If one didn't already know that Corliss wasn't an elected official, the way he speaks out the side of his mouth certainly would make one believe he was.

Come on Dave, you darn well know that each and every year for decades when the County Clerk set the county real property valuation at even higher and higher values, the Commission, your former boss, and you beat your collective chests about how you all held the line on taxes and didn't raise the mil levy. While that may be technically accurate, you know that you didn't have to increase the levy since you kept on appropriating homeowners' money when the value of houses increased thousands of dollars each year. Also, funny how valuations went up by tens of thousands of dollars during the great economic boom in a few short years, but has only decreased a few hundres bucks since the Great Recession started over 4 years ago.

While I don't agree with Brownback's policies very often, I do like the fact that as a resident in a community in which my elected officials and City Manager seem to care less about financial restraint, I welcome the requirement that my local Good 'Ole Boys don't get an automatic tax increase year after year just because the County Clerk says my house is worth more.

Gaughan, please call it what it is... taxpayer money. Revenue is something businesses make, pay out to their employees, and invest to grow their business. Taxes are what are confiscated from the aforementioned entities and then wasted by politicians like yourself.

You voted to give Mr. Compton the tax abatement for the Masonic Temple matter because you, along with others, determined that it would return 1.5 dollars for every dollar wasted by you and yours. My recollection is that a church is going in there. Care to crunch those numbers again? I bet you didn't even put a provision that outlay of taxpayer money to require that to get the tax money, a "revenue" generating business that would 'increase' the tax base would have to be located there. Did ya?

SRS as an example, uh? Taxpayers remember that fiasco as well Mr. Gaughan. I recall how you and yours didn't even bother to negotiate with our local 1-percenter Mr. Schwada to lower the annual lease payment when he was in a position to renegotiate. Frankly, your leadership is suspect and business knowledge horrendous. I recently read how Mr. Schwada is as tough a negotiator as there is. He must laugh at you fools as he didn't have to do anything but sit back and wait for you idiots to throw money at him. While you aren't up for election this year, I certainly hope the electorate remembers your sidekick in tax increases, wasteful spending and shows Ms. Thelman the door.

Instead of crowing about Brownback making it harder for you locals to confiscate MY money, why not stand up on your soapbox about the accomplishments you've made with your votes which raised our taxes. Would be a pretty short speech, uh?

Keep an eye on Brownback who is a borrow and spend,borrow and spend,borrow and spend supply side economics pusher from Washington D.C. Yes those supply side wreckanomics politicians are reckless spenders big time of YOUR tax dollars which in effect increases taxes annually.

Have no fear Frank Male will spend your tax dollars like a drunken sailor. He has a lot of wealthy friends in town known as developers/builders who love those large tax dollar handouts. Frank Male is definitely a long term Chamber of Commerce inner circle member that which promotes reckless use of local tax dollars.

--- Sam Brownback likes to give your tax dollars to wealthy corporations absolutely. In large chunks. He has given Marrs Candy $9 million tax $$$$$. He is no fiscal conservative not by a long shot. He is cutting taxes and spending big.

--- Worker's taxes siphoned off by their bosses by Jim Hightower / Thursday, April 26, 2012

--- Last year, Kansas used workers' withholding taxes to bribe AMC Entertainment with a $47 million payment to move its headquarters from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, to a KC suburb on the Kansas side, just 10 miles away. What a ripoff!

--- Where is the $47 million tax dollars that belong to Kansas taxpayers? AMC subsequently has been purchased by a Chinese leveraged buyout group. Hmmmmmmm.

--- My congratulations to workers in 16 states – from Maine to Georgia, New Jersey to Colorado! Many of you will be thrilled to know that the income taxes deducted from your paychecks each month are going to a very worthy cause: your corporate boss.

--- Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center, has analyzed state programs meant to create jobs, but instead have created some $700 million a year in corporate welfare. This scam starts with the normal practice of corporations withholding from each employee's monthly check the state income taxes their workers owe.

--- But rather than remitting this money to pay for state services, these 16 states simply allow the corporations to keep the tax payments for themselves! Adding to the funkiness of taxation-by-corporation, the bosses don't even have to tell workers that the company is siphoning off their state taxes for its own fun and profit.

--- These heists are rationalized in the name of "job creation," but that's a hoax, too. They're really just bribes the states pay to get corporations to move existing jobs from one state to another, or they're hostage payments to corporations that demand the public's money – or else they'll move their jobs out of state.

Property tax collections increased 99% between 1997 and 2011, while the average mill rate only increased by 21%. Elected officials like to refer to the mill rate and claim that they barely or didn't raise taxes, when the truth is that tax collections have doubled since 1997.

And that's overall. Tax collections on residential property increased 149%...Commercial & Industrial property taxes increased 82%....Agricultural property taxes increased 31%...all while inflation was only up 37%.

Details on how taxes in each county (all taxing jurisdictions combined) have changed are available at http://www.kansasopengov.org/PropertyTax/tabid/1264/Default.aspx. Tax collections in Douglas County are up 133% but the mill rate is only 18% higher, substantiating comments above that elected officials are being honest when they claim that they've held the line on taxes. All data comes from the Kansas Dept. of Revenue.

The proposal is about nothing more than transparency. The only change is that if government wants to increase tax collections by say, 5%...they have to be honest with taxpayers and not pretend the increase is only maybe 1% because of how the mill rate changed. And that's why local governments will lobby hard to prevent taxpayers from knowing the truth.

This is the most anti-free market proposal ever considered in this state.

Why do Il Marrone and his partisans hate the free market?

Where was the desire for "transparency" when, during the last legislative session, Gov. Brownback and Republican conservatives ramrodded through a historic tax cut that makes the owners of 191,000 small businesses STOP paying individual Kansas income tax but makes the employees of those same businesses KEEP paying?

With that tax law change Republican conservatives literally created a social caste system that gives greater wealth and social privilege to business owners while consigning wage earners to lives of paying annual earnings tax in order to keep our state's infrastructure, education, public safety and social programs running (on a near empty tank). Business owners exploit the infrastructure and services but don't contribute anything from their own personal income to help pay for it.

Where was the call for transparency, the insistence that Kansas citizens must approve that tax cut by voting for it in a statewide general referendum? That's right: there was no such call, and it's because Republican conservatives seized the opportunity of their first-ever legislative majority to arrogate the will of the people. They have imposed on us, by means of their personal income tax law change, a social caste system that ranks wage workers at the bottom, exploits wage workers financially. And I believe conservatives fully intend to keep exploiting wage workers forever.

This exact type of abuse by a moneyed class is why American colonists revolted, declared national independence then went to war with England.

Brownback's justification for cutting the state income tax rate, especially for businesses, is that it will lead to growth in the economy and thus automatically generate more income for the state government, rather than less. However, with the property tax proposal, Brownback prohibits local governments from benefiting automatically from the improvements in the economy that he is promising. In effect, his property tax proposal undercuts the justification for his income tax plan now being implemented.

So what is the real rationale that underlies both policies? Transparently, the goal is to starve government. It is a goal that the radical right-wing Republicans and the anarcho-capitalists (so-called "libertarians") applaud. But the rest of us depend upon the existence of government services for our communities to be livable--we want roads, schools, police, fire, water, hospital, relief for the poor, the arts, library, etc.--and unlike the others, we're not too selfish to pay our fair share of taxes to benefit the community.