The Populous slide deck (available here) is dedicated to the problems facing Kauffman Stadium, including the infamous Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) or “concrete cancer.” The deck indicates that when this appears, it must be replaced. The report also highlights problems facing several parts of the stadium and concludes “the age of the building systems and outdated technology will force replacement of major mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems as their service life expires.”

The final slide lists the renovation cost estimate as $1.072 billion. That is more than the new ballpark cost estimate of $1.005 billion. These estimates suggest that a financially prudent decision would be to build a new park.

But wait . . .

On page 9 of the term sheet the Royals presented to Clay County on September 28, 2023, the cost of a new ballpark in North Kansas City is listed at $1.277 billion. That’s 27 percent higher than the Populous estimate of $1.005 billion. That increase may be due to inflation, which would also affect the cost of repairing the K. We don’t know the projected costs of the plan to build a stadium in the Crossroads district that voters rejected on April 2 because no one will tell us. We also don’t know the cost estimates of building in the East Village.

Unfortunately, there is so much we don’t know about these proposals. The Star reports that the city manager is now in talks with both the Chiefs and the Royals and that a public vote may not be necessary. It would be a shame if the lesson that new stadium proponents learn from the April 2 vote is that the public should be even less informed and involved in how the city spends tax dollars.

The post Documents Give Conflicting Numbers on the Cost of a New Stadium appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Linked here are documents regarding those negotiations received through an open records request:

• Email exchange setting up the initial August 15, 2023, meeting between Royals representatives and Clay County leadership
• July 7, 2023: The initial term sheet for the proposed lease agreement
• September 15, 2023: Clay County’s term sheet discussion points
• September 28, 2023: Royals’ presentation on the proposal
• October 17, 2023: Clay County’s revised proposal
• November 20, 2023: Royals’ second presentation
• December 2023: Clay County’s summary of negotiations to date
• Email exchanges between Royals leadership and various North Kansas City government agencies detailing infrastructure costs from JE Dunn, a fiscal impact analysis by bakertilly Municipal Advisors, and a letter from local police to the Royals. It also includes a letter from the Royals putting the negotiations “on hold with Clay County, Missouri, as we work through a competing opportunity in Jackson County.” That last letter is dated January 16, 2024.

The post Details of the Negotiations Between the Royals and Clay County appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Phil Davis: [sighs] I don’t know what he’s up to, but he’s got that Rodgers and Hammerstein look again.

Betty Haynes: Is that bad?

Phil Davis: Not bad, but always expensive.

I’m afraid things are about to get more expensive with the Royals:

The Royals had previously announced a decision on a new Kansas City ballpark by the end of September. Now, as of Sept. 21, the team is looking to push off a decision as negotiations continue with both Jackson County and Clay County officials over the cost and funding of the projects. If the team goes downtown, the new ballpark would be located in the East Village near the downtown loop, on a 27-acre site bounded by 8th Street to the north, 12th Street to the south (where the main entrance would be located), Charlotte Street to the east to Cherry Street to the west; if the team does go with North Kansas City, an 18th Avenue and Fayette Street ballpark location would be part of the 90-acre site. The target date for both locations: 2028.

The fact that negotiations are continuing with both counties is concerning, precisely for the reason Quentin Lucas mentioned at the outset when Clay County’s bid was announced: the longer this bidding war goes on, the worse served local taxpayers are going to be. It’s hard to envision a circumstance where longer negotiations would decrease the amount of money shoveled over to the Kansas City Royals at the end of this process, so moving the decision date from late September to late October is a very unwelcome development.

Again, no public money should be going to a project like this, but if it is, it would be far better for that decision to be made sooner and not later. The decision coming later than was promised should concern all taxpayers.

The post Royals Put Off Stadium Decision Another Month appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That said, I should make and reiterate a few points about the Royals’ stadium issue, now that it’s back in the news.

• The stadium renderings are cool. It’s easy to poo-poo big-dollar construction proposals as being sales jobs of dubious eventual reality, but that doesn’t make the prospect of something new any less interesting. The eventual financing plan for the stadium will likely be bad policy, but it’s understandable why people might get excited at what a future ballpark might look like. That’s obviously why they had the press conference this week: to stoke support and excitement.
• But cool renderings don’t change the fact that taxpayers shouldn’t pay for professional sports stadia. The renderings for these stadia could have put a helicopter port on the roof, a rocket ship in the parking lot, and a theme park in center field, but a cool drawing doesn’t make giving tax dollars to rich baseball tycoons an appropriate “investment” by the public. Developments like this generally do not expand the pie of disposable income in a region; instead, they tend to redirect spending that was previously being spent by consumers at other restaurants and entertainment options in the region. Ask bar owners in Westport what they think the immediate impact of the Power & Light District was on their traffic and you’ll get a sense of the potential risks of subsidizing new competition to existing businesses this time around.
• The “$2.8 billion” construction impact figure presented by the Royals is not a game changer. As I told KMBC 9, I believe that the Royals believe their numbers and that stadium construction would create “$2.8 billion” in economic activity in and around the ballpark. But what’s that really mean, other than to repeat the obvious? When the team is promising $1 billion in private financing to go along with $1 billion in public support, yeah, those are two giant wheelbarrows of cash being dumped into one spot that get you pretty close to the headline number. But that doesn’t change the fact that half of the spending would be coming from the public to create a district that would compete with other entertainment districts, including Westport and the Power & Light District.
• And speaking of the taxpayer-subsidized Power & Light District, it hasn’t and won’t ever pay for itself. One of the biggest public spending projects in the last couple of decades was the Power & Light District in Kansas City’s downtown. From the beginning, the city was on the hook to pay off the bonds for the property if tax revenue from the district wasn’t high enough. The result? Over the last 16 years, Kansas City taxpayers paid the nearly $170 million gap between what the district costs and what the district generates in tax revenue to pay the bonds. It’s easy to make promises of success when the cost of failure is borne by someone else, and there’s no guarantee taxpayers—whether in Jackson County or Clay County—won’t get soaked this go-around, too.

There is a bit of deja vu here, of course; about this time in 2022, I was talking about a potential move for the Chiefs, whose lease at the Truman Sports Complex ends when the Royals does. But the takeaway now with the Royals is the same as it was with the Chiefs—sports teams should pay for their playthings themselves. The Royals may be the kings of Kauffman, but when it comes to sovereign action in the real world, public officials should reject spending tax dollars on anything but legitimate responsibilities of government. Subsidizing sports teams isn’t one of those responsibilities.

The post Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Pay for Your Own Stadium appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jackson Kurtz at KMBC Channel 9 in Kansas City after the Royals finished their press conference and give him my views on the situation. I’ll have more to say on the Royals tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s the story we were a part of that ran earlier this week.

The post Show-Me Talks Royals Stadium Move on KMBC appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Well, I have some bad news. On Friday, word broke that the Royals have been talking with North Kansas City and Clay County officials for a ballpark development, and those talks have gotten fairly serious. According to two county commissioners and the mayor of North Kansas City:

Over the past few months leaders from Clay County and the City of North Kansas City have had conversations with the Kansas City Royals about the possibility of developing a new baseball stadium and adjacent ballpark district in North Kansas City. This plan would include commercial, residential development and entertainment experiences adjacent to the stadium, complementing the amazing businesses and entertainment options that already exist in downtown North Kansas City today. We look forward to continuing our work with the Royals and have additional meetings scheduled with them.

The Royals confirmed in a recent media report that they are considering a location in North Kansas City. We think it is important that we communicate our efforts with the community, and the reason we plan to work with the Royals on behalf of our respective jurisdictions to select a North Kansas City site for the planned new stadium. Although no agreement has been reached by either Clay County or North Kansas City to take action on, we are striving to lay the groundwork necessary for a plan that is positive for the city, the county and our entire community.

A vote on a countywide tax for the stadium could come as early as this November, a quick turnaround for such a seemingly late-breaking project. Apart from the expected taxpayer subsidy, the potential North Kansas City sites have a few advantages, including no Kansas City earnings tax (and so instant raises for Royals employees) and a more stable crime situation than Kansas City, which just had its 88th murder of 2023, including seven murders in just the last four days as of this writing.

I expected both the Chiefs and Royals would remain in the region but thought that the Chiefs were the most likely to head to Kansas or some other non-Kansas City, Missouri jurisdiction. Friday’s news upends that assumption, with both teams leaving Kansas City’s boundaries now a legitimate possibility. No taxpayers should subsidize the Chiefs or Royals, but if Kansas City lucks out and gets to enjoy the teams without having to line their pockets, all the better.

And to North Kansas City and Clay County, I’ll just say this: Really? C’mon now.

Really?

The post “The Kansas City Royals of North Kansas City”? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Bizarre, right? I thought so and wrote a whole paper about it. The good news is CON laws are falling out of favor across the country, and there are rumblings in the Missouri Legislature that CON elimination could be a major priority in 2022. The bad news is it isn’t 2022 yet.

In the meantime, the old and broken system lingers, and as The Missouri Times reported this week, seasoned health care providers who want to serve Missourians (or just serve them better) are still having to go hat in hand to beg the government to let them offer care for people. Indeed, the Health Facilities Review Committee (HFRC), which grants or denies certificates, was back at work, and the absurdity of the system was once again front and center.

Among the lowlights, an hour-long debate over a pair of proposed senior living facilities in St. Charles County stands out. Opponents argued that the new facilities would pressure existing providers to find quality employees, presumably because the newer facilities would pay better and would, of course, be newer. (“Competition for staff” is a common objection at these hearings.) Opponents also argued that a lot of certificates of need had already been issued in the region, but the holders of many of those certificates haven’t opened facilities yet and thus a certificate shouldn’t be issued here.

In other words, opponents wanted the application denied not because there were too many facilities serving St. Charles County, but because there were too many certificates. What nonsense.

And then there are the applications to add or upgrade existing equipment.

Barnes-Jewish in St. Peters needed to ask the HFRC for permission “to replace its cardiac catheterization lab where doctors work to restore blood flow after a stroke” with a new $2.8 million investment. It was approved. A cancer center in North Kansas City was approved for a “$2 million replacement for its PET/CT system which administrators said was lacking.” It was approved. A Kansas City area provider wanted to add a $2.6 million MRI unit. Approved. Obviously.

Again, why is the state involved in this at all?

The idea that the government has any business interfering with qualified health providers creating or upgrading facilities is absurd and counterproductive to the public interest. I’m hopeful that next year will be the year that CON requirements are finally eliminated in Missouri. It’d be a great thing for providers and patients alike.

The post Missouri’s Health Facilities Review Committee Shouldn’t Exist appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For those who aren’t aware, PPP was created by Congress to give forgivable loans to businesses and nonprofits affected by the coronavirus. As governments across the country shut down schools and businesses, Congress realized that it needed to provide support or businesses would go under, costing millions of jobs and carving deep scars into the American economy.

The first part of the story is important. Government shut these businesses and schools down. PPP was not a “bailout,” rewarding businesses that had acted poorly or were floundering. Businesses and schools had little say in whether or not they would be able to serve customers and did not deserve to be harmed as a result.

Lots of schools took PPP loans. This shouldn’t surprise us. As Dean Johnson, leader of the Crossroad Academies charter schools in Kansas City told The Kansas City Star, “I understand the economic realities, but one way or another we need to be able to meet our expenses, and if we’re trying to provide a more complex learning model what we certainly can’t be doing is laying off staff.”

But here is where the Star’s PPP story went off the rails. Rather than examining the effects of the coronavirus on local schools and their budgets, the author decided to pit charter and private schools against the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), making the case that it was unfair that charter and private schools could get PPP support while KCPS couldn’t. The article PPP-shamed them. It includes the predictable jabs at Rockhurst High School’s tuition ($15,000 for the upcoming year), and a quote from the local teachers union leader taking a dig at Betsy DeVos.

Like great Kansas City jazz, it’s the notes that it didn’t play that are the most revealing.

First, it left out the fact that KCPS receives more public funding than local charter schools, and even more per pupil than most private schools. According to the state of Missouri, KCPS spent $15,137 per student in 2019. Seems like an important detail to put in the story. KCPS is hardly in penury. It is certainly not “underfunded.”

Second, as Mayor Quinton Lucas pointed out on Twitter, in Clay County, federal CARES Act dollars were allocated to support the North Kansas City and Liberty public school districts. Jackson county could do the same for KCPS but hasn’t. Maybe someone should ask them why not.

Third, the article fails to mention that if private and charter schools were to close due to the economic effects of the coronavirus (as more than 100 private schools already have), it would be terrible for KCPS. State and local governments are already reeling from decreased tax revenue due to depressed economic activity; flooding schools with hundreds or thousands of new students would put tremendous strain on KCPS or any other public school district. If public school advocates could see beyond their immediate, narrow interests they would understand that charter schools and private schools are doing them a favor.

The disappointing thing about the Star’s article is that if it were not framed as adversarial, but as a system of schools wrestling with a shared problem, we might be better able to find solutions. Judging from the social media reaction, most readers walked away from the story angry at private and charter schools, not interested in how to help all children in Kansas City get a good education in the time of the coronavirus. That’s a shame.

The post The Star PPP-Shames Kansas City Private and Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

RideKC is the regional transit group responsible for the Kansas City streetcar. RideKC’s initiatives are largely funded by city taxpayers, and this latest venture is no exception. The cities of Kansas City, MO and North Kansas City, MO are both listed as public funders of the scooter project.

Eric Vaughan, bike share director for local advocacy group BikeWalkKC, commented on the scooter project:

RideKC is the only transit authority in the country that’s now integrating scooters as part of the regional transit network, which really goes to show how progressive our team here in Kansas City has been with their approach.

This raises an obvious question: If private companies are already putting electric scooters on the streets, why is taxpayer money being used so that the Kansas City transit authority can enter the market?

Bird is a company that consistently has scooters on the streets in Kansas City. Lime has had scooters in the area as well, and a company owned by Ford called SPIN will be placing scooters in Kansas City later this year. Scooters are widely available, and the companies’ use of private chargers and mechanics ensures that scooters are in good shape and located in well-trafficked areas. Lime’s 2018 year-end report claimed that 31,000 Kansas Citians used Lime scooters in a three month period.

The scooter market in Kansas City seems to be doing just fine without government help. If private companies are already providing services, why is our government spending taxpayer dollars on those services as well?

The post Why Is RideKC Entering The Electric Scooter Market? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Kansas City Star editorial board, not entirely surprisingly, supports the bond, and concludes its editorial with:

The district’s current debt service levy of $1.29 per $100 of assessed valuation won’t retire for about 20 years. Approving the bond issue in August would extend the debt levy 10 more years. Because of the extension, taxes that residents and businesses pay to the school district will neither go up nor down whether the measure passes or fails, officials say.

Two years ago, my colleague James Shuls addressed this very argument. He wrote,

Bonds work in much the same way and school districts can “refinance” to extend the term of the bond. They market this to the public as a “no tax increase” bond issue and claim that your payment will not go down or up whether the issue passes or not. Your tax payment will not change, but you will be paying for a longer period of time.

The bond issuance may be the exact right idea to meet North Kansas City’s needs. Shuls suggests calling such efforts “no tax levy increases” because, in fact, the new bonds will require the expenditure of more tax dollars. Proponents know better, and would be more credible if they just leveled with voters rather than spin fanciful yarns.

The post North Kansas City Proposes A “No Tax Increase” Bond Issue appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now, this might strike you as odd when you hear over and over that charter schools are destroying public education.  Kansas City and St. Louis each have more than one-third of their students enrolled in charter schools, and yet, the traditional public school districts seem to be getting better.  How can this be?

It’s possible that either by stirring competition, more efficiently sorting students into options that serve them, or relieving pressure from school districts, charter schools are helping once struggling districts turn a corner.  Whatever the reason, it is hard to look at these numbers and see charter schools harming either district.

I should also point out that both districts started in very bad places.  In 2011, Kansas City had a graduation rate of 50 percent and St. Louis was at 54 percent.  Even with their gains, the Kansas City School District sits at only 67 percent and St. Louis at 68 percent. This puts them on par with cities like Newark, New Jersey (68 percent) and Compton, California (65 percent). They perform worse in absolute terms than neighboring cities like Little Rock (75 percent) and even Chicago (70 percent).  Inauspicious company. Clearly, there is still a long, long way to go.

Around the rest of the state, there was both good news and bad news.

The overall graduation rate in Missouri is up, from 81% in 2011 to 85.7% in 2013. That gain represents the 6^th best growth rate in the country over that time period. At the same time, though, Hispanic students in the class of 2013 graduated at a rate of 81 percent, low-income students graduated at a rate of 78 percent, and African-American students graduated at a rate of only 72 percent.

The report also broke out the performance of districts with at least 15,000 students:

• Around Kansas City, North Kansas City saw a graduation rate of 91 percent and Lee’s Summit clocked in at 94 percent.
• In greater St. Louis, Hazelwood saw an 86 percent graduation rate, Ft. Zumwalt 89 percent, Francis Howell 92 percent, Parkway 93 percent, and Rockwood 94 percent.
• Columbia had a graduation rate of 86 percent and Springfield had one of 87 percent.

All in all, a very interesting report that should inform conversations about education around the state.

The post If charter schools are ruining education in Missouri, more please! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All streetcar lines are expensive and redundant, but the proposed northern extension is especially wasteful. Opponents and friends of the streetcar alike should be able to agree that this is not the best use of city resources.

Well, it seems like we can agree, with some rail supporters arguing against this extension plan. The price tag is an obvious point of criticism, but some streetcar supporters undercut their previous argument for streetcars by claiming that North Kansas City does not have the economic density to warrant a rail line. As Kansas City Councilman Russ Johnson put it, “it’s hard to have rail where there isn’t economic density.”

But wait a second. Haven’t we all been told that streetcars create economic density? Even Johnson has “insisted that the streetcar will help economic development near the rail lines and could help build urban population density.” He is not alone. Supporters of the streetcars have claimed that development follows the rail and that the un-built line in Kansas City has already driven development. If that is truly the case, a streetcar line makes more sense in North Kansas City than elsewhere, because its economic density could use a boost.

Johnson’s statements betray the truth about streetcars: they do not necessarily drive development, but they benefit greatly from existing development. The massive expense of streetcars usually requires densely developed areas that can act as a supportive tax base. Downtown Kansas City has businesses and property owners who can be taxed to pay for the streetcar, North Kansas City does not. Sales and property taxes, like those proposed for the downtown streetcar, would not be sufficient to support a streetcar extension to North Kansas City.

The post Streetcar Supporters’ Tortured Logic On Display In North Kansas City Extension Option appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Price tag: Streetcar lines are expensive; most cost more than $50 million per mile. With an additional $50 million for a dedicated streetcar bridge across the Missouri River, the Northern line would be far more expensive per mile than the starter line in downtown Kansas City. To make matters worse, federal dollars might be difficult to come by, because, as the Star reports:

. . . funding depends in part on the economic development potential of the project. There’s no way to have economic development activity, consultants admitted, on a bridge that would have to span 1.7 miles of existing heavy railroad lines, the river itself and other unusable land to get to North Kansas City.

Of course, a much cheaper option is to run the line across the Heart of America Bridge. But this route has significant congestion from cars, trucks, bicycles, and buses. Which brings us to:

• Public transit options already exist for the route. Three bus lines (38, 133, 142) already connect the River Market with North Kansas City, two along almost the exact route of the proposed streetcar. If those bus routes do not adequately serve the area, Kansas City could increase bus service for a fraction of the cost of the streetcar.

All streetcar lines are expensive and redundant, but the proposed northern extension is especially wasteful. Opponents and friends of the streetcar alike should be able to agree that this is not the best use of city resources.

The post Kansas City Streetcar Northern Extension: The Bus With Rails Also Wants Its Own Bridge appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post All Options Should Be on the Table for North Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Needless to say, rushed changes to the board rules and amendments added to bills after public hearings are completed does not make for good public policy. A judge upheld the right of the city to add new members to the hospital board, but I have heard that the current board members changed the board rules to require a super-majority vote on certain actions before the new members could be appointed. That might be clever, but it is hardly admirable.

Legislation taking the hospital away from the entity that has owned it for decades would be a very dangerous  precedent, terrible policy, and wrong, all combined. Maybe it is just me, but I think taking away ownership of the hospital from the city is, you know, a bad idea. The city owns the hospital. It has always owned the hospital. The city should be able to do what it wants with the hospital, be that sale, privatization, closure, expansion, whatever. (Let’s be clear, however: under every legitimate scenario, the hospital is going to continue operating.)

I am no lawyer, but I have to imagine the courts will continue to side with the city here. That makes legislative changes the best option for hospital activists opposed to any structural changes. It would be extremely unfortunate if a pro-free- market legislature made an exception in this case and blocked the city from even considering something such as privatization, which most members of the legislature would usually support.

The post North Kansas City Hospital Getting Very Interesting Very Fast appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Local governments should provide services that government is best suited to provide and that the private sector cannot serve as effectively. This includes streets, police, fire protection, and neighborhood parks. The list does not include hospitals. The private sector, including both non-profit and for-profit hospitals, has long provided fantastic health services to our country. Indeed, to many Americans, the idea of a government hospital probably feels like a relic.

As with many privatization efforts, the fears of turning a beloved public asset over to the profit-mongering private sector are vastly overstated. The Kaiser Foundation found in a 1999 study of public hospital ownership changes that, “In most instances, access to care for low-income patients has been preserved after conversion and teaching programs have not been cut.”

A 2001 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded: “In many respects, the empirical evidence from hospital conversions is reassuring. … On the whole, hospitals’ missions appear to be preserved post-conversion.” The studies note that the government should carefully negotiate the contracts and monitor the operations after the sale to ensure compliance with public goals and protect the public interest. Missouri law already requires the state attorney general to review any hospital sales, as it did when Sweet Springs, Mo., sold its hospital to a for-profit company in 2009. No more state regulation is needed, especially changes that outright prevent sales to for-profit companies.

Private hospitals, both non-profit and for-profit, are a cornerstone of our health care system. They treat the uninsured and poor as part of their mission, and they do it well. The idea that only a government hospital can take care of society’s needy is as ill-founded as the idea that government should make clothes and grow food for the poor because the private sector is not capable of doing those things, either.

There is nothing wrong with North Kansas City making money off the sale of the hospital if that is what it chooses to do. That money would not disappear in a sinkhole — it would be invested back in the city or returned to city taxpayers via lower tax rates. In particular, if a for-profit hospital took over operation, the tax base of the city would be greatly enhanced. The money from the sale or new taxes could allow the city to do many things, including investing in a lower-cost health care clinic if it chose. Clinics are a far more responsible long-term strategy for local governments than large hospitals. Such a change would not be new to Missouri. Saint Louis County now operates three clinics after closing its public hospital more than two decades ago.

North Kansas City officials deserve credit for launching a careful effort to investigate the best options for the city. They are not doing this as part of a fire sale. If city leaders determine that a sale of the hospital to a private company is best for the city and its residents, they should be allowed to do so without new state regulations blocking the way. Limiting the city’s options, which recent bills filed in the state legislature would do, has no real benefit. If residents and voters do not like North Kansas City officials’ ultimate decisions, they have numerous ways to send that message.

Privatizing the hospital will benefit North Kansas City. Health care services under private operation would continue just as they have for decades under public ownership. North Kansas City should not be expected to hold back against a nationwide trend toward converting public hospitals because of erroneous fears of private operation.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post North Kansas City Should Privatize Its Hospital appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Matthes cited Independence, a suburb near Kansas City, as an example of a community that has enjoyed success with TIFs. I wonder if he was referring to the Bass Pro TIF in Independence that has failed. The city of Independence has had to kick in more than $4.1 million to cover bond payments associated with the project.

Matthes also said that “(TIF) does prevent and eliminate blight” and “it does increase property value and tax revenue over time.” Though the Missourian highlighted a TIF in North Kansas City that is characterized as successful, it failed to mention the notorious Citadel TIF in nearby Kansas City.

In late 2011, Kansas City officials voted to pay $15 million to purchase property that had been razed and contaminated with asbestos. The Citadel site now sits vacant, and is an example of a TIF project that made an area much, much worse, instead of eliminating so-called blight.

Moreover, earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal characterized Kansas City’s downtown entertainment TIF development, the Power & Light Development, as a “budget hole.” The Journal reports that the Power & Light Development is generating less than one-third of the tax revenue needed to cover debt costs associated with the project. As a result, Kansas City is setting aside $12.8 million to make up the difference.

On the eastern side of the state, TIF does not look much better. Matthes’ statement that TIF eliminates blight and increases tax revenue over time ignores the findings of a multi-year study of TIF and other development subsidies in the Saint Louis area that those subsidies were frequently concentrated in “higher-income communities.” The same study found that retail jobs associated with TIF projects came at a cost of more than $370,000 in taxpayer dollars.

Those findings are not surprising: Years earlier, the Brookings Institution concluded that TIF in Missouri “. . . is used extensively in high-tax-base Missouri suburban areas with little need for assistance . . .”

Perhaps I am being unfair. When Matthes said that TIF has proven to eliminate blight, he may have been referring to the TIF awarded to a Saint Louis area mall. The mall was deemed “blighted” because it lacked a Nordstrom’s. I suppose, because the West County Mall now has a Nordstrom’s, one could consider the “blight” removed.

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