In a little more than two weeks, Kansas City voters will cast ballots for an ordinance that would prohibit the city from using financial incentives to benefit businesses that perform work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, and advocates on both side of the issue have begun ramping up their messages. Groups on both sides of the issue have released dueling commercials on their respective websites, with peace activists that succeeded in getting the issue on the April 2 ballot releasing a nearly three-minute message at
www.foolish-investment.com and an industry-backed group releasing a 54-second commercial at
www.keepkcjobs.com.
The peace groups, led by the KC Peace Planters, have argued that local government should not help companies involved with the NNSA, as the Kansas City Council did in helping finance the construction of the Kansas City Plant’s new home with hundreds of millions of dollars of local bonds, and that local government should instead focus on investing in other technologies. “We assert that city voters should have a say over what lending is done by our industrial development corporation,” the group said. Supporters of the Kansas City Plant have argued that the plant helps keep 2,500 jobs within the city. “The real goal of many of the petition’s supporters (as they have repeatedly stated) is to scrap our nation’s policy of nuclear deterrence, and replace it with unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament, regardless of whether our potential adversaries follow suit or not,” supporters of the plant said on their website. “Of course if the petition is approved it will have absolutely no effect on national defense policy, but it will have a huge negative effect on Kansas City’s ability to compete with Kansas for new jobs and businesses.”
