Turns out after all that it wasn't a cash-flow problem or even an opposition to educated children that prevented Sprint Nextel from paying all of its Johnson County property taxes.

Sprint was listed among the property tax deadbeats, er, we mean delinquent taxpayers, that Johnson County Treasurer Charles Letcher listed recently in the Sun publications of the Kansas City Community Newspaper Group.

Sprint, at least temporarily, stiffed the taxpayers for payments on five parcels for a grand total of $18,216.54, according to the treasurer's list.

Schools are primary beneficiaries of property tax dollars, but a Sprint spokesman encouraged observers not to read too much into this situation.

Sprint is just as committed to education as ever, John Taylor, a company spokesman told us late last week.

"We have a longstanding reputation in Kansas City and around the country for supporting education, Taylor said.

It's true.

Just recently the company's foundation awarded another $607,000 in education grants to schools and school districts. Sprint notes, that since 1989 its foundation has "provided nearly $100 million to community organizations across the country with a special emphasis on those supporting K-12 education, positive youth development, arts and culture outreach, school safety and Internet safety."

And Sprint, which has been feeling profit pressures recently, still has plenty of money to pay its bills, including property taxes.

The explanation for the company being listed on the ignominious roster is much more mundane.

"We did receive the bills," Taylor said. "We did not pay them. We have since paid them with penalties."

In Sprint's defense, most of its other property tax bills go to a single address, Taylor said. The problematic bills, ranging from 27 cents -- yes, that's right. One bill was for 27 cents -- to $7,107.62 for each of these five parcels, went to a variety of different addresses.

Taylor couldn't offer a specific explanation for why the bills slipped through the company's property tax-paying process. In all, Sprint receives some 52,000 property tax statements annually for its holdings across the country, he said.

"It was an oversight," Taylor said. "We want to pay all the bills we are supposed to pay. In this case we made a mistake."