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...
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Theoretical Jobs
H&R Block once claimed to have created more than 2,000 new jobs by moving employees to a different building, courtesy...
KC’s economic development study parroted exactly what the city wanted
The following commentary also appeared in the Kansas City Star. Businessman John Wannamaker famously quipped, “Half the money I spend on...
What I Saw at the TIF Hearing
Anyone who has been paying attention to the Show-Me Institute over the past few years knows that our analysts are...
The Power & Light District Still Hasn’t Delivered
On Ruckus last week we discussed the city’s debt and its profligate spending on the Power & Light District downtown....
Kansas City’s Economic Diversion
City leaders are still pointing to Kansas City’s downtown as an economic development success story. Taxpayers lose millions each year...
Kansas City, King of Corporate Welfare
Good Jobs First, a “national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials,” publishes what it calls its Subsidy...
Development Can Happen without Subsidies
It is a sign of how bad the subsidy culture is getting when Kansas City Star reporter Diane Stafford has...
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...
Kansas City’s Development Guru Admits He Was Wrong
Most Kansas Citians won’t recognize the name, but we owe much of the inspiration for our downtown development scheme to...
What an Honest Economic Development Study in Kansas City Might Conclude
A July piece by Steve Vockrodt for The Kansas City Star talked about the city’s efforts to study the real...
“I Don’t Care What the Research Tells You”
Is Kansas City getting an adequate return on its investment in economic development? We’re skeptical. The research says it is...
Counting Economic Development Jobs
H&R Block, which once messed up its own tax accounting, has a weird way of counting job growth. This may...
Happy Tax Day!!!
For those of you racing to finish and mail your tax returns in today, you have my sympathies (not that...
IRS Commissioners Should Have to Do Their Own Taxes
The Drudge Report linked to a story from The Hill about the not-surprising admission that the new IRS commissioner does...
