Please share -- The Olathe City Council broke the law when passing their $100 million sales tax increase. A day before the vote of the city council, they added language to the ballot question, which EXPANDED the ways that the tax money could be spent. But an Olathe voter would have never known that the changes were made, because these changes were never mentioned (by mouth or in print) the night of the city council meeting. Thats illegal. Any state legislature or US Congress would have re-voted. This is a case of the cover up is worse than the crime. Im confident that the initial error was a mistake, but the city council made it much, much worse by putting the incorrect ballot language on the citys Web site throughout the election, and in the minutes of the city council meeting. Voters would not have known the correct language unless they would have read the legally-required advertisement in The Olathe Daily News (the what?... oh, that smaller version of the already-shrunken KC Star...) or on the election office Web site, or on the final ballot they received in the mail. At least 2 weeks passed between the final vote of the city council (August 6), and the earliest that it would have appeared on the election office Web site (somewhere from August 23 and Sept 1). Heres my summary for the meantime: Update on the Olathe tax vote from November 12 -- its worse than we ever knew. The mayor and city council broke the law when first voting on the $100 million, 10-year, 33% sales tax increase. My PAC got involved in the tax measure, because it is a 33% tax increase on the local portion of the sales tax, and because the mayor and city councilmen never justified why they needed more money. Also, grade school math will tell you that when a city is growing in population, and property taxes are already increasing at a rate faster than inflation in most years, and sales taxes are keeping up with inflation and population growth, they already have enough money. ANY business and ANY family could balance this budget, but for unexplained reasons the Olathe city government CANNOT seem to balance a budget, and they claim to need an additional $9 million... why, we dont know why. Because is never a good reason to increase a tax. Add on the fact that sales taxes hurt the poor and middle class the most, and this economy is already devastating for these citizens -- the Olathe city council is kicking them when theyre down. Now we learn this -- The City Council of Olathe broke the law to pass the $100 million tax vote. What Mayor Copeland and the city management did would not be allowed in the state legislature or the US Congress. At minimum, the city council and city attorney violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act (KOMA). It was presented to the public as a maintenance vote. But the words upgrade and improve were added to the ballot language on Monday, August 5 -- the day before the Tuesday, August 6, vote of the city council when they placed it on the November 12 ballot. The Monday, August 5, meeting was a non-televised work session that was technically public but I expect was not attended by anyone else in the public. On Tuesday, August 6, the language was not read aloud (for the few public audience members and others watching on TV) but was voted on. The printed packets available to the public at the meeting contained the incorrect language. Throughout the ENTIRE election prior to the November 12, the citys own Web site contained the incorrect language. The minutes of the August 6 meeting (available on Olathes Web site) contain the incorrect language. There is currently NO PHYSICAL PROOF that the city council even VOTED on the correct language. At minimum, the city should have re-voted on the matter. Re-votes are common in state legislatures and the US Congress, when they realize that an amendment that was intended to be added, was not yet added. The so-called citizens committee, which was funded by people who will profit from the tax increase, also mailed postcards containing the incorrect ballot language. Finally, the city attorney and city council violated their own city ordinances, to allow the citizens committee to place their Vote Yes signs closer to the streets than whats allowed for anybody else. According to Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby, the ballot language (the correct one) was placed on jocoelection.org sometime between August 23 and September 1. So, the earliest that a member of the public would have known the correct language was August 23, and only if they visited jocoelection.org. In reality, nearly every voter would have been misled until they got the ballot in the mail, containing language that was never legally voted on by the city council, and containing language that was different than what was on the citys taxpayer-funded Web during the election. Interestingly, it only passed because of wealthy voters, because of Democratic voters, and because of a large amount of trust that many otherwise-conservative voters have when the city says, Trust us, we need more money. That trust is now severely eroded. The Olathe tax increase passed by 57%-43%, a lot more narrowly than a similar tax vote in Overland Park (at 72%-28%) on October 8 of this year. My PAC got involved in the Olathe one; we were not involved in the Overland Park one (we have limited resources, of course); you see the difference in the result. I polled the election while it was going on, and the low turnout helped the tax increase pass. Under-50 voters (who vote less frequently) opposed it, and the poor and middle class opposed it. It passed by 57%-43% only after tens of thousands of tax dollars were spent by the city to promote the tax (legal but unethical). Olathe is a young area, and this shows during the fall elections every 2 years. But with the turnout only at 32%, the November 12 electorate was much older than what is represented in the overall electorate. I estimate that about 35% of the November 12 voters were under the age of 50. There will be more on this in the weeks to come. Thank you.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 21:31:22 +0000
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