KC’s Corporate Welfare: JE Dunn’s HQ Renovation Gets Public Support
Thomas Friestad of the Kansas City Business Journal writes that JE Dunn Construction has secured public incentives through Port KC...
Apparently, Failing to Meet Promises Is Not a Violation of K.C. Subsidies Regime
In 2019, I wondered where those jobs were that Cerner promised to create in return for the subsidies handed to...
Kansas City Must Learn Lessons from Cerner Failure
The recent Kansas City Business Journal report about Oracle drastically reducing its Kansas City workforce in the former Cerner offices...
Fixing the “Delmar Divide” with a TIF?
Developers are asking for millions in tax subsidies for a redevelopment project with the hopes of fixing St. Louis’s “Delmar...
An Incentive Package for Tesla May Not Benefit Joplin
Tesla is in search of a site for a new manufacturing plant, and Joplin has put itself in the running...
Where Are Those Jobs, Cerner?
In 2014, Cerner received “the largest economic development project in the history of the state” to build its new headquarters...
Kansas City’s Christmas Tree
If you’ve lived in Kansas City for a while, you’ve heard all about building new things. We’ve built a new...
Kansas City, King of Corporate Welfare
Good Jobs First, a “national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials,” publishes what it calls its Subsidy...
Development Can Happen without Subsidies
It is a sign of how bad the subsidy culture is getting when Kansas City Star reporter Diane Stafford has...
Kansas City and “Fraudulent” Crony Capitalism
President-elect Trump has talked a great deal about the need for massive and widespread infrastructure spending. Many people agree that...
The Consequences of Bad Policy
The Kansas City Star recently reported that Urban Summit activists have turned in petition signatures requiring a citywide vote for...
The TIF Tax
On the November ballot, many Clay, Jackson, and Platte County residents will be asked to increase their property tax levy...
Kansas City Star Editorial Board Gets Subsidies Wrong Again
The Kansas City Star editorial board published the following in a piece on the earnings tax on January 28: A spokesman for the...
Kansas City’s Debt
KCUR does a nice job of rounding up a few projects such as the Sprint Center and Kemper Arena that...
Kansas City Builds by Digging Itself into Holes
We’ve written extensively about the money that Kansas City has been handing out to downtown developers. Every dollar they give...
Riding to the Hounds of Corporate Welfare
Oscar Wilde famously defined foxhunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” His quip aptly describes a sport...
New Year’s Resolutions for Missouri Lawmakers
As first appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Are you listening, Missouri lawmakers? This is the Ghost of Christmas Past....
