The Riley County employee says a new state bill to help people understand where their tax dollars go will, in turn, cost taxpayers more money to implement.
Riley County and Manhattan city officials met for a joint meeting Thursday to discuss the possible “unintended consequences” of passing the Senate bill to 13 residents if a municipal entity’s budget exceeds what is known as the “revenue-neutral rate” for a local one Property tax could exceed.
Rich Vargo, a Riley County employee, said the new law, which comes into effect next year, is designed to educate people about how their tax dollars are being used and encourage them to attend household hearings for local authorities to “share their opinions to express what they want ”. financed and what they do not want financed. “
During the meeting, Vargo said there were still many questions to be answered about how this new legislation will affect the budgeting process for facilities like the Riley County Police Department and local libraries.
“It will affect all taxpayers because ultimately it will cost money to do that extra step of sending out the mailings,” said Vargo. “Next year it will cost us (Riley County) more than $ 18,000 to send out these statements; these are additional expenses for our budget that the taxpayers will pay. “
Vargo said it will cost an additional $ 30,000 to update the county’s computer software to reflect the changes in the calculations resulting from the new law.
“It’s extra work, extra process, extra cost, because of what state lawmakers believe is necessary,” Vargo said.
A Revenue Neutral Rate (RNR) is a tax rate that, using the entire assessed valuation from the current tax year, is intended to generate the same income from property taxes as in the previous year. The rate would be lower when property valuations are rising and higher when valuations are lower.
SB 13 outlines the new steps that municipal bodies must take if they want to exceed the revenue-neutral rate. This process begins by notifying the district official of the intention to exceed the RNR. Next, notices must be published on a city’s website and in the newspaper by September 10th and 10 days before the scheduled household hearing. During this time, information emails are sent to people.
A tax rate and budget hearing must be held by September 20 to give taxpayers the opportunity to comment on the budget. Then the company must adopt a resolution or regulation confirming that its budget exceeds the RNR and finally the proposed budget can be adopted.
Vargo said local city and county commissioners have budget hearings and working meetings every year, but the public “just doesn’t listen” to them.
“Well, we’ll see,” said Vargo. “Next year will be the first test of this if these mailings help train the public so that they tend to come to these budget hearings and express their views.”
Vargo said the Manhattan and Riley County governments will obey state laws “whether we like it or not”.
“Everyone agrees that the public needs to be aware of this,” said Vargo. “That is why we have our full budget on our website and all of our hearings are open according to the law.”
Neutral tax notifications will be sent to all Kansas taxpayers starting next year. Riley County’s commission chairman John Ford said the new law was discussed at length during a conference for Kansas commissioners last week. He said the common theme of the three-day conference was that state lawmakers “is the greatest obstacle we really face right now as a whole”.
“To me, modeling Utah and Tennessee laws is … economically, we are not all the same,” said Ford. “The challenges and problems we face are not all created equal.”