Audit Critical Of Kansas Incentive Program

A new audit of a Kansas incentive program shows that counties in suburban Kansas City have been the main beneficiaries of the program.

The Promoting Employment Across Kansas program allows a firm creating jobs to keep 95 percent of those employees’ state income taxes for up to seven years.

The state auditors estimated PEAK has created 5,200 jobs in Kansas, 2,800 of them moving from outside the state, in exchange for $21 million in forgone withholding taxes through December 2012.

About 1,550 jobs went to Johnson County. Four companies also moved about 1,200 jobs to Wyandotte County.

Cherokee County was the only Kansas county outside the Kansas City metro area that reported any jobs relocated by PEAK during the audit period.

Associated Press information from: The Kansas City Star