Petition Signers Receive Opposition Phone Calls

Thu, December 08, 2011

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KMUW / Chandra Stauffer

A petition, which could put the Ambassador Hotel guest tax provision on the ballot for public vote, was turned in to the city on Monday with more than 3,500 signatures. But as Chandra Stauffer reports, some people have received phone calls asking them to reevaluate their decision to have their name on the petition.

The petition challenges a provision approved by the city council that would allow the hotel developers to use more than $2 million dollars in guest tax revenue in its first 15 years of operation.

The Wichita chapter of Americans for Prosperity wants the public to decide if the developers should get that tax incentive and held a petition drive the past two months to get the required signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

Jen Rezac, an Americans for Prosperity spokesperson, says after the petition was turned in, some of the signers received phone calls about their signatures.

“People who put their name on the petition have three days after those petitions have been turned in to remove their name from those,” says Rezac. “The folks who signed the petition have been contacted, they’ve been receiving phone calls from those who are opposing our efforts, trying to get them to sway their opinion on this to try to get them to go ahead and remove their name from the petition.”

James Woomack signed the petition and received one of those calls.

“They asked me if I’d be willing to sign a form to remove my name from the ballot,” says Woomack. “And they started in trying to explain to me what I had signed, which made me feel insulted that they didn’t think I had read and researched what I had signed.”

Woomack says the phone call came from Luce Research, a data collection firm out of Colorado Springs.