Yael T. Abouhalkah: Kansas should do more to attract residents

Where are people moving in the United States? Not to Kansas.

Sorry, Gov. Sam Brownback.

That’s the “fun fact” from the 39th-annual National Movers Study released by United Van Lines. Sure, this is a publicity gimmick for the company. But United does crunch some data that show where its customers moved in 2015.

Kansas ranked as the sixth worst “outbound state.” In 2014, the Sunflower State was seventh from the bottom.

Put bluntly, the extremely costly tax cuts pushed through by Brownback in 2013 are not attracting people to Kansas, despite the governor’s high and delusional hopes about them. The tax cuts also are not boosting employment in Kansas, which had the eighth worst rate of job growth from November 2014 to November 2015, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Back to the United Van Lines report: Oregon was the “top moving destination,” followed by South Carolina, Vermont, Idaho, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, the District of Columbia, Texas and Washington.

Kansas needs to have a strong public education system and superb basic services to attract new residents. Brownback’s tax cuts are sending the state in the wrong direction, by reducing the amount of money available to provide those services to Kansans.

This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Yael T. Abouhalkah: Kansas should do more to attract residents."