Kansas Archives - Missourinet

Kansas legislature approves health compact legislation originated in Missouri

April 7, 2014 By Mike Lear

Kansas is on the verge of banding with 8 other states including Missouri in forming an interstate health care compact, which would let states go their own way with health care rather than participate in the federal healthcare reform law.

Representative Eric Burlison (Photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The same plan that has passed out of the Kansas legislature, and has become law in 8 states, was first proposed in Missouri. It needed two things to be ratified: passage in at least two states, and Congressional authorization.

Representative Eric Burlison (R-Springfield) sponsored the first interstate compact proposal, which was enacted in 2011. He says states in the compact would have an option other than the Affordable Care Act.

“Let states decide what’s in the best interest for their citizens and if something’s working in another state, then we can glean ideas from that state and implement them in our state,” says Burlison. “That way you are seeing innovation at work and you’re seeing creative ideas at work instead of supressing every state with a one-size-fits-all, mediocre solution.”

Oklahoma Congressman James Lankford (R) has introduced legislation that would give Congressional approval to the compact. It has been referred to a subcommittee. If it clears the Republican-controlled House it faces a tough road in a Democrat-controlled Senate, which Republicans hope to take control of in elections this year.

“It may not be this [Congress] that’s able to do it, but any future legislature could adopt the interstate compact,” says Burlison.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) hasn’t said whether he will sign that state’s compact legislation.

House passes proposed ceasefire in jobs ‘border war’ with Kansas

March 4, 2014 By Mike Lear

The state House has passed its version of a bill proposing a cease-fire in the so-called “Border War” over jobs with Kansas.

The proposal sponsored by House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) would restrict the use of certain incentive programs for businesses that move from four counties in Kansas across the border to any of four counties in Missouri. It would only be enacted if the state of Kansas adopts and maintains a similar policy regarding businesses that move from those Missouri Counties into Kansas.

The legislation is HB 1646.

Representative Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City) says this is the year for Missouri and Kansas to reach such an agreement.

“We’re winning this war but we can’t afford to keep it going at this rate and neither can Kansas,” says McManus, “and I think that latter part is even more important to recognize. With the changes that Kansas has undergone, they cannot afford to keep this going and they recognize it. So there’s leverage there. We have to use it.”

Jones says the economic development effort needs to be less about state versus state and more about the region versus the rest of the world.

“We’re holding out the olive branch and saying, ‘Let’s stop playing this economic small ball. Let’s create a business climate in the region that attracts more jobs back to the United States, back to the Midwest.”

The Senate has passed its own version of that legislation, sponsored by Senator Ryan Silvey (R-Kansas City).

Three bills, one proposal to end jobs ‘border war’ with Kansas to be heard today

February 5, 2014 By Mike Lear

Three bills will be heard in two legislative committees today that aim to end the so-called “border war” between Missouri and Kansas over jobs.

All three bills would bar the issuance of certain business incentive programs to businesses that move from specific counties along the Kansas-Missouri Border on the Kansas side, to those along the border on the Missouri side. Supporters say it would end the practice of one state “poaching” companies and jobs from one side of the state line to the other. All three would be contingent on Kansas agreeing to block the offering of state incentives that would lure businesses from Missouri across the state line.

The legislation was pre-filed in December in the Senate by Senator Ryan Silvey (R-Kansas City) (SB 635). Bills mirroring it were then introduced in the House by Representative Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City) (HB 1515) and later by House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) (HB 1646).

Governor Jay Nixon in November called for he and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to put a temporary moratorium on incentives in the Kansas City region, followed by legislative action to make them permanent.

McManus’ and Jones’ bills will be heard in House Hearing Room 7 at noon. Silvey’s legislation will be heard in the Senate Lounge at 1:00.

MO stakeholders take ‘wait and see’ approach to Kansas study of MO River diversion

November 26, 2013 By Mike Lear

Missouri stakeholders are taking a “wait and see” attitude about the study of a proposal to funnel water from the Missouri River into western Kansas to irrigate crops and replenish the Ogallala Aquifer. The proposal is that during times of high water or flooding on the Missouri, as much as 4 million acre-feet of water could be diverted. The study is expected to begin next year and take 18 months.

A kayaker travels on the Missouri River past the State Capitol at Jefferson City.

Randy Asbury is the Executive Director of the Coalition to Protect the Missouri River. He says the concern among Missouri stakeholders is that once an aqueduct is built, its beneficiaries will lobby to increase when it is used and how much water it provides.

“Is this just the camel’s nose coming under the tent?” asks Asbury. “At a time when water is needed, if the infrastructure’s in place, if the aqueduct is operating, would they then want water not only in flood events but also at other times?”

He says stakeholders in Missouri have seen such escalation with other issues regarding River management. He says an example would be when the Master Manual for Management of the River was developed.

“We saw at that time that as people had opportunity to push for something for their state’s interest, many times they didn’t want what they originally requested, they wanted more.”

Asbury says 4 million acre-feet is no small amount of water.

“That amount of water, taken at an inopportune time, could be very devastating even to municipal water supplies or to electric generators in this area. They have to have water to get into their intakes.”

Asbury says while the issue is only the subject of a study, stakeholders in Missouri are watching to see what develops. He says there is a belief that the project will prove too expensive to pursue, after a 1982 study put the cost at $3.6 billion dollars at that time. That cost today could be as high as $25 billion.

The “wait and see” attitude could change quickly, however.

“I’m confident there would be many attorneys lined up by many organizations to fight this, so it’s not something that would be conceded at any point if ever there was the opportunity for this to actually take place. There would be legal challenges galore around it.”

Kansas officials are preparing for legal challenges, however. The Shawnee Dispatch in Shawnee, Kansas reports State Representative Sharon Schwartz (R-Washington) recommending, “you might want to put money in our litigation fund,” at a recent rollout for the study.

The Shawnee Dispatch also reports that Officials in Kansas view the Missouri River diversion as the best option for bolstering the Aquifer that stretches from Nebraska to Texas. A groundwater management district in Garden City, Kansas, has considered filing an appropriation for water rights from the Missouri River in anticipation of litigation.

Asked whether Missouri stakeholders should be speaking up more now, Asbury says to do so might have them getting ahead of themselves.

“I think there is adequate time here, if there is a need to oppose it, to do so.”

Governor Jay Nixon has not held back his disagreement with the proposal, however, penning a letter last week to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback urging him to scrap the plan.

House Committee looks for ways to improve Quality Jobs program

January 28, 2013 By Mike Lear

A House Committee has held its first hearing digging into the Quality Jobs Program.

Representative Jay Barnes (speaking) says the committee on Government Oversight and Accountability will meet Friday, February 8 in Kansas City to talk about the Quality Jobs program and “What to do about Kansas.” (Photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications.)

The House Committee on Government Oversight and Accountability was originally formed to study the failure of a project to bring a sucralose refinery and more than 600 jobs to Moberly. Its chairman, Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City), acknowledges the Quality Jobs discussion began with the Mamtek investigation.

“It was just a catalyst to allow myself a platform to get people asking the first real questions about the Quality Jobs Act.”

Jones says Quality Jobs is has suffered from a low success rate. He says up until two years ago for projects of $1 million annually or more, about the jobs created matched the number of jobs promised about 35 percent of the time. More than 46 percent of those projects yielded no jobs at all. He says smaller projects met their job promises only about 20 percent of the time while creating no jobs nearly 76 percent of the time.

Barnes notes there have been some success stories, however, and says his goal is to find how to have more of those and fewer failures.

He says one way to achieve that might be to give the Department of Economic Development more discretion in what projects are approved for Quality Jobs incentives.

“Right now, as we heard the testimony, there is no discretion. You come in, you make certain promises, you get the tax credit automatically. What we know happened in Mamtek is the executives from Mamtek used that and some other things as leverage to put pressure on local communities for the offering of local government bonds which ended up in a tremendous failure.”

Proponents of Quality Jobs argue that in failures such as Mamtek, the project received no incentives because certain thresholds in job creation and other factors were not met. Barnes says there’s more to it than that.

“There’s two responses to that. The first is that the Quality Jobs Act authorizations are used in some scenarios to leverage local government resources or other resources in which taxpayer money is expended up front. We know from Mamtek that is what happened. The second issue is that these programs have caps … and every dollar authorized for a business that has no business receiving the authorization is a dollar that can’t be spent on a business that might actually create jobs.”

He also says the time spent by Department employees on failed projects is also wasted.

The committee also heard from the Director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University, Professor Howard Wall. He told the committee that academic economists view tax credit programs as “completely ineffective.”

He says the Department’s claim that Quality Jobs has created more than 11,000 new jobs over its life is hard to back up.

“There’s a credit authorized and a factory is set up then people are employed. That’s usually what’s called ‘jobs created.’ Maybe those were created by the credit, maybe they would have existed anyway. Also, that’s not taking into account the negative effects on employment everywhere else because those workers typically came from other jobs, other employers who might now shut down because they can’t get workers.”

Wall recommends that Quality Jobs be scrapped, but Barnes says realistically, that won’t happen.

“Politically speaking I believe it would be impossible. I have much sympathy for the professor’s position that it ought to be scrapped in total. However, I know that it has bipartisan defenders in [the Capitol] and I know that’s not going to happen.”

Barnes says the next step for the Committee will be a hearing at Union Station in Kansas City to discuss, “What to do about Kansas.”

He says the two topics are, “absolutely related, because the Quality Jobs Act is used as a measure of competition with the State of Kansas.”

Barnes says discussion of improving the quality jobs act will be one of the subjects at that hearing, as well as reducing taxes, which he says would do more to create jobs than all jobs tax credits combined.