Thunderstorms, some heavy during the morning hours, then skies turning partly cloudy during the afternoon. High around 85F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..
Tonight
A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
We’ve had a heckuva struggle this year with the local government over our reporting on their budgets. That’s essentially because they’re going to raise your tax bill by north of 10 percent, and they don’t like us reporting it that way. They prefer that we report that they’re lowering the tax RATE, which some of them are, or they prefer that we point the finger at somebody else – each other, the cops, the Republican legislature, the Democrat governor, or, I dunno, our reporters.
In this context came a press release last week from the county government that I found remarkable. I don’t want to blame any individual person for issuing that press release, or writing it the way it was written, or anything of the sort. They were just doing their jobs. Which is exactly my point.
The county’s public-relations staff issued the announcement that they were now projecting higher interest income from the money just lying around. That means, of course, that they figured they didn’t need as much property tax revenue to pay for the spending plan they’re developing.
The first paragraph:
“Riley County Commissioners approved an adjustment to the proposed 2024 budget during their meeting Thursday morning, August 24. The adjustment will lower the proposed 2024 mill levy for Riley County from 41.312 to 39.956. The change was made due to an expected increase in revenue from interest on the county’s cash balances and investments. The increase in expected revenue will result in a reduction of $1,075,000 needed in ad valorem taxes for 2024.”
Here’s the basic problem: That statement is crafted to imply that your taxes are going down. That is not going to be the case. The budget the county moved forward at that meeting involved a tax rate that would mean a 7 percent increase in the county’s property tax bill for a typical Manhattan homeowner. That’s because property values are generally up by 13 percent.
But this was not ever mentioned, or even hinted at.
If you rely on the government to report on itself, that’s what’s going to happen. You think the Clinton White House would have reported aggressively about Monica Lewinsky? You think the Nixon Administration would cover Watergate? The elected officials want to look good, and the bureaucrats want to keep their jobs.
Meanwhile, I don’t want to diminish our competitors, but it’s worth noting that two radio stations that purport to cover local news essentially copied and pasted the county’s statement into a what they call a story. They bit the hook. Nobody else, of course, paid any attention. Not the Topeka TV stations, not Facebook, not Google. Radio and television are entertainment media. Google and Facebook have no reporters and just use algorithms to tell you what you want to hear.
Only your local subscription-based newspaper, your source of independent professional journalism, managed to report what was actually happening. This is not because we are saints. It is because we are doing the job you pay us to do.
To the county staff’s credit, they issued a press release this week with a budget update that made mention (down deep in the statement) of the fact that tax bills would rise. My sense is this is because we called their bluff.
Local independent, subscription-based professional journalism matters, perhaps more than ever. Without it, you’d just have to swallow what the government gives you.
