Voice For Liberty

Tag: Government planning

  • Be wary of expanding Wichita transit spending

    bus-moving-quickly-bus-22114_1280Today’s Wichita Eagle carries an op-ed designed to gather support for funding an expanded Wichita regional transit system. The article is Chase M. Billingham: State should support transit. Before deciding to expand Wichita’s transit system, and especially before deciding on a new taxing scheme to fund it, we need to make sure we understand more about transit.

    Here’s a claim from the op-ed that is incorrect: “Already, local revenue sources and fares account for about half of Wichita Transit’s operating budget.” That doesn’t align with figures I’ve found. In July I reported on the transit system’s finances, and found that of $13,914,580 in annual operating expenses, $5,953,042 was categorized as from fares and local source. That’s 43 percent, not really close to half. Considering fares and local support as a fraction of total spending including capital, it’s 38 percent. This data is from the National Transit Database for 2011, and is summarized in a chart at the end of this article. The Wichita city budget documents tell largely the same story.

    By the way, many people would be surprised to learn of the fraction of expenses paid for through fares. Considering operating expenses only, the number is 13.5 percent. Considering operating and capital costs, just 12.1 percent comes from fare revenue. The remainder is provided by taxpayers. So when a bus rider puts a dollar in the farebox, taxpayers contribute an additional six dollars to fund the system.

    Speaking of taxpayers, Billingham writes: “In recent years, generous federal funding has made up much of the rest of the budget …” It ought to be a crime to use the word generous to describe federal spending and taxation. “Generous” has to do with giving. That’s a voluntary act. The federal government has nothing to give except what it takes from others, and that is not generosity.

    Why should we spend on an expanded transit system in Wichita and the region? Billingham writes: “Research has shown that robust public transit service can spur economic growth and downtown redevelopment, reduce traffic congestion, and expand residents’ access to jobs and resources.” Well, what research? There is no citation. Now, I know that newspapers don’t like to include footnotes or citations in articles. That’s too bad, as we’re left to guess from where the author drew his facts and conclusions.

    Transit is an expensive way to move people. Riders spend a lot of time waiting for buses. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for economic growth. Considering downtown development: If it’s true that transit increases downtown development, that’s bad for taxpayers, as very little is done downtown without some type of taxpayer handout. People spending their own money, not someone else’s, usually choose somewhere other than downtown.

    Randal O'Toole: The Best-Laid Plans

    As far as expanding access to jobs: I’ve done some research. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole, author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, writes the following regarding the tremendous boost the personal automobile has given Americans: “Since the dawn of the Republic, no invention has enhanced the quality of life of the average American as much as the mass-produced automobile. Americans today are far more mobile, they earn much higher incomes, and they have access to far more consumer goods than a hundred years ago. It is no exaggeration to attribute most of these improvements to the wide availability of automobiles.”

    Owning an automobile gives people the mobility that is impossible to provide through transit, and that is very important for workers. Some examples:

    “Studies show that car ownership is a significant factor in improving the employment status of welfare recipients.” (Job Access, Commute, and Travel Burden Among Welfare Recipients)

    “Raphael and Rice (2002) found in their study that car ownership has a strong effect on the probability of an individual being employed as well as on the number of hours they work per week. Generally, car ownership better enables job seekers to look for jobs. They can consider work outside of regular transit service hours, and they can travel faster, more safely, and more flexibly than with public transportation.” (Transportation & Work: Exploring Car Usage and Employment Outcomes in the LSAL Data)

    Also from this study: “Overall, car ownership does appear to have an important relationship to employment status, wages, and weeks worked.” And “Having a car as a primary mode of transportation makes a respondent four times as likely to be employed. Car ownership also improves earnings by several hundred dollars and increases weeks worked by up to eleven weeks.”

    In the rankings of factors that are important to obtaining employment, a car was more useful than a high-school-equivalent diploma. We should be working to increase automobile ownership, especially among lower-income people. The more we tax people to provide transit, the more difficult it is for them to buy and maintain private cars.

    Finally, consider this from O’Toole on the disjointed logic of transit boosters: “Transit advocates will point out that the autos driving on congested urban highways often have only one occupant. But that is exactly the point: If modern life is so decentralized that carpooling makes no sense for most commuters, how are giant buses and high-capacity trains going to work?”

    The goal of the planners, of course, is for people to conform to their designs, not their own. Transit is one of the ways that planners create their dream world for us to live in. The sustainable communities planning process we’re undertaking has, as a goal, reducing the amount we drive. REAP, one of our several planning agencies, has much information about the process on its website devoted to the process, located at Sustainable Communities Grant 2011. I would especially encourage reading the document “Sustainable Communities Work Plan DRAFT.” In there you can learn of the plans to “decrease per capita Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).” This plan, if it succeeds, will harm citizens’ mobility and economic opportunities, especially for the people who need jobs most.

    The sustainable communities planning process is definitely anti-automobile. One of the goals for the plan is: “Regional Transportation Plan: Develop multi-modal transportation options/programs for the region and connects housing options to emerging employment clusters.” This sounds like a good and noble idea. But in practice, government transit systems fail to produce what riders truly want and need, and are very expensive.

    Wichita Transit Finances, 2011

  • A vision for Wichita

    Wichita city hall logoWhy are some in Wichita so insistent on pushing their vision of what our city should look like, and why are they willing and eager to use the coercive force of government to achieve their vision? In the article below, Randal O’Toole, using a work by Thomas Sowell, provides much insight into understanding why.

    Reading this post, I couldn’t help think of Wichita: the “manufactured crisis” of too much driving and too little walking; the desire by many, including several Wichita City Council members — even self-styled conservative members — to expand the power and reach of government; and the denial of responsibility for obvious failures like Waterwalk.

    project-downtown-logoWe should remember that the plan for downtown Wichita developed by Boston planning firm Goody Clancy is a plan developed by and for self-styled elites. We only need to remember when David Dixon, Goody Clancy’s principal, told Wichitans that in the future, Wichitans will be able to “enjoy the kind of social and cultural richness” that is only found at the core. That’s an insult to the vast majority of Wichitans, but the elites in Wichita evidently believe it, or are willing to tolerate this insult in order to achieve their vision.

    O’Toole visited Wichita in 2010 and presented a fascinating lecture.

    The Vision of the Urbanites

    By Randal O’Toole

    As the Antiplanner has traveled and visited people all over the country, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. Though I’ve met thousands of suburban and rural residents who are very happy with their homes and lifestyles, I’ve never met one who thinks the power of government should be used to force others to live in the same lifestyle. Yet I’ve met lots of urban residents who openly admit that they believe their lifestyle is so perfect that government should force more if not most people to live in dense, “walkable” cities.

    Do cities turn people into liberal fascists? Or do liberal fascists naturally congregate into cities, and if so, why?

    A general description of the phenomenon I’ve observed can be found in Thomas Sowell’s 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell says that America’s liberal elites view themselves as smarter or more insightful than everyone else, and thus qualified to impose their ideas on everyone else. The process of doing so, says Sowell, follows four steps (p. 8):

    First, the anointed identify or, more usually, manufacture a crisis. Sowell’s book reviews three such crises: poverty, crime, and teen pregnancy, all of which were declining in the 1960s when the liberals turned them into crises. The crises relevant to this blog include such things as urban sprawl (totally manufactured as in fact it is not a problem at all) and auto driving (while some of the effects of driving are negative, these are easily corrected while the overall benefits of driving are positive).

    Second, the anointed propose a solution that inevitably involves government action. Sowell makes it clear that the the leadership of the elites go out of their way to define or manufacture the crises in ways that make it appear the government action are the only solutions. In other words, their real goal is to make government bigger, not to solve problems. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it doesn’t really matter; what matters is they propose the wrong solutions to problems that often don’t really exist.

    Third, once the solution is implemented, the results turn out to be very different, and often far worse, than predicted by the anointed. Crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy went up, not down, when government stepped in to “fix” these problems in the 1960s. In the case of urban planning, anti-sprawl policies made housing unaffordable and led to the recent mortgage crisis. Anti-automobile policies make congestion worse and therefore waste even more energy and produce more pollution.

    The final stage is one of denial, in which the elites claim that their policies had nothing to do with the worsening results. Other factors were at work, they claim; in fact, the results might have been even worse if their enlightened policies had not been put into effect.

    Sowell notes that the anointed use several tactics to promote their ideas. For example, “empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with that vision” (p. 2). Whenever the Antiplanner uses data to show that there is no urban sprawl crisis or rail transit doesn’t work in a debate with an urban anointed, the inevitable response is some version of “figures don’t lie but liars figure.” “Statistics can be used to show anything you want,” is another version. These comforting words leave the anointed free to dismiss any data and all that conflict with their vision.

    A second fundamental tactic is to presume that they have the moral high ground. “Those who accept this vision are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane,” says Sowell. “Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin” (pp. 2-3). The term “smart growth” is a classic example of this tactic, used solely to bludgeon any dissenters with the claim that they must favor “dumb growth.”

    Relying on tactics like these, the anointed avoid confronting the fraudulent nature of their crises and the failures of their solutions. “What is remarkable is how few arguments are really engaged in, and how many substitutes for arguments there are,” says Sowell (p. 6).

    While The Vision of the Anointed describes the situation, it doesn’t answer the fundamental question of why people think that way. A partial answer is provided by Sowell’s 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions, in which Sowell traces two different world views back to the late eighteenth century. One view, expressed by Adam Smith, is that humans are imperfect and so we should design institutions that work even if the face of these imperfections. The other view, proposed by William Godwin, is that humans are perfectable, which suggests that the benign hand of government authority should be used to guide people to that perfection.

    Today, the Tea Party represents the descendants of Adam Smith, while urban planners are descendants of Godwin. As University of California planners Mel Webber and Fred Collignon wrote more than a decade ago, urban planners were “heir to the postulates of the Enlightenment with its faith in perfectibility.”

    The question still remains: why are urbanites more susceptible to the vision of the anointed? Perhaps part of the answer is that the constant friction between strangers that cities impose on their residents leads to a desire for government authority to protect people from those frictions. But a larger part of the answer may be that the role of government is far more visible in cities than elsewhere, and far larger in cities today than in the past, so residents of those cities cannot imagine living without it — and those who want more government are attracted to those cities. In any case, everyone in general and urbanites in particular should be wary of any ideas that make government bigger, as they are probably just part of some elitist scheme to coercively impose their vision on everyone else.

    The link to this article at O’Toole’s site is The Vision of the Urbanites.

  • It will be a busy Tuesday in Wichita

    City of Wichita logoTuesday’s meeting of the Wichita City Council is likely to take more than a few moments, as the agenda is loaded with items. The agenda packet may be viewed at this page in general, or this link specifically for the August sixth meeting.

    First, there are four speakers on the public agenda, which is where citizens may sign up in advance to speak on any topic. (When speaking on specific agenda items, speakers do not need to sign up in advance, but need to stay on topic.)

    Then, the city will consider a forgivable loan to Triumph Aerospace Systems, Inc., as the Sedgwick County Commission also did. Information on that item is at Why is business welfare necessary in Wichita? and Sedgwick County votes for harmful intervention.

    Then, the public hearing for the formation of a new Community Improvement District (CID).

    Then, selection of the developer for the west bank apartments site. This is contentious; see this reporting: Clark group says city of Wichita acted in bad faith on west-bank plans, Wichita city manager’s letter offered support for Clark plan; mayor expresses concern, Developer of Arkansas River apartment project criticizes city’s handling of proposals, and Wichita council expected to choose developer Tuesday for Arkansas River’s west bank.

    Then, approval of the subsidy for discount carriers at the Wichita airport. The goal of this program, the Affordable Airfares program, is usually stated as “to provide more air flight options, more competition for air travel, and affordable airfares for Kansas.” Fares are probably lower — there’s no way to tell what they would be without this program — but this is certain: The number of available flights and seats available to Wichita flyers is declining, and at a rate faster than that of the nation. See here for an interactive visualization and discussion.

    Then, a public hearing on the Request for Resolution of Support for Application for Housing Tax Credits; Market and Main Apartments.

    Then, a proposal to grant a cash subsidy to United States Bowling Congress, Inc. so that Wichita can host the 2019 Tournament. City documents state “For cities to be competitive they must not only sell USBC on the merits of the community but be willing to offer financial support.” The amount contemplated is $650,000.

    Then, a public hearing on the 2013 budget.

    The council will receive the annual report on the city’s retirement plans. This has been placed on the consent agenda, meaning there will be no discussion unless a council member requests.

    There’s more, but these are the major items affecting the economy, jobs, prosperity, and economic freedom. And to top it off, at the start of the meeting the mayor will proclaim this as National Clown Week. Really.

  • Southeast High School decision a test of beliefs

    One aspect of the decision whether Wichita High School Southeast should be moved or renovated in place is this: What about the environment?

    We haven’t heard much about this, however. But there are many in Wichita that advocate against urban sprawl. The proposal to move Southeast High from its present location to a proposed site on the fringes of Wichita: This defines urban sprawl.

    There are also many in Wichita who support the sustainable communities initiative. A core tenet is that we’re spending too much on carbon-spewing transportation. The language is couched as “energy use and climate change,” but the clear meaning is that we’re burning too much gasoline and diesel fuel.

    Which is, of course, what powers school buses and cars. It’s undeniable that moving Southeast High Schools will result in increased transportation by auto and bus, and fewer students commuting to school by foot.

    moving-southeast-high-school

    Moving a school from a high-density urban location to a low-density suburban area: Isn’t this contrary to good urban planning? At least good urban planning as defined by the anti-sprawl, pro-sustainable communities crowd?

    To be sure, the Southeast decision is up to the board members of USD 259, the Wichita public school district. Many of them subscribe to the “green” agenda.

    Then, where are the members of the Wichita City Council and Sedgwick County Commission who voted for the sustainable communities initiative? The bureaucrats from the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University who are managing the process?

    If these people really believe in their anti-sprawl, anti-fossil fuel, pro-sustainable communities agenda, they need to make themselves heard on this issue.

  • Wichita needs more, and willing, taxpayers

    What is the goal of Wichita/Sedgwick County Community Investments Plan?

    And what of its companion websites for the South Central Kansas Prosperity Plan: Think Tomorrow Today and Let’s Talk Prosperity?

    Here’s an excerpt from “Citizen Attachment: Building Sustainable Communities,” which appeared in Government Finance Review. Authors are Mark A. Glaser, Misty R. Bruckner, and Corinne Bannon, all associated with the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University. HWS is facilitating the planning process for the city and county.

    citizen-attachment-cover

    (Nearby is the illustration used for the cover of this paper (click on it for a larger version). Does anyone else think this looks like citizens rallying to send money to the shining government headquarters high on the hill?)

    Increasingly, citizens are retreating from their responsibilities to community and demanding more from government than they are willing to pay for. But changes in local government behavior can be instrumental in reversing this trend, by strengthening citizens’ commitment to the well-being of their communities. Citizens who are committed to community are more willing to accept responsibility for the well-being of their fellow citizens and are also more likely to join with government and other parties to improve their communities. Citizens who are committed to community are also more willing taxpayers — that is, when government demonstrates that it can be trusted to invest public resources in ways that strengthen the community. The central thrust of this model is getting citizens and governments to work together, but realistically, many communities will require new revenue — including additional tax dollars — if they are to assemble the critical mass of resources necessary for meaningful change. Accordingly, citizens who are willing to pay increased taxes are an important component of building sustainable communities.

    More willing taxpayers.

    Citizens who are willing to pay increased taxes.

    I recommend you read this paper. Click on Citizen Attachment: Building Sustainable Communities.

  • REAP: We’ll plan for you, like it or not

    Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
    — H.L. Mencken

    We’ve learned that the government planners will plan for you, whether or not you want it. Despite having voted against participation, two Kansas counties are still included in a regional planning consortium.

    South Central Kansas Prosperity

    The new website thinktomorrowtoday.org promotes and supports the sustainable communities government planning process in South-Central Kansas. The planning effort has been rebranded as “South Central Kansas Prosperity.”

    In the logo, on a map, and in narrative, Butler and Sumner counties are listed as participants. But these newspaper headlines say something else about what the elected officials in these counties thought about joining the plan:

    Sumner County isn’t on board with fed’s sustainable communities planning grant

    Sumner County isn’t on board with fed’s sustainable communities planning grant (Wichita Eagle, July 30, 2012): “One of the counties served by a sustainable communities planning grant recently declined to be a partner in the effort, expressing concerns about federal intrusion in local government.”

    Butler County decides not to support REAP planning grant

    Butler County decides not to support REAP planning grant (El Dorado Times, August 23, 2012): “The issue at the center of the Butler County Commission’s discussion about a sustainable communities planning grant was local control.”

    I can understand why these counties decided to opt out of the planning process and why two Sedgwick County Commissioners voted against participation.

    Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole, in his book The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, explains the danger and harm of government plans. I remember two passages in particular:

    Somewhere in the United States today, government officials are writing a plan that will profoundly affect other people’s lives, incomes, and property. Though it may be written with the best intentions, the plan will go horribly wrong. The costs will be far higher than anticipated, the benefits will prove far smaller, and various unintended consequences will turn out to be worse than even the plan’s critics predicted.

    And this:

    The worst thing about having a vision is that it confers upon the visionary a moral absolutism: only highly prescriptive regulation can ensure that the vision overcomes an uncaring populace responding to a free market that planners do not really trust. But the more prescriptive the plan, the more likely it is that the plan will be wrong, and such errors will prove extremely costly for the city or region that tries to implement the plan.

    We see the vision of moral absolutism on display: Despite two counties voting against participation, their overseers will, nonetheless, create a plan for them.

    It’s for their own good, after all.

  • Without government, there would be no change: Wichita Mayor

    It’s worse than President Obama saying “You didn’t build that.” Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer tells us you can’t build that — not without government guidance and intervention, anyway.

    City of Wichita logoWhen President Barack Obama told business owners “You didn’t build that,” it set off a bit of a revolt. Those who worked hard to build businesses didn’t like to hear the president dismiss their efforts.

    Underlying this episode is a serious question: What should be the role of government in the economy? Should government’s role be strictly limited, according to the Constitution? Or should government take an activist role in managing, regulating, subsidizing, and penalizing in order to get the results politicians and bureaucrats desire?

    Historian Burton W. Folsom has concluded that it is the private sector — free people, not government — that drives innovation: “Time and again, experience has shown that while private enterprise, carried on in an environment of open competition, delivers the best products and services at the best price, government intervention stifles initiative, subsidizes inefficiency, and raises costs.”

    But some don’t agree. They promote government management and intervention into the economy. Whatever their motivation might be, however it was they formed their belief, they believe that without government oversight of the economy, things won’t happen.

    But in Wichita, it’s even worse. Without government, it is claimed that not only would we stop growing, economic progress would revert to a previous century.

    Mayor Carl Brewer made these claims in a 2008 meeting of the Wichita City Council.

    In his remarks (transcript and video below), Brewer said “if government had not played some kind of role in guiding and identifying how the city was going to grow, how any city was going to grow, I’d be afraid of what that would be. Because we would still be in covered wagons and horses. There would be no change.”

    When I heard him say that, I thought he’s just using rhetorical flair to emphasize a point. But later on he said this about those who advocate for economic freedom instead of government planning and control: “… then tomorrow we’ll be saying we don’t want more technology, and then the following day we’ll be saying we don’t want public safety, and it won’t take us very long to get back to where we were at back when the city first settled.”

    Brewer’s remarks are worse than “You didn’t build that.” The mayor of Wichita is telling us you can’t build that — not without government guidance and intervention, anyway.

    Many people in Wichita, including the mayor and most on the city council and county commission, believe that the public-private partnership is the way to drive innovation and get things done. It’s really a shame that this attitude is taking hold in Wichita, a city which has such a proud tradition of entrepreneurship. The names that Wichitans are rightly proud of — Lloyd Stearman, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, W.C. Coleman, Albert Alexander Hyde, Dan and Frank Carney, and Fred C. Koch — these people worked and built businesses without the benefit of public-private partnerships and government subsidy.

    This tradition of entrepreneurship is disappearing, replaced by the public-private partnership and programs like Visioneering Wichita, sustainable communities, Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, Regional Economic Area Partnership (REAP), and rampant cronyism. Although when given a chance, voters are rejecting cronyism.

    We don’t have long before the entrepreneurial spirit in Wichita is totally subservient to government. What can we do to return power to the people instead of surrendering it to government?

    Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, August 12, 2008:

    “You know, I think that a lot of individuals have a lot of views and opinions about philosophy as to, whether or not, what role the city government should play inside of a community or city. But it’s always interesting to hear various different individuals’ philosophy or their view as to what that role is, and whether or not government or policy makers should have any type of input whatsoever.

    “I would be afraid, because I’ve had an opportunity to hear some of the views, and under the models of what individuals’ logic and thinking is, if government had not played some kind of role in guiding and identifying how the city was going to grow, how any city was going to grow, I’d be afraid of what that would be. Because we would still be in covered wagons and horses. There would be no change.

    “Because the stance is let’s not do anything. Just don’t do anything. Hands off. Just let it happen. So if society, if technology, and everything just goes off and leaves you behind, that’s okay. Just don’t do anything. I just thank God we have individuals that have enough gumption to step forward and say I’m willing to make a change, I’m willing to make a difference, I’m willing to improve the community. Because they don’t want to acknowledge the fact that improving the quality of life, improving the various different things, improving bringing in businesses, cleaning up street, cleaning up neighborhoods, doing those things, helping individuals feel good about themselves: they don’t want to acknowledge that those types of things are important, and those types of things, there’s no way you can assess or put a a dollar amount to it.

    “Not everyone has the luxury to live around a lake, or be able to walk out in their backyard or have someone come over and manicure their yard for them, not everyone has that opportunity. Most have to do that themselves.

    “But they want an environment, sometimes you have to have individuals to come in and to help you, and I think that this is one of those things that going to provide that.

    “This community was a healthy thriving community when I was a kid in high school. I used to go in and eat pizza after football games, and all the high school students would go and celebrate.

    “But, just like anything else, things become old, individuals move on, they’re forgotten in time, maybe the city didn’t make the investments that they should have back then, and they walk off and leave it.

    “But new we have someone whose interested in trying to revive it. In trying to do something a little different. In trying to instill pride in the neighborhood, trying to create an environment where it’s enticing for individuals to want to come back there, or enticing for individuals to want to live there.

    “So I must commend those individuals for doing that. But if we say we start today and say that we don’t want to start taking care of communities, then tomorrow we’ll be saying we don’t want more technology, and then the following day we’ll be saying we don’t want public safety, and it won’t take us very long to get back to where we were at back when the city first settled.

    “So I think this is something that’s a good venture, it’s a good thing for the community, we’ve heard from the community, we’ve seen the actions of the community, we saw it on the news what these communities are doing because they know there’s that light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve seen it on the news. They’ve been reporting it in the media, what this particular community has been doing, and what others around it.

    “And you know what? The city partnered with them, to help them generate this kind of energy and this type of excitement and this type of pride.

    “So I think this is something that’s good. And I know that there’s always going to be people who are naysayers, that they’re just not going to be happy. And I don’t want you to let let this to discourage you, and I don’t want the comments that have been heard today to discourage the citizens of those neighborhoods. And to continue to doing the great work that they’re doing, and to continue to have faith, and to continue that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that there is a value that just can’t be measured of having pride in your community and pride in your neighborhood, and yes we do have a role to be able to help those individuals trying to help themselves.”

  • Language makes a difference

    No longer is it “Sustainable Communities.” Now it’s “South Central Kansas Prosperity Plan.” Either way, the program is still centralized government planning, with great potential to harm our economy and liberties.

    South Central Kansas Prosperity Plan

    The newly-renamed planning initiative has a new website set to launch in a few days — Let’s Talk Prosperity.

    But no matter how politicians and bureaucrats dress it up, we need to remember the roots of this program. It took from 1987 to 2012, but Sedgwick County actually adopted the language of the United Nations regarding sustainability.

    Those critical of sustainability planning are concerned that engaging in the practice has the potential to import harmful policies and practices originating from the United Nations. Critics of these critics say this is nonsense and overreacting. Tin-foil hat stuff, they say. Examples as reported in the Wichita Eagle come from Commissioner Dave Unruh and Commission Chair Tim Norton:

    Unruh said he sees the grant simply as an “effort to make decisions about our future for us and our future generations that will save money, conserve resources and be the best solutions for all the folks in our region.” …

    Norton said he sees the grant as a way to “look to the future, try to figure out best possible outcomes and make decisions today that will be good for tomorrow.”

    “We’re all in this together. You may not like the federal government. You may not like the state government. You may not even like the local government. But I like being at the table and being involved in the future.”

    He dismisses any connection to Agenda 21.

    “It was a non-binding agreement passed during the first Bush era,” he said of former president George H.W. Bush. “I don’t rail on President Bush because it happened on his watch. I’m not twitchy about it. I’m not worried about it.”

    It’s instructive to notice, however, that the language Sedgwick County uses when considering sustainability comes directly from the United Nations. General Assembly Resolution 42/187: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development holds this language: “Believing that sustainable development, which implies meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, should become a central guiding principle of the United Nations, Governments and private institutions, organizations and enterprises.” (emphasis added)

    Sedgwick County’s Sustainability Page holds this: Definition of Sustainability for Sedgwick County … Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs … (emphasis added)

    Sedgwick County left out the word “own,” but otherwise the language is identical. This definition was repeated on the county’s 2012 Employee Sustainability Survey.

    The Sedgwick County page — and other county documents — mention economic development, environmental protection, institutional and financial viability, and social equity as “the four core factors that Sedgwick County considers when making community policy and program management decisions.” These goals are often mentioned in Agenda 21 documents, especially social equity.

  • Wichita sees results of new economic development policy

    The first action under a new Wichita economic development policy doesn’t produce economic growth, and in fact, harms the Wichita economy.

    Government takes and gives

    A feature of Wichita’s recently-revised economic development policy grants property tax and sales tax forgiveness for speculative industrial buildings. These are buildings built without having a tenant in place. The proposed plan had a formula that grants a higher percentage of tax forgiveness as building size increases, but the council eliminated that and voted a 100 percent tax abatement for all buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.

    Given tax costs and industrial building rents, this policy gives these incentivized buildings a cost advantage of about 20 percent over competitors. That’s very high, and makes it difficult for existing buildings to compete. Probably no one will build these buildings unless they qualify for and receive this incentive.

    The city hopes that these incentivized buildings will generate new jobs in Wichita. But there appears to be nothing in the policy that prevents existing Wichita companies from moving to these buildings. If this happens, it doesn’t create any new jobs. The company that moves will save a lot in property taxes. Some other landlord in Wichita will have empty space, not through his own fault, but because of Wichita city policy.

    This is what has happened. The first tenant for the first building built under this incentive policy is a company already in Wichita. It’s simply moving its existing operations within the city. The Wichita Business Journal reports that an existing Wichita company will vacate its current space to move in to the new building. It will use about one-third of the available space. (Big industrial spec building signs first tenant)

    (Paying less in property taxes is good, as money remains in the private sector instead of being transferred to government. But city hall doesn’t believe this. Politicians and bureaucrats want to increase the tax base, but here is an example of giving it away.)

    Will the owners of speculative buildings rent only to companies newly moving to Wichita, or will they rent to whoever is willing to pay? Will Wichita companies want to move to a new building with cheaper rent? We now have answers to these questions. So far, the city’s new policy has simply moved jobs from one location to another, creating no new jobs. It has harmed landlords with existing buildings.

    Existing industrial landlords in Wichita — especially those with available space to rent — must be wondering why they attempt to stay in business when city hall sets up subsidized competitors with new buildings and a large cost advantage.

    Citizens must wonder about equality. A principle of taxation is that everyone pays equally, and that policy should be applied uniformly. But this program creates a special class of landlords and tenants who do not have to bear their full share of the cost of city, county, school district, and state government.

    Do incentives work?

    We must ask ourselves what do we really get for the cost of incentives. Alan Peters and Peter Fisher wrote an academic paper titled The Failures of Economic Development Incentives, published in Journal of the American Planning Association. A few quotes from the study, with emphasis added:

    Given the weak effects of incentives on the location choices of businesses at the interstate level, state governments and their local governments in the aggregate probably lose far more revenue, by cutting taxes to firms that would have located in that state anyway than they gain from the few firms induced to change location.

    On the three major questions — Do economic development incentives create new jobs? Are those jobs taken by targeted populations in targeted places? Are incentives, at worst, only moderately revenue negative? — traditional economic development incentives do not fare well. It is possible that incentives do induce significant new growth, that the beneficiaries of that growth are mainly those who have greatest difficulty in the labor market, and that both states and local governments benefit fiscally from that growth. But after decades of policy experimentation and literally hundreds of scholarly studies, none of these claims is clearly substantiated. Indeed, as we have argued in this article, there is a good chance that all of these claims are false.

    The most fundamental problem is that many public officials appear to believe that they can influence the course of their state or local economies through incentives and subsidies to a degree far beyond anything supported by even the most optimistic evidence. We need to begin by lowering their expectations about their ability to micromanage economic growth and making the case for a more sensible view of the role of government — providing the foundations for growth through sound fiscal practices, quality public infrastructure, and good education systems — and then letting the economy take care of itself.

    In 2008 Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit investigated spending on economic development. It found about the same as did Peters and Fisher.

    There is one incentive that can be offered to all firms: Reduce tax costs for all. The Tax Foundation report from last year should be a shrill wake up call to the city and state that we must change our ways.

    There is a lesson to be learned: Economic development incentives have a cost. Other businesses (and people) have to pay these costs. That only increases the motivation to seek incentives from the city and state. In fact, it may make it necessary to receive subsidies in order to be competitive with those companies who have incentives.

    All this raises the cost of government. It’s a spiral that leads to ever-increasing control of economic activity by city hall. If all this produced results, that would be one thing. But Wichita has been lagging in economic growth for many years. The results of the first project undertaken under a new Wichita economic development policy holds clues as to why Wichita lags behind.

    Wichita needs to build a dynamic economy that is based on free enterprise and entrepreneurship rather than government planning and handouts. This is the way we can have organic and sustainable economic development that will increase jobs and prosperity for everyone.