JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I’m afraid we’re about to see a blink-and-you-just-missed-it sales tax election in Kansas City.

That is unfortunate and discouraging.

On Tuesday, a very low number of people will go to the polls to vote on Question 1, which would increase the existing Fire Department sales tax from a quarter-cent to a half-cent. (An election board official told me today he was estimating a 6 percent to 8 percent voter turnout.)

I expect the proposal to pass. That, too, is discouraging.

Like many incremental sales taxes, this one sounds like it doesn’t amount to much. It does.

:: If voters approve Question 1, the sales tax in much of Kansas City would go from 8.61 percent to 8.86 percent, or nearly 9 percent. It is higher in certain commercial areas, including the Plaza and Downtown.

:: An extra quarter-cent would raise about $21 million a year, or about $315 million by 2036, when the full half-cent tax would be scheduled to expire.

(And, believe me, it probably won’t expire then; once these taxes are set, voters almost always renew them.)

This is a bad, bad tax proposal, one of the worst I’ve seen in my 50 years in Kansas City. The City Council, which hurriedly approved putting this on the ballot, should be ashamed of itself. But it’s not because, as usual, a Council majority fears retribution at the polls from Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Along with the African-American group Freedom Inc., the fire fighters control the largest block of votes in the city. And Freedom is arm-in-arm with the fire fighters on this proposal. The organization either has been paid or will be paid tens of thousands of dollars by a committee affiliated with Local 42 to help get out the vote on Kansas City’s east side.

This is a bad proposal for two main reasons:

:: The sales tax is the most regressive tax of all; it hits hardest those who can least afford to pay. And yet its often the easiest one to get passed.

:: This is an ambush by the fire fighters and a large majority of the City Council, including Mayor Quinton Lucas, who was out of town when the Council approved the election and refused to speak out against it. (He had told The Star before he was elected mayor that he was against any new taxes.)

The ambush aspect is particularly galling. Let me walk you through the elements of this lightning bolt…

— At the Jan. 16 City Council meeting, Councilwoman Katheryn Shields, now in her 13th year on the Council (two terms earlier and second term this go-round) introduced an ordinance calling for an election on this issue. As far as I know, no one in the media picked up the story, and, as a result, the vast majority of the public had no idea it was on the Council’s radar.

— The following Wednesday, Jan. 22, the ordinance came before Shields’ finance committee, and Fire Chief Donna Maize told the committee the department needed nearly $80 million for immediate and long-term station improvements and for equipment, including new trucks, pumpers and ambulances. The committee unanimously approved the ordinance, and The Star had its first story about the tax proposal that afternoon.

— The next day, Jan. 23, seven days after the ordinance was introduced, it went to the full Council and was approved on a 10-2 vote. (Voting “yes” — besides Shields — were Kevin O’Neill, Heather Hall, Teresa Loar, Dan Fowler, Brandon Ellington, Lee Barnes Jr., Kevin McManus, Andrea Bough and Ryana Parks-Shaw. Voting “no” were Melissa Robinson and Eric Bunch. And, as I said, Lucas was absent.

Normally, tax proposals emerge from City Hall after weeks or months of planning, deliberation and public discussion.

The fact that this measure blew through the Council like a tornado, with little or no public input, clearly shows the goal was to keep the measure under wraps as much as possible.

Years ago, The Star would have sniffed this out and exposed it when it surfaced, but, as we all know, The Star has lost the bulk of its editorial staff, as well as much of its core readership.

Where The Star used to stand as a bulwark against government-launched “trick plays” and other abuses, its influence is now greatly diminished. I expect The Star’s editorial page to come out against Question 1, but here we are four days before the election and it hasn’t happened yet. And now it’s probably too late.

**

In addition to successfully rushing this measure onto the ballot, the Council majority and the fire fighters got another favorable break with the spread of the coronavirus. As it should, the pandemic has taken front and center in everyone’s lives, and few people are paying attention to local government, except how it is dealing with the epidemic.

As a result, many people, I’m sure, are not even aware of Tuesday’s election, much less Question 1. Furthermore, many of those who are aware of it are probably leery about going to the polls. It’s possible we’ll see a record low turnout, possibly less than 10 percent of registered voters.

But I’ll tell you who will be going to the polls — the fire fighters, their relatives, their friends and others who are connected to them in any way. They are a powerful and relentless political force, and they vote in their interests. Along with Freedom Inc.’s help on the East Side, they should carry the day.

The firefighters have been sending out full-color mailers (see example below) focusing not on the tax but on how “our fire fighters are responding to the pandemic” and how voters can safely vote on Tuesday.

It is an ingenious approach — minimizing the tax and maximizing what the fire fighters are known for, ensuring public safety.

It’s also a con. But the fire fighters have just as much experience swaying the public as they do protecting it.

For what it’s worth, I strongly recommend a “no” vote on Tuesday. We should not let the fire fighters and the Council members who brazenly rammed this proposal onto the ballot play us for fools.