Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vs. KC Mayor Quinton Lucas: Is the border war already back?
The costly border war between Kansas and Missouri over jobs and public incentives for businesses appears to be back, just a few months after governors from both states pledged an end to it.
That was unmistakably clear Thursday after a flurry of statements about subsidies for a new Waddell & Reed office building downtown. The Kansas City Council appears poised to endorse more than $100 million in incentives for the structure, and that has made Kansas officials angry.
Waddell & Reed’s well-paid employees are moving a few short miles from Kansas to Missouri as part of the deal.
Any collapse of the border war truce would be disastrous. Without immediate, serious work from all involved, though, it may be inevitable.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly was scheduled to meet Thursday with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas to discuss the border war and other matters. Instead, Lucas said, Kelly canceled the session, apparently because of concerns about the Waddell & Reed project.
Kelly’s office would not confirm the cancellation but did express frustration with the incentives for Waddell & Reed.
The central issue is not Missouri’s $62 million investment in the project, which has been public for weeks. But the deal includes more than $28 million in local property tax abatements — incentives that Kansas officials believe violate the terms of the border war truce.
“My executive order limiting the use of state incentives was premised in part on Missouri local units of government bringing their property tax incentives to a level playing field with Kansas,” Kelly said. “Without that action, a true ceasefire cannot occur.”
Lucas defended the city’s incentives for Waddell & Reed. He said he was angry about Overland Park’s recent decision to endorse $200 million in public incentives for a massive office and housing complex at Brookridge golf course.
The mayor thinks the Brookridge project is designed to lure jobs from Missouri to Kansas. “If they want to have a real conversation about border war truces, why don’t we talk to Overland Park, (which) continues to be an incredible incentive provider?” he said.
Obviously, Kansas and Missouri officials still distrust each other, as they find sinister motives lurking behind every decision. Ending that distrust will be step one in heading off the resumption of the border war.
But there are more fundamental issues that both sides are missing.
The Waddell & Reed project isn’t flawed just because it’s taking jobs from Kansas. It’s also bad public policy, period. Providing massive state and local subsidies for wealthy private developers and rich investment managers is a misuse of public funds that hurts everyone else. That should be stopped.
The Brookridge project in Overland Park is similarly problematic. There is no reason the public should subsidize private developers in one of the richest counties in America. Many incentives are misguided even if the project never moves a single job or resident across the border.
One Overland Park councilman called it “reverse Robin Hood syndrome,” taking from the poor to give to the rich. That’s exactly right and is a clear explanation of what’s been happening in the region for decades.
Most Kansans and Missourians had hoped the border war truce would not only end the meaningless competition for jobs, but that it would also bring elected officials to their senses on the issue of corporate welfare. Early indications are not promising.
Elected officials in Kansas and Missouri should renew their commitment to ending the counterproductive, expensive border war. Then they can commit to ending ruinous tax breaks for people who don’t need them, wherever they live.