Self-Inflicted Wounds and Decades of Setbacks

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 2026

The Kansas City metro area should be a Midwest powerhouse. Missouri ranks a respectable 12th in the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index—strong on corporate and property taxes, low overall burden. Yet inside Kansas City, Mo., and Jackson County more broadly, elected officials have engineered three policy-made choke points that repel investment, stifle construction, and drive jobs across State Line Road and county lines: chaotic property assessments, suffocating permitting delays, and the uniquely distortive 1 percent earnings tax.

The Jackson County commercial property-tax debacle remains Exhibit A, with business owners hit by assessments spiking, two-, three- and four-fold—in some cases, more. Warehouses are valued at wildly inconsistent rates for identical space. Owners have passed the pain along via lease escalators; small operators called it an “economic eviction notice.” The backlash was swift and historic: voters recalled County Executive Frank White Jr. by an 85-15 landslide last fall. His successor, Phil LeVota, responded with a 15 percent cap on 2025 commercial increases, retroactive credits, extended payment deadlines to Jan. 31, 2026, and the long-overdue removal of assessor Gail McCann. Helpful, but the damage was baked in—frozen capital budgets, shuttered storefronts, and heightened vacancy risk that will linger into 2027 reassessments.

Compare that volatility to neighboring Johnson County on the Kansas side, where assessments move predictably—albeit always up—and where commercial absorption continues to outpace the Missouri side. Businesses don’t fear an annual tax lottery; they plan, expand and hire.

Permitting and development standards deliver the second blow. The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City’s “Let Builders Build” campaign—launched last August and still gaining traction—catalogues the daily reality: multi-week or multi-month waits for routine permits, inconsistent code enforcement across 69 jurisdictions, aesthetic mandates that reject cheaper code-compliant materials, and utility tap fees that can top $13,000 before a shovel hits dirt. 

CompassKC, the city’s centralized online platform, was a welcome upgrade, but industry feedback shows it has not delivered the speed or predictability builders find in Lenexa, Olathe, or Overland Park. The result? Constrained housing supply that inflates rents, slower adaptive-reuse projects down-town, and industrial development that increasingly chooses the Kansas suburbs where reviews are faster and fees transparent.

Then there is the earnings tax itself—the 1 percent levy on every dollar earned inside city limits, plus profits tax on businesses. It generates roughly $373 million annually and funds nearly half of core city services. Voters must renew it every five years; the next ballot test comes in April. Unfortunately, from a budgeting stand-point, we’re screwed: There is no reasonable financing alternative at this point. 

Beyond that, no equivalent exists in Kansas. Decades of econometric evidence—from Kansas City to St. Louis—shows such payroll taxes suppress in-jurisdiction employment growth, with activity simply relocating a few miles west. Talent and companies vote with their feet. Why pay the tax when Johnson, Wyandotte and neighboring Kansas counties offers stability without it?

These are not abstract gripes. They compound. Wild assessments create cash-flow shock. Red tape adds months and tens of thou-sands to project costs. The earnings tax tips the location decision. Together they explain why, despite Missouri’s enviable state-level climate, KCMO and Jackson County keep ceding ground on office absorption, industrial leasing, multifamily starts and—let we forget, professional football.

Local priorities reveal the misalign-ment: heavy reliance on TIF districts that favor politically connected developers, renewed focus on stadium deals with taxpayer exposure, and reflexive def-ense of the earnings tax rather than a serious conversation about less dis-tortionary replacements. Short-term revenue extraction consistently trumps long-term, predictable rules that let private capital do what it does best.

These issues are bad enough, but consider the compounding effect when layered upon other black eyes for the community in recent  years.

Among them, the 2020 law-enforcement debacle that allowed protesters engaging in George Floyd mania to storm the Country Club Plaza, smashing storefront windows. Again, this was on the Plaza, our purported crown jewel of a shopping district and a longtime point of pride for this community. Letting that episode drag on helped set the stage for a surge in crime on the Plaza that has yet to be fully reconciled.

Then there’s the resurgence of The Border War—remember that?—which most of us actually believed had been resolved with a bistate truce between Missouri and Kansas back in 2019. We witnessed the durability of that “regionalism” in the fall, when the Chiefs announced that they’d be abandoning the iconic Arrowhead Stadium  for a new, multi-billion-dollar palace in Western Wyandotte County.

The latest insult to that injury comes with the anticipated loss of Lockton from its longtime Plaza location to (where else?) Johnson County.

This need not continue, but it’s going to require a more engaged business community to correct course. Here’s a pretty clear, achievable path forward: n Make a not-to-exceed 10 to 15 percent maximum commercial-assessment cap permanent and codify fair, transparent valuation methods with annual third-party audits.

n Set binding performance metrics for permitting—average days to approval, public dashboards—and tie depart-ment budgets to hitting them. Expand CompassKC’s successes with true one stop digital work flows.

n Use the April 7 earnings-tax renewal as leverage for reform: phase in exemptions for new hires or small businesses, or pair renewal with a credible plan to sunset the tax over a decade as other revenues modernize.

n Align zoning and building stand-ards with actual market demand instead of NIMBY wish lists.

Business leaders, neighborhood groups, and voters have the megaphone right now. Demand these changes at every candidate forum, in every council hearing, and at the ballot box in April and November. Kansas City Missouri’s fundamentals—central location, low state costs, world-class amenities—are too strong to let parochial policy choices keep us in second place. The region is growing. The question is whether Kansas City and Jackson County will lead it—or watch from the sidelines while the suburbs do.

My Dad, John Sweeney, Sr., was Jack-son County’s last elected assessor back in 1968, and he would be ashamed at what’s become of the city and county he and responsible public servants helped to build.