Each week during the 2025 Kansas legislative session, we will provide Johnson County lawmakers the opportunity to share their thoughts about what is happening in the state capitol.
Below is a submission from Republican Sen. Kellie Warren, who represents Kansas Senate District 11, covering parts of Leawood and Overland Park.
Republican Rep. Charlotte Esau of Olathe and Democratic Rep. Jo Ella Hoye of Lenexa have also both been offered opportunities to submit their own columns this week.
The views expressed in each Capitol Update are solely those of the lawmaker.
To update you, I want to share with you that last year I knocked on thousands of doors, listening to residents of Senate District 11. Here’s the thing I heard over and over: we need property tax reform. Rates and valuations are high, and it is just not working.
This is a complicated issue. Rates are largely decided by multiple local taxing entities — counties, cities, school districts, etc.
The process — including the appraisal process — can be changed by the state. To address this complicated topic, the Kansas Senate took action and passed three items to reduce or reform property taxes:
- SB 35, which passed 38-2, eliminates the 1.5-mill levy for state educational and institutional buildings. The 1.5-mill levy is the only instance in which the state government puts property tax revenue into its coffers — all other property taxes are local in nature. The money for the impacted buildings would be made up via the state general fund.
- SB 10, which passed 37-3, would exempt a wide range of residential vehicles from property tax, including motorized bicycles, watercraft, snowmobiles and trailers. County appraisers supported the bill, saying it would create efficiencies and lower costs, as often the resources required to assess these vehicles exceeded the revenue collected. School districts impacted by this exemption would automatically receive equivalent revenue from the state general fund.
- SCR 1603, which passed 28-12, would limit the growth of taxable value of any real property or residential mobile home personal property to 3% per year. This would essentially expand our “Truth in Taxation” law, which requires local governments to vote to exceed the revenue-neutral rate. SCR 1603 goes another step by ensuring they can’t rely on valuation increases if they want to increase their budgets by more than 3%. They have to vote to raise the mill levy, providing more transparency to the process. SCR 1603 is a constitutional amendment, so if approved by the House, it would go to the voters of Kansas on a future ballot.
I voted YES on all three items.
They are important steps in reforming our property tax system. The House has different approaches, so this is an early step in the process. I look forward to seeing the results of the negotiations as we move forward in this session.
Another important bill we passed ensures that we’ll never have a state government shutdown.
We’ve all seen the brinksmanship in Washington, D.C., where politicians in both parties will use the possibility of a government shutdown as a threat to get their way. To prevent this same thing in Kansas, we passed a bill ensuring that the state government would continue to operate on the previous year’s funding level if we reached the end of a fiscal year without a budget being enacted into law.
That protects those on social services, our schools and all those who rely upon our state government functioning.
These are some highlights of my work for you to date. As always, I’m honored to be the voice for Senate District 11, and if you have any questions or feedback, let me know.
