Wichita Business Journal grants city council excess power

The Wichita Business Journal and the City of Wichita team to provide incorrect coverage and missing analysis.

Today the Wichita Business Journal reported: “An $11.5 million expansion of the Wichita operations of BG Products has been given the go-ahead. The Wichita City Council on Tuesday approved the expansion plan and issued industrial revenue bonds for the project.” ¹

The problem with this reporting is that BG Products was not asking for the city’s permission to expand its operations, as the first sentence implies. Nor did the council approve an expansion plan, as the second sentence plainly states.

Instead, today the council granted BG Products an exemption from paying property taxes estimated at $204,280 per year for the next five years, and possibly another five years. This is how the industrial revenue bond program works in Kansas. Cities do not lend money. Instead, they grant exemptions from paying taxes. ²

(BG has agreed to pay $5,143 per year, the present taxes on a building being razed.)

While the agenda packet for the meeting specified BG’s plans for the bond proceeds, the proposed uses of the funds have little — nothing, really — to do with qualifying for IRBs. ³

So it’s curious as to why the agenda packet details the company’s plans for the bond proceeds. It’s even more curious why city economic development analyst Tim Goodpasture spent quite a bit of time briefing council members on these plans. Except: His Twitter handle is @goodybagict.

While the agenda packet supplies the estimated amount of property tax exemption granted to BG products, the city’s analysis makes no mention of the amount of sales tax BG may escape paying. Sales tax exemptions are another feature of IRBs in addition to property tax exemptions. While the city’s analysis doesn’t mention sales tax, section 5 of the ordinance passed by the council states the city has determined BG is entitled to a sales tax exemption of unspecified amount.

Since the city’s analysis of the proposal did not include mention of sales tax, we’re left to wonder whether the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research incorporated the sales tax exemption in the analysis it performs for the city.

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