Urban Neglect: Kansas City and TIF

My colleague Michael Rathbone and I authored an essay titled “Urban Neglect, Kansas City’s Misuse of Tax Increment Financing.”

In the essay we examined Tax Increment Financing (TIF) project data provided by Jackson County and census data on household income. We found that in Kansas City the majority of taxpayer subsidies go to parts of town that are relatively wealthy and economically vibrant, rather than to the poor and economically depressed areas for which TIF was ostensibly designed.

Mike Mahoney of KMBC filed a story on our report. In it he interviewed Councilwoman Cindy Circo, who offered:

But it is the private development that drives the actual project itself. The city doesn’t go through the TIF process itself and be the developer.

This is an odd statement because Burns & McDonnell, and every other company that seeks a TIF subsidy, argues that the project could not go forward without public investment. So while Circo may be correct that the city does not choose the individual projects that apply for TIF, the TIF Commission and the city have demonstrated time and again that they aren’t really vetting applications, which has created an “anything goes” environment. One need only study the Citadel project to know that this is true.

If the city’s appointees on the TIF Commission were better at approving only legitimately blighted properties—those that truly require public investment—public subsidies might more often be used in the parts of town that really needed it. Instead, the subsidies flow to well-connected business leaders and their development lawyers, and public dollars unnecessarily go to projects such as Country Club Plaza and River Market.