By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson Chamber hosted its first legislative forum Saturday at Hutchinson Community College. Present were Reps. Michael Murphy, Paul Waggoner, Jason Probst and Joe Seiwert.
The legislators touched on many topics from water to education to the Woodie Seat Bridge, but one that has come up for the legislature this past month is the so called APEX bill, which is in the legislature to give large incentives to get a company with 4,000 jobs to come somewhere in Kansas.
The three Republicans on the panel all expressed skepticism that the deal would work out for the state, even if the incentives are offered and accepted.
"It's not always the golden bullet," Murphy said. "Like I said earlier, I think we need to make our state more attractive. I would rather have a hundred small companies come in and they would probably be scattered around the state, rather than one big one come in stuck in one place, that's me, personally."
Rep. Paul Waggoner noted that growth for one plant doesn't mean growth for everyone.
"There is not a correlation between strong economic growth in a state and throwing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars at profit-making companies just to incentivize them," Waggoner said. "It's much more important to have a good, balanced tax rate that is as minimized as possible and is as fairly distributed as possible, in that sense, I reject the premise of the question."
Rep. Joe Seiwert has seen large employers come and go and that's where his concern lies.
"You can be held hostage by these corporations," Seiwert said. "We all agree that some of these corporations are good, but some of them are not, and when you get a not corporation, you're held hostage. You bring in 4,000 employees in one town, you're going to do a lot of things in the future to keep them 4,000. Otherwise, you're going to have housing issues, you're going to have road issues, you're going to have empty buildings sitting around."
Rep. Jason Probst isn't pleased that incentives are deemed necessary, either.
"Economic development, is kind of, it's an ecosystem and you can't, as much as I don't like the corporate incentives that are part of this APEX bill, you have to acknowledge that is the game we're playing," Probst said. "We can't just simply remove ourselves from that and expect to be competitive. If every other state is playing that game, Kansas will lose every time, if we're not playing it. I don't like it and I'm not going to support it, but I acknowledge that's part of the landscape."
The next forum is March 5