Kansas lawmakers mandate county services but scrutinize property taxes that pay for them

TOPEKA — County government is boring.

Except when it isn’t.

People depend on law enforcement, health departments, trash collections, recordkeeping and other services counties provide — but they only notice when a service fails.

And they don’t like to pay for the services.

State lawmakers especially don’t like to pay for the services.

The situation creates tension between state and local governments: State statutes require counties to provide 18 core services, but legislators have increasingly placed scrutiny on counties for assessing the property taxes that largely pay for them.

Bruce Chladny, executive director of the Kansas Association of Counties, and Jay Hall, the association’s deputy director and general counsel, talked about that strain during a recording of the Kansas Reflector podcast.

“We’re trying to have conversations with the state,” Chladny said. “They’re open to having conversations with us, but quite frankly, we don’t know what that magic formula looks like. We don’t know. Where do you get money from out of nothing?”

Legislators have floated various proposals in recent years to place a lid on local property tax collections. This year, the Senate has approved a constitutional amendment that would cap annual increases in appraised property values.

But legislators also have eliminated a number of programs that funneled state revenue to counties. The bipartisan tax cut package that lawmakers passed in a special session last summer, for instance, erased the Local Ad Valorem Tax Reduction Fund, which the state hadn’t funded in 20 years anyway. The fund was supposed to lower local property taxes.

County governments are left with an array of unfunded or underfunded mandates.

The state requires each of its 105 counties to provide a public health department, emergency management operations, solid waste planning, mental health services and various licenses, including marriage.

They must provide a sheriff’s office, coroner services, a jail, criminal prosecution and district courts.

They have to provide property valuations, collect property taxes and record property at a register of deeds.

They have to administer elections, maintain roads and bridges, control floods, and eradicate noxious weeds.

Local property taxes pay for 56% of those services, according to the Kansas Association of Counties. That doesn’t include the cost of infrastructure, such as maintaining a county courthouse where services are housed. Other sources of revenue include sales taxes and fees, but many fees — such as vehicle registration fees — don’t pay for the full cost of the service.

The state provides a fraction of overall county funding, including stipends for health and emergency management departments.

If it sounds boring, it is.

Or, the way Hall sees it, it only seems boring because these services are necessary.

“They’re easy to ignore because most of the time they’re working very well, and we just kind of let that exist in the background, rather than really worrying about it,” Hall said. “Because, our elections run smoothly. Taxes are collected. Roads are taken care of.

“When we call 911 and somebody picks up on the other end, we don’t really think about what it takes to run those types of services. Now, if we called 911 and no one picked up, everyone would be upset, but that’s because we have the expectation. And counties consistently fulfill the expectation that there will be somebody on the other end of that line when you call 911, that the sheriff will come and take care of things, that the county roads and bridges will be maintained. Those are just the natural expectations.”

One of the association’s priorities this year is to educate state lawmakers and the public about the obligation counties have for legally required services.

“I try to remind people that at the local level, dollars equal services,” Hall said.