EDITOR:
On the campaign trail, two questions come up again and again: the 30% pay increase for elected officials, and when the Homestead Tax Act will actually go into effect. Voters deserve real answers — so I went looking for them.
I filed a Sunshine request with the clerk’s office, copying the commissioners and county administrator, to find out where things stood.
Platte County has faced a lot of scrutiny lately over Sunshine law requests and transparency. I was recently made aware of a Sunshine request in which the clerk’s office did not provide easily discoverable emails. If the county clerk won’t be transparent with our citizens, that may explain why the county has faced so many records requests in the first place — and how much money could have been saved if our clerk simply worked with people instead of against them.
Before the clerk’s office produced a single document for my request, a sitting commissioner sent me every email in their account mentioning “Homestead” — including the recap from the inaugural meeting on SB3, the Homestead Act itself. Why? Because they’d learned that another taxpayer’s request last week had been answered incompletely, and they didn’t want mine to get the same treatment.
Let that sink in. How does anything leaving a public office to a taxpayer count as “incomplete?” Taxpayers are owed the whole picture — every time. When information gets filtered before it reaches the people who pay for it, that’s not an accident. That’s an attempt to shape what the public is allowed to see, or worse, use a taxpayer’s request to run an agenda.
And here’s the pattern that emerges once you read the full record: the same officials who found 30% for themselves without hesitation are the ones slow-walking a law that protects you:
● Pushback on implementing the Homestead Act on schedule — blaming a vendor for not knowing last year to plan for implementation this year; and pushing to wait until after the 2027 assessment for “equalization,” even though SB3 sets 2024 as the initial credit year.
● Dismissive commentary about the work itself, from inaugural meeting: “If the commission doesn’t want to participate, outsourcing may be the best option because this is a very detailed and major undertaking.”
● From the assessor : “Market activity has substantially stabilized and, in many areas, appears to be plateauing. If those market conditions continue, future annual valuation changes may naturally fall within or near the proposed 5%…for that reason my concern is not with the long-term concept of taxpayer protections…”
There is no “someday” on taxpayer protection. Every elected official is called to protect taxpayers now — not whenever the market gets around to it.
Here’s a reminder some in county government seem to need: building revenue is not the goal of the government. If you come from the private sector, that instinct stays at the door. You live within the means you’re entrusted to manage. This job is service — not an agenda, not a growth strategy, not a way to run out the clock on a law you’d rather not enforce.
Delays like this aren’t technical. They’re a choice — and exactly the kind of choice that makes voters believe their government is working against them instead of for them.
Taxpayers deserve straight answers the first time, not the second time, after someone gets caught.
If an elected official can’t meet that standard, it’s time to consider other options — starting at the ballot box on August 4th.
–Mary Calvillo
Candidate for
Platte County Clerk
