Three Wichita City Council members have accepted high-dollar gifts since creating a carve-out last month that allows them to exceed the city’s $150 annual gift limit with a majority vote of the council. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the City Council’s agenda packets. There, the gifts are not identified as gifts.
Instead, they are packaged as travel requests alongside trips that are funded by the city — with no stated outside funding sources, no donor names, no estimated value and no list of what expenses are included in the travel request. There’s also no mention that a vote for the travel is a vote to allow council members to exceed the gift limit set in an ethics ordinance they passed unanimously last month. Mayor Lily Wu said she would like to see that change.
“I’ve been transparent about all of my travel requests from the bench,” Wu said in an email. “I’m in favor of directing staff to add who is paying for the travel and what they are providing (typically transportation, accommodation, and meals).” Other council members have also expressed support for changing how the gifts appear on the agenda to increase transparency.
Vice Mayor Maggie Ballard raised the possibility of adding it to the agenda at the Oct. 1 council meeting. “There seems to be a lot of conversations lately happening about council travel,” Ballard said.
“Most people are not going to watch the meeting to see who’s paying for council, so I don’t know if that’s somet.
