Bury the Damn Hatchet
Nowhere do those cannon volleys continue to echo louder than they do inside the Kansas City region’s business community.
History is important, and those who cringe at the Border War reference for the Missouri-Kansas college sports rivalry—or call for a more politically correct reference to it—cannot stop the animosities of hard-core fans who continue to hold this grudge.
But the modern-day Border War, in my opinion, has much less to do with a football or basketball rivalry than it does the job-poaching efforts that have escalated between the two states. We’ve seen example after example, from JP Morgan Retirement Services and KeyBank Real Estate Capital moving hundreds of jobs into Kansas, to Jet Midwest leaving Kansas City, Kan., for state-subsidized new digs on the Missouri side. Those moves may be good for the bottom lines of companies involved, but
they are poisonous for the region’s collective tax base.
I’m of the opinion that civility needs to start at the top and must be mandated down to each county and city. Each state now points to incentive programs in the other as justification for ratcheting up even more new incentives. But without cooperation from Govs. Jay Nixon and Sam Brownback and each state’s department of economic development, I’m afraid little will happen to address the piracy problem.
I was pleased to see 17 of the region’s business figures sign off on a letter earlier this month to both governors, seeking a truce in this economic civil war. While somewhat imbalanced in its authorship (12 Missouri-based signatories; five Kansans), the letter from some of the bigger names in Kansas City commerce should help force the issue in state policy circles.
But I think one of the main issues we continue to skirt involves perspective: Kansas, as a state, wants more employers and wants to bring in more residents to work for them. Same goes for Missouri. The problem is that this region is a bit of a different animal when it comes to the appropriate use of business incentives. The issue that causes conflict between state policy and local commerce is that neither state is competing strictly against the other for new business. Policies crafted specifically to address Kansas City’s needs could tie the hands of those in Jefferson City trying to recruit from more distant states. The same dynamic confronts Topeka.
But the economic interests of each state are intertwined with the economic vitality of the broader Kansas City region. Until area cities and counties and state leadership itself can understand the importance of collaboration, at least of courtesy the not poach employers from one state or another, both states will continue to suffer significant losses of much-needed revenues. By providing economic incentives to employers to move across the state line, not one city, county or the state itself will gain anything truly substantive. The use of incentives to poach businesses, as the “Civil War 17” referred to in their letter, results in a net gain of nothing for this region—and in fact, a net loss.
What state officials in Kansas and in Missouri might need to do—despite a we-could-care-less attitude from St. Louis leadership—is structure a truce that mitigates lateral moves from one state to another, where only the employer wins. Or, perhaps more longstanding than a truce, why not some bistate cooperation to create a special zone, within which incentives could not be used for cross-border relocations? Whether that requires special state legislation to achieve, or even congressional action, it could safeguard the interests of this region while protecting the broader concerns of state economic programming.
Elected officials and ED professionals need to realize that if we align the interests of federal and state lawmakers to fight on behalf of both states, especially western Missouri and eastern Kansas, the KC area and both states will economically benefit.
Missouri’s Jay Nixon appears more conciliatory toward the idea of addressing this issue than has Sam Brownback on the Kansas side. But without some cooperation, perhaps the only appropriate response from Missouri would be the use of its comparatively greater economic muscle to outgun what Kansas can offer, with less than half the population and a state budget more than a third smaller than Missouri’s. That scenario, while unfortunate, could be justified. We hope it won’t come to that. Put in military context, the threat of incomparable force parked near the State Line border is what it may take to stop the poaching.
On this Sesquicentenial of the Civil War and the Border War conflict, it’s beyond time that the states of Missouri and Kansas bury the hatchet on the cross-state raids and let history continue the conflict on the collegiate playing field. 
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
JSweeney@IngramsOnLine.com