"But all the other guys are doin' it!"

The city of Lenexa has issued Applebee's a $12.5 million dollar tax break over the next decade. Apparently Applebee's needs such generous incentives to help them make the monumental move from Overland Park to Lenexa. By my calculations that's about 15 miles. "We want to keep our star companies in Kansas," is Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' rationale for what on the surface seems like a lousy deal for the taxpayers. Rumor has it that Applebee's dropped the "M" word (as in "Missouri") while looking for new space which was enough to send Kansas lawmakers scurrying for their checkbooks to make sure that didn't happen. Should we in Kansas City care that Lenexa and Overland Park are willing to cut each other's throats over a company that's trying to shirk its responsibility to the community? Should we care that the governor of Kansas is actually facilitating this type of cannabilistic competition between two neighboring cities? Yes we should care because it happens on this side of the state line too. Every expiring lease in Kansas City comes with the inevitable threat of leaving one municipality for another. Corporations in the metro have a double advantage. Not only can they play one municipality against another, they can play Missouri against Kansas too. At this current rate, within the next twenty years most local corporation's leases will have expired and been renewed on a tax-free basis leaving the metro area with absolutely no corporate tax base. Who makes up that difference? Small business. Companies not big enough to blackmail their communities. And after they go? What then? When does it end? It ends when responsible leaders present a unified front. How can government provide tax subsidies to local companies to move down the street and call that growth? In economic circles this is what's known as a zero-sum game. Zero-sum means one person's gain is exactly balanced by the losses of another. Lenexa gained a corporate headquarters. Overland Park lost a corporate headquarters. Kansas retained a corporation, and supposedly Missouri lost out on gaining one. And the Kansas City area? Come some morning in the not too distant future Applebee's employees will leave their same metro area neighborhoods, drive the same metro area roads and consume the same metro area services. The only difference is they will arrive somewhere near College Boulevard and Lackman Road instead of West 107th Street. This is what Lenexa Mayor Michael Boehm deems a "win for everyone." Why can't we declare a truce with respect to corporate incentives? Why can't OneKC be more than just a marketing tool? I call for a memorandum of understanding amongst the metro community that says we will not offer incentives to lure companies away from one another. It's time to put the brakes on irresponsibility. We can play the blame game later. Right now let's concentrate on not jumping off the bridge because all the other guys are doin' it.