Charity Begins In Government

I'd like to do dedicate a little ink (metaphorically of course) in a mid-week post this week to my friends in the Glass City.  You know who you are (Maggie Thurber).  You're the ones concerned (if not justifiably outraged) over the fact that your City Council is perfectly willing to donate tax dollars that don't belong to them to worthy causes, yet those very same elected officials seem unconcerned at their utter lack of personal contribution to these same supposedly laudable groups.  

I'm sure that knowing of your charitable nature, many of you can't help but feel warm (if not downright ill) inside to know that while you live in a city that's been balancing their budgets in ways that would make double entry bookkeepers weep in envy; the stewards of your public funding can still find it in their hearts to support those who come to them cap in hand.  Short of funds they may be, but apparently long on votes.  It must be inspiring to know that the same people begging to take money each year from the Capital Improvements Budget to balance the General Fund can still find it in their hearts to donate from that Fund that the city has none to spare.   It must make you feel all warm and fuzzy to hear the same elected officials who complain of a lack of funding for proper police and fire protection calmly dispense public checks to private charities.

While you're basking in the smug and self-satisfied feeling that comes from watching these fiscal watchdogs rob Peter to pay Paul (curious, when you're Peter) I must tell you however that Toledo's well-known level of public generosity may soon need to stand in line.  For this November, it's the intention of Jackson County, Missouri (Kansas City) to place a measure on the ballot which would create a 20-year, half-cent sales tax.  Now while county sales tax proposals are certainly nothing new to those in Toledo, the potentially laudable goal of this particular one might be viewed as rather unique (and potentially scary).

If passed, the expected $40 million in annual revenues would go to equip and provide staff to ... wait for it ... medical research.  Kansas City's Children's Mercy hospital would reap some $20 million, with at least another $8 million to go to both St Luke's hospital and the University of Missouri at Kansas City.  All three of these entities already receive private donations (tax-deductible, BTW) for such purposes, but it's thought that such major funding escalation would allow them to increase the size of their research programs, as well as to allow them to recruit top scientists for the effort.   (I wouldn't at all be surprised!)

Let me say first that medical research is a truly laudable endeavor, and one that I support through personal contribution.  But what kind of research are we talking about you here might ask.  "Why, medical research of course," (he said in his best Bill Murray "Stripes" imitation).  Actually, the particular type of research that will be supported by this funding hasn't been defined by those promoting the tax.  It could be anything from a cure for cancer or AIDS to one that's really important, like a cure for the common cold.  (It might even be Alzheimer's research, but I don't remember.)  Of course, it could be that they don't want to go into too much detail, since knowing what the money would go for might make such a taxpayer donation less charitable.   According to a piece in the Kansas City Star though, "Backers of the proposed county tax say it is adequate to make a major difference, medically and economically."   (my added emphasis)
  
Not surprisingly Kansas City's Mayor and City Council are fully behind this ballot effort.  After all, not only is none of it money from city coffers, but a specific tax like this one doesn't prevent the city from future tax request efforts for project it already has in mind like expansion of the recently approved $100 million, two mile-long streetcar system or the proposed $1.2 billion dollar airport terminal improvement project.  Oh sure, KC could use more police and fire protection as much as Toledo, has their own water and sewer system issues, and has a backlog of street repairs waiting; but pursuing such concerns wouldn't provide the same warm glow as supporting such worthy causes.  Sure, the three largest private foundations in the area could come up with $36 of the $40 million just by setting aside 1% of their assets (again according the the KC Star); but wouldn't that make the taxpayers feel ungenerous by comparison.

Besides, supporters of the tax tell us that if any of this research bears fruit, taxpayers will share in the rewards reaped by it.  Of course their not saying what our share of such research would actually be, but wouldn't taxpayers seem greedy for asking what their cut of this undetermined research would be before committing to funding it for the next 20 years?

Sorry Toledo.  It's not that you haven't shown yourself unfailingly charitable during some of the toughest economic times that any part of the nation has had to face.  Let's face it, you've failed to turn down any but the most ridiculous of tax requests over the years, and your continued tacit support of the city council regularly giving away the money they've torn from your grasp through taxation has all but redefined 'giving til it hurts'.  Kansas City however apparently seems fully ready to raise the bar on both the level of largess and the ridiculous nature of giving.  Like you, their generosity seems to know no bounds (or common sense) and their willingness to tax themselves to provide it apparently knows no limits.  As in the Glass City, here in the City of Fountains, it seems that Charity begins in government.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am compelled to admit with a sense of mean-spirited gratitude and of greedy self-satisfaction that I live in Johnson County, Kansas and not Jackson County, Missouri.

    

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/09/16/4486667/surprising-opponent-to-jackson.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/09/16/4486667/surprising-opponent-to-jackson.html#storylink=cpy

Heads In The Clouds, Faces In The Trough

Every city seems to have a pie-in-the-sky project or two that seems to outweigh common sense, financial sensibilities, and even political realities.  Through a little known branch of Einstein's theories which today's physicists have yet to properly recognize, let alone define; these projects usually turn themselves into a form of black hole that sucks in both political and financial capital in. 

In the City of Fountains, that project is for Kansas City to replace its user-friendly, three terminal airport  (one of which is currently being closed down from lack of use) with a new single terminal facility.  And the cost for tearing out an existing airport that many consider the most user-friendly in the country to put a single terminal monstrosity (Can you say Midway airport?), mostly for the purposes of streamlining the terminal security process and adding a few terminal shops and eateries to the mix is $1.2 billion before in-project changes, delays and increases in materials, and the cost overruns that are always involved with such massive government projects begin to have their way with it.  (Can you say "Big Dig"?)

Perhaps most bizarrely, the city and the Aviation Director in charge of the maintenance of the existing facility Mark VanLoh, is spending $117,000 of the taxpayer's cash on a PR campaign to show that he's apparently incapable of maintaining the existing 30 year-old facility in a move designed to push for its replacement.  He notes in an article in the Kansas City Star that, "the public doesn't see the many ways in which those terminals are deteriorating and can't be remodeled to meet the needs of the 21st century aviation world".  There are some who think that seems rather at odds with the Department's PR efforts only 9 years ago, when it was touting the success story of spending some $258 million in taxpayer funds designed to remodel and update those very same terminals.  And what about the millions spent to add underground parking garages to each of those terminals not so many years before. that  Where do both of these rather significant investments in the airports original future fit with this new plan for its eventual destiny?

What does the city's leader, Mayor Sly James (yes, that's his real name) have to say about this:  "I think what happened is that the concept got pushed out before we figured out how to push it out".  Yep, you guessed it ... bad PR.  Of course, every poll of local citizens shows that they are currently not in favor of building such a terminal, but what difference should that make?  (After all, no one listens to the people when they're not interested in letting the government spend their money.)  In fact, when a small local group started a petition effort to stop the city from pursuing the spending of taxpayer money in pursuit of the project, the City Attorney ruled such a citizen's effort 'premature' and invalid as a consequence.

Imagine the hubris!  It isn't about the fact that KC doesn't need a new terminal now in the wake of an ever-shrinking airline industry.  It's not that the city isn't already committed to building one of these black hole projects in the form of a 2-mile long streetcar system of doubtful use, except perhaps as a stepping stone to expanding it.  It's not even that like many other cities of its size, the city doesn't suffer grave infrastructure issues where streets, bridges, and water and sewer systems are involved; and that will only be solved by major increases in some form of equally massive projects funded by tax and fee increases to its citizenry.  The real problem with the airport project is that the Mayor and his minions have not been allowed to do the sales pitch for it at their own time in and their own way.

Unfortunately, those of you who live for the power, influence, and the vast amounts of cash involved with such projects should have no real fear however.  A new Kansas City Airport appears to have entered the event horizon of this non-Newtonian phenomena.  The shear mass of such a project will be difficult to slow down, especially as it gathers the mounting acceleration of taxpayer-funded, government-approved gravity well of a PR campaign and the refusal of government at any level to give up on such things until it gets it own way.  There's money to be made in such massive government projects for big contractors, for union workers, and for government bureaucrats who get to dispense these vast funds.  There's also a good bit political power and future fund raising to be garnered for any politicians who serve the purposes of these funding black holes.  There's little mystery to the result of question of the airport's future therefore, when those in charge have their heads in the clouds and their faces in the trough.

Sky High Dreams

Kansas City is going to get a new airport that will cost it over $1.2 billion.  It really doesn't matter whether it needs one or not, whether the existing one gets the job done or not, or whether it makes any sense to build one or not.  What apparently is important to this situation is that the movers and shakers within city government want this new airport (as depicted to the left), and they're determined to get it.

Now for those of you who have never actually used KC's aerodrome, Kansas City currently possesses a unique three terminal design which was originally dedicated in 1972.  It has consistently ranked in the top five facilities in the country in terms of customer satisfaction (as tracked by J D Powers and Associates), for the last decade and in 2010 was rated as the top medium-sized airport.  (All of which appear to be good reasons to tear it down.)  

This isn't to say that KC hasn't hasn't kept up the facility and indeed has spent considerable money on its airport to update it over the last 41 years.  In a move to upgrade the original design, additional millions were spent not that many years later to add underground parking garages at each of the three terminals for the convenience of travelers.  (What fate that underground parking would see after this latest revision has yet to be discussed.)  During the years of airline expansion, a fourth concourse was even considered (and delayed long enough to make it unnecessary).  Just nine years ago, the city spent a further $258 million to again update the very terminals that it now wants to tear down and replace. 

Of course airline traffic is down these days; and with the recent mergers led by American and United, KC is today using only two of those available three terminals.  Then again, flights all over the country are down as the airline industry attempts to consolidate in the face of years of incipient financial failure.  The ever-increasing cost of fuel, the compeititive nature of key air routes, and an economic slow-down that has only added to a significant reduction in non-business related travel all point to an airline industry that will be struggling for many years ahead to maintain any level of profitability and damned lucky to see anything approaching a full recovery any time soon.  But instead of seeing the closing of 33% of its gates as a warning sign against future infrastructure spending, supporters of the new design see this instead as an opportunity to build the new facility over the recently closed corpse of the A Terminal.

On top of the poor industry timing, one has to wonder about the timing involved with looking for bond financing during the tight budgets of a stalled economic recovery.  After all, none of this has been approved for state or federal grants that might provide any alternative.  That would leave the airlines largely responsible for picking up the cost of this project by increasing landing fees, a move which will likely see such costs passed on to consumers through increased fares.  The city, whose infrastructure budget is already stretched like many others around the country, would likewise have figure out how to pick up part of the tab, something likely to be offset by yet more in the way of a higher sales tax or increases in hotel taxes (or both).  

And yet all of this effort and expense is to be made fro no better reason than to simplify the current security process at the airport and add shopping and restaurant venues.  The current layout apparently requires more staffing than the single entry port model of many airports (though it does shorten potential security lines); a job which has been ably handled by one of the few privatized security forces instead of the standard TSA agents.  Of course the real boon, as it is for any other such big government project, are some really great high-paying 'union' jobs in the construction trades, along with the inevitable construction delays and cost overruns that go with such efforts.  Strangely however, part of the initial justification of moving forward with the project is that it would allow this new airport to operate with less in the way of both security and other operational personnel.

Not surprisingly, local residents are rather dubious of moving forward with what they see as unnecessary spending, and have said so repeatedly.  KC's City Council however, seems unfazed by such public opinion and have recently approved the spending of $117,000 of such taxpayer money for a public relations firm to attempt to sell local residents on the project that they don't appear to want.  Or at least, not yet ... 

The bad news about such a disasterous waste in government spending in such tough economic times is that none of this will be going to KC road, water, and sewer systems that are all but crumbling beneath their feet.  The good news however, is that when such collapse does eventually happen, at least KC residents will have a new and more efficient escape route.