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...
K.C. Subsidies Stop Making Sense
I’m reminded of the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime when reading about yet another scheme to subsidize more...
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...
John Sherman’s Proposed Entertainment District Is Bad for Everyone Else
John Sherman, the owner of the Kansas City Royals, said in an announcement the other day: I believe in my...
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Pay for Your Own Stadium
Yesterday I wrote about an interview I did with KMBC 9 on the Royals’ latest announcement that they had new...
Should Five Percent Appear Too Small…
The Beatles famously sang the above lyric in their song Taxman. It comes to mind because, believe it or not,...
What I Saw at the TIF Hearing
Anyone who has been paying attention to the Show-Me Institute over the past few years knows that our analysts are...
The Power & Light District Still Hasn’t Delivered
On Ruckus last week we discussed the city’s debt and its profligate spending on the Power & Light District downtown....
TIF Doesn’t Create Jobs
Paul F. Byrne, a professor at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas—who has examined tax increment financing (TIF) use in Missouri...
Kansas City’s Economic Diversion
City leaders are still pointing to Kansas City’s downtown as an economic development success story. Taxpayers lose millions each year...
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’s Development Guru Admits He Was Wrong
Most Kansas Citians won’t recognize the name, but we owe much of the inspiration for our downtown development scheme to...
“I Don’t Care What the Research Tells You”
Is Kansas City getting an adequate return on its investment in economic development? We’re skeptical. The research says it is...
Taxpayers’ Subsidy Skepticism Is Warranted
The Kansas City Star published a piece last week about subsidized development and its opposition in the region. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the...
Is the Streetcar a Development Magnet?
Those who have followed the expansion of streetcars in Kansas City and across the country will know that the primary...
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...
The Risks to the City of the Convention Hotel Gamble
At the City Council's recent business session on the proposed convention hotel, proponents kept repeating that there was no risk to the...
How Will the Convention Hotel Help Taxpayers?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the planned convention hotel in Kansas City does increase convention business. How...
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...
Righting the Wrongs of the Power & Light District
One of the reasons Kansas City is on the hook financially for so much on the Power & Light District is...
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