When Brian Eno and the Talking Heads recorded “Once in a Lifetime” in the summer of 1980 with the repeated phrase “same as it ever was” as the song’s bridge, they presumably weren’t thinking about Kansas and Missouri’s never-ending border war, but they might as well have been. The Border War is officially back, if it ever left anyways, and no, we don’t mean the Missouri Tiger’s 42-31 victory on September 6th over the Kansas Jayhawks.
On September 18th, the Kansas City, MO City Council made official something that has been well-known since the moment it was initially declared: the border war is here and it is here to stay. City Council voted unanimously to joined the State of Missouri in ending, or at least not continuing, the truce.
Same as it ever was.
While Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and then-Missouri Gov. Mike Parson may have signed a truce limiting the use of state tax incentives to lure companies across the state line to just companies who would create new jobs in the summer of 2019, the agreement was clearly dying on the vine from the moment it came into existence. The seemingly never-ending flirtation around the future home of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals ate away at any chance that this gentleman’s agreement would last.
Same as it ever was.
By 2022, Gov. Kelly publicly declared that the deal conveniently did not apply to the Chiefs, and by presumed extension, the Royals. When that happened, Kansas City, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas decried the convenient exemption logic, asking outloud if this exemption meant that “the next big something under the sun” would also be exempt from the deal.
The back-and-forth, tit-for-tat, between the two states is reminisicent of the infamous “Dinner Party” episode of The Office, when Michael Scott yelled ” Snip, snap! Snip, snap! Snip, snap! I did! You have no idea the physical toll that three vasectomies have on a person!” Well, we are left asking, what kind of toll does an unending incentive fight have on our local economy?
The answer: Estimates suggest that Kansas and Missouri have forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payer money for a couple hundred jobs here or there.
According to the Brookings Institute, when writing about Missouri and Kansas in 2019, “Economists are famous for arguing about trends and methodologies. But one area in which they have consensus is on the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of state and local economic development subsidies. Rarely do such subsidies sway business location decisions. Rarely do they create more jobs than without a subsidy. And rarely do they generate more income than they cost a community from lost tax revenue or the additional public investments needed to accommodate the new business.”
With any luck, the stadium conversation will wrap up soon, with the Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs ending up either in Missouri or Kansas, and we will at least be able to move on from that portion of this never-ending, back-and-forth financial war that leaves citizens worse off.
Same as it ever was.
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
