From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week.

The debate over data centers is heating up across Kansas.

Why?

Sedgwick and Harvey counties are hitting the pause button on new tech facilities amid fears they could drain local resources.

Also, Governor Laura Kelly takes a victory lap in her final state of the state address.

She celebrates the historic chiefs deal but issues a warning to lawmakers about the toxic political climate.

But first, a heated showdown at Wichita City Hall.

The council rejects a last minute plea from the mayor to delay a sales tax vote, setting the stage for a high stakes special election in March.

That's what we're talking about right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jaren Cirillo.

Despite a last minute effort by the mayor to delay it.

The Wichita City Council is now pushing ahead with a special election on a 1% sales tax hike.

After a heated special meeting.

The council voted 5 to 2 to go ahead with the March 3rd special election.

Mayor Lily Wu called for a pause, citing a lack of guardrails and new concerns that 26,000 voters will be sent to temporary polling places.

And that, she says, could potentially cause confusion.

But Vice Mayor Dalton Glasscock argued that a delay would cost the city millions in deferred maintenance for crumbling fire stations and funding for homeless services.

Residents packed City hall to complain about the rushed process, and the $170,000 price tag of this special election now.

But the council ruled that changing course now would undermine the process.

Here to discuss this and some of the week's other local and state news is former Wichita City Councilman Brian Frye, Wichita Eagle opinion editor Dionne Lefler, state Representative Henry Helguson, and local community activist Faith Martin.

Thank you all for showing up today and joining us.

Brian Frye, I'll start with you as being a former former city Council member.

Boy, this is wrought with, confusion, misrepresentation.

It seems like, are you talking about the vote itself or or this whole the whole the whole subject?

Tell me your thoughts on first off, this action.

They've delay or they tried to delay it.

It's not going to happen.

So I applaud the mayor for taking the action.

Ideally.

And it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but I think that should have happened Friday during the agenda review when the subject first came up.

Should have asked to be put on Tuesday's agenda to have that discussion at that point.

That would have, you know, kept that other meeting from having to happen.

It was the right thing to do.

It's new information.

You talk about changing the game.

26,000 people are affected, and they deserve to have that opportunity as 10% of the votes.

There should have been that pause.

So I applaud her for taking that now would have done a little differently.

I think some council members were surprised by that, and that's unfortunate.

That goes back to talking to your colleagues and making sure that everyone knows what everyone's doing.

But that doesn't that go to the whole rushed process of this, this whole subject to begin with?

The council barely talked about this for two weeks before or after Wichita Forward brought it, brought it forward.

Well, so I mean, Laura Rainwater testified at the meeting Wednesday that she reached out to the city council or to the city legal back in mid-November about a special election.

So this wasn't that rushed.

There was a much more time to be able to talk and have this discussion.

It wasn't until late November that the council first heard about over the the the public first heard about the plan.

And then voted on it at the December meeting.

So that became very condensed.

But obviously there was discussion happening maybe late October, early November.

So there's also members.

Well, certainly by city staff.

Okay.

Interesting.

Faith, let me let me move over to you.

Thank you for coming.

By the way, today.

This is your first time on the show and you've been very active in local, city politics over the years.

Community response to this has been very negative.

When we talk about the mayor trying to slow roll this last this past week.

Community response to this has been extremely negative from day one.

Yes, but the entire council has just seemed like they're steamrolling forward no matter what.

That's how it feels.

I mean, I, I, I joked when I gave public comment this week, this past week that this is the fourth time that I've been here talking about this issue publicly.

And, it feels like people aren't getting listened to.

And I have a lot of respect for City council and the work that they do.

But there were some angry people that walked out of that special meeting on Wednesday.

Yeah, you're against the 1% sales tax.

So I also sat on the district advisory board, and I told them in that meeting because Wichita Forward came to District Tuesday and I said, you know, it's happening.

I will, do my due diligence and be an election worker.

But now that it's going to go to a vote, what happens if it passes?

What happens if it doesn't pass?

Those are the things I'm talking about with my communities.

And if it does pass, what a civilian oversight look like.

If it doesn't pass, how do we still address these issues that aren't being funded?

And the main complaint seems to me, from what I'm hearing anyway on the street is that there's no there's no plan, really.

There's just a bucket of money for public safety, a bucket of money for police, a bucket of money for fire, a bucket of money for homeless, a bucket of money for century two.

Does it need to be more detailed than that?

That was a lot of the conversations that were had in my community.

I feel like people felt like if it was five different ballot initiatives and you could vote on the thing that you cared about, obviously we'd fund public safety.

Obviously we'd fund homelessness.

Century two leave it up to the voters.

Another, Center Avenue.

Leave it up to the voters.

But there's some things that property tax relief is a real issue.

And I think bundling all those together really muddies the water.

If people don't know where to fall on that.

Now.

Faith, Dionne, Faith mentioned property tax relief.

And some are saying that, you know, the idea at the very beginning of this was that with the sales tax rising, there would be property tax relief.

Do you think that'll happen?

Yeah, I think that would happen.

But, I don't know if you read my column or not on I did too, but, this, this whole, you know, transferring, transferring taxation from property tax to sales tax, there are winners and there are losers there.

And the people who are the winners are the people with the biggest properties and the wealthiest people.

The losers are the renters because their property tax is baked into their rent and their landlord is not going to cut their rent because they're getting a windfall of sales tax money and getting their property value, getting their property tax lowered.

So that and the and the really funny thing was they've sold this as well.

You know, people from out of town will pay the sales tax.

Well the exact almost, you know, almost exact same amount will go out in property tax relief to out-of-state corporations, out of out of town landlords.

And so, I mean, it's basically a wash.

But, you know, the rich get richer and the renters get double taxed is what happens there.

And I think it's also important to mention as well as as, Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater brought forward, she she didn't say this specifically, but when you look into the precincts and the districts that are affected, these 26,000 voters that are affected, that will have to go to a different polling place, a large percentage of them are in lower income areas.

People that this this sales tax will arguably the most Henry question for all of you.

Oh where does it stand on the sales tax on food.

Yeah we know I'm playing devil's advocate on this because factored into their number I don't I think they figured that they were going to be able to collect on food.

They can't they can't they actually by the state law that was passed by.

Yeah.

They, they are not allowed to take food out of the equation.

When's the last time you've heard of the city council coming up with a policy like this and then coming to the legislature, because I volunteered in tax committee to introduce, and there were two of us to do it.

Come before us and say, we need you to get this done because we're having an election in two months and we need the exemption.

It is it is the most ludicrous thing that I've heard of in a long time to defend council.

It's not their plan.

They didn't come up with it.

Then why did they pass it in the first house?

No.

Then they're going allowing it to come to the vote, which is another issue.

You know, they have delayed intentionally and they've delayed other discussion about century two and what to do with homeless, because I've been part of those discussions.

They didn't want a solution because they want to have this opportunity to have this big, full blown plan that has a lot of problems.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So the devil's in the details.

Yeah.

And there's a billion details.

Well right.

That are not being addressed.

That's right.

Yeah that's true.

It doesn't seem like there's many details as far as what these projects will go through.

Now, does anybody at the table think this is going to pass on February or whatever.

Does anybody at the table.

No, no.

Very difficult path okay.

Let's see what happens.

Now.

Go ahead.

Let's put the caveat is there something that should come from this failure.

And that is exactly right.

Maybe citizens and council should come together and develop plans how to deal with the homelessness, how to deal with century two, how to deal with the things that need to be dealt with.

Yeah, absolutely.

But I have a fear we're going to move Wichita backward before we can move Wichita forward.

That may be.

Yeah.

And one last question, and I'm going to talk to Faith about this.

You mentioned the CIP and I learned this when I was on council.

You know, the CIP is the capital improvement program, a large list of basically wish list things for the city, but it includes fire stations, it includes art, it includes everything, everything.

And it's on this list.

That kind of will probably never see the light of day.

You know, I thought to move items of the Clapp Park master plan to out of the CIP into the main budget.

How do we how do we get to a place where we see these projects?

That includes very important things like police stations and fire stations and other things moved out of the CIP and actually in the budget, I think the best way that we could move forward is the guardrails that Wichita forward likes to talk.

Or as they presented around their plan, the the citizen Oversight Committee would make those guardrails.

I would like to see those guardrails around the CIP, because we know that the programs can fluctuate based on the budget.

So what oversight is there to make sure that the priorities are what the citizens want, and not just, well, this is how much we have, and this is what we're spending.

The only guardrail that exists is an ordinance that, allows for or doesn't allow for, has to have a set aside for art that is the only guardrail on the CIP art.

Okay, I'll we'll move on.

In her final state of the state address, Governor Laura Kelly took a victory lap celebrating the historic deal to bring the Kansas City Chiefs to Kansas.

But she also issued a stark warning against divisive politics, urging lawmakers to prioritize civility as they tackle issues like water and mental health.

Takes Piller Pedroza has the details from Topeka.

Please admit the Honorable Laura Kelly, governor of the state of Kansas.

Tuesday night was the last time Laura Kelly would hear those words as she entered the House chambers to deliver her final state of the state address.

She looked back at the successes in our state during her administration, from eliminating the Bank of CDot and refilling the state's coffers, to negotiating a deal to lure the chiefs over the river into Kansas.

The bipartisan team of leaders in this chamber, along with the local officials, we just recognized, and many members of my administration worked together to make this happen.

Republican leadership agreed.

The Chiefs deal was truly a bipartisan effort, but they had a slightly different view of some of the other bipartisan successes.

All the things that jumped out to me, honestly, in that speech were touting all the tax cuts for all of them.

But food and Social Security came over vetoes.

She vetoed every other tax cut that we put in front of her.

We overrode them.

Kelly talked a lot about bipartisanship and civility, saying it's critical for the state's future to defy the political divisiveness coming from our nation's capital.

We must have the courage to put what's right ahead of what's politically expedient.

We must have the courage to compromise ahead of party purity.

This moment in our politics requires it.

And she pointed out that during her time in office, the state has enacted, by her count, 587 bipartisan bills.

There is nothing but bipartisanship here, because if she got if she gets a chance to win, it came through us first.

And we're a supermajority, a legislature.

So everything is bipartisan.

The governor also outlined her hopes for the session and the state's future, including approving more money for special education in Kansas to cover the funds DC owes, but hasn't been paying and banning cell phones for kids in Kansas K-12 schools.

Get that bill to my desk and I will sign it into law.

That's something Republicans agreed on.

The cell phone bill was actually generated from the Republican side.

I'm glad.

I was actually glad to see her talk about that.

Kelly also called for more money to expand the state's mental health hospitals, and asked lawmakers to come up with a comprehensive plan to save the state's dwindling water supply.

The future of our entire state is dependent upon the actions we take today.

It will require looking beyond the next election and looking instead to the next generation.

But there's at least one thing Republicans say she missed.

She didn't mention property tax at all.

And that's everywhere I've gone in the state.

The property tax crisis has been the number one by far.

So, Henry Helgeson, I'll start with you.

First off, give me your initial thoughts.

What what did you think of Governor Kelly's final state of the state address?

Boy, that's a loaded question.

There's never been so much partizanship in that in that chamber.

Yes.

There's a desire for civility, by all parties.

But, you know, I think the Democrats, Republicans work well, it's the executive branch that doesn't work well with the legislature.

You know, and and I'm a little bit on the outside, I'll be very blunt about that.

I believe that we should have spent more time on developing property tax reduction.

I think that the chief's deal is going to be a destructive element for the state of Kansas.

You don't make a decision for venture capitalists of $6.8 million.

Hide all the information to, from to the general public to the press.

You don't have any ideas what it is.

Nobody does and think that you're going to fly off to New York and make the state a good place to live.

We could have done a lot of other things without $8 million.

We could have made billions.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

My mistake.

Yeah, $8 billion.

And we could have gone and made an effort to try to correct the problems we have in our region system.

We could deal with school finance, which is going to come up next year, which is going to be the most divisive issue that we will have.

And probably in the next 20 years.

There are there are problems that aren't being talked about.

Yeah.

Diane, I couldn't help but notice that Dan Hawkins and Ty Masterson are talking about bipartisanship while trying to take credit for everything that happened and trying to blame the governor for everything else.

Yeah, that was that was a little bit, weird, wasn't it?

The you know, it's like, well, everything is bipartisan because we have a veto proof legislature.

So we, as the Republicans can do anything that we want as long as we can keep our caucus together.

That's that's today was silly, but, yeah, the you know, I mean, the chief thing.

Yeah.

You know, it's it's fun, you know, but, you know, friends of mine around the country are like, you know, there are two Kansas cities here, right?

Exactly.

You know, I mean, it's a big deal around here, but, you know, I mean, nationally, okay, well, whatever.

You know, it's it's and the, you know, the the thing is, I mean, these these stadium deals never pay more than they.

Yeah, they never bring in more than we pay for them.

No.

Good point.

Faisal, I'll move over to you.

And and you bring an interesting perspective.

We I don't know if we've had a libertarian at this, at this table, but you are a libertarian.

So tell us your perspective on what's going on right now and the governor's final state of the state speech.

So I agree that there's not enough civility.

Honestly, people don't want to get involved in local, elections, politics, civic engagement because they're it's ugly and people are tired of it.

So I agree with her on that.

I also agree with Diane that I think the football stadium is going to be a hoot, both of you.

It's going to be a huge debacle that's going to end up costing us.

And if Republicans really cared about what people were talking about, I appreciate the conversation around property tax relief.

But almost 80% of Kansans want to legalize cannabis.

Medical, recreational doesn't matter.

It is so silly for us to keep walking away from that issue when it is.

Talk about bipartisan.

That's an issue that easily could be.

Health care is a huge issue that keeps coming up.

Mental health, care.

We have so many other issues that are not gender, driver's license and football stadiums.

As a libertarian, the least amount of government involvement in my life is what I'm looking for, and it feels like we're not getting that.

Brian Fry anything else to add on this?

No.

I love the spirit of the governor's speech.

And as council member, that's what I always tried to do as well try to work across the aisle and find common ground and and figure out how to best govern that way.

That's when I was the most successful.

And I didn't care about an R or a D. As a council member, you're not supposed to, and I think that's the way it should be looked at.

It's supposed to represent the people who elected you.

Yeah.

All right.

Our next story.

They promised high tech jobs and investment, but critics say they could drain local water supplies and strain the power grid.

The debate over data centers is now exploding across Kansas.

Sedgwick County approved a 90 day moratorium on new applications this week, and that gives officials time, they say, to study concerns about noise and energy demands.

Harvey County went even further, adopting a pause through 2028.

Meanwhile, a fight is brewing in rural Barbour County, where Google is eyeing a site for a new data center.

There.

That's sparking fears from residents who say they're worried it will forever change their farming community.

This kind of sounds like a similar argument with data centers about solar panels and windmills.

We we've been having this argument for decades, but this is the biggest case of of governmental schizophrenia that I think I've ever seen.

Because we passed SB 98, I believe was the number that provides a 20 year sales tax exemption on all their on all the, equipment and services for these places.

And guess what?

They said, okay, we'll take that.

You know, and what they have to provide is $250 million of investment and 20 jobs.

20 yeah.

That's it.

And the thing is, it's like when you look at a data center, the value in a data center is not the building, not the structure.

The value in the data center is what's inside it.

And that that's all portable.

So you know, and you know, the other thing too is, is the energy thing.

Well, you know, if we need energy to run data centers, then why did we all get taxed to build a power line, to take the power that's generated in Kansas City, Missouri way?

Yeah, whatever.

You know, and it's just, you know, I mean, the whole thing, it's just this, this whole, you know, it's like, yeah, come here, come here, come here.

And then no, don't come here.

Yeah.

You know, and didn't, didn't the Sedgwick County I believe Sedgwick County had maybe it was Tyson.

It wasn't solar farms, it was Tyson.

Yeah.

We had there was a lot of talk about Tyson Chicken coming to southwest Sedgwick County.

And the residents shot that down as well.

Henry, as far as revenue generation, this seems like a good idea.

The cannabis to, you know, at the all of these things to raise revenue that it seems residents aren't in favor of it in certain data centers anyway.

Maybe not cannabis, but all of these things to generate revenue that aren't going to happen.

It sounds like, well, how do we make it?

This was an $18 million fiscal note.

As I remember last year, and several of us spoke against it because we don't think it's necessary.

We don't think it's good for the environment, we don't think it's good for the general population, and we don't want to give up $18 million to brand these facilities, you know, but lobbying in Piqua can make a difference.

It made it with the Chiefs.

It makes it with the data centers.

And, you know, that's part of the reasons we don't have enough money to do the things we want because we give tax breaks.

Yeah.

Bryan Frye, do you think the county was in the right here?

Oh I think absolutely.

It's the right to take a pause on this.

I currently share the map, see the Planning Commission.

We have not had any applications for data centers.

And I think it's a good thing that the county did this pause so they can review it.

You know, we hear the concern about the water use as a community that just suffered through a horrible drought and what it did to Lake Cheyney.

What could a data center create, undue stress on that?

I think you have to take a pause and really make sure you dive into it.

So is any comments here?

Yeah.

I think from a citizen perspective, the process how solar was taken, it was a long process with lots of citizen feedback.

I actually talked to Jim before the meeting on Wednesday, and I said, it's not that I'm against private properties because some private property owners want to have these, but if we your private property rights end where my private property rights begin.

And so if we don't do our due diligence at the the county level to ensure that the citizens of Sedgwick County will not be negatively impacted and do our due diligence to get public feedback, then we're just governments picking winners and losers.

A federal complaint has been filed against a Kansas elementary school now over allegations that a staff member censored students for choosing Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk as their heroes.

The conservative group A, C, L, J says a guidance counselor at Marshall Elementary in Eureka ordered students to erase their names, reportedly telling them the Kirk quote was not a hero.

The school is calling the incident unintended confusion.

But the legal group is now asking the Department of Justice to investigate claims of political discrimination and free speech violations.

Faith, I'll start with you.

This is this is an touchy subject.

We're dealing with children now, and, politics, entering the schools.

We know.

Do we want we?

I don't think we want that, do we?

Well, I think two things can be true.

I think someone can think that a person is a bad person, but also it's not the public or government's right to limit speech.

So, do I think he was a great person?

Would I be okay if my kid was running around saying their hero was somebody I didn't agree with?

No, but it's a public school.

We do not.

Government does not ever have the right to limit free speech even with children, right?

Absolutely.

I can't say it any better than what she just said.

Yeah.

So it's interesting, though, that, you know, this is happening in a smaller town as well.

Eureka.

Where were you weren't travels faster in small towns as well.

Henry, anything else to add?

No, it's I think it was a bad decision.

Correct it and go on.

We want to encourage, someone to reach out to the community and say we should encourage people to highlight what's good about the lives of people in the Republican Party, people in the Democrat Party.

And if they're in no politics, tell people why they're good and have kids.

Learn from that book.

Interesting.

If you read the complaint, even how they tried to correct it went awry and added to the complaint.

So it's very ugly situation there now Dion go ahead.

Well I mean.

We're talking about a sixth grade class in a school in a very small district in a fairly, you know, in a state with a lot of school districts and, you know, the the term tempest in a teapot comes to mind.

Yeah.

I mean, if we can, you know, solve this at the local level, that would be best for everyone.

But in these politically charged times, something like this, that was probably a mistake that somebody made.

And then they realized, oh man, now I'm in trouble because one of the kids wrote Charlie Kirk on the board.

So what am I going to do?

You know, I mean, really is this, you know, is this even worth arguing about at this point?

But if it's happening here, what else is it happening?

I mean, you have to start speaking out probably nowhere.

Yeah.

And let's face it, you know, children are going to take after their parents.

And, you know, usually what's what's happening in the household.

Children are going to take after that.

And, you know, the teacher, it seems like.

Yeah, maybe you had a hard time reading the room.

I don't know, I worked on the Richard Nixon campaign when I was in sixth grade.

You know, it's like it explains a lot.

Yeah.

I just need to turn the temperature down.

Yeah, I think it's.

So people are so quick to escalate, and we just need to turn the temperature down.

And that's where the civility comes in.

The other side.

I think it'd be very temperature raised though.

A little grace.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much Brian Frye Dion Lefler, Henry Helguson and Faith Martin for their insights.

I'm Jared Zarrella.

We'll see you back next week.