- Coming up on IGI, Kansas, Lieutenant Governor David Toland sits down with us for an in-depth look at the role of the Lieutenant Governor and the high profile work he does as Commerce Secretary.

Stay with us as we talk to Kansas'.

Lieutenant Governor on IGI.

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Thank you.

- Hello and welcome to IGI I am your host Washburn University Professor of Political Science, Bob Beatty.

Kansans, do you know who your lieutenant governor is?

I'll give you some time.

Lemme look through these articles here.

Well, if you don't, it's okay.

And you're probably not even surprised that you don't know.

What you may be surprised about is what Kansas' Lieutenant Governor does.

It's not what you might expect, but let's have him tell you about it.

Lieutenant Governor David Toland.

Thank you for joining me on IGI.

It's just a fact you live with it.

Probably that most Kansans don't know who the Lieutenant governor is.

I was actually just recently, there's a discussion with former Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson and he told myself and others that he actually liked that it allowed him to do his work without dealing with maybe a lot of things that come with lots of publicity and people always watching you.

So I, I thought that was an actually an interesting comment.

But before we get into your current position, what you do and everything, you're Kansas Lieutenant Governor, tell us about yourself.

Are you, are you from Kansas?

Did you grow up in Kansas or how did you end up here with us now?

- Oh, thanks Bob.

Yeah.

I am a proud seventh generation Kansan.

Okay.

So my ancestors were rabid free Soilers who came to Allen County in 1857.

And we have been here ever since.

And I'm very proud of that fact.

So, grew up in Iola, graduated from ku and like many Kansans, I left the state after I graduated and took my also Kansas bread wife with me.

And we moved to the East coast and we were living there for better part of 10 years before we had the opportunity to come home.

And we've been back about 17 years now and it's been a great life.

- And where were you from?

What high school did you go to?

- Yeah, so Iola High grad.

Okay.

In, in Allen County.

So proud southeast Kansan and very, you know, rooted in, in that place.

And in rural - Kansas.

And we were talking a bit earlier, you were sort of looking for a way to get back to Kansas after you'd been gone for a while.

Is that right?

- Well, it was, it was somewhat unexpected 'cause we had a, a good life in DC and enjoyed that very much.

But we were living in a row house in northeast DC when our daughter was born.

And one night I got a call from my old family doc back in Iola who had this, this opportunity that came about from our local hospital being sold as part of a chain.

And they'd set up a foundation to fund community improvement activities in six counties, five in the Kansas City metro and then Allen County where I'm from.

And six months later we packed up the moving van and headed west.

- Yeah.

I came out here from Arizona and my backyard was about 10 feet of rocks.

- Yeah.

- And then we moved to Topeka and we, our backyard had trees and a and a creek.

And I was like, oh, this, this is, this is very, very nice.

We went - From a four foot by four foot front yard, which was not where we wanted our then 10 month old daughter to learn how to walk to four acres in Allen county when we moved home.

Yeah.

And we'll get into it later.

Kansas has a lot to offer, obviously for people absolute that want to move employees or you know, whoever to to, to the state.

So how, what did you do before you became lieutenant Governor?

I should put it this way.

How did you end up being Lieutenant - Governor?

Well, it's, it was not something I ever planned to do or - Expected.

What happened?

Well, what he does.

- Yeah.

I think that's a theme with Lieutenant Governors actually was never on their bucket list.

So for me, I was the director of a, a nonprofit called Thrive Allen County in Iola for 11 years.

And I'd gotten involved with then Senator Laura Kelly and supporting her campaign for governor in 2018.

And I had no intention of leaving the work that I loved in my hometown of Iola, but had the opportunity to become Governor Kelly's first Secretary of Commerce.

Yeah.

And so I continue to hold that job.

Two years into the Kelly administration, there was a vacancy in the state treasurer's office and Governor Kelly appointed her lieutenant Governor Lynn Rogers, who was a banker to be the state treasurer, which opened up the Lieutenant Governor's office.

And so I got a second hat to wear.

So I'm both Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of Commerce.

- Now when, when that happened, were you thinking, Ooh, maybe I'll be lieutenant governor or I'll, you're, it just like, wow, that's an interesting possibility.

- You know, it was, it was the middle of the pandemic.

I had been incredibly busy as a Secretary of Commerce trying to rebuild an agency that had been completely decimated in the previous administration.

And we were really going fast to try to make sure that we could make opportunities, make lemonade out of the lemons that had been given to us through the, the pandemic.

And so there were a lot of companies at the time that were investing in logistics and distribution in food processing.

And those are areas where Kansas had natural strength.

So we'd been running really hard, really fast for the entirety of the pandemic.

And then I got the second job as lieutenant governor, and then the following year we had a reelection to gear up for.

So it was a very busy time and I've just really tried to keep my eye focused on the ball of how do we grow the Kansas economy, how can we use the Lieutenant Governor's office as a way to amplify the work that I do as Secretary of Commerce?

- Right.

And we'll, we'll get into that commerce part very soon, but in, in studying Kansas politics and, and yeah, we, we, we joke and it's just, it's like the vice president.

I know the vice president's a little more high profile, but this, this second person just isn't very, very well known.

And that's why I've always thought that the idea to, for a lieutenant governor to have a cabinet office is actually, I, I think a pretty good one.

Former lieutenant governor Mark Parkinson's said he still, he did not have a cabinet office.

He still worked on projects, but he, he didn't take a salary because he, I don't know, he's an interesting guy.

He didn't felt, I think he didn't, he wanted to be able to work on his, his other interests and then not, you know, essentially feel guilty or be attacked for it because he did not feel it was necessarily a full-time job.

So this idea as, as a cabinet official, I think is pretty good one.

I'd assume you approve.

You think so too?

But just a year or two ago, I remember there was actually some proposed legislation to ban that from some Kansas legislators, and I didn't understand why they would wanna do that.

D do you remember that?

- I I do.

And didn't agree with it.

Didn't understand - This.

What was the, do we even need to say the reasoning?

I didn't get the reasoning.

Why not?

If you have a lieutenant governor, why not let them be a, a cabinet official?

- Yeah.

You know, there are some very practical reasons that you should be a cabinet official.

Yeah.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of constitutional duties as lieutenant governor.

- Are there, are there any, - Other than taking over, there are a couple of commissions Okay.

That I sit on as lg and other than that, you're there in the event of an emergency.

- Right.

- And so as a practical matter, it's good to have that cabinet job so that you can most effectively use that office for the benefit of, of Kansans.

Right.

And so I didn't agree with the proposal, and I think Kansas has been very well served by allowing and encouraging LGS to also have cabinet positions.

- So let's, sticking to the, the LG part, putting aside the cabinet, what, what do you do as Lieutenant Governor?

Not necessarily commerce, but if it, if you get something and, hey, this is a lieutenant governor task, I'm gonna do, what sort of things does do, do you do?

- Most of the activities that I do as lieutenant governor are ceremonial.

- Okay.

- So it might be that the governor's unavailable to meet with the ambassador from a country, and so I slot in for the governor.

Or it could be that there's a speech that that needs to be delivered and it's an important speech governor's unavailable.

And so I do it, it's also mundane.

So often during the legislative session, the governor is pulled any number of, of different directions.

And it's important though, for legislative pages who are elementary and middle and high school students to have the opportunity to take a picture at the governor's ceremonial desk with the governor.

And if she's unavailable, then typically I will sit there in her place and we'll swap out the name plate.

So it says Lieutenant Governor Toland rather than Governor Kelly.

And I get to greet the pages.

So it, it really is, is a range of, of things that are largely ceremonial.

And, but I've also found that it's useful to my cabinet job.

When I was only the Secretary of Commerce, I couldn't always get a meeting with a C-Suite executive, but with the Lieutenant Governor title, nine times outta 10, they will take that meeting.

So it's been really useful to supercharge some of our, our commerce activities.

- Yeah.

When I was, many years ago, talking to former governor William Avery, I asked, what are traits to be in this, this office, in this job?

And he, he said, well, you have to like people.

So if you're, if you're doing all these things, I won't put words in your mouth.

Sounds like you probably like people or you'd be pretty grumpy if you're doing all these things.

- I absolutely like people and, and - Not everyone does.

- That's true.

- You can tell sometimes, - Hopefully most people that are in public life though do like people.

And I've enjoyed so much the travels that, that come with the job, particularly around the state.

And it's also taken me around the world where you get to represent and to carry our brand and our message and the opportunities that exist here to a global audience.

And so it's, it's been a joy.

It really has.

- Now, if, if many of our audience doesn't know Kansas as Lieutenant Governors, I hope I won't be able to stump you.

Is there a lieutenant governor from Kansas has past that you, that you maybe admire or, or, or, or know about?

Well, - Yeah.

To, to name a couple.

Going way back, Dave Owen was Lieutenant Governor 73 to 75.

That is going back.

Yeah.

I believe.

And yes.

And I've gotten to know Lieutenant Governor Owen through an economic development project.

So he's, he's in private industry now, and so we've been working with him, but his wife was also the Secretary of Commerce, Laura Owen.

- Oh, wow.

- And so I've enjoyed that relationship.

Lieutenant Governor Parkinson, who you mentioned earlier, was a, a phenomenal lieutenant governor and a really bright star in, in public service.

And so I've been so impressed by him, my predecessor Lynn Rogers as Lieutenant Governor's, been a friend and, and he set up our office of Rural prosperity, which has been important to our work.

So gotten great opportunities to meet several of our living Lieutenant Governors and to learn from them.

- Yeah, that's wonderful.

And there's a Lieutenant Governor's Association, is that correct?

- Yes.

- And so you, you go, it'd be interesting because so many states have different, you know, different offices in some states they're actually elected separately.

- Right.

- Which is kind of wild.

- Yes.

- Kansas is, is truly unique.

I think maybe you know, better, it's only four or five states where the Lieutenant Governor runs in the primary, not the general election.

So it's interesting how it's such a different office in, in so many different states.

It's not something that's just institutionalized.

- Well, in, in some states, and Kansas used to be like this, the Lieutenant governor presides over the Senate.

- Hmm.

- And that's interesting.

I I believe that changed in Kansas during Lieutenant Governor Owen's term.

There's constitutional amendment at that time.

It's, it really does vary from state to state.

And I've enjoyed my colleagues from around the country getting to know them and how things work in their states.

- So you're also commerce secretary, that some, I know that's a very, very busy job for you.

There's a, there's a couple big deals that I'm often asked about and, and asked to weigh in on or talk about, obviously the Panasonic deal, which there's an article out recently about how is is growing because of that deal.

The other is the chiefs and the royals.

Okay.

And correct me if I'm wrong, both were star bonds, is that right?

- They're both eligible for - A, both eligible - A what we call a juiced up star bond.

- So I I, I do get asked how these star bonds work and you know, we only have 12, 13 minutes or whatever.

But you know, if someone just has no idea this is a unique thing, or at least it's very effective for Kansas, if there's economic development, how do these star bonds work if some, if a something in a project or whatever is eligible for them - With the traditional Kansas star bonds, and if you've ever been to the Kansas Speedway or to the Amelia Earhart Museum in Atchison or to the baseball stadium in Wichita, those are star bond projects.

What you do is you take the attraction and you draw a boundary around it, and within that boundary you collect all of the state and local sales tax.

- Okay.

- And you do that for up to 20 years.

And you use those revenues to pay for the costs associated with development.

There's some restrictions in what you can do based on whether it's urban or rural.

But that's the general idea.

So you take the state and local sales tax around that attraction and you pour it back in to make that possible.

With the special star bonds that were passed in 2024 to attract professional sports teams, we are allowed to fund up to 70% of the cost of A NFL or Major League baseball.

And with that, the star bonds can be pledged for up to 30 years.

And so it's a very, very powerful incentive.

And so we are engaged right now in the recruitment of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals, and that's where it stands.

- Okay.

So that one's interesting to me.

We can get into Panasonic as well.

That one's especially interesting.

And anyone who's seen me on this program or some others knows, I'm actually in favor of everything that Kansas has done.

There are some critics who say, oh hey, we don't, like, the critics would say, we don't like people's taxpayer dollars going to help these projects.

And I argue a bit, but you're here, you, you're, you're involved with it.

What, what do you say to them?

- Well, I'd say first that the people that are paying for the, for these star bonds, people that go to the attraction, that go to the district, they've made a decision to be there.

And it's not paid by Kansans all over the state.

It's by the users.

So I think that's important.

Number one, it's also important to look at the overall economic impact of these projects and how, if you can bring net new dollars into Kansas, whether that is from, when you're talking about professional sports, the income tax that's paid by the New York Yankees when they come to Kansas City, Missouri right now for the time that they are in Missouri, that's substantial.

We would like to see that income tax come to Kansas instead, if the Royals are in Kansas.

There are tremendous new revenue opportunities that exist with these types of projects.

And the reality is they aren't going to happen unless you've got an incentive tool to, to attract them.

And so people can say, well, we don't like this, eh, I don't really like it either.

I wish we could live in an environment where we didn't have to have public incentives.

But the reality is that every state in our nation and just about every local jurisdiction in the United States has some form of incentives to attract and or retain businesses.

And so the notion that, yeah, we just shouldn't do this isn't realistic.

- I, I think one of the parts that I have argued makes the Kansas deal attractive is that Missouri has a history of losing our letting go teams.

And when I first said that, people said yes.

And then I did a little research and it's actually quite shocking.

Okay.

So, and this is just from memory, these are the teams that have left the state of Missouri over the years, going back, of course the St.

Louis Browns baseball team, the Kansas City a's baseball team, the Kansas City Kings NBA team.

Imagine having an NBA team.

Now, wouldn't everybody die for that?

Kansas City Scouts hockey team, two professional NFL football teams, the St.

Louis Rams and the St.

Louis Cardinals.

And I probably left out a couple.

So what I was struck by, and this is, I'm not gonna ask you to bash Missouri like I've just done, but I was struck by how fast Kansas acted Now in politics, we know that things can take a while, boom, you know, one day, two days.

Talk about that and how, what that says about, you know, Kansas being able to offer this deal, but also being so united.

We saw what happened in Missouri over the last year and a half in getting, being so organized and united and getting this deal across.

- I guess what I'd say is that in Kansas we fight about plenty of things.

There's no question about that.

But by and large, when it's come to issues of growth, I can go back to Panasonic.

We had to pass, pass a special incentive in an election year and do it in about two weeks.

And we couldn't tell the vast majority of legislators who the company was.

And you've got a Democratic governor asking for this with a Republican super majority.

We got it done with overwhelming majorities in both houses and we did it in 13 days.

And so you look at the Chiefs and the Royals and HB one, the Star Bond Act, it got done in a matter of hours.

Now there had been a lot of prep work - Right - Before that, but again, Kansas has been united around growth and trying to create opportunities for our state.

And I think that should be a source of pride for all Kansans.

It certainly is for me.

- I think there's also, earlier we talked about, well it's not necessarily about prestige, but there's, there's an economic aspect to not prestige, but being in the game.

- Yeah.

- That cities, a number of cities that have lost in a, think of it this way, cities that have lost professional franchises sometimes have suffered downturns.

Not just, oh, we lost the money from that team, but their downtowns or the areas the team was in, maybe go downhill.

They're not as, maybe lose some convention centers.

Look at a city like Oklahoma City that got the thunder.

It's, it's sometimes often not quantifiable, but is there, can there be a spillover effect where it could bring more conventions just saying, oh, there, there's a, there's a sort of a juice to this, to this place now you know that.

- Yeah.

And it, it is difficult to quantify that.

- Yeah.

How do you - Quantify that?

But I can tell you from personal experience where we have had c-suite executives in the room with, with Kansas City Royals players and Kansas City Chiefs players, and being able to take them to Arrowhead and Kaufman.

And of course they're on the Missouri side right now, but we are in a regional economy.

It's been very useful to us as we're recruiting companies to the region to be able to have major league teams.

And it would be a, a loss for Kansas if those teams were to leave the Kansas City region.

And so that's why Kansas has stepped forward as aggressively as we have.

And we hope to be able to get this thing done and bring both teams to the Sunflower State.

- We only have a few minutes left, but I did wanna ask you about data centers.

They're controversial and I know a lot of states are, are trying to get them, and I, I think Kansas is as well, but there's also been negative stories about some of the data centers and one was, I think in Missouri and they, they suck up too much water or they don't deliver on the promises or they're just plain ugly or, or they deliver a hum.

What about the pros and cons?

Are you, do you hear those negative aspects too?

Or is that just particular ones that have, that have not worked out?

- I think there's some bad apples, but by and large I am supportive of data centers.

There are people probably watching this show right now on their phone, and they're able to do that because ultimately data is passing through a data center.

And, and so if we want the technologies and the services that we have in our digitally connected lives, that has to be supported with infrastructure.

So data centers are, are coming, they're here, they're gonna continue to be here.

And the reality is for, for Kansas taxpayers that may be frustrated about property taxes, one of the things that I really like about data centers is they generally don't ask for property tax abatements.

So if you drop a $150 million investment into a rural county in Kansas, that immediately adds to your assessed valuation in a way that can help bring property tax burden down by broadening the tax base in that place.

It also though, doesn't require a lot of of people.

And so you, you do have some hiring that is associated with a, a data center, but it's not so much that you can't place that in a rural community.

And so I see a lot of advantages.

You gotta do 'em right.

You gotta make sure there's, there's water.

You gotta make sure that they're cited appropriately within a community so that you're not having impacts from light or, or sound on neighbors.

And so you, you need to do the planning.

You gotta be upfront about what the impacts, the pluses and minuses are are and do a thoughtful, careful analysis.

But at the end of the day, I think the net net is positive for Kansas.

- And we talked about Mark Parkinson, he decided when actually Lieutenant Governor became governor and he decided not to then run for governor.

And we have Jeff Collier, same thing happened.

He runs for governor.

But you announced you're not running.

Why not?

- Primary reason is that if I were gonna run for governor, I would've had to have stepped down as Secretary of Commerce probably the beginning of 2025 While I'm engaged in the middle of the chief's recruitment and the Royals recruitment.

And we have a very, very large project, a five and a half billion dollar project that we hope to close very soon.

That is a priority for me to get done as Secretary of Commerce, I was hired to be the Secretary of Commerce.

That's my first love.

And I just could not Yeah.

Walk away from that.

Any of these three projects are once in a career opportunities, chiefs and Royals are once in a half century opportunities and we have two at the same time.

So I had to make a hard decision about what was more important.

And I came down on the side of let's get these deals done, let's make sure that we are setting Kansas up for success regardless of who the new governor is and what the future holds.

We will have a lot of momentum from the Kelly Toland administration economically, and I'm really proud of that.

- Okay.

We have 20 seconds or the chief's gonna get their some semi act together and get back to the Super Bowl.

- Yes, they are - Absolutely cut down the penalties and the, they, they'll probably be okay.

A rough start.

- But we believe in the Chiefs.

Yeah.

- And yeah, that's good.

That's right.

Yeah.

They, they seem to find a way.

Well, thanks so much.

Thanks Paul for joining me and, and us at IGI.

I appreciate that's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktw.org.

If you'd like to view this program again or any previous episodes, visit us online@watch.ktw.org for igi.

I'm Bob Beatty.

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We appreciate your financial support.

Thank you.