I’ve argued for years that Kansas City’s lavish subsidies distort the market while failing to deliver on economic promises. New reporting from the Kansas City Business Journal suggests the process itself may be just as broken.

Reporter Thomas Friestad reconstructed negotiations among Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), PortKC, and Gillon Property Group over incentives tied to Country Club Plaza. The emails, obtained through an open-records request, depict a rushed and opaque decision-making process worthy of public distrust.

The original proposal reportedly included roughly $309 million in incentives over 30 years. KCPS officials objected not only to the size of the package, but also to shifting valuation methods that obscured the true public cost. The district also sought protection for voter-approved bond revenues and more time to evaluate major revisions before approval by PortKC.

That timeline is the real story.

The emails show negotiations continuing until the night before a scheduled PortKC meeting. KCPS officials argued they were being asked to evaluate a substantially revised proposal in just two business days. One consultant for the district described the timeline as “concerning even with the highest level of independent analysis.”

This is a recurring problem in Kansas City’s incentive culture. Complex tax arrangements are negotiated behind closed doors and then presented to affected taxing jurisdictions with little time for meaningful scrutiny. The result is confusion over the true public cost and distrust among taxpayers expected to finance these deals.

Kansas City has seen this pattern before. Similar concerns surrounded the Power & Light District and continue to emerge in discussions over a proposed downtown ballpark. Political machinations routinely take precedence over transparency and accountability.

Notably, KCPS did not oppose subsidies outright. District officials simply asked for clear terms, accurate projections, and adequate time to evaluate a deal that could affect school finances for decades. The fact that negotiators appeared unwilling to provide sufficient time to evaluate the deal speaks volumes.

Kansas Citians have grown understandably skeptical of these taxpayer-funded deals. Too many projects promised economic transformation and delivered little beyond long-term public cost. The Country Club Plaza negotiations are, at best, an example of rushed incompetence. At worst, they suggest an effort to push a massive subsidy package through before taxpayers and public schools could fully evaluate it.

The post Country Club Plaza Subsidy Deal Reveals What’s Broken in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Every English city uses this basic framework, ensuring all elements of city life are working together to benefit everyone’s well-being. [emphasis added]

If New York City and Houston do not have a comprehensive plan, then our Missouri municipalities don’t need one either. As Jane Jacobs said about urban planning, “The pseudoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success . . .”

There is general agreement that some type of infrastructure planning is required by municipalities. As cities grow or change, there need to be plans in place for the installation of sewers, gas and water pipes, electrical lines, sidewalks, and roads. But urban planners rarely maintain focus on those needs. Planners frequently and disappointingly mandate the mundane. The growing sameness of so many American communities is a direct result of municipal plans requiring a consistent look in a community. When you realize that most zoning codes were copied (the literal cut-and-paste prior to computers and copy machines) from other cities, that most cities use the same (or very similar) building codes, and that zoning codes limit the options available for many lots, nobody should be surprised by the loss of distinct urban aesthetics across the nation. As Cody Lefkowitz wrote about the depressing sameness of urban areas now:

Before the rise of zoning and consolidation of development, the country was full of special places with wonderful vernacular architecture. These were cities and towns built by many hands. Cities and towns that aged gracefully through generations of stewards iteratively building from the foundations of their predecessors. New Orleans, that much-loved city, is one of the most exceptionally beautiful places one can imagine, with an identity as unique as it is mystifying. When you’re there, you could never mistake yourself for being anywhere else.

Municipal planning commissions are empowered to establish comprehensive plans for their cities and to approve changes, amendments, and variances to the current plans or zoning codes. They are largely advisory. The city council can easily approve a change the planning commission rejects, like in Kansas City when the council unfortunately approved building height limitations for the Country Club Plaza. In Creve Coeur in 2013, the city council approved changes to allow a new grocery store that the planning commission had rejected. City councils can also reject changes the planning commission approves.

The point is not that elected officials should be subservient to the planning commission members; far from it. The point is to overcome the idea that planning is some kind of urban science with a large public benefit. The planning process is wholly subject to the same political aims, interest group pressures, and regulatory capture that all of government is. Furthermore, the process institutionalizes and legislates the bias toward uniformity and present-day assumptions. Counties and municipalities should limit their use of planning to necessary infrastructure issues and refuse to engage in it otherwise.

The post The Last Thing Missouri Needs Is More Urban Planning appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Then again, in the song, they said that seven stories is about as high as a building oughta grow, and perhaps that explains the limits on building heights that they have in the Plaza, and, hence, the controversy.

The Plaza area has had height limits in place for three decades, although the limits were advisory until about three years ago when they became law. The limit for buildings is between three and five stories, depending on the location within the Plaza district.

I have been to the Plaza many times and I, like most people I know, love the look, feel, and vibe of it. But I think that the property rights of the developer along with the benefits of urban density make building height limits a questionable idea.

Kansas City is not the only city in Missouri with building height limits. St. Louis has them, too, in certain areas. I would imagine many other towns also have them, but they don’t come into play much. Nobody is proposing to put a 42-story office building in Poplar Bluff right now.

I think the most famous example of building height limits in the United States is Washington, D.C. Those very strict limits have certainly given our capital a consistent look, but they are undeniably one of the reasons housing and office costs in DC are so high.

Removing the height limits in Kansas City won’t make it Manhattan overnight (no, not that Manhattan). But if a developer wants to build an unsubsidized, tall building along the Plaza, shouldn’t the economic, social, and environmental benefits of allowing taller buildings be given greater weight than the desire to maintain a “consistent look” for an area, even an area as iconic as the Plaza?

The post Building Height Limitations Are Unwise appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Numerous state audits over the past decades have identified the shortcomings of these districts. Now, the Kansas City Auditor has reviewed the use of CIDs in Kansas City and found many of the same issues. Show-Me Institute analysts have written about the problems with CIDs and TDDs for years. Common problems with these special taxing districts include financial abuses, lack of transparency, egregious boundary drawing to avoid voter participation, and much more.

The recent audit of CIDs in KC found many of the same things. From the article in the Kansas City Star (emphasis added):

In recent years, however, several CIDs have been created to benefit a single property owner or developer. In 2016, for example, the Intercontinental Hotel at the Country Club Plaza created a CID for itself to raise taxes earmarked to pay for upkeep of deterioration that the ritzy hotel argued had created blighted conditions. A similar CID was approved for the Romanelli Shopping Center in Waldo in 2019.

Both were criticized for using taxes to subsidize property maintenance. More than half of the existing CIDs in Kansas City benefit a single owner or developer, as opposed to community-based districts like those covering Westport or downtown.

The audit also noted that several CIDs — more than a third — have not submitted their annual budgets to City Hall, a requirement under Missouri law.

Legislation just passed by the state legislature makes some modest reforms to CIDs. These reforms include mandating annual financial reports, competitive bids for contracts, and requiring at least one independent board member. Hopefully, the governor will sign it. But we need to go much further and ensure these taxing districts cannot abuse the public trust for private gain, which is all many of them are good for. (Yes, there are exceptions to that.)

We need far more voter involvement, stricter reporting requirements, tougher limits on which expenditures are allowed, and total tax caps, just to name a few potential improvements. The single most important thing we need is a requirement that a full city (or county, for unincorporated areas) vote to approve all new CIDs and TDDs.  Absent greater reform, these special taxing districts will continue to just be the great Missouri tax-and-spend deception.

The post More Evidence of Failures of CIDs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

First, let’s make clear that the hotel market in Kansas City is already crowded. The Kansas City Star made this point just a few months ago, and it’s something developers themselves admit. It’s so bad that the city’s tourism board is asking for more public funding to help sell rooms to address the fear that too many hotels will reduce hotel rates (as hotels compete for guests). In short, problems created by subsidizing hotel construction resulting in foregone tax revenue are to be solved by directing even more of the remaining tax dollars toward subsidizing hotel sales departments. If you think this is crazy, it gets worse.

Despite all this, some Kansas City Councilmembers want to offer more tax breaks to build two hotels near Country Club Plaza. (Regarding a crowded hotel market, the immediate area around the plaza area is already served by 12 hotels.) Specifically, the plan this time around is to have taxpayers underwrite $80 million in bond debt. With Chapter 100 bonds, the property taxes may end up being abated as long as the bonds are outstanding. This means that for up to 20 years, there may be no property taxes paid on the projects—taxes that might otherwise be used for police, public safety, and roads.

Twenty years is a long time to abate property taxes. Back in 2004, the council passed an ordinance in which it agreed, “Bonds will be issued for a term not to exceed 10 years. Bonds issued for personal property shall have a term limited to the life of the personal property, but not to exceed 10 years.” This new effort, however, just waives that 10-year limit. Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Mayor Quinton Lucas told KCTV5 News,

There is no money coming from taxpayer sources to directly fund this. The question on the bond obligation is to what extent is the city pledging its full faith in credit in connection with the lending?

The first claim is misleading at the very least. The project doesn’t use existing taxpayer sources, but it may abate or redirect the taxes that would have been paid but for this ordinance. It’s a distinction without a difference. As for the second part, that is a whole other consideration: If the project goes belly up and no taxes are being redirected to bond payments, will bondholders come after the City of Kansas City, the folks who issued the bonds? This is not an easily resolved question.

If hoteliers want to invest their own resources in Kansas City—and themselves reap the rewards—that is welcome. If they agree with VisitKC that the market is already saturated and choose not to invest, that is understandable. But taxpayers should not be asked to go without so that one more developer, one more well-heeled lobbyist or one more connected attorney can earn a few bucks selling Kansas City what we may already have too much of.

The post More Hotels; Fewer Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The mayor’s irritation may have been exacerbated by Port KC CEO Jon Stephens’ reaction to the border war truce. He oddly offered that despite the truce, the port authority could “proactively recruit” businesses from the Kansas side of the border but that it wouldn’t. The quote does not present Stephens as a team player on economic development reform.

When asked if the port authority was just a way to grant tax incentives while avoiding city council and public scrutiny, Stephens answered [starts at 19:38):

I would say that that’s certainly is not something that I would consider. I view everything [Prima facie] on exactly what is the net benefit. And I can tell you that we’re working very hard on our social equity: how we roll out to communicate exactly what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, and how we’re going to communicate to the citizens and their elected officials.

I’m not sure what any of that means, but it’s a disappointment for anyone hoping the answer was simply “no.”

Even if the port authority is a subdivision of the state of Missouri, Kansas City leaders have the ability to rein it in. Its board is appointed by the mayor and state statute allows the city council to, “from time to time enlarge or reduce the area comprising any port district” with the approval of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission. Perhaps restricting future Port KC activity to within a quarter mile from the Missouri River is a good way to make sure that it cannot keep issuing incentives downtown or even, as Helling points out, south of Country Club Plaza. In appointing a new board, the mayor could make sure that within that quarter mile of the river, Port KC is acting in the best interests of taxpayers.

Missouri’s economic development policy is littered with legislative good intentions warped by subsidy-seeking developers and consultants. Such legislation must be revisited to clamp down on abuse. In many cases it’s the statutory definitions that must be revisited; in this case it may be port authority boundaries. Port KC has demonstrated it is unable—and perhaps unwilling—to restrain itself to development along the river. The mayor and city council—and perhaps the state legislature—should do it for them.

The post Plugging the Port Hole appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sadly, my worst fears were realized when I received a draft copy of the report via an open records request. And the release of the final report hasn’t made things any better.  In short, the report tallies up the amount of subsidies awarded in Kansas City, tallies the investments made, and divides the latter by the former. Their conclusion was that “each incentive dollar invested generated $3.83 in additional tax revenue.”

During the years this study took to complete, was any effort made to answer the central question before policymakers—how much development happened because of incentives? If so, I can’t see any evidence of that effort. The question has been tackled by other researchers—most if not all of whom seem to arrive at the same answer: very little—or certainly not enough. The Upjohn Institute for Employment Research concluded in a July 2018 study that “for at least 75 percent of incented firms, the firm would have made a similar decision location/expansion/retention decision without the incentive.” That is a devastating conclusion, suggesting that three out of four dollars spent on incentives is unnecessary.

As a result, policymakers were vexed when the CDFA’s report was presented to the City Council on August 16. The report gives them no information that could help them distinguish good incentive investments from bad.  Councilmembers’ repeated questions about how this report can inform future decisions were met with answers that seemed designed to obfuscate.

Consider the following exchange between one councilmember and the director of the office of economic development (starts at 48:15):

Councilman Lucas: So there is some public conversation at times to the idea that we should not incentivize on the Country Club Plaza, we should not incentivize downtown. I guess the answer that I am hearing is that we can’t quite answer that question. Is it your view, Ms. Tyndall, that this study can actually help answer the question as to whether we have provided sufficient incentivizing activity such that we do not need to continue to extend incentives in certain areas?

Kerrie Tyndall: The way that I would respond to that question is to say that I think that this study shows that in general economic development incentive tools do work. They do provide an overall positive return on investment to the city when we apply them, but they are ultimately—at the end of the day—a tool. And someone has to take advantage of those tools in order for us to see an impact and from a public sector perspective we can certainly invest our dollars and be in control of how we invest our dollars when we’re trying to leverage investment of the public sector we’re somewhat dependent upon them to take advantage of those tools in order to accelerate some of the social gains that we want to achieve . . . [I gave up transcribing here].

In other words, no. City officials seem to be saying that taxpayers ought to subsidize every project in order to realize that three-to-one investment return. After about 90 minutes, the mayor seemed frustrated that council members weren’t buying the report’s conclusions. He asked one of the consultants—PGAV Planner’s Adam Stroud—about whether the incentives created the return that the report touts (starts at 1:25:55),

Mayor James: If $288 million [in incremental real property taxes*] is as a result of some incentive being used, if there is no incentive being used, would the number be zero?

Adam Stroud: I can’t answer that.

James: Would it be less than the $288 [million]?

Stroud: I also can’t answer that.

Again, unlike so many other studies of economic development incentives, this one simply omitted any analysis of whether incentives were necessary to drive development. This report just makes that assumption, but as Stroud honestly points out, he doesn’t know because this study didn’t consider it.

Despite the costliness and tardiness of the study, this giant hole in its design makes the report essentially worthless, both for assessing of existing incentive subsidies and for guiding future policymaking.

*The $288 million that the mayor refers to is actually the amount that will be returned to the developer instead of going to fund city services, so it’s unclear why the mayor asks the question this way. Nevertheless, it’s clear from the context that the mayor is looking for a link between subsidies and higher tax revenues, but this study can’t establish such a link.

The post How Bad was the CDFA Study of Incentives in Kansas City? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Crosby Kemper III and Patrick Tuohey Discuss KCI and Country Club Plaza on Ruckus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Who preys upon the sightless with such cruel impunity? More often than not, it is leading citizens and business organizations, taking advantage of poorly conceived laws with the stated purpose of promoting economic development.

Under Missouri laws established in the 1990s, transportation development districts (TDDs) and community improvement districts (CIDs) operate as micro-governments that direct tax revenues to private interests to use for the supposed benefit of their local communities. A primary benefit of a TDD – from the viewpoint of a single property owner or a group of owners banding together to form a district – is the ability to impose a tax on people with no vote in the matter.

Over the past two decades, more than 200 TDDs and nearly 300 CIDs have sprouted up in big cities, small towns, and suburban enclaves across the state. In 2014 and 2015, TDDs collected more than $175 million in tax revenue, according to the Missouri State Auditor’s Office. “Given that TDDs have been operating this way for nearly 20 years,” Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst Graham Renz has observed, “their collective impact is in the billions.”

Before becoming a city councilman and later mayor of Neosho (pop. 12,000), south of Joplin, Richard Davidson served on the town’s school board from 2004 to 2008. He was shocked when supporters of a TDD sought an $800,000 contribution from the school district to support the building of new roads. “We educate kids,” he told the TDD proponents. “We don’t build roads.” Later he wrote a column for the Neosho Daily News titled, “TDD Spells Trouble for Our Schools.”

The Neosho TDD was set up in 2009 to fund $6.9 million in transportation projects, with a projected $4.5 million coming from a half-cent sales tax from businesses within the district and another $2.4 million from the Missouri Department of Transportation. Like many TDDs, this is a special taxing district with no residents. Within its boundaries, the 550-acre district includes the city’s golf course, wooded areas, and mostly uncropped farmland, along with a small commercial strip with a Wal-Mart, a Lowe’s, and some other shops and restaurants. Through the half-cent sales tax, customers of those businesses have paid in excess of $500,000 a year to support the TDD’s activities.

So far, those efforts have not stimulated any new business development. But who is to say that the millions of dollars spent by the TDD on roads and transportation won’t at some point turn woods and idle farmland into valuable commercial property?

Davidson, who served as mayor of Neosho from 2010 to 2016, regards the TDD as a clear case in which the end (not so much economic development as the enrichment of a small number of private property owners) does not justify the means (taxing unseeing and unsuspecting consumers).

Community improvement districts work in a similar way. Examples include the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel on Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and the Cardinals’ Ballpark Village in downtown Saint Louis. CIDs allow both of these commercial ventures to collect a one-percent sales “tax” from patrons, which is really just an artfully disguised part of the selling price.

It is time to jettison two-decade-old Missouri laws that promote taxation without representation and provide a textbook example of what the 19th-century economist Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder.”

The post How Missouri’s Special Taxing Districts Promote “Legal Plunder” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In response to a question from Councilman Quinton Lucas, Cole added that the developers would not seek any incentives for West Port Terrace at Manor Square. They expect to begin work on the project by early next year and complete construction within about 18 months.

I can’t speak to the merits of the project, but I am pleased that Pulse Development LLC, the developer of record, is willing to pay taxes. Happily, this appears to be a trend. A proposed 13-story, 257-unit apartment building just west of Country Club Plaza and an entertainment development at Ward Parkway Mall that are likewise eschewing taxpayer subsidies. Maybe someday businesses paying taxes in Kansas City will be so common that it won’t show up in news reports.

The post Shocker! KC Developer Builds Building, Pays Taxes! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Back when City leaders referred to themselves as “geniuses,” City Hall was handing out subsidies to everyone. H&R Block kicked off the feeding frenzy with their downtown office building, followed by the financially disastrous Power & Light District deal that has taxpayers footing the bond payments. In recent years taxpayers have chipped in for wealthy corporate headquarters for Burns & McDonnell and Cerner, and subsidized luxury high-rise apartment buildings. Even The Star itself has received a tax abatement. Once taxpayers and parents raised an objection to a subsidy for architectural firm BNIM to build in a hip part of town, the Council considered some reforms. Mayor Sly James would have none of it and complained that “we may as well put up a sign that says Kansas City is once again closed for business.”

Obviously, James is wrong. As Kansas City contemplated subsidizing a Hyatt hotel downtown, Marriott was building two on their own dime a few blocks away. The owners of Ward Parkway Mall are building a restaurant plaza without any subsidies. And now we learn of this proposed 13-story, 257-unit apartment building just west of Country Club Plaza. This is great news, not just because someone wants to invest in Kansas City, but because they are willing to invest their own money rather than seek taxpayer subsidies.

As Show-Me Institute writers have pointed out for years, not only do subsidies starve cities, counties, schools, and libraries of the revenue they need to provide basic services, subsidies also pervert developers’ incentive structure. And all this for projects that research shows likely would have been built anyway.

Real private investment—without taxpayer subsidies—is a true sign of economic health. City leaders need to put the brakes on handing out subsidies and let more private investment come.

The post Development Can Happen without Subsidies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Blight, which is a legitimate and pervasive problem on the east side of Kansas City, is tragic. It scars communities, reduces property value and chases away private investment. The documentary “Our Divided City” demonstrates clearly the link between urban neglect, poverty, blight, and crime in Kansas City alone.

But Kansas City’s use of blight, particularly in the case of the InterContinental Hotel, doesn’t address those things. The Kansas City Star wrote that the hotel in question is seeking the blight designation so that it can create a community improvement district (CID) and collect a 1% tax. The hotel would keep the tax and use it to address “deteriorated bathroom finishes and ceilings, torn and badly stained carpets in heavily trafficked areas and guest rooms, and torn wall paper.” In short, the CID allows them to create and collect a tax that they don’t have to report as part of their basic rate. But it will still be charged to every customer—tacked on at the end of every bill like any other tax, even though the money will stay with the hotel. One Marriott general manager has said that if the InterContinental’s request is granted, other hotels will seek to follow suit. And why not? It’s an opportunity to charge customers an extra 1% more than the rates they advertise.

It's difficult enough to look at a hotel as opulent as the InterContinental and think blight. Now the hotel wants to charge customers an extra 1% that the city will never see, and call that a tax. Kansas Citians, along with those who visit the city and stay at the InterContinental, deserve better. The hand-wringing and nose-holding of the past is not sufficient. Kansas City needs a more open and fair tax policy.

The post The Luxurious Intercontinental Hotel is Blighted? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Power & Light District plan was put together by City Manager Wayne Cauthen, and it was done largely out of the sight of the public. It was too late to make changes when the subsequent city manager, Troy Schulte, told us that in order for the Power & Light District to be self-sustaining, as voters were promised, “You needed Plaza-level holiday-level sales every day of the year.”

Seeking to avoid that same mistake, the 2010 convention hotel effort received lots of scrutiny, including reports from consultants and financiers. Bill Lucas, then president of the city’s hotel steering committee, said, “We’d about have to double our convention bookings” to make the hotel feasible. The project did not go forward because people were skeptical we’d make the goal.

This time the city is rushing a vote on the project to meet an arbitrary political deadline. There are no reports from consultants; no reports from financiers. One councilmember even complained about the short time available to make a decision.

While no one is saying how much convention business will have to increase to repay the investment, consider the impact of TIF giveaways to developers:

• Visitor money spent in the convention hotel itself won’t help us, as we’re giving all the taxes generated from those sales to the developers through Tax Increment Financing (TIF).
• If convention visitors wander to the Power & Light District for dinner and drinks, they’ll pay a high tax rate, but the city is already giving that tax money to Cordish through their TIF. The city won’t see much from it.
• If visitors head north to the River Market, the same will apply—we’re giving at least half of the tax revenue there to the developers.
• Maybe they’ll ride the streetcar. The streetcar will be free, so we won’t see any tourism dollars there (although it appears visitors who stay at the convention hotel will be paying 1 percent to the streetcar Transportation Development District).
• Maybe visitors will go to Country Club Plaza. That will be great, but half of the tax revenue generated from their purchases will go to the developers named in the Plaza TIF.

Therein lies the problem with Kansas City’s frequent use of TIF; we’re hollowing out our tax base. We claim that these developments will help the city, but in order to get the developments, we give away the tax revenue. Kansas City will likely need to more than double our convention bookings to make this financially sound, but no one is saying. This is no way to run a city.

The post How Will the Convention Hotel Help Taxpayers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The folks of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City have included our essay in their new book, Picture of Health: 2015 State of Black Kansas City. They are having a book release party at the Kansas City Public Library-Downtown Central on February 12 at 5:30 p.m. The event promises guest speakers and authors discussing topics such as racial equality. If you’re in the area, consider going. If not, I encourage you to get a copy of the book.

The post Show-Me Study Featured in New Book appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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.

The post Urban Neglect: Kansas City and TIF appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In January, Kansas City Mayor Sly James announced that Lockton — a large insurance provider based in the Country Club Plaza — would remain in its current location. Notably:

When Lockton officials announced in January they would remain in their building at 444 W. 47th St. through 2030, city and development agency officials said details of the state aid package were being negotiated. Mayor Sly James also said no city incentives would be involved.

And negotiate they did. The state kicked in almost $12 million in incentives to make sure Lockton did not move. And the city? Contrary to the mayor’s initial claim, the city did throw in an incentive package for the company, giving Lockton a 50 percent personal property tax break. As it turns out, even when we are told at a high-profile press conference “for jobs” that the city will not throw taxpayer money into the pot, the city just might be throwing money into the pot.

Maybe — just maybe — the city’s economic development plan is dysfunctional. Kansas City has one of the worst tax burdens and debt burdens in the Midwest. In the last decade, the city built an entertainment district/fiscal sinkhole to help make its stagnating convention center more marketable, “discovered” that the city also needed a government-backed hotel to better link the district and the convention center, and then decided it needed a government-backed trolley to tie all of its government-backed projects together. Kansas City, in short, is not unlike the state in general — an economic basket case, chasing one “hot industry” after another with tax credits and other incentives, but failing to anchor sustainable growth.

You do not build prosperity as the People’s gambler. You build it as the steward of the People’s tax dollars — fast to save, slow to spend, and eager to facilitate a level playing field for all of its citizens. Kansas City officials should reconsider the trajectory they are setting for the city.

The post Kansas City Dead Set On Its Dead-End Development Ways appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What could go wrong?

Councilman Russ Johnson has filed a resolution that would direct City Manager Troy Schulte to apply for a Federal Transit Administration grant to study extending the proposed streetcar line to the Country Club Plaza and University of Missouri-Kansas City area.

The current proposal has the line running a 2.2-mile route from River Market to Crown Center. The second leg would add a little more than three miles.

City officials apparently feel they need to go straight to ludicrous speed with this crazy train proposal, but basically all of the same objections apply to the new plan as the old. Kansas City’s streetcar plan attempts to satisfy a market demand for transit that does not exist along the proposed route and will cost at least — and now, potentially far more than — $100 million to get off the ground. In addition, despite city promises, the plan will make the city less competitive, not more competitive, with a spike in local taxes.

Is this really what Kansas City needs to be investing in right now? The Kansas City Star‘s Yael Abouhalkah recently noted that Kansas City has the second-worst debt service burden among the largest cities in the region and one of the highest tax burdens. Why would the city aggravate concerns that are already making it less competitive, and why on Earth would they double down on such a plan?

The post Double Trouble: Kansas City Considers Extending Trolley Line To Plaza appeared first on Show-Me Institute.