Should military bases help fund Kansas counties? This former US congressman thinks so | Opinion

Kansas is studded with military bases that don’t pay property taxes to the counties that host them.

Should they?

A former Wichita-area congressman thinks so, and is attempting to put together a coalition of counties that would lobby the federal government to make payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT, on military installations across the sunflower state.

Former U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, now a Washington lobbyist, is asking eight Kansas counties with a significant military presence to pay his company $3,000 a month to advocate for PILT on military bases, including McConnell Air Force Base at the southeast edge of Wichita, Fort Riley in Geary and Riley counties and Fort Leavenworth in Leavenworth County.

Sedgwick County commissioners David Dennis and Jim Howell recently participated in a video meeting with Tiahrt and several other counties, and Dennis told the rest of the commission about the proposal at a meeting on Wednesday.

Dennis, a 29-year veteran of the Air Force and retired colonel, was not enthusiastic about the county seeking more income from the air base.

“Remember, I’m retired military and I want to make sure that our defense budget meets the needs of the defense of our nation, and it’s not siphoned off for other things like sending tax money to counties,” he said. “Anything that siphons money away from the Department of Defense … that worries me.”

He said the base is the county’s fourth-largest employer, with about 9,300 employees, and that it accounts for an estimated $825 million in area economic impact.

“I do not want to ever do anything that (negatively) impacts the partnership we have with McConnell Air Force Base,” he said.

He said at a dinner Tuesday night, he bounced the idea off of congressional aides for Sen. Roger Marshall and Rep. Ron Estes and they hadn’t heard about it.

Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins also hadn’t heard about it, but their initial reactions were that it’s a bad idea, he said.

But Tiahrt makes enough of a case to justify at least taking a long, hard look at the proposal.

The principle here is that county governments, and county taxpayers, do have to provide some services to military bases in their midst.

McConnell provides a lot of its own police and fire services, but local courts handle cases that originate on the base and local governments build and maintain the road systems that provide the base with shipping access routes.

While that’s not a big a deal in Sedgwick County with its large population, tax base and budget, it’s a lot harder on smaller counties, Tiahrt said.

And payments in lieu of taxes is not a new concept to the federal government.

This year, the Department of the Interior is allocating $578 million to 1,900 state and local governments for payments in lieu of taxes — covering properties managed by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Forest Service and other agencies.

It’s been going on since 1976.

In fact, Sedgwick County gets a share of that, albeit a small one because there’s not much federal property here.

According to federal records, there are 1,031 acres of PILT-eligible property in the county, and the county will get a payment in lieu of taxes of $3,246 this year.

Statewide, the federal government controls about 550,000 acres in Kansas and pays $1.5 million in lieu of taxes.

Military installations are currently exempt from payments.

There is, however, a pilot project underway in which the Defense Department is offering grants to local governments to share the cost of general public infrastructure that supports military bases and the families who live there.

On Wednesday, the commission approved an application for about $9.8 million under the DOD’s Defense Community Infrastructure Pilot Program, to help fund a new $15 million Emergency Preparedness Center.

It’s a little unclear why applying for that grant is OK, but seeking payments in lieu of taxes would be siphoning money from our national defense.

The next step should be for Sedgwick County to figure out how many local tax dollars are funding services for the air base.

Once that’s established, then commissioners can make a more informed decision on whether Tiahrt’s payment in lieu plan is a good idea or not.

It may not ultimately be something Sedgwick County needs, but it would be a mistake to dismiss it out of hand.