As first appearing in the Springfield Business Journal on August 27, 2013:

“Bass Pro Shops could only have happened in America – the home of the free enterprise system.” Those were the words of Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris in a recent Bloomberg News article.

Bass Pro has become a household name throughout America, synonymous with the great outdoors, and undoubtedly is an exceptional business.

It has completely changed the nature of sporting retail with its Walmart-size stores filled with unimaginable stocks of outdoor equipment, aquariums, wildlife displays and gun libraries.

Morris clearly benefited from a free enterprise system in America. However, one cannot overlook the fact that much of Bass Pro’s success and expansion are due to taxpayer-funded subsidies.

Many of those subsidies are from tax increment financing. TIF districts originally were created to spur economic development in portions of cities deemed economically depressed or blighted. Yet, cities across the country have long used a very loose definition of what constitutes a “blighted” area. The wealthy St. Louis suburb of Des Peres once declared a local shopping mall blighted because it lacked a Nordstrom’s.

Bass Pro has routinely received at least some amount of public assistance with many of its stores. According to the Public Accountability Initiative watchdog group, Bass Pro had received $500 million in taxpayer subsidies as of 2010.

The outdoors megastore sells itself to suburban communities as a destination retail attraction, capable of bringing in customers from hours away and even across state lines. To local leaders, bringing in a store the caliber of Bass Pro seems like a surefire way to increase local property and sales taxes.

However, Bass Pro does not always live up to its promise as an economic kick-starter and job creator. Many of the stores fail to raise the tax revenue that cities imagined, as happened in Mesa, Ariz. Bass Pro projected the Mesa store would produce $5.7 million a year in sales tax revenue for the city; instead, it has only managed an average of $1.7 million in four years.

In Missouri, Independence witnessed a similar result with the TIF it passed for a Bass Pro store.

What city officials fail to realize is that a large, new store does not give people more money to spend on fishing poles or waders.

Often, Bass Pro Shops only consolidates the market of outdoor supplies by killing smaller competitors, which negates the total growth that the development added.

Local leaders across the country are desperate to take credit for creating jobs and bringing a marquee brand to their community. In this desperation, they may dole out overly generous taxpayer subsidies for a few select businesses, which puts local, smaller businesses at an immediate disadvantage.

Big box retailers like Bass Pro often are built in affluent areas that could attract businesses without subsidies. We do not need the government picking winners and losers.

Bass Pro can build its stores on its own, as it did in Columbia, just north of Interstate 70. Instead of conjuring up incentives to bring businesses to their town, local leaders should focus on creating a pro-business atmosphere for all. That means lowering taxes and reducing regulations. If cities create a business-friendly environment, the rest will take care of itself.

Will Reynolds, an Ozark native, is an intern at the Show-Me Institute promoting market solutions for Missouri public policy.