Frustrated by what they say are big-spending, out-of-touch Johnson County, Kansas, leaders, and unable to rely on local news media to hold them accountable, an ad hoc group of citizens is urging voters to “Take Back JoCo” Nov. 5.

Coming together only in recent months, Take Back JoCo has already created a network of 400 to 500 citizens concerned about high taxes and spending, and what they say are misplaced priorities by the Johnson County Commission.

The nonpartisan network has launched a website and sent out mailers informing residents of the county’s profligate financial situation – as well as commission candidates they believe can help fix things.

Those candidates include Mark Hamill, running to unseat District 2 commissioner Jeff Meyers, and Mike Storm, seeking to replace District 6 commissioner Shirley Allenbrand – as well as keeping current Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, who is on the ballot for re-election.

Take Back JoCo’s website offers a quick five-question, yes-or-no quiz that, at the end, suggests which candidates represent the user’s views.

The group’s overall three-pronged focus is on property taxes, elections and the county budget.

Take Back JoCo notes assessed home valuations are up over 100% in the county, with property taxes up by three times the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, “on a county level the budget has doubled from $800 million to $1.8 billion in 10 years.”

And the county budget has risen 47% in just the past four years, says Take Back JoCo member Laura Smith Owen.

Courtesy of TakeBackJoCo.com

“If someone visits the website,” adds member Jeffrey Lysaught, “we have incident after incident of lax financial controls, audits and things of that nature that all taxpayers should be concerned about. That’s our money. 

“The specific example we cite is, they lost $500,000 on a failed homeless shelter in Lenexa, Kansas. That should be very disconcerting. There was no due diligence. It was fraught with malfeasance, overpaying for a property [with] an unsolicited, noncompetitive bid for a property which was $2.5 million over the appraised value.

“Actually the amount on the shelter was eventually going to be $10 million – for this dilapidated La Quinta hotel. Boom. Nobody asked any questions whatsoever. 

“Illegal immigrants were eligible to stay at this shelter. Can you imagine that? Look at every other city – Denver, Seattle, Chicago – they’re having nothing but problems with illegal immigrants’ housing. We invited them in and we were going to give them $10 million to build a facility to house them. Thank goodness we stopped that for now, dead in its tracks.

“So, I think folks should wake up and start taking a look at, ‘Hey, that’s my money – where is it going, because my property taxes keep going up every year.’”

County Commission Chairman Mike Kelly, says Owen, “tried to sneak that whole homeless project through in the dark of night, figuring nobody was paying attention and he would just do the deal.

“He even said publicly that he had been working with Lenexa for over a year because they needed a special use permit from Lenexa to put the shelter in Lenexa – while I know for a fact from speaking to members of the [Lenexa] City Council and the Planning Commission, they knew nothing about it until literally just a couple of weeks prior to the Planning Commission meeting. 

“So God bless the staff at Lenexa; they did the due diligence that the board of County Commissioners didn’t do.”

The city’s planning commission voted against the project 9-0, and the city council concurred by rejecting it on a 5-2 vote.

‘We the people’ got involved

Take Back JoCo actually was born of the grassroots opposition to that ill-conceived, soundly rejected plan for a low-barrier homeless shelter in Lenexa. Lysaught and his wife started attending county meetings “and were shocked at the waste, deceit and use of our tax dollars,” he says.

Lysaught, who has a financial planning background, says it also became clear the old model of news media holding local officials accountable simply isn’t working anymore. “That’s why we decided to get involved. We the people.”

Yet, the rejection of the shelter came only after the county had already spent or pledged half a million dollars toward it.

Now Take Back JoCo wants to root out the source of that boondoggle.

“We have such a mismanagement of funds, taxpayer funds, that it borders on corruption,” Owen says, adding that an internal audit recently found 80% of county invoices didn’t even have prior purchase orders associated with them.

“My last company was a publicly traded company,” she notes. “If we had done that, we would have been shut down by the SEC. But basically (county commissioners) rolled their eyes.”

What would Lysaught and Owen tell Johnson County residents who think everything is fine?

“It was once a five-star place to live,” Lysaught says. “Now crime, drugs, taxes, apartment buildings and high housing costs litter the landscape.”

“Someone gave me a really good analogy the other day,” adds Owen. “They said think of Johnson County as a Rolls Royce. We all do, right? We’re very proud of all the beautiful things we have here in Johnson County. And yet, if you open the hood, it’s an old broken down jalopy on the inside, it’s being so mismanaged.”

Owen says sitting commissioners Meyers and Allenbrand recently professed no idea of where the county budget could be cut. “And I’m like, ‘Well, let’s start with cutting DEI buttons that the county bought so people would know if I’m a ‘he’ or ‘she.’ Let’s start with that,’” Owen says. “Then let’s go on to some of these bloated salaries all across the county.”

Owen argues the county manager not that long ago received a 19% raise despite earning “three times” the national average for such a position.

She says she called the chairman of the Platte County, Missouri, commission to ask him how that body, in contrast to Johnson County, Kansas, managed to roll back taxes. “He said, ‘Laura, it’s really simple: We don’t spend money on stupid stuff.’”

‘They’re filing their nails’

Another knock on the commission is a lack of transparency – the most conspicuous symbol of which is Kelly’s edict that public comments at commission meetings won’t be shown to viewers online.

“What are they afraid of? What’s Mike Kelly afraid of?” asks Owen. “And when you give a public comment, what are they doing? They’re filing their nails, they’re reading their email, they’re playing on their phones. They’re not paying attention.”

On the other hand, Commissioner O’Hara “has been incredible,” Lysaught says. “She’s fought an uphill battle against the county commissioners. It’s usually a 5-2 or 6-1 one vote. She always has the citizen at heart and the taxpayer at heart in her voting, and she’s not afraid to ask tough questions.”

Asking questions is what Take Back JoCo is all about – what members hope they inspire voters to do.

“I think they need to do their due diligence,” Lysaught says. “Take a look at who’s really representing them in regards to expenditure of tax dollars, waste and fraud. 

“And get serious and vote for the people that have track records – not just say things; track records. And there’s a list of them [at TakeBackJoco.com] for the county commissioners, some really good people that are running that walk the walk.”