KC’s Corporate Welfare: JE Dunn’s HQ Renovation Gets Public Support
Thomas Friestad of the Kansas City Business Journal writes that JE Dunn Construction has secured public incentives through Port KC...
K.C. Subsidies Stop Making Sense
I’m reminded of the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime when reading about yet another scheme to subsidize more...
When City Leaders Aren’t Concerned, Taxpayers Should Be
In a recent story in The Kansas City Star about cost overruns for the downtown convention hotel, Steve Vockrodt wrote:...
Baltimores on the Missouri?
At a recent conference on municipal policy, I had the opportunity to reflect on Baltimore, Maryland. Certainly Charm City has...
Should Five Percent Appear Too Small…
The Beatles famously sang the above lyric in their song Taxman. It comes to mind because, believe it or not,...
Kansas City and “Fraudulent” Crony Capitalism
President-elect Trump has talked a great deal about the need for massive and widespread infrastructure spending. Many people agree that...
How Will the Convention Hotel Help Taxpayers?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the planned convention hotel in Kansas City does increase convention business. How...
The Convention Hotel’s Tax Breaks and Gimmes
Reviewing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the city of Kansas City and the developers who want to build a...
Kansas City Builds by Digging Itself into Holes
We’ve written extensively about the money that Kansas City has been handing out to downtown developers. Every dollar they give...
Righting the Wrongs of the Power & Light District
One of the reasons Kansas City is on the hook financially for so much on the Power & Light District is...
A Tale Full of Power & Light, Signifying Nothing
Kansas City leaders want to point to downtown as a great monument to government planning. Look at the revitalization, they...
The Star Dishes on Cordish
When you build developments based on tax incentives from governments, rather than market forces, you end up with the Kansas...
Eminent Domain at the All-Star Game
A front-page story in this morning’s Post-Dispatch details the delays that have plagued the Ballpark Village development in downtown St....
What, For Free? Gimme $78 Million Dollars
Can’t you just imagine seeing this scene playing out … Cordish to Centene: "Excuse me, sir? What it is, Mr....
