Whipsawed by the Panasonic factory deal, we can escape most other tax giveaways

Kansans will pay money right out of our pockets to lure a $4 billion Panasonic battery factory to Johnson County. We ordinary citizens, plus many existing businesses, will make up for the tax bills Panasonic does not pay.

But this deal is important. Because if we don’t grab the 4,000 jobs the corporation vows to create, some other place will. We are whipsawed, in other words, getting our pockets tapped by that wealthy corporation one way, or sacrificing all those jobs on the other.

Whipsaw: “to beset or victimize in two opposite ways at once…” Long ago steel whipsaws were supple blades with which two lumberjacks cut logs into planks, often getting hurt in the process. Now it’s only a useful metaphor, as when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spoke of “an age when big business repeatedly bullies, extorts and whipsaws local governments.”

We’ve been whipsawed before, as proven by the Ford plant in Claycomo, Missouri. Since 2010 it has enjoyed a lucrative tax deal, with citizens making up for what the auto giant doesn’t pay to support state government, city, county, schools, libraries and more. With big money always ready to move elsewhere, for lowly citizens it’s either help pay taxes for big shots or give up the well-paying jobs.

Need I mention that whopper whipsaw brandished by the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals as they speculate about massive improvements, or maybe a brand-new stadium downtown? The authors of “Hard Ball — The Abuse of Power in Team Sports,” comment: “The monopoly power exercised by leagues has been used to bring pressure on local governments around the country, with threats to move teams if stadiums or arenas are not built.”

A colleague of mine long ago at the Kansas City Star, James B. Steele, with his reporting partner, Donald Barlett, argue in their several books that the whipsaw can be shattered. The federal government could simply tax back every dime our cities and states give away in these neat deals for wealthy corporations. That would level the playing field and return us to competitive free enterprise. Regrettably, until that happens the Panasonic corporation and the others have us over a barrel (another useful metaphor).

But here’s the crux of it: In most of our many other Kansas and Missouri tax giveaways, we are far from being whipsawed. Some years back, my own Shawnee City Council granted giveaways so a breakfast/lunch spot could renovate an older building without paying full taxes. That restaurant is a nice place. But just make major improvements to your own home and then try to duck when the county assessor slaps you for the extra value.

We suffer a fake whipsaw in our Kansas-Missouri “border war,” with tax giveaway cities in both states bribing corporations to jump the line. Within Kansas itself, it is border jumping between cities: Shawnee versus Lenexa versus Merriam versus Mission versus Overland Park versus Roeland Park versus Prairie Village, with Olathe the most free-handed donor of our taxes to millionaires. Which city can give away most and thus be rewarded with most office blocks, strip malls, luxury apartments, shooting ranges, posh restaurants, movie centers, box stores, sports bars, lumber yards — all private property paid for in good part with our public money?

This is just stupid. If a site looks profitable, sensible business people will build there. If they shy away from investing their own money on their own property, who cares? Let it stand vacant. To justify tax giveaways on a vacant tract at Shawnee-Mission Parkway and Mauer road, my own city’s development department assumed that the grassy, sloping land thick with wildflowers and trees was “blighted.” I say keep the wildflowers and trees until the developer is willing to pay his own bills.

Dr. Jim Hinson, former Shawnee-Mission school superintendent, once warned that his district suffers from the $3 billion in tax abatement locations that cities have already created.

“It forces the school districts to go back to the community for a tax increase,” he said.

I believe this existing Kansas law in most cases could free us from the whipsaw: No privately owned property subject to ad valorem taxes shall be acquired and redeveloped under the provisions of K.S.A. 12-1770…if the board of county commissioners or the board of education levying taxes on such property determines by resolution adopted within 30 days following the hearing…that the district will have an adverse effect on such county or school district.

Thus, our Kansas county commissioners and school boards could vote to kill — not the free enterprise projects themselves — only the tax giveaway part. Inexplicably, these elected officials always seem to cheer on freebies for millionaires.

But the whipsaw Panasonic wields just now is in no way fake. The 4,000 jobs they promise suggest that the State of Kansas and Johnson County will give away everything but our citizens’ own blood to land their factory. Maybe the blood as well.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.