Several Lawrence companies are not fulfilling the promises they made when the City Commission granted them tax abatements, but their tax breaks shouldn’t be revoked, members of a city committee agreed Thursday.

The city’s Public Incentives Review Committee reviewed data from all 12 companies that have property tax abatements with the city and found many had not delivered as many jobs as they projected when they applied for the abatement, or they were paying wages that were below area averages.

“I know we have never wanted to be heavy-handed, but I think there is quite a bit of noncompliance,” said City Commissioner Mike Rundle, who serves on the review committee. “Maybe this body needs to look at how we can do this better.”

Most committee members, though, said they were not ready to start revoking tax breaks or modifying the terms of the tax abatements.

“I think there are definitely a number of companies that didn’t meet their goals,” said Mayor Boog Highberger, another committee member. “But I didn’t see any evidence of bad faith. We don’t want to punish people for downturns in the business cycle that they aren’t responsible for.”

Not all committee members were as generous in their assessments. Committee member Kirk McClure, an associate professor in urban planning at Kansas University, said he was concerned businesses were taking advantage of the system.

“Firms know they can promise much and deliver very little with impunity,” McClure said. “But what we should focus on now is how to prevent this type of failed economic development from happening in the future.”

McClure said he did not think it would be productive to attempt to make changes to abatements for businesses currently out of compliance because they have been allowed to be out of compliance for too long.

The committee did not produce a list of companies it believed were out of compliance, but members asked questions about two in particular. Microtech Computers failed to return a required questionnaire detailing its employment totals and salary levels. It is the second year in a row that the company has missed the deadline, City Clerk Frank Reeb said.

2004 Tax Abatement Report (.pdf)

But committee members said they were willing to assume that Microtech simply had committed an oversight by not submitting the report. It gave the company 60 days to complete the report or else face possible action by the city.

Committee members also questioned job totals at DST Systems. The financial services company on Dec. 31 had 29 fewer employees than it had projected when it applied for the abatement in 2000. That was the largest gap between projections and reality among any of the companies.

Attempts to reach officials at Microtech and DST Systems were unsuccessful.