Sedgwick County tax exemptions

Unlike the City of Wichita, Sedgwick County has kept track of its tax exemptions.

As part of an effort to increase efficiency and management of Sedgwick County government, former county manager Michael Scholes implemented numerous changes, as detailed in the document Efficiencies in Sedgwick County government. One management effort was described as this:

Developed a tax system and business intelligence query to identify Industrial Revenue Bonds (IRB) & Economic Development (EDX) tax exemptions and report foregone property tax revenues for Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 77 reporting. The report provides the ability to report by tax authority, company, and real or personal property for one (1) or up to four (4) years. Prior reporting was time consuming and error prone; requiring manual data entry into Excel spreadsheets.

The county has not made this report available on its website. To access this report in an alternative manner, click here

The City of Wichita, to my knowledge, does not provide information like this, except as a total amount in the city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). (The city and county numbers are not in agreement, and by a large amount.)

Of note, the mayor’s page on the Wichita city government website holds “Mayor Longwell has championed many issues related to improving the community including government accountability, accessibility and transparency …” So far, the mayor’s leadership and stewardship has not produced this level of information.

Of further note, a majority of the Sedgwick County Commission decided to fire Michael Scholes.