What was the reason behind Kes being removed from Star Trek Voyager?

I remember reading in an interview, that the producers of Star Trek Voyager were planning to remove Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) from the show but after he was voted one of the "50 Most Handsome Men" they were forced to change their decision and instead decided to remove Jennifer Lien (Kes).

Removing / replacing characters doesn't happen too often in Star Trek franchise.

Are there any sources or interviews that explains why she was removed?

Answer

There's a lot of detail on Jennifer Lien's Memory-Alpha page. It boils down to a couple reasons.

Money. You have to pay cast actors. This discussion cites numbers on the order of $20,000 and up per actor episode, so that's half a million dollars for a 26-episode season.

The character wasn't particularly interesting. Jeri Taylor is quoted on that page as saying:

"It was a mutual feeling [....] [Jennifer Lien] just felt her character wasn't going anywhere, so it was a very amicable and mutual decision."

And Robert Beltran (Chakotay):

"[But] they weren't doing much with her anyway. Except for the Kes-driven episodes, she was pretty much a glorified extra, as we all become when we're not intrinsically involved in the episode.

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