The city is suffering under a $55 million operating deficit. The mayor pointed out in a 2023 budget letter that “The demands of a City this size in square miles and infrastructure age far exceed affordable options for residents and available resources.”

What to do? The answer is obvious: dedicate more public tax dollars to private corporations. And not just baseball, but women’s soccer, too!

Kansas City leaders are once again proposing public subsidies for a sports facility. This time, the beneficiary is the Kansas City Current and the continued development of the Berkley Riverfront.

According to reporting by The Kansas City Star, the city may create a new tax-increment financing (TIF) district and issue up to $235 million in bonds to support expansion of CPKC Stadium and surrounding development. The project would increase stadium capacity from 11,500 to 18,000 seats and add parking, retail, and mixed-use development to the riverfront.

Why? Why is it the responsibility of taxpayers to fund this? Projects like this can be good. They can even be great! But it’s not on par with, say, public safety or infrastructure, or education—which will all lose money because of the subsidy.

Supporters of the proposal point to the team’s success. Lucas told Fox4 that Kansas City must position itself for future events such as a potential Women’s World Cup and noted that there are limits to what an 11,500-seat stadium can host. He also emphasized that the proposed financing would not come from the city’s general revenue fund.

Let’s be careful about that last point. TIF does not create money out of thin air. Without a deal, the Current owners would pay taxes on their development—just like you and me. The proposal is to change that and let them keep that money. Money that we are told the city doesn’t have enough of.

Perhaps the most revealing thing is that Lucas can’t even be bothered to make a coherent defense of this spending. When asked about public subsidies for the Current, he told Fox4, “We’ve been through this before with another professional team that plays in Kansas City.”

But in an April 17, 2026, live interview with the Kansas City Stack Substack, Lucas said about public financing for a Royals ballpark: “this is like the incentive arrangements that we’ve done in other places. Probably the most stadium-like discussion is the stadium we built on the riverfront for the Kansas City Current. That, of course, was an incentive arrangement where you had votes at city council at one of our incentive agencies, that being the Port Authority, and you had state participation. I expect that to be the same.” [3:36 mark]

In other words, we’re giving public money to the Current because we’re giving money to the Royals because we gave money to the Current. That’s his argument.

I was reminded recently of other reporting from Fox4 in which Lucas defended himself for accepting secret gifts from the Royals, among others, to pay for tuxedos and trips to the Super Bowl. He said, “my goal is always to save taxpayer dollars.”

Lucas may have lots of reasons for accepting gifts. But given his willingness to spend public funds on stadiums, it’s hard to believe he cares about saving taxpayer dollars.

The post Kansas City Mayor’s Circular Reasoning on Stadium Subsidies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Kansas City Star recently published a story examining the city’s gun violence problem as Kansas City hosts matches during the World Cup.

The article raises a legitimate concern. Kansas City, Missouri, suffers from far too much violence. Recent shootings have again drawn national attention to a problem local leaders have struggled to address for years.

The Star largely frames that problem through the lens of Missouri’s gun laws. Missouri allows permit-less carry. It broadly preempts local firearm regulations. Legislative efforts to tighten gun restrictions have gone nowhere, even after highly publicized tragedies such as the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally shooting.

Reasonable people can conclude that these policies contribute to violence.

But if we are serious about understanding why Kansas City experiences so much violence, there is an obvious question that deserves attention:

What about Kansas? The state line is not hundreds of miles away. It is literally a road.

Kansas has permit-less carry. Kansas does not require firearm registration. Kansas does not impose waiting periods. Kansas does not require universal background checks for private firearm sales. Kansas broadly preempts local governments from adopting their own firearm regulations.

In other words, Kansas and Missouri have remarkably similar firearm laws, yet the outcomes on violence are very different.

The Star notes that Kansas City, Missouri, averages roughly 30 homicides during June and July, compared with four in Kansas City, Kansas. That is a remarkable difference. Accounting for population, Kansas City, Missouri, still experiences roughly twice the homicide rate of Kansas City, Kansas.

If neighboring jurisdictions with similar firearm laws experience dramatically different homicide rates, serious observers should be interested in what else might explain the difference. They should certainly acknowledge it.

The question is not whether gun laws matter. The question is whether they are sufficient to explain the difference in homicide numbers. The Star asks the first question. It largely ignores the second.

The post If Gun Laws Explain Kansas City’s Violence, What Explains Kansas? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to The Kansas City Star, the city has not yet formally applied for funding under Missouri’s Show-Me Sports Investment Act. State participation is a central piece of the financing plan, and city officials are already considering ways to secure up to $600 million in local support.

Negotiations of this scale are complicated. City, state, and team officials may simply still be working through the details. But the delay raises an obvious question. If the public financing package is as straightforward as supporters suggest, why are the numbers still unavailable? (The same could be asked of the Chiefs deal in Kansas.)

One possibility is that the arithmetic is becoming more difficult as officials move from press announcement to actual financing plans.

When the stadium was announced, the Royals indicated that roughly 60% of the project’s estimated $1.9 billion cost would come from public sources. That implies well over $1 billion in taxpayer support. Yet the Show-Me Sports Investment Act places meaningful limits on state assistance. As I noted previously, available estimates suggest the state’s contribution may be closer to $250 million than the much larger figures that have circulated publicly.

If state support is lower than hoped, the remaining public contribution would need to come from Kansas City taxpayers through various tax diversions and subsidies. It won’t be cheap.

The political environment may become even more challenging if voters get a chance to weigh in. Opponents of the project have submitted signatures seeking a public vote on the city’s participation. That effort remains uncertain, but financing proposals acceptable to elected officials may not be acceptable to the public—as we learned in 2024.

To make matters more confusing, the Star previously reported:

Mayor Quinton Lucas told reporters that the city has projections for how much tax revenue a new stadium could generate based on what Kauffman Stadium in the Truman Sports Complex produces now — which city officials say is roughly $5 million a year.

That $5 million is currently going into the city’s coffers and used to fund police, infrastructure, and other public goods. Moving the team downtown and then returning that money to the Royals is not a wash—it’s a $5 million hit to the budget each year. And that does not include the cost to the city if the stadium fails to generate enough money to cover the bond payments—because the city will issue the bonds and back them up.

This project is bad for taxpayers and bad for the city. The delay from the city and the state in providing financing details suggests that elected leaders are beginning to understand exactly how bad it will be.

The post Kansas City Mum on Royals Ransom appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I wrote recently that in the lead up to the public vote, even earnings tax defenders could not defend the earnings tax. Despite urging yes votes, they conceded many, if not all, of my claims that the tax makes for bad policy.

Now we might be seeing this story repeat itself with stadium subsidies. It’s being reported that Kansas City’s package of subsidies for a downtown baseball stadium includes bonds issued by the city—and backed by them. This means that if the stadium fails to generate enough revenue to pay the bonds, city taxpayers will make up the difference. This is exactly the type of deal that requires the city to direct over $10 million each year to cover Power & Light District debts.

The Kansas City Business Journal reports city leaders are aware of that same risk with a downtown ballpark for the Royals. They concede:

. . . estimates for Power & Light District sales and economic activity tax generation proved “spectacularly wrong.” The entertainment hub’s annual bond gaps have required about $10.5 million a year from the city’s general fund and $199 million total to date.

City leaders now say they’re being more careful — even as they plan to support as much as two times the district’s original debt for a stadium at Washington Square Park.

How times have changed. Twenty years ago then-Mayor Kay Barnes told a columnist for The Kansas City Star, regarding her deal on the Power & Light District:

“We’re going to look like geniuses” in five or 10 years, Barnes said. The city is paying low interest rates for projects that are capable of paying off the debt, she added.

Barnes could not have been more wrong. (Though she was named the 2018 Kansas Citian of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce, which says more about the chamber than it does Barnes.)

Public subsidies for private interests such as a baseball stadium is still bad policy. They don’t benefit taxpayers. But it’s some comfort that at least Kansas City leaders are capable of learning from their mistakes—right?

Right?

The post Another Policy Concession from Kansas City—Kind of appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But what if that weren’t the case? What if the government only assessed the value of your land—and not any improvements you put on it?

That approach is called a land tax, or land value tax (LVT). By separating land from improvements and taxing them differently, governments can encourage property development. In downtown areas, often dotted with parking lots or undeveloped parcels, owners would be incentivized to build or to sell to someone who will.

This need not be an increased cost to owners. Taxes on improvements and land could be set at different rates (ideally zero for improvements) to ensure there is no net increase.

Show-Me writers have argued in favor of this approach for years:

• 2010: A Land Tax Is Preferable to the Earnings Tax
• 2010: Great Article About the Land Tax in the Kansas City Star
• 2012: Kansas City Should Expand, Not Remove, Land Taxes
• 2012: Kansas City Land Tax Should Be Expanded, Not Eliminated
• 2015: Land Taxes and Columbia
• 2026: It’s Time to Phase Out the Earnings Tax. Honestly, Nothing Else Has Worked . . .

The legislature in Kentucky, our neighbor to the east, is considering a bill that would, among other things, allow cities to separate property taxes into land and improvements.

In Missouri, such an effort likely would require a change to the Constitution. Currently, Article X, Section 3 states, “Taxes may be levied and collected for public purposes only, and shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” Later, Article X Section 4 defines real property as a single class with limited subclasses.

This could easily be changed, perhaps by inserting into Section 4, “Land and improvements upon land may be classified as separate subclasses of real property for purposes of taxation.”

Every city wants to spur development. The structure of our taxing system often serves as a disincentive to build. A land tax is a way for cities to encourage building and development without increasing taxes and without offering taxpayer subsidies. And it’s simple to understand and explain.

As Missouri and its cities look to encourage population growth and development, adopting a land value tax is a simple and straightforward way to do so.

The post Land Taxes: Will the Grass Be Greener in the Bluegrass State? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last week in The Kansas City Star, I argued the earnings tax is harmful. The responses suggest the Show-Me Institute is winning the argument, regardless of the vote’s outcome. What’s striking is that even those who acknowledge the tax’s flaws remain unwilling to act on their supposed principles. (St. Louis will also be voting on the earnings tax.)

I argued that the tax is regressive, drives workers and businesses away, and fuels the city’s subsidy culture.

David Hudnall, a reliably left-of-center columnist for the Star, urged a yes vote but largely conceded my points. In a column titled, “Just hold your nose and vote for Kansas City’s earnings tax,“ he agreed the tax is regressive and supports lavish subsidies for wealthy developers.

Weirdly, Hudnall then lamented that the tax requires a public vote in the first place. But he wistfully concluded, “I’d welcome a little more fiscal discipline at City Hall.”

The Star’s Editorial Board also endorsed a yes vote but conceded the tax is regressive and “economically harmful”—a significant admission. The piece further conceded, “The earnings tax is not the best way to fund such a large proportion of our city services.” Another notable concession. The piece closed not with a demand for action, but with little more than meek, wishful thinking:

We hope to see future City Council candidates campaigning on a pledge to reform the system. We also hope to see council members who vow to keep the basics of what makes a city hum fully funded—and ratchet back the incentive handouts.

Back in 2021, the last time Kansas City voted on the earnings tax, the Editorial Board urged a yes vote after admitting the tax was regressive and fed the city’s incentive culture. (They even admitted that the sales tax was too high.) Yet they feared reform would be worse.

In 2015, another reliably left-of-center columnist for the Star, Yael Abouhalkah, lamented that the city has neither explored alternatives nor held a meaningful discussion about the tax. He also observed that the tax is regressive and hits the poor hardest.

The problem, then as now, is that city leaders have no incentive to explore alternatives or discuss a 10-year phaseout of a tax widely acknowledged as harmful. Why? Because rather than demand better, the Star’s opinion class and business leaders reliably fold at the slightest scare tactic.

Hand-wringing about Kansas City’s flawed tax structure is not enough. We need city leaders, including those at the Star, to live up to their principles. Otherwise, what is the point of having a platform?

The Mayor and Council have failed to address these issues. There is no reason to expect that will change until voters demand it.

The post Earnings Tax Defenders Unable to Defend Earnings Tax appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a column for The Kansas City Star, I challenged the rosy claims of the alleged economic windfall from hosting the World Cup. Every group I contacted indicated they got the number from someone else. When I finally found the organization that generated the number, it did not respond.

That seems to be the standard procedure.

The Kansas City Business Journal tried to dig into how Kansas City’s tourism bureau concluded that 650,000 visitors would descend on the region. Thomas Friestad wrote: “Visit KC declined to share its specific methodology for estimating visitors, saying it is proprietary information.”

Blaise Mesa, writing for The Beacon, examined the economic impact claims being made by proponents of a new Chiefs stadium in Kansas. He ran into the same wall, writing, “The Beacon contacted the firm that calculated economic development data on the stadium, but they didn’t reply to requests for comment.”

It should be a red flag for even the most diehard supporters of these deals that those who promote the claims refuse to answer basic questions.

The post Extraordinary Economic Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence—Sports Edition appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Across Missouri, public officials routinely delay, dodge, or deny access to information that taxpayers are entitled to. They charge outrageous fees, cite vague exemptions, lose track of requests, or hide behind non-disclosure agreements, treating transparency as a nuisance rather than a requirement.

Years ago my colleagues wrote about the prohibitively high fees municipalities sought just to turn over the most basic financial data—the city checkbook. That’s just the beginning.

Consider Kansas City’s downtown ballpark negotiations. Mayor Quinton Lucas indicated he was willing to share details, so I took him up on it. I filed an open records request through the city website. Having received no response for almost two weeks (state law requires action be taken within three days), I followed up only to be told that the request had been wrongly assigned and had been sitting idle. A city employee resolved the issue, adding, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed” that it works this time. Two weeks later I was emailed: “All responsive records pertaining to this request are closed records pursuant to Sec 610.021(12) because such records are related to negotiations for a contract prior to its execution.”

The Kansas City Star reports that the city is again in negotiations with the Royals to subsidize a downtown park. Elected leaders are apparently eager to make sure the deal is not only kept secret, but also that it avoids any public vote.

In August 2025, I asked the Kansas City Streetcar Authority for records about the construction costs of its new Main Street extension—reported to be the most expensive streetcar line in the country at over $100 million per mile. My request was redirected to city staff who told me the matter was under review. I followed up in late October and was told the city would contact me by the end of that week. It’s been almost three months with no update.

In one recent case, a state employee told me the data I needed would take just 20 minutes to find—but only after a formal Sunshine Request was submitted and processed. This person did not know how long that would take. I got the information five days later, and I was grateful. But it underscored a troubling reality: a process meant to promote transparency is now often used to delay it.

Then there are the NDAs. The director of Missouri’s Department of Economic Development signed one with both the Royals and Chiefs—and indicated in a legislative hearing that she may not be able to answer questions. PortKC even requires companies sign an NDA in its application. While sealed bids may serve public interest in competitive contracting, secrecy around subsidies undermines the very idea of public oversight.

Missouri’s Sunshine Law could be a valuable tool, but it needs to be refreshed and its exceptions narrowed. Doing so would not merely combat waste, fraud, and abuse, but would also encourage better public policy.

The post Missouri’s Sunshine Law Needs More than Good Intentions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Then there’s Kansas City. The regional transit authority eliminated fares in 2020, but it did not go exactly as local leaders had hoped.

“We just never found a sustainable funding source to replace the $10 million a year out of the fare box,” said Eric Bunch, a city councilman in Kansas City, Mo., and a board member of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.

Rose also included perspectives from urban transit researchers, who note that reducing fares is less critical than improving service speed, frequency, and reliability.

For KCUR’s audience, Rose’s framing may have come as a surprise. While the station occasionally raised funding concerns, it largely avoided discussing how fare elimination could affect service.

In late 2019, a KCUR piece quoted then-Councilwoman Kathryn Shields, who lead the council’s finance committee, as pointing out that no one was addressing how to offset losses at the farebox. Instead, KCUR’s early coverage framed zero fare as a breakthrough, not a policy gamble — quoting advocates and then-KCATA leader Robbie Makinen extensively while declining to examine the underlying “research” he invoked.

None of the KCUR reporting during the debate seriously contended with the service impact of zero fare. None sought out urban transit researchers, as Rose did. None considered the so-called research that Makinen cited in support of the policy. KCUR’s framing heavily favored advocates—including an exceedingly fawning piece on Makinen himself—and did not interrogate claimed benefits.

In May, 2021, KCUR quoted Makinen as saying, “When [zero fare] started, everyone said it wouldn’t work, I believe we’ve proved them wrong.” His confidence was premature.

Early in the debate, research, ridership surveys, and national reporting—some of which I cited in a January 2020 Kansas City Star column—already pointed to the risks of fare-free transit.

KCUR’s most direct acknowledgment of fare-free drawbacks came belatedly, in 2022, when it reprinted a story from The Beacon on unreliable service and long waits faced by bus riders. KCUR’s own reporters only asked, “Should Kansas City Keep Buses Free?” in 2023 when the damage was evident.

Back in that December 2019 piece, KCUR quoted then-Councilman Kevin McManus as saying, “When we take the fareboxes away, nobody wants to be on this council putting them back.” Six years later, six of the 13 council members who voted to remove fares in 2019 voted to reinstate them in 2025.

KCUR deserves credit for eventually publishing more substantive fare-free coverage. But had this level of scrutiny come earlier—before the rise in operator assaults, service cuts, and staffing concerns—the public conversation might have been far more informed. Policymakers might have avoided their embarrassing reversals. And the harmful impact to those who depend on public transit might have been reduced, or avoided altogether.

The post KCUR Finally Confronts the Reality of Fare-Free Transit appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But the concerns with Port KC don’t end with finances alone. A series of audits from 2021 through 2024 flagged serious internal control problems, including one where the finance director had full authority over journal entries, deposits and account reconciliation—with no oversight. Port KC has repeatedly promised to fix these issues and repeatedly failed to act.

PortKC’s most recent audit, dated April 30, 2025 (but which seems to have been posted to the website on August 29, 2025), contains the same financial concerns on page 52. Specifically, a “significant deficiency in internal controls over financial reporting.”

My column was published after the 2025 audit but before it was made publicly available. PortKC could not have effected any changes for the 2025 audit—but I wish someone at PortKC had alerted me that I was actually undercounting the years auditors were pointing out the same, unaddressed shortcomings. So much for claims of transparency.

The post Correction: PortKC Ignoring Its Own Audits for Five Years, Not Four appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Patrick Tuohey, co-founder and policy director of the Better Cities Project, has been critical of the Sun Fresh project. He says the store looks “great on paper” but does not have demand to support it. Plus, he noted, the neighborhood has other options because of a nearby Aldi store and the independent Happy Foods Center.

Kansas City officials hoped that subsidizing the grocery store would revitalize a long-neglected corridor. Ten years later, with the store on the brink of closure, city leaders are asking what went wrong. But they needn’t look far: the answers were visible from the start—and many of them were detailed in the very Show-Me Institute blog posts I wrote at the time.

Since 2015, I’ve chronicled the Sun Fresh project and argued that its shortcomings were structural, not situational. Here are the key arguments made then, all of which remain relevant now.

• In May 2015, I wrote that “Kansas City government is going into the grocery business,” a move I called “a stunning development.” I noted that the city would lease the property to Sun Fresh for just $1 per year and that the entire project was heavily subsidized—a sign that market demand alone wasn’t enough to support it.
• In the same 2015 post, I argued that grocery demand was already being met in nearby areas: “people who make a living running grocery stores by investing their own money do not think this [Sun Fresh investment] is a good idea.”
• The next week, I conducted some shoe-leather reporting by driving around the supposed food desert. I found several grocery stores with well-stocked produce aisles, and marveled about how, due to the city’s use of various taxing jurisdictions, food in some of the city’s poorer neighborhoods was more expensive than in wealthier areas.
• In May 2016, I updated the story of the subsidized grocery store, noting costs were ballooning, ending with: “In short, it appears that city leaders are planning to lose money investing in an already-failed venture in order to pursue a policy that has no evidence backing its effectiveness.”
• The next month, I wrote that the USDA was becoming skeptical of the “food desert” idea itself. I also noted research showing that the mere availability of healthy food was not sufficient to solve the problem of unhealthy diets.
• In March 2017, I pointed out that project costs continued to rise.
• In December 2017, I summarized new research showing that the “food desert” premise was deeply flawed.
• In October 2018, I highlighted a Kansas City Star piece indicating grocers are in the business of giving people what they want, not what someone else thinks they ought to have. The Sun Fresh store director told the paper, “You can pick apart any store that you want to on what they have or don’t have, but it’s about if people request these things or not . . .  We’re going to give our customers what they want. Not just what looks good.”
• In July 2019, I wrote that there were signs the project was already failing. “Despite city-funded construction and dramatically subsidized rent, the store cannot pay its bills. The question now seems to be whether taxpayers should further fund this failing enterprise.”

The city’s logic was clear enough: offer fresh food options in a historically underserved area, and hope it drives neighborhood investment. The Star quoted then-Mayor Sly James as saying the Sun Fresh Market would be the “beginning of the revitalization of this entire corridor.” He was wrong. The policy approach ignored fundamental questions of market feasibility and safety. Even when intentions are noble, taxpayer subsidies cannot manufacture demand where it doesn’t exist.

Supporters may argue that this was an experiment worth trying. But experiments should come with contingency planning and humility—not endless subsidies. The city’s willingness to absorb risk that private firms declined should have been a warning, not a point of pride.

The real tragedy is that Kansas City could have directed those resources toward improving public safety, supporting neighborhood-scale entrepreneurship, or partnering with existing grocery providers willing to operate without public subsidy. All of those approaches would have been more fiscally responsible and, most likely, more sustainable than what the city did.

As policymakers consider next steps, they would do well to revisit the early warnings and lessons from Sun Fresh. The problem was never just about food access. It was about how we define, diagnose, and address the challenges facing our neighborhoods.

This was a foreseeable failure. Hopefully, our policymakers learn from it.

The post Sun Fresh’s Struggles Were Predictable—and Predicted appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis has a reputation for being a violent city. Crime issues have helped push people out in droves and deterred newcomers from settling in the area. St. Louis City’s population has decreased by over 30% since the 1980s, and the number of vacant downtown buildings has increased substantially. The Wall Street Journal went as far as to call downtown a “real estate nightmare.”

Although St. Louis continues to rank among the most dangerous cities in the country, efforts have been made to solve the ongoing crime problem, beginning with the replacement of former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in 2023. Gardner exacerbated the crime issue in several ways, including having an exclusion list of police officers who were not allowed to bring cases to her office and creating a massive backlog of more than 6,700 cases that awaited charging decisions. The current St. Louis Circuit Attorney, Gabe Gore, has since cleared all cases in the backlog.

More recent efforts include House Bill (HB) 495, signed by Governor Mike Kehoe into law in March. This legislation transfers control of the St. Louis Police Department to a state-appointed board. The governor has already made five interim appointments to the six-person board (the mayor is the sixth member of the board). In addition, a $45 million 911 dispatch center broke ground last year in St. Louis with the goal of improving response times. In St. Louis, only half of the 911 calls in 2022 were answered within the national standard of 10 seconds.

It is unclear whether these efforts will have positive impacts on public safety in St. Louis, but what is clear is that violent crime in the city is down. It was down 7.8% in 2024 compared to 2023. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) reported homicides were down 6.3 % in 2024. It is worth noting that crime is down across the country, so this may be part of a larger trend.

The fact that St. Louis has lower violent crime and homicide rates is a positive sign, but time will tell if the city can sustain this success and lose the moniker of being one of the nation’s most dangerous cities.

The post St. Louis’s Improving Crime Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Secrecy isn’t standard practice. The Economic Development Corporation—which oversees the TIF Commission and other incentive bodies—does not require NDAs.

These agencies also hold more public meetings, solicit community input, and include representation from schools and libraries. Mayoral appointments to the TIF Commission must be confirmed by the city council. In contrast, the mayor appoints PortKC board members unilaterally.

This lack of transparency disserves the public. While developers might prefer NDAs when pursuing public subsidies—which is a separate concern—here, it’s the public agency itself insisting on secrecy. That’s even more alarming.

PortKC has other problems, some of which I detail in a recent column for The Kansas City Star:

A series of audits from 2021 through 2024 flagged serious internal control problems, including one where the finance director had full authority over journal entries, deposits and account reconciliation — with no oversight. Port KC has repeatedly promised to fix these issues and repeatedly failed to act.

PortKC’s transparency problem is compounded by persistent failures in oversight. A string of audits from 2021 through 2024 flagged major internal control issues. In one case, the finance director had sole authority over journal entries, deposits, and account reconciliation with no checks in place. PortKC acknowledged the problem and pledged reform but never followed through.

The 2024 audit revealed yet another compliance failure: the agency hadn’t verified whether its development partners were barred from receiving federal funds—a basic federal requirement known as “Suspension and Debarment.” Given PortKC’s increasing intake of federal money, this oversight is especially serious.

These aren’t isolated lapses. PortKC also failed to properly vet Lux Living in 2022. The pattern is clear and ongoing. With long-standing problems still unaddressed, the question is no longer whether something will go wrong, but when.

These issues matter more than ever. At the time of my Star column, I noted PortKC might be involved in financing a downtown park for the Royals. That’s now more likely: the Kansas City Business Journal reports that tax-free bonds via PortKC are under discussion.

Meanwhile, city officials are exploring ways to approve deals without a public vote. Combine that with PortKC’s built-in secrecy, and the result is troubling: public funds deployed without public oversight.

The post Why Is PortKC Keeping Secrets? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How bad is crime in Kansas City? If you believe recent international headlines, we’re a “Mad Max-style hellhole,” a reference to the post-apocalyptic movie franchise. Ouch.

I grant in the piece that the headline came from a news outlet known for being sensationalist, but as Kansas City prepares to host the World Cup in 2026, our international reputation is important.

Speaking to Pete Mundo on KCMO Talk Radio the morning of May 23, Mayor Quinton Lucas, just back from a junket to Qatar, said this [at 2:32]:

Of course the Qataris were very interested in saying, “we can send people over, free of charge, to come help you.” I’ll make sure I have a chat with [KC Police] Chief Stacey Graves and some of the others before we do that, but, [it’s a] well-resourced country.

That statement came right after a discussion about transportation, but Chief Graves does not handle city transportation, nor does she serve on the board of KC2026, the committee formed to organize efforts to host the 2026 FIFA event. It appears the mayors’ understanding was that the Qataris were expressing a security concern and offering to send assistance.

Federal law does not permit foreign nationals to exercise any police powers on U.S. soil. While there may be plenty of coordination among governments and their law enforcement agencies prior to events like the World Cup, I doubt that would be handled by the hosting city’s police chief.

Just as Mayor Lucas would have been in no position to coordinate security with a foreign entity, it’s possible that the Qatari making the offer was in no position to provide it. I don’t know.

What is clear, even if Lucas doesn’t realize the implication of the offer, is that Kansas City is seen internationally as a place that cannot provide public safety to its own citizens or international visitors. That won’t be solved by advertising on buses in London, but by competent management of city resources—something we have yet to see.

The post Is Kansas City a Public Safety Charity Case? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There’s a long track record of inflated claims around the economic benefits of hosting major sporting events. Economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson found that the 1994 World Cup resulted not in a $4 billion boost, as advertised, but in a net loss between $5.5 billion and $9.3 billion across host cities. Despite this, city officials—and their usual partners in the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Council—continue to market the 2026 event as transformational for Kansas City.

A recent Kansas City Star article outlines the Small Business Storefront Vacancy Revitalization initiative, under which the city will offer up to $25,000 per year in rent subsidies to small businesses that occupy empty retail spaces. The goal is to fill downtown with activity and present a more vibrant environment to World Cup visitors.

But if the World Cup were the growth engine it’s advertised to be, wouldn’t businesses already be competing for these spaces?

The need for incentives suggests otherwise. Rather than a natural uptick in demand, the city appears to be staging vitality. Pop-up stores and subsidized art installations may look good for a few days, but they are not a substitute for long-term market viability. Officials point to similar programs in Seattle and San Francisco, yet even there, long-term results remain unclear.

Yes, some storefronts may light up temporarily. But if Kansas City genuinely wants to support small business, better options exist: streamline the permitting process, reduce regulatory barriers, address infrastructure needs, and improve public safety. These are structural reforms that support entrepreneurs regardless of tourist calendars.

Instead, city leaders appear to be following a familiar pattern: promote a high-profile event, rush to spend earmarked funds on short-term optics, and then dodge accountability when outcomes fall short.

If it hasn’t worked so far, why would anyone expect it to work in the future?

The post Kansas City’s World Cup Potemkin Village appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is a proposal to sell the Sugar Creek water and sewer systems to Missouri-American Water on the April 8th ballot. The company is offering Sugar Creek $5 million for the systems and guaranteeing an $8 million investment into improvements.

Sugar Creek needs to make improvements to its water and sewer systems. Sewer rates just went up this month, and water rates will likely increase, too. The question for voters is whether the city will fund those improvements via debt or whether Missouri-American will pay the city for the asset and fund the improvements itself.

Studies have shown that private utilities generally operate more efficiently than public utilities. Privatization of these two systems could result in a substantial infusion of money for the city, and placing the water and sewer facilities on the tax rolls would expand the tax base. That large payment plus the broader tax base could lead to tax cuts elsewhere in Sugar Creek.

The residents of Sugar Creek currently receive their gas and electricity from private utilities closely regulated by Missouri’s public service commission. Getting their water from Missouri-American Water would be no different, and this sale would greatly benefit the people of Sugar Creek.

The post A Sweet Deal for Sugar Creek appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The story is similar to a piece published almost a year ago by Flatland, an online news source operated by Kansas City PBS that claims to be “committed to providing context” to the region’s challenges. The breathless piece was titled: “5 Companies Own 8,000 Kansas City Area Homes, Creating Intense Competition for Residents.” That claim comes from a 2023 study from the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), which states: “Nearly 14,000 single-family homes in the region are owned by 33 companies. Of these, five companies own nearly 8,000 homes.”

Okay. Is that a lot? How many single-family homes are there in the region? The MARC report doesn’t say. Flatland, despite its commitment to context, provides none. Neither does the Star.

I’ve reached out to MARC for these data, but while I’m waiting, I did some basic calculations. The Census estimates there are 969,534 housing units in the Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area. Nationwide, about 74% of housing units are single-family residences. Data provided by the Greater Kansas City Regional Housing Partnership indicate there are 682,546 single-family homes in the region. If 14,000 are owned by institutional investors, that amounts to 2% of the market.

Are we being asked to believe that large firms and investors owning 2% of the housing market is “contributing to rising prices” or “creating intense competition?” Really?

The worst part is that, according to the Star, Missouri legislators are considering an effort to bar corporations from buying residential real estate.

While it may be ideologically satisfying to cast corporate landlords or institutional investors as the real enemy, it does nothing to actually solve the problem. The truth is that housing affordability is driven more by restrictive government regulations that impede the ability of the free market to meet demand. Zoning restrictions, burdensome regulations, neighborhood NIMBYism, and slow permitting and approval processes are the actual drivers of housing costs. Addressing those problems requires real policy work.

Using legislation to tinker with who is permitted to buy homes may feel like progress, but it is more likely to reinforce the problematic status quo in housing—too many rules and not enough houses.

The post Reporting on Housing Fails to Ask Basic Question appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis County wants to follow the example of the City of St. Louis and create a land bank. This land bank will allow the county to become more aggressive about acquiring and selling property, primarily through tax auctions. If the examples in St. Louis and Kansas City are any indication, the land bank will fail in its goal of getting property back to the private sector. Creating a land bank will, however, increase opportunities for corruption and hold property off-market as a favor to politically influential developers. In case you have forgotten, here is the story on land bank corruption:

[Former Alderman] Boyd admitted accepting a total of $9,500 from Doe for his help convincing the city’s Land Reutilization Authority to accept a lower bid from Doe for a commercial property on Geraldine Avenue in Boyd’s ward. The LRA ultimately accepted Doe’s $14,000 bid. The LRA initially listed the property as worth $50,000. Boyd then worked to get a property tax abatement for Doe.

Inexplicably, the state authorized land bank expansion last year. St. Louis County is moving ahead with it. This is really the worst move the county could make and it isn’t going to end well for St. Louis County.

On the other side of the state, when St. Joseph created its land bank several years ago, the authorizing legislation included elements to help protect against corruption. It prevented people who might have a conflict of interest, such as anyone affiliated with St. Joseph city government, the land bank itself, or relatives of land bank staff or St. Joseph city government, from buying land from the land bank. Keep in mind that family members of the Jackson County Executive were able to purchase and flip land bank properties in Kansas City under questionable circumstances, to say the least. From the Kansas City Star:

No houses were built, and the company formed by Frank White’s stepsons Joseph, Darrel and Jordan Hurtt more than doubled its initial $3,700 investment by selling just four lots to a woman who lived near the properties on Montgall.

Now that it’s been several years since the St. Joe land bank was created and it has accomplished nothing, there is a bill in the legislature to remove those protections against corruption. It’s astonishing. What is the thought process here? Do St. Joseph city officials want to flip a few empty houses so badly that allowing those with inside information to profit is suddenly alright in St. Joseph? When something isn’t working under honest means, the answer is not to try it with dishonest means.  I hereby award House Bill 717 the title of the worst bill in Jefferson City this year.

The post An Update on Land Banks in Missouri: From Bad to Worse appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On November 5, voters in Platte County will decide on a new “children’s services fund” tax. The proposed quarter-cent sales tax will fund mental health services for children. We all want to help kids, right? It may at first glance seem to be an easy choice, but Platte County citizens should think twice before supporting this new tax.

Politicizing charity is a dangerous road to go down. So is creating another, obscure taxing district with little oversight. The established children’s services fund in Lafayette County provides a useful case study for those problems. The fund had operated for years with almost no oversight. Those operating it routinely engaged in improper activities, including funding charities that were affiliated with board members and funding a private business that wasn’t a nonprofit. After a whistleblower called attention to these problems, the state auditor investigated and referred the fund to authorities.

If voters pass this tax and create this fund, will some kids benefit? Of course. But entangling philanthropy with politics, creating a new taxing agency with limited oversight, and making charities dependent on government are not the best ways to go about helping kids in Platte County.

The post Platte County Children’s Services Fund Tax appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Back in 2016, I noted that Jackson County Executive Frank White said of the tax at its renewal: “Anything that we can do to help our citizens in terms of prevention, and being proactive in what we do, is really what this (tax) is about.”

I pointed out at the time that the DARE program, funded by the COMBAT tax, has failed to show positive results in the research studies that have examined its effectiveness.

Four years later, in 2020, I mentioned an audit of the tax by then-Auditor Nicole Galloway. She wrote: “The county has not developed a plan for ensuring that performance evaluations of the programs funded by COMBAT are performed annually as required by county code.”

Now, in 2024, precious little seems to have changed. In a column for The Kansas City Star, I noted:

COMBAT doesn’t appear to measure outcomes. The closest it comes is a Community Impact Report, which relies chiefly on anecdotes and testimonials — many from people with financial interests in supporting COMBAT. A clue COMBAT doesn’t monitor program effectiveness is a note in the report indicating the number of those served by various programs are based on “grant application projections.” Not only is this relying on self-reporting by those receiving funds, but doing so at the moment they apply, when their plans are the most optimistic and least tested.

Kansas City’s homicide rate reached a record high in 2023. It has been a little lower so far this year, which is good. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that anyone knows why. Maybe it’s just a matter of chance.

While the lower homicide rate is great news, if we don’t measure the effect of the money we are spending, we risk not doing enough of what is working. That assumes any of it is working. We just don’t know, and that isn’t good enough for policymakers or the families of those lost.

If Kansas City leaders want COMBAT to be taken seriously, we must measure the effectiveness of the program and focus funding on what works.

The post Jackson County COMBAT Is Still a Failure appeared first on Show-Me Institute.