The Douglas County commission meets in the historic courtroom on the second floor of the old county courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

The state’s tax lid legislation is replete with “gray areas” that Kansas cities and counties are going to have to work through as they prepare their 2018 budgets, Douglas County commissioners were told Wednesday.

Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew and Assistant County Administrator Sarah Plinsky briefed commissioners at a work session Wednesday on the tax lid’s implications for the county’s 2018 budget process.

The legislation was first passed in 2015 and was amended last year to become effective for the 2018 budget cycle. It ties increases in city and county mill levies to the consumer price index unless voters approve additional spending. However, the legislation allows local jurisdictions to take advantage of valuation increases from new construction and exempts spending on law enforcement, fire protection, emergency medical services, new debt and the costs of state and federal mandates.

Shew and Plinsky explained there was ambiguity about what county services could be considered for exemptions. It’s not clear, for example, if the exemption applied only to those — in Plinsky’s words — ?”with a badge and gun,” or if they could be applied to emergency dispatchers, the coroner, emergency management, numerous Douglas County District Court activities or the district attorney’s office. Just what constituted an unfunded state or federal mandate was also unclear at a time when the county has been forced to fund numerous additional activities after state cuts, commissioners were told.

“What we’re getting from the state is that it’s up to the cities and counties to figure it out,” Shew said.

Plinsky said she planned meetings with counterparts from Johnson County and other large Kansas counties in an attempt to find “safety in numbers” through a consensus use of exemptions.

County administrative staff is now working through the formula to determine how much taxing authority the county would have under the tax lid. County Administrator Craig Weinaug said commissioners would have to decide soon how aggressive they wanted to be in listing gray area services under the tax lid exemptions.

Shew said the state would not audit the approved budgets of local jurisdictions for compliance with the tax lid’s provisions. However, Weinaug said there was a risk a citizen could sue the county in Douglas County District Court, claiming the county’s approved spending didn’t meet the tax lid’s provisions.

Strategies that could be considered should the county decide to stay within tax lid spending limits would include budget cuts to nonpublic safety agencies and community partners, higher fees for services and the issuing of bonds or temporary notes for public works projects, Plinsky said.

The tax lid legislation will require a good deal of activity by numerous county agencies and officials in a short time, Shew said. In June, he said, the clerk’s office and the county appraiser would need to update and certify valuation figures that the County Commission and the governing bodies of other county jurisdictions will use in crafting 2018 budgets. In addition, state statute requires the County Commission to approve a budget in mid-August and, if needed, to schedule an election requesting additional property tax authority by July 1.

“There are multiple calendars in play, and they don’t match,” Shew said. “We were clear when we testified to the Legislature they didn’t match, and they passed it anyway.”

Another concern was the state’s ability to share updated valuations on utilities and railroads by the June 1 deadline, Shew said. The state has a record of missing a mid-July deadline for those numbers in recent years. The state assessments, which account for about 10 percent of the county’s overall assessment, can vary by double digits from year to year, he said.

“Nothing can be done until we get those assessments,” Shew said.

Contrary to the prior understanding of county commissioners, the tax lid legislation does allow for a referendum on additional property tax authority through either a mail-in ballot or traditional polling site election, Shew said. However, given such considerations as the 45-day requirement to send ballots to those in the military, the only practical date and method for such a referendum would be the Sept. 15 mail ballot that the law’s language allows. There is no direction in the legislation or from the state about how local governments are to word ballot questions, Shew said.

Should the county decide to ask voters to approve additional taxing authority, it could share the expense of an election with other county jurisdictions making a request on the same date, Shew said.

The tax lid would move the County Commission’s 2018 budget hearings and discussions to June, a month earlier than their traditional July dates, Weinaug said.

Douglas County Commission Chairman Mike Gaughan said that the numerous gray areas underscore that the tax lid was a badly crafted piece of legislation.

“This statute was passed at the last minute of the legislative session,” he said. “It was never about good policy. It was about postcards for campaigns.”