Kenyon and Stacey Gleason were already planning to move to Topeka from South Dakota…. It wasn’t until they were shopping for homes with their Topeka real estate agent that they learned another financial incentive awaited them. Kenyon could apply for Choose Topeka’s relocation program, which gives remote workers who move to Shawnee County $10,000 toward the purchase of a home. A few months later, Kenyon happily cashed the $10,000 check. … their experience also illuminates the complexities and blind spots of economic development efforts like Choose Topeka. Its approach — attempting to grow the tax base by targeting individuals rather than companies, and by using cold hard cash as opposed to convoluted subsidies — is a relatively new one, with mixed results in other areas it’s been implemented, including Tulsa, northwest Arkansas and Vermont. The Gleasons were coming to Topeka anyway: Did the city really need to write them a $10,000 check? Bob Ross, the senior vice president of marketing for the Greater Topeka Partnership, the umbrella organization for Choose Topeka, says yes. … More than a third of Choose Topeka’s participants migrated to the city from elsewhere in the state, data shows, suggesting its economic incentives contribute to a kind of Border War in miniature, where Topeka sucks up talent from small Kansas towns and neighboring counties nearly as often as it attracts a remote worker from Texas or California. (Participants who work for a local company get up to $15,000.)
Source: Kansas City Star
