increase of 6,941 (0.5 percent) in the labor force over the year.

    The number of unemployed persons fell from July 2019 to August 2019 by 1,005, or 2.1 percent. The unemployment rate was 3.3 percent in August, down 0.1 percentage points from one year ago, and down the same amount from July.

    Using seasonal data, Kansas nonfarm jobs increased by 1.09 percent over the past 12 months, while national jobs grew by 1.39 percent. Non seasonal data shows Kansas nonfarm jobs rising by 1.44 percent over the past 12 months, while national jobs grew by 1.38 percent.

    Click charts and tables for larger versions.

    In the following chart of showing job changes from the same month one year ago, Kansas is always below the national rate.

    In the following chart showing job changes from the previous month, Kansas has outperformed the nation four of the past five months.

  • From Pachyderm: Wichita City Council Candidates

    From Pachyderm: Wichita City Council Candidates

    From the Wichita Pachyderm Club this week: Wichita city council candidates from districts 4 and 5. This audio presentation or podcast was recorded on September 20, 2019. Todd Johnson is the moderator.

    Shownotes

  • From Pachyderm: Representative Roger Marshall

    From Pachyderm: Representative Roger Marshall

    Roger Marshall
    From the Wichita Pachyderm Club this week: Dr. Roger Marshall, United States Representative for the first district of Kansas. He recently declared his intent to run for the United States Senate in 2020. This audio presentation or podcast was recorded on September 13, 2019. The recording starts shortly after Marshall started speaking.

    Shownotes

  • Wichita metro employment by industry

    Wichita metro employment by industry

    An interactive visualization of Wichita-area employment by industry.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor, makes monthly employment statistics available. I’ve gathered them for the Wichita metropolitan statistical area and present them in an interactive visualization.

    This visualization is updated with data through July 2019.

    To learn more about the data and access the visualization, click here.

  • Downtown Wichita jobs decline

    Downtown Wichita jobs decline

    Despite heavy promotion and investment in downtown Wichita, the number of jobs continues to decline.

    The United States Census Bureau has a program known as LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics, or LODES. According to the Bureau, “The LEHD program produces new, cost effective, public-use information combining federal, state and Census Bureau data on employers and employees under the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership. State and local authorities increasingly need detailed local information about their economies to make informed decisions. The LED Partnership works to fill critical data gaps and provide indicators needed by state and local authorities.”

    Data is available by zipcode. This allows isolation of downtown Wichita, which usually recognized as zip code 67202. Data was released at the end of August for calendar year 2017.

    What does the data tell us about downtown Wichita? As can be seen in the nearby chart, the trend in jobs is down, and down almost every year. Most notably, the number of private sector jobs has declined by 28.6 percent since 2002. (Click charts for larger versions.)

    Since 2010, about the time Wichita started more aggressive promotion of downtown, the number of private sector jobs has fallen by 9.4 percent.

    Of note, for the three age groups this data tracks, the jobs in group “age 55 or over” is growing, although it is numerically the smallest group.

    The City of Wichita and the Wichita Metropolitan Statistical Area are not doing well. According to the same data set, the rate of job growth has been declining since 2012, and was near zero or negative for 2016 and 2017.

    For more information on this data, and to access the interactive visualization of this data, see Visualization: Downtown Wichita jobs.

    Because of the public policy aspect of this data, I asked both candidates for Wichita Mayor for a response. Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell did not respond to repeated requests. Challenger Brandon Whipple provided this by email:

    Under current city leadership, our sister cities are all growing at a higher rate economically than Wichita. Wichita’s recent job growth is at .5%, compared to Oklahoma City at 3.4%, Omaha, NE at 1.9% and the national average at 1.6%. The current Mayor brags that our unemployment rate is at 3.9%, but that’s the same as the national average, which means it’s nothing to brag about. Omaha, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Des Moines all have lower unemployment than Wichita and the national average.

    Wichita has competed and beat our sister cities in the past economically. We need leaders who are not afraid to compare Wichita not only to our past, but also to other mid-size cities and have the vision to again become an economic leader among them. There is no silver bullet but the first step towards economic growth is recognizing we have room to grow.

    Also we’re not gaining jobs, we’re losing people. That’s nothing to brag about.

    For the two institutions planning and developing policy for downtown, the city’s public information office did not respond. Jaimie Garnett, Executive Vice President of Strategic Communications, Greater Wichita Partnership provided this:

    Based on how the Census Bureau collects LEHD data it can be difficult to get a true comparison of year-to-year numbers especially in smaller geographic areas. Our understanding is that how a company reports its workers can vary and that the Census Bureau gives data in each category what they call a “noise infusion” to protect individual firms’ confidentiality. When we have talked with economic groups such as WSU’s CEDBR, they consider the LEHD data the best data available while also recognizing these issues.

    We’re excited about many recent Wichita area announcements from downtown to the region. For downtown Wichita, we’re pleased by the fact that the private sector made 90 percent of the investment in 2018 and over the past 10 years, the private sector made 77 percent of the investment. In addition, downtown is experiencing corporate investment and there are companies relocating to the core.

    While these concerns about LEHD data are valid, I don’t believe they explain the long-term trend. Additionally, both the city, its agencies, and WSU’s CEBDR have made gross errors in using LEHD data. 1 2

    —
    Notes

    1. Weeks, Bob. Downtown Wichita jobs, sort of. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/downtown-wichita-jobs/. ↩
    2. Weeks, Bob. Census data for downtown Wichita workers. Available at https://wichitaliberty.org/wichita-government/census-data-downtown-wichita-workers/. ↩
  • Wichita mayoral debate

    Wichita mayoral debate

    Details of the Wichita baseball stadium land deal were an issue at the first Wichita mayoral debate.

    The Wichita first mayoral debate of the general election season between Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell and Brandon Whipple was characterized by the Wichita Eagle headline, “Wichita mayor candidates accuse each other of lying in first debate.” But I noticed a story told by the mayor that sounds like a good deal, but deserves scrutiny.

    It has to do with the four acres of land sold for $1 per acre to the owners of the new Wichita baseball team. The controversy is that the fact of the sale was not known by the public until shortly before the council was asked to approve the deal. As reported by the Wichita Eagle:

    The City Council sold four acres of public land for $1 an acre in a deal where some city staff members acknowledged they didn’t follow city guidelines for selling city property.

    “We can always communicate better,” Longwell said. “Certainly, it was a learning opportunity for many of those at City Hall that had been working on that bill for a long time.

    “But let me tell you what really didn’t get reported. The previous stadium had a contract where the team paid us $25,000 a year to play there. The new team is going to be paying us up to $600,000 a year. I’ll negotiate four acres away every day for $600,000 every year that we can put into the Wichita city coffers and all of the growth that it’s going to bring that river corridor.

    “So at the end of the day, what people are not arguing is how good the deal is. They’re just complaining about the communications, and we can improve that.” 1

    Let’s look at “how good the deal is.” The money Longwell referenced is called a “management fee.” More commonly, a payment like this is called “rent.” It’s paid to the city by the new baseball team annually. Here’s the contract language: “Beginning with the first year of the Initial Term, the Team will pay annual fees of Three Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars ($350,000) per year, with an increase to be determined every five years based on the average increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers over the previous five years.” 2

    I’m not sure how to model the calculation described in this agreement, but one attempt showed that inflation would have to be nearly four percent per year in order to reach an annual payment of $600,000 at the time of last adjustment. For reference, the average inflation rate for the last ten years is about 1.6 percent.

    But the inflation rate doesn’t really matter, as the purpose of a payment that increases with inflation is so that its value remains constant in real dollars. So whatever the annual management fee years from now, it should be worth, in real terms, its value today, which is $350,000.

    Click for larger.

    Then: No matter what the management fee paid by the new team, some of it goes to the Wingnuts, the old team. Nearby is a table from the agreement between the city and the Wingnuts. 3 The $2,200,000 the city needs to pay is more than the first six years of management fees the new team will pay.

    One more thing: In order the get these management fees, the city had to build a stadium costing some $75 million. The management fees, after the Wingnuts are paid off, represent a rate of return of one-half of one percent.

    The mayor mentioned that a benefit would be “all of the growth that it’s going to bring that river corridor.” For now, that growth exists as plans only. I hope the river corridor is a commercial success, but the city’s experience in development is mixed.

    —
    Notes

    1. Tidd, Jason. “Wichita mayor candidates accuse each other of lying in first debate.” *Wichita Eagle,* September 10, 2019. Available at https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article234948907.html. ↩
    2. Ballpark facility use and management agreement between the city of Wichita, Kansas and Yes2No, LLC, a Massachuetts limited liability company authorized to do business in Kansas. October 12, 2018. ↩
    3. Agenda for September 11, 2018: “The total settlement amount of $2,200,000 will be paid over time by annual payments from 2018 to 2026 from the first six (6) years of management agreement payments paid by the new AAA baseball team.” ↩
  • For Wichita, another agenda surprise

    For Wichita, another agenda surprise

    Wichita city hall again places a controversial matter on the consent agenda, where it might pass without notice.

    Should the City of Wichita lease part of a new park to a private entity for its exclusive use? That’s what the Wichita City Council will consider this week. But there are issues apart from the lease itself.

    The subject of the item this week is Naftzger Park in downtown Wichita. The new building on the east side of the park has ground floor retail space, including a restaurant. To have an outdoor patio area in which alcohol is served, the restaurant’s patio must be fenced in. Furthermore, the proposed patio sits on park land, which requires execution of a lease.

    The problem is that plans for the fenced patio were not known by the mayor, the city council, or the public until last week when the city council agenda for its September 10, 2019 meeting was released.

    Not only that, the item was placed on the consent agenda. That’s a section of the meeting where a number of agenda items are considered and voted on in bulk without discussion, unless a council member asks to “pull” an item. The consent agenda usually holds non-controversial items.

    But the redesign of Naftzger Park has been controversial. There was much community discussion about the design, and not everyone was happy. The park and the surrounding development have received millions in taxpayer subsidy, which adds to the controversy.

    So it’s surprising that anything involving this park would be handled on a consent agenda. But in February the council considered an error in the park design, correction of which cost $115,000. That was passed on the consent agenda with no discussion.

    Where is the fence? Click for larger.
    Now, another matter regarding Naftzger Park was placed on the consent agenda, and it is definitely controversial, as is any plan to lease city park land to private interests. Credit to Wichita City Council Member Bryan Frye (district 5, west and northwest Wichita) for objecting to the consent agenda placement, according to Wichita Eagle reporting.

    The city has had other trouble with its consent agenda. This summer the lease of airport land to a hotel developer was placed on the consent agenda. The lease was found to have errors and the matter was delayed twice.

    According to the minutes of the July 16 council meeting, Mayor Longwell referenced “a mistake made by staff to put this on consent agenda without the knowledge of any Council Member.”

    On the same matter, the Wichita Eagle reported: “‘We really don’t like, in this case, last-second changes that are brought to us,’ Longwell said. ‘And it’s not fair to the community to have last-second changes presented to the council and then ask us to vote on it.’” A few days later the newspaper reported, “On Friday, Longwell said he plans to ask the council to change its policies so “every negotiated agreement goes on a regular agenda, not consent.”

    Someone didn’t get the message, it seems.

    Should the city lease part of Naftzger Park for exclusive private use? That’s an issue worthy of discussion. But two things are certain:

    Any lease should have been part of the original discussion on the redesign of Naftzger Park two years ago.

    And, stuff like this shouldn’t be on the consent agenda.

  • From Pachyderm: Envision and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce

    From Pachyderm: Envision and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce

    From the Wichita Pachyderm Club this week: Michael Monteferrante. He is President and CEO of Envision, Inc. and Chairman of the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce. This audio presentation or podcast was recorded on September 6, 2019.

    Shownotes

  • Kansas Republicans should have their say

    Kansas Republicans should have their say

    Kansas Republicans should insist on having a voice in choosing the next Republican presidential nominee.

    The Kansas Republican Party has decided to deny giving rank-and-file party members a voice in choosing its presidential nominee for next year. In a release, the party says : “The Kansas Republican Party will not organize a Caucus for the 2020 election because President Trump is an elected incumbent from the Republican Party.”

    The release gives a reason: “Every time an elected incumbent Republican has run for re-election, except in 1912, the Kansas Republican Party state convention adopted a resolution instructing all delegates to vote for the elected incumbent. This has been the same standard for the Kansas Republican Party dating back to President Lincoln’s reelection ”

    This reasoning is undemocratic (small “d”).

    Kansas Republicans should have either a caucus or a primary election. To have neither, simply because the incumbent president is a Republican, deprives members of the Kansas GOP of a chance to make a decision.

    Yes, President Trump is popular with Republicans, very much so. But not everyone agrees. There are Republicans, myself included, who would prefer someone else than Donald Trump as the party’s nominee. Already, there are several credible candidates. Perhaps there will be more. For the Kansas Republican Party to assume that Trump would win the caucus or primary smacks of elitism. Party elders know best who should receive our convention delegates, it says. The vote of the people does not matter — this is the message from Kansas GOP leadership.

    I can hear the critics: “None of these have a chance to beat Trump.” That’s hardly the point. But these candidates are serious and have achieved success in politics. Some have been members of Congress and/or governors.

    Between now and March 2020 — when a caucus or primary would likely be held — things could change. Kansas Republicans need to position the state to have a voice in who is the next Republican nominee for president.

    Further, to give everyone an equal chance to have a voice, Kansas Republicans should abandon the caucus and hold a primary election. Participating in the caucus is difficult. Many people are not able to attend and cast their vote. No matter the cost to the party, Kansas should seek broad participation in its presidential nominating process. That means asking the people to make a selection, and it means a primary election instead of a caucus.