Very interesting, this E-tax situation. Not just the Kansas City situation but the combination of Kansas City and St. Louis.
Quite a contrast, actually. In both cities, voters overwhelmingly approved retention of the one-percent tax on salaries and business profits. But that’s where the similarities end.
Consider:
— In Kansas City, the opposition, led by eastern Missouri billionaire Rex Sinquefield spent about $600,000 trying to defeat the tax. In St. Louis, there was no organized opposition.
— In Kansas City, all indications are that it will be “business as usual” at City Hall and that a serious, extensive review of city taxes and finances is not likely to occur. In St. Louis, however, it appears that it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the E-tax will be eliminated before the next retention election, which would take place in five years.
So what’s the deal?
Well, it seems clear to me that, in St. Louis, Sinquefield and Mayor Francis Slay, a friend of Sinquefield, made a deal.
Here’s how the conversation that led to that gentleman’s agreement likely went…
Rex — “Uh, Francis, you know you’ve got to get rid of that E-tax; it’s killing job and business growth.”
Francis — “Yes, Rex, I realize that. But we can’t chop it off all at once, you know. How about this: If you don’t contest it on April 5, I promise you that we’ll get rid of it before it comes up for retention in five years, and we’ll come up with ways to replace the revenue.”
Rex — “You got it.”
How could such a clear-cut deal take place in one city, while, at the other end of the state the battle will be re-engaged every five years for the foreseeable future?
It’s the difference between a strong mayor form of government (St. Louis) and a council-manager form of government in Kansas City.
Slay can make that deal without having to worry about being undermined by the Board of Aldermen. In Kansas City, however, the mayor can’t promise anything, unless he’s got the signatures of six other council members, giving him a 7-6 majority, including himself.
To see the difference in the E-tax intentions of leaders in the two cities, one had only to read Slay’s comments in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Mayor-elect Sly James’ comments in The Kansas City Star.
James: “What a great victory. We now have confirmation that we’re going to have the earnings tax that we need so much.”
Slay: “What we saw here was a step, an important step toward what I believe to be a necessary and inevitable change in the way the city delivers services and the way the region is governed.”
The Post-Dispatch story went on to say that city officials already had begun talking about other ways of getting the revenue that the E-tax generates. “I don’t think there’s going to be another campaign on this earnings tax” in five years, Richard Callow, pro-earnings-tax campaign manager was quoted as saying.
That about says it all, doesn’t it? The wheels are in motion in St. Louis, and the E-tax is going away.
Now, if Kansas City leaders are paying attention, that should set off all kinds of alarms.
Two reasons:
1) The E-tax undoubtedly is hurting business and job growth in Kansas City. We’re already getting poached to death by the Kansas side, and now, with many Missouri-side suburbs growing, they, too, will pick up the cherry-picking pace.
2) After St. Louis gets rid of its E-tax, it will start competing more stoutly for businesses that are looking to relocate to Missouri. And when it lays out its package of incentives, it can say, “If you come to St. Louis, you won’t have to worry about an earnings tax, but if you go to Kansas City, you’ll be hit for one percent of your profits.”
Ouch!
Let me make this clear: I was not only for the E-tax, I was on the Save Kansas City Committee steering committee and made two presentations on behalf of the tax. At both appearances, however, I advocated for a thorough review of Kansas City finances.
And while I like the idea of forcing the “sundowners” — those who leave the city after work each day — to help pay for the amenities and facilities that bolster the urban core, I think this newfound focus on the E-tax is fostering a lot of unnecessary resentment among the sundowners.
You remember, don’t you, E-tax proponent Dan Cofran’s now-famous quote to a woman who was frustrated because she had to pay the tax even though she didn’t live in Kansas City? “Then, don’t work here,” he said.
Ouch…again.
The reply didn’t hurt the tax’s chances of passage at all, but it didn’t help relations between those of us who live in Kansas City and those who don’t. We shouldn’t allow the E-tax to drive the wedge even farther between us and them.
So, let’s see what we can do about getting rid of that E-tax, OK, Sly? OK, council members?
The last thing we want, other than that wedge being driven deeper, is the sight of St. Louis steaming by us as we cling to a tax that only about 20 percent of the largest cities in the U.S. are holding on to.
Also, this looks like a case where the big dog, Sinquefield, isn’t going away. He’ll be back in five years — assuming he’s still alive — and he and his minions will dump several hundred thousand more dollars into that campaign, and he’ll make our business community shell out another $1 million or so to try to beat him.
To me, he looks an awful lot like Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters: He won’t quit until he gets what he wants.
Companies don’t usually move away from where the bulk of their employees live. That’s why Morgan Stanley was able to move three miles from Missouri to Johnson County and reap millions in incentives, without suffering a loss of their work force. Many of them, I would bet, already lived in Kansas. Kansas City is the only city in the state with this problem. Companies aren’t moving out of St. Louis to go to East St. Louis in Illinois. They move out of St. Louis to go to the suburbs in Missouri. They move because of schools, crime and city services. So I doubt any KC company will move across the state to St. Louis (where they would receive no state incentives), when they can simply hop across the state line and obtain tens of millions of dollars from Kansas.
That’s a good point, Mike, and you know a lot more about this than I do. What I was thinking about, though, in terms of possible competition between Kansas City and St. Louis is companies that might be thinking about relocating, or expanding, from elsewhere in the country (Harley-Davidson, for example) and looking at Missouri. It seems to me that St. Louis would have a distinct advantage over Kansas City, if it had no E-tax and we did.
What will happen here in St. Louis is that within the next five years you will see the city become part of the county, and all of the departments that do the same jobs will be combined and the city will become the 97th municipality in the county, and the E-tax will be a thing of the past. It only took 151 years for the county and the city to get back together…
Many thanks to our St. Louis correspondent…I should have picked up on that, Gus, because the Post-Dispatch story that I cited mentioned collaboration between the city and the county as a key element of reducing expenses. Consolidation with the county makes a lot of sense for St. Louis City. Keep us posted…
Jim,
So, is consolidation between the city and county a feasible thing on this side of the state?? Could KC and Jackson County merge services? I rate that as highly unlikely.
I’ve never heard any serious discussion of city-county consolidation here, Willie. Usually in consolidations, both government and corporate, you have a strong party taking over a weak party. A classic example was the consolidation in the 1990s of KCK and Wyandotte County governments. The city comprised something like 90 percent of the land space in the county, and county government was totally superfluous — not to mention a sinkhole for millions of taxpayer dollars.
Jackson County, however, has dozens of cities, many of them prospering, and the county does a reasonably good job on its basic services, including assessing, collecting and distributing taxes; recording deeds; maintaining roads and park land; and enforcing the law in the unincorporated areas.
Kansas City is equally strong in its own right, providing mostly distinctive services, such as water, sewer, aviation, fire and police, neighborhood development, codes enforcement, trash and recycling collection, and road and park maintenance.
In St. Louis, on the other hand, the county has been burgeoning for decades at the expense of the land-locked city. It apparently has reached the point where the city needs a “bailout.” If that happens, it would be the biggest governmental shift in state history, and everybody will be watching. How would it affect us, on the other side of the state? I don’t know exactly, but it will. If consolidation works, the St. Louis area could grow at the expense of Kansas City; if it doesn’t, it could spur growth in Kansas City. But from here, it looks like an inviting road for St. Louis to take.