Kansas, Missouri battle over companies

[flyingember]

KANSAS ON KANSAS WAR!

CenturyLink to move from Overland Park to New Century

intrigued what the turnover will be. moving to the far side of Olathe there's going to be very few people which this won't increase the commute

[chaglang]

KANSAS ON KANSAS WAR!

CenturyLink to move from Overland Park to New Century

Wouldn't be a bit surprised if the state counts this in their job creation stats.

[KCMax]

Three bills, one proposal to end jobs ‘border war’ with Kansas to be heard today

Three bills will be heard in two legislative committees today that aim to end the so-called “border war” between Missouri and Kansas over jobs.

All three bills would bar the issuance of certain business incentive programs to businesses that move from specific counties along the Kansas-Missouri Border on the Kansas side, to those along the border on the Missouri side. Supporters say it would end the practice of one state “poaching” companies and jobs from one side of the state line to the other. All three would be contingent on Kansas agreeing to block the offering of state incentives that would lure businesses from Missouri across the state line.

[KCMax]

Mo. lawmakers hear plans to end Kan. tax break war

The proposal appeared so popular that some Missouri lawmakers suggested it could be labeled a "consent bill," placing it on a fast-track for approval that precludes any amendments during House and Senate debate.

The leading witness at the Missouri hearings was Bill Hall, assistant to the chairman of Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards Inc. and president of the Hall Family Foundation. His key evidence was a recent foundation report examining the money spent through two of the states' primary incentive programs.

Since 2009, one Kansas program has waived $141 million of tax revenues to relocate 3,343 jobs from Jackson County, Mo., to Johnson or Wyandotte counties in Kansas, Hall said. Meanwhile, one Missouri program has waived $76 million in tax revenues to move 2,929 jobs from those two Kansas counties to Jackson County, he said.

The net result: a collective tax waiver of $217 million that produced a net gain of 414 jobs in Kansas.

[knucklehead]

This is a huge waste of time.

History has proven you cannot negotiate with Kansans.

Kansas politicians will find some excuse not to do this.

It will be interesting to see which excuse they settle on. The one thing you can bet on is whatever theme they settle on it will include an implicit insult against Missouri and KCMO.

[flyingember]

I wonder if the 414 jobs is actually a correct number? Didn't one of the companies that moved just announce 600 new jobs?

so if this isn't in the numbers Missouri would end up bring better stewards of tax money

given the state's revenues are increasing whatever Missouri is doing needs to be copied by Kansas

[KCMax]

This is a huge waste of time.

History has proven you cannot negotiate with Kansans.

Kansas politicians will find some excuse not to do this.

It will be interesting to see which excuse they settle on. The one thing you can bet on is whatever theme they settle on it will include an implicit insult against Missouri and KCMO.

The excuse they're using so far is the "KS has discretion in their statute/MO has no discretion" lame excuse, as if KS ever uses that discretion to turn down a deal.

[earthling]

From jobs thread. 3 year view of employment growth/loss on both sides of stateline.

In December MO side of KC metro showed gain of employment from previous Dec, in nearly every category....


KS side of metro showed an actual loss over last year and in nearly every category except info/health jobs...


KS side was doing really well, better than MO side previous couple years and then it swapped. Is almost like the border war is causing a teeter totter effect, well it couldn't impact that much but curious. January data should tell a more accurate story as it's based on W2 forms and there aren't many seasonable jobs.

[KCMax]

MO will give out $1.5 mill in incentives to move Xceligent from Independence to Blue Springs. Company will add 200 more jobs.


http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... -blue.html

[zonk]

Missouri KANSAS ON Missouri KANSAS WAR!

[Highlander]

Missouri KANSAS ON Missouri KANSAS WAR!

Yea - the obvious side effect from the war is that Missouri companies can threaten to go to Kansas and reap the tax benefits from the state they currently reside in without when all they want to do is upgrade offices in the same general area (and vice versa). So the evolution of the flawed business development model both states use to move companies across state line is that they now will need to pay business to stay.

[KCMax]

KS Legislature has their second audit of econ development programs. They compared their programs to other states by contacting officials in other states.

http://www.kslpa.org/docs/reports/R-14-003.pdf

Page 2:

Missouri officials declined to speak with us.

Main finding is no one knows if these programs work, but you need to offer them to stay in the game.

[chaglang]

Main finding is no one knows if these programs work, but you need to offer them to stay in the game.

Wait, what? If no one knows if they work, it's equally likely that a state is wasting money on these programs.

[kboish]

Thats why they call it "race to the bottom".

We've got to win! Win what? I don't know, but we've got to win!

[Highlander]

So the economic border war is good for Kansas City? Of course, that would be the perspective of a commercial real estate agent.

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/19/48 ... -hurt.html

[chaglang]

So the economic border war is good for Kansas City? Of course, that would be the perspective of a commercial real estate agent.

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/19/48 ... -hurt.html

Chris Wally is on a little bit of a PR offensive lately. He had a similar article in the Business Journal this week. Claiming that these incentives have kept businesses in the metro may have some truth to it, but to say that all of those companies would have moved elsewhere is probably overstating the case.

[KCPowercat]

So the economic border war is good for Kansas City? Of course, that would be the perspective of a commercial real estate agent.

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/19/48 ... -hurt.html

Chris Wally is on a little bit of a PR offensive lately. He had a similar article in the Business Journal this week. Claiming that these incentives have kept businesses in the metro may have some truth to it, but to say that all of those companies would have moved elsewhere is probably overstating the case.

Yeah talk about a biased point of view. Heck yeah this guy wants them to keep going....

[mean]

Claiming that these incentives have kept businesses in the metro may have some truth to it, but to say that all of those companies would have moved elsewhere is probably overstating the case.

Sure, and if we hadn't passed the stadium tax, the Chiefs would now be playing in Los Angeles.

It's not completely implausible that one or more of the businesses in question would have fled for an entirely different metro. Just almost completely implausible.

[knucklehead]

I don't remember losing a lot of KC companies packing up and moving to other cities over the years.

I assume at some point TWA moved to St. Louis but that was before my time.

Panhandle moved to Houston.

The Big Pharma co that bought Marion moved a bunch of jobs to New Jersey.

With the Panhandle and Marion moves I doubt if incentives had much to do with it. Houston is the national center for energy companies and New Jersey has a lot of Pharmaceutial companies.

A lot of the maintenance work up at the old TWA maintenence base moved to Tulsa but that seemed more to do with changes in the airline industry than incentives offerred by Tulsa that KC didn't want to match.

Does anyone remember any other big employers leaving KC for another metro area?

My point is before Kansas really went crazy and started throwing incentives around to get companies to move from the Missouri side of the metro to the Kansas side, I don't remember a lot of companies just leaving town. Why would they have suddenly started doing that in the past 10 to 15 years, only to be stopped by the big incentives now offerred.

[earthling]

Office shutdowns/moves seem to be more common these days due to acquisitions rather than direct HQ moves, but direct HQ moves do happen at times. I think a bank in OP just moved office to Chicago. Otherwise for acquisitions (occurs more often), depts may be consolidated into whichever city makes the most sense, KC wins/loses some of those partly due to incentives. KC was fortunate to keep BATS merger in KC area. A San Fran law firm consolidated most back end/IT operations into a downtown KC office they already have, essentially making it the operations HQ.

We are in an M&A age and KC will continue to win/lose many.