CEO: We’re leaving Kansas, and Brownback should resign in shame

Saying that “it’s not so much that I’m moving the company to Missouri as I’m moving it away from Kansas,” an Overland Park CEO is leaving the state with an open letter criticizing Gov. Sam Brownback’s policies.

“It is far past the time that Sam Brownback and his cronies admit the damage they’ve caused to the people of Kansas and resign in the shame they deserve,” Pathfinder Health Innovations chief executive Jeff Blackwood wrote in the letter.

He said he released the goodbye letter in the hope that it would prompt Kansas voters to “take a more cautious approach in the upcoming elections.”

“I don’t have anything to gain by it,” he said Thursday. “We’re leaving the state.”

The company provides billing and paperwork services for autism therapy providers. It has 23 employees and will move Aug. 1 about 10 miles across the state line into Kansas City, Mo.

In reply, Brownback’s office issued a short statement about his stewardship of the state’s economy.

“While we are not familiar with that particular company’s situation, we do know that Governor Brownback’s tax policy has attracted a record setting number of new businesses for five consecutive years, most recently totaling 17,298 new Kansas businesses in 2015,” said the statement by spokeswoman Eileen Hawley.

Brownback critics have said that many new business filings are simply existing firms reorganizing to take advantage of Brownback’s 2012 tax plan, which eliminated state income taxes for owners of limited liability companies.

Pathfinder, a regular corporation, remains taxable because it has outside investors and can’t convert to an LLC.

Blackwood said his company did get a tax incentive to move to Missouri that was “minimal, less than $40,000.”

“As an individual, I could have become an LLC myself and avoided paying personal income taxes, but chose not to do that,” Blackwood said.

Blackwood’s letter, posted to Pathfinder Health Innovations’ website and Facebook page, criticized the tax cuts.

“Brownback declared that this tax cut would be a ‘shot of adrenaline’ for the Kansas economy, but the reality is that the tax cuts have had the opposite effect,” the letter said. “For 11 of the last 12 months, Kansas has dramatically missed revenue targets, falling deeper in debt and facing another round of degraded bond ratings.”

Meanwhile, “the tax burden has fallen upon those that are least able to afford a reduction in services from their government, and the developmentally disabled community is just that community.”

Blackwood said that started shortly after Brownback took office, with the 2011 closure of the Lawrence office of the state’s social service agency, then called the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. The closure meant disabled citizens there had to find rides to a Topeka office about 30 miles away.

He said it got worse with Brownback’s privatization of Medicaid services for the poor and disabled through his KanCare program.

“I can’t, in good conscience, continue to give our tax money to a government that actively works against the needs of its citizens,” his letter said.

This story was originally published June 16, 2016 at 6:37 PM with the headline "CEO: We’re leaving Kansas, and Brownback should resign in shame."