Angela Smart, vice president of the Hall Family Foundation, is co-author of continuing research that details the effect on taxpayers of the economic Border War between Missouri and Kansas.

“We undertook the research to be able to have something that we could use to educate the community and business leaders,” Smart said. “We wanted to get a sense of the size of the problem at a time when it seemed to be growing.”

According to the research, which takes into account only PEAK (Promoting Employment Across Kansas) and MO Quality Jobs programs, $217 million has been spent on job relocation between Kansas and Missouri, with Kansas realizing a net gain of 414 jobs at a cost of $340,000 per job.

“We’re not legislating, we’re not advocating, we’re studying and sharing our research,” Smart said. “All we can do is follow what’s going on at the level of the two states.”

Whether jobs have been actually created or merely shuffled back and forth across the state line, what have citizens received for the $217 million in abated corporate taxes?

“I live in Fairway (Kan.), and I might argue that, on the Kansas side, maybe people have moved from Missouri to Kansas when their company moved there,” Smart said. “And because they’ve moved, now they’re going to my same grocery and spending money on the Kansas side.

“But, anecdotally, we don’t think that people are moving their residences when their company might move from, say, 87th and State Line on the Missouri side over to the Sprint Campus on the Kansas side. People are probably staying in their existing homes.”

Who has the most at stake regarding this issue?

“We think it’s an important issue, whether you’re an economic development professional, a commercial realtor, somebody who benefits from the use of incentives or somebody who’s a member of their PTA and has three kids in public schools,” Smart said. “People take different sides on the issue, but most that we’ve talked to agree that this makes no economic sense and it is wasteful and it is not benefiting the region.”