Just how short are the memories of Kansans? Or maybe a
better question is how short do Kansas officials think our memories are?
I’m no super memory genius, but I have Google, and the
ability to recall things that happened less than five years ago. (And I’m
beginning to think these may be very marketable skills.)
So, Gov. Sam Brownback and others announced some good news
for Kansas last week: Amazon is going to build an 800,000 square-foot
fulfillment center in Edgerton. It’s going to bring 1,000 jobs to the region.
That all sounds terrific! Except, um… didn’t Amazon just
close a 915,000 square-foot fulfillment center in Coffeyville, Kansas? The
answer is: Yes, Amazon did close a giant Coffeyville facility in February 2015
laying off as many as 1,000 people.
So, in 1999, Kansas officials got to announce to great
fanfare the opening of an enormous distribution center north of Coffeyville. At
the time, officials said the facility would employ as many as 1,000. (I can’t
find anywhere anything that confirms the place employed that number when it
closed last year.)
This mega-facility received ample incentives from state and
local governments. Amazon received an incentive package worth $4.5 million, or
$350,000 for up to 10 years as well as another $1 million in incentives for
improving access roads and other infrastructure upgrades. The state also gave
the facility a $500,000 loan that was forgiven if the company hit employment
goals. Which by the way, I can’t find whether the company hit those goals and
the debt was forgiven, or if Amazon repaid that half million dollar loan. The
incentives expired in 2009.
Recognizing that Amazon was threatening to close its
Coffeyville warehouse, state and local officials again opened up the wallets of
their constituents, offering an incentive package of up to another $10 million
to entice the Internet company to remain in Coffeyville. Amazon said no.
In the aftermath of Amazon’s departure, the building was sold to a California investor. Now, I don’t know what happened to the 915,000 square-foot building that Kansas residents helped subsidize north of Coffeyville. I’m guessing it’s a vacuous, vacant building slowly decaying. But I hope I’m wrong.
Fast forward to last week, when Amazon announced it was
bringing 1,000 jobs to Kansas. I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but it seems
like Kansas got to pay out unemployment to Amazon’s former employees in
Coffeyville, and now we’re all about to pay again for the pleasure of having
the Internet retailer in our state.
The Edgerton property will receive property tax abatements
of up to 75 percent for 10 years. Meanwhile, the Kansas Department of Commerce
confirmed that the state is offering Amazon PEAK incentives. These are
incentives for employing Kansans, and the incentive typically allows an
organization to retain 95 percent of payroll tax for employees that earn above
the median wage where the operations and jobs will be located.
They will not release the details of the deal until after it’s
inked. I think it’s fairly safe to assume that all told, the taxpayer
investment in this Amazon project is more than $10 million, because that’s what
the company turned down a year ago.
I am trying my best not to get all angered up – people have
recently told me I’m too mean -- but it’s really, really difficult not to
settle into a fiery rage over this. I do not understand how or why it’s
acceptable to take money out of the taxpayers’ wallets, stick the cash in the left
hand pocket of the state, take more money from the taxpayers, and then combine
the cash with the left hand pocket and move it into the state’s right side
pocket and pretend we’ve all won some sort of prize. As sure as I sit here,
there will be ticker tape parades and plenty of groveling press conferences
showing every step of this process. You know those pictures with public
officials in hard hats with shovels? Ask yourself if those photos are worth $10
million.
Amazon is America’s largest retailer by value. Its worth, as
of this writing, is $247.6 billion. It’s worth more than Walmart. Amazon’s CEO,
Jeff Bezos, is worth more than $46.7 billion. The average Kansas household,
meanwhile, makes about $51,255. The net worth of the average Kansan is about
$409,778. This isn’t about envy or class warfare. It is about not forcing everyday
Kansans to subsidize big businesses. By the way, Coffeyville has a poverty rate
of 19 percent.
So Jeff Bezos and his Amazon behemoth want Kansans, which
are worth a little bit less than the average American, to subsidize their
enormous building. Wait, that should be buildings—plural. It’s especially
unfair for the people of Coffeyville to be asked (at gunpoint, via the tax
collectors) to subsidize moving the building and the jobs.
If this doesn’t make you, dear Kansas friends, angry, then I
don’t even understand you anymore.
This may or not have to do with people's short memories, but J.R. Claeys, state rep. Salina, was investigated by the FTC and was found to have committed business fraud. I find it somewhat surprising that somebody with this background of business fraud was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. Maybe many of his constituents were not aware of his background of business fraud when they voted. I hope this is the case and they did not have short memories. This information concerning Claeys' business fraud can easily be found by googling: "JR. Claeys Green Certification Scam" or "J.R. Claeys Green Certification Fraud"
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