The Columbia Daily-Tribune and the Columbia Missourian both had excellent articles in today’s editions covering the conference sponsored by the Show-Me Institute yesterday, on educational adequacy lawsuits, school-choice initiatives, and much more. We would like to thank the legislators from both parties who attended, as well as the many other participants who joined us for a very interesting day.

The best line of the entire conference, as quoted by the Missourian: 

James Guthrie, an economist at Vanderbilt University, addressed this issue and said, “When the education system has consequences for adults when children don’t learn, only then will we see results.”

I’ve discussed how more charter schools could help bring down the dropout rate in St. Louis. Now I see by way of Edspresso that Florida educators have the same idea:

Although Lee’s Life Skills Center and Richard Milburn Academy already target drop- out or at-risk students, Stiles and Victor Hall, a member of the accelerated high school board, hope to reach other students.

“We have found that Lee County has a significant dropout rate,” Stiles said.

Lee’s dropout rate was 3.5 percent in 2005-06, according to the Florida Department of Education, compared with 2 percent in Collier County and 2.5 percent in Charlotte County.

“Frankly, a lot of those students’ needs aren’t being met for a variety of reasons,” Stiles said. “They may have transportation issues. Students may physically have a need to go to work to help their family make ends meet.”

Also in the article, a district’s director of charter schools discusses why they’ve become so popular. She attributes the charters’ success to parents’ desire for different choices. And charter schools offer real alternatives to traditional public schools, because they’re free to experiment in ways that traditional public schools can’t (or won’t). For example, the article describes Florida charter schools that focus on reading and physical education and feature longer school days than most public school districts.

Other charter schools around the country are responding to parents’ desire for unique educational approaches. In Chicago, there’s a charter school that emphasizes healthy lifestyles. A charter school in Arizona requires students to take AP courses starting in ninth grade and offers foreign languages like Mandarin. A California charter school gives students extra opportunities in drama and music.

St. Louis currently lags behind Kansas City in number of charter schools. If St. Louis expanded its charter school system, parents would have these choices here too.

The MSBA blog is at it again, bashing the Show-Me Institute — I mean, writing about "religion." What these posts have to do with religion, I have no idea. Unless it’s that in their theology, the Show-Me Institute is the devil. Today they link to a report that characterizes SMI as a "conservative" think tank and describes the political causes that some board members have contributed to.

To set the record straight, the Show-Me Institute is nonpartisan, and does not support or oppose any political campaigns or candidates. We just write about sound public policy. When our board members, donors, or staff support any campaigns, they do that in their capacities as private citizens. And from what I’ve heard in casual conversations at the office, we hold diverse views on a number of issues. The first talk SMI gives to new employees is that your personal political opinions have nothing to do with the Show-Me Institute and don’t belong on the blog. Even when we write about policy, every post is accompanied by that big disclaimer at the top of the page.

Are we "conservative"? No. We promote market solutions for Missouri public policy, not political agendas. Try searching for the word "conservative" on our website. Nothing comes up.

Now that I’ve addressed the most egregious misinformation in the post, I’ll turn to the only point they made about parental choice, that it subsidizes private schools. The best answer I can find is a quote from an editorial on the Friedman Foundation website:

Some people say they object to giving state money to private entities like schools. But of course this is done all the time, and for good reasons. Government pays private parties all the time to achieve public purposes — pell grants for students, Medicare, mental health services, highway construction, support for parents via tax deductions for children. 

I think it’s a pretty good editorial, though I can’t speak for everyone at SMI.

The Show-Me Institute is today co-sponsoring a conference about issues associated with public school finance and educational adequacy lawsuits. The other conference co-sponsor is The Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

We have a conference website up, with links to the day’s agenda, working papers, and bios of presenting academics. The day is just now gearing up with an opening presentation by Mike Podgursky on the recent adequacy lawsuit here in Missouri, and a look at the correlation between increased public school funding and increased student performance (such a correlation doesn’t exist). It should shape up to be an interesting, engaging day.

While my colleagues are blogging about beauty pageant winners, the Desperate Housewives TV show, and Panera Bread, I thought I would cover something substantive. But I may be out of luck. The main story on the Post-Dispatch website reports that people are unhappy about construction on highway 40. No kidding. And over at www.johncombest.com, we learn that, according to the Washington Missourian, "Meth Labs Continue to Be a Problem." The more things change, the more they stay the same!

The Arch City Chronicle links to two stories, one from Detroit and one from DC, on issues of interest to Missouri and the Show-Me Institute. The first one, from Detroit, regards the city’s plans to sell 92 of its parks, just as the city of St. Louis recently sold (or leased, whatever it was) a small area of Forest Park to Barnes Hospital, over much protest. The Detroit Free-Press article in very interesting, particularly in that parks abutting schools might just be transferred to the school district. I also think it would be a good idea for neighborhood associations to have the first crack at buying the parks, at a discounted rate, provided they commit to maintaining them.

The other article is from the Washington Post on judicial elections. While changes may indeed be necessary for our own Missouri Plan, this article clearly shows the problems that come from large-scale judicial elections. I hope we make needed improvements to our judicial selection system, but I in no way want to move toward the elections we see over in Illinois that are described in this article.

The Beer Theory of Civilization, which is an actual theory in which I believe wholeheartedly, has taken a giant step forward with the Scholarships For Beauty Pageant Contestents Program at Lindenwood University. If this does not increase college applications and an appreciation for taller higher education, nothing will.

Perhaps Ron Paul really is having an impact. Last night on Desperate Housewives (which my wife was watching while I counted the minutes until we could switch back to the World Series), Lynette announced that she was running for Wisteria Lane Neighborhood Association President as a Libertarian. In fact, much of the story revolved around what level of control neighborhood groups should have over yard fixtures like fountains and tree houses. From a land use/property rights perspective, it was pretty interesting stuff.

I’m not going to discuss the merits/drawbacks of the new St. Louis Country solid waste disposal proposal, but I will mention that it has many county residents up in arms about their loss of autonomy. A full discussion of the issue is presented in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Suffice it to say, the proposal consolidates unincorporated St. Louis County trash service (which will provide more uniform and cheaper service), but will also require each district to offer an extensive recycling service.

I personally think that this is a good idea and that it is within the government’s proper powers. But there is a certain level of arrogance in the county’s response to the criticism of the proposal:

“Giving up the right to choose their own hauler is a small sacrifice to make [in order] to achieve something the county really needs.”

I will never understand the collectivist mindset of elected officials, and their belief that what they view is “best” for someone always trumps that of the individual’s. A simple "I feel your pain" would suffice.

Panera Bread has announced that it may relocate its corporate headquarters from St. Louis to Boston when its corporate leases (in Richmond Heights and Brentwood) expire in 2010.

I’d blame this on bad governmental policy if I could (oh, I wish I could), but Panera claims that the move is necessary in order to consolidate business units, and also because it has had difficulty in finding the right office space for its expanding staff in the St. Louis metro area.

Besides, it’s not like business is going to be any cheaper in Taxachusetts.

We often hear about escalating health care costs, and policymakers debate what the state should do about it. Here’s some good news about how the free market is doing its part to address the problem:

Schnucks pharmacies on Monday will be the first in the region to offer a selection of antibiotics for free. Customers can receive up to a 21-day supply of any one of more than 54 generic, oral antibiotics at no charge.

Schnucks will offer the program at all 100 of its pharmacies across seven states.

Why is Schnucks doing this? The article discussed two main reasons. First, the owner cares about helping people get medicines they need. Second, cutting health care costs and filling some prescriptions for free is good business. Free antibiotics will draw new customers to Schnucks and allow it to compete with other stores that offer low-price prescription drugs.

Unfettered competition can help patients by driving costs down to zero. Of course, this won’t fix all health care problems. Antibiotics are so cheap that it’s feasible for a store to offer them for free. Schnucks won’t be giving out free brain surgeries. There’s still a need for good health care policy, but we should take note of what the private sector can contribute.

Mass Transit Tax Proposal takes form of: half-cent sales tax increase (or perhaps a caterpillar?). St. Louis County voters likely to take form of: bucket of cold water. Seriously, though, will Gleek get to ride on the trains if this passes? You know that his body could be used to reconnect trains in emergencies! It’s true, it really could. That is not a joke.

Anyway, what are the good parts of the proposed tax increase to fund both MetroLink expansion and support Metro’s general budget? There are indeed some good points of this proposal. I like the fact that it focuses on connecting MetroLink with employment centers. It is not clear in the article, but my knowledge of the plans is that abandoned railroad lines will be used to form the route, which will obviously save a great deal of money and limit property takings. I like the fact that Metro and St. Louis County are being honest with voters, in that if voters want MetroLink expansion, they know they will only get it with a tax increase, and if they don’t, they know they can end expansion with this vote.

Whether you support it or not, this proposal lays it out pretty clearly. I sort of like the fact that this would free up county funds for some important road projects, but, alas, those could be done without the tax increase, just by decreasing the amount the county gives to Metro now. I am NOT saying the county should decrease the Metro subsidy now, just that they could if they chose to.

I completely agree with this very clear statement from a county aide in the Post-Dispatch:

“Infrastructure precedes investment,” Jones told municipal leaders at the league meeting in Ferguson. “It provides a framework for private investment. Transportation is the first investment. You have to move goods and people,” he said.

What do I dislike about the proposal? I don’t like some of the arguments being put forth in favor of it. This one is particularly bad:

The county’s second theme is that MetroLink expansion would reduce traffic congestion. Cline said that between 1992 and 1997, cities without a rail system saw congestion increase by 52 percent and those with one had only a 32 percent boost in congestion.

Really, perhaps this is the reporter’s fault for not including supporting information, but those statistics are not proof of anything. Perhaps congestion increased more in cities without light rail because those cities tend to be newer and more open, and more people chose to move to those locations. Congestion worsened in, say, Phoenix or Las Vegas because lots of people moved there, not because they didn’t have light rail. Perhaps lower taxes, made possible by the lack of an expensive light rail system, enticed people to move there.

The above argument is a classic example of confusing correlation with causation. There are other problems with the arguments, but reducing congestion and pollution are obvious canards. Even if MetroLink expansion succeeds beyond our expectations, the number of autos taken off the roads will be so small as to have no meaningful effect on either congestion or pollution.

Supporters would be much better off just taking the direct approach to voters: If we expand MetroLink, some of you will benefit from it, and it will give employees — many of whom need mass transit — better options for getting to work. That is the argument I will use when I vote in favor of the tax increase next year. Will 50 percent plus 1 in St. Louis County join me? We’ll see.

I’ve been remiss in pointing out this article at The American by our former editor, Tim Lee, about how eminent domain abuse in Missouri harms the very poor residents that officials are ostensibly trying to help. The article serves as a brief introduction to some of the material in his recent study, "The Specter of Condemnation: The Case Against Eminent Domain for Private Profit in Missouri."

Another copy of the article also turned up a couple of days ago at The Cato Institute, where Tim is now an adjunct scholar. Be sure to read the article, then read the study, and learn how your neighborhood may be vulnerable to the bulldozers as well.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a story today, via Combest, on St. Louis County’s newly born property tax reform group, and the Haenni family, which has gotten involved with it. Property owners throughout Missouri will be receiving their tax bills in the mail in the next few days. Many people, like my family, just get their personal property bills while the big one goes to the mortgage company, but enough people get them both that I predict major difficulties for any tax increase proposals on the November ballot.

The main problem the Haenni family sees is the large fund reserve balance kept by their school district, Kirkwood. (I know it seems this blog has been all Kirkwood lately, but that’s just a coincidence.) A national expert on education financing has this to say about Kirkwood’s large reserve balance of about 33 percent:

A national school budget expert questioned the need for any district to have fund balances of millions of dollars at the time tax revenue comes in.

Nationwide, the rule of thumb is five, possibly 10 percent at the most, at any time in a district fund balance," said James W. Guthrie, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. He is president of the American Education Finance Association.

"Having fund balances that don’t dip below double-digit percentages (of the operating budget) is stunning and inexcusable," Guthrie said.

The interest alone from that balance can be very attractive to districts, he said.

"But I think it’s fair for the taxpayers to say that they’d rather some of that balance pay for a new park, or better ambulance service.

"Or, of course, to be returned to them in the form of a tax cut."

The new property tax group in St. Louis County is terrific. I am not opposed to property taxes, however. In fact, I much prefer them to income taxes — but the assessment system in Missouri needs to be reformed. I will have an op-ed with my ideas flushed out shortly.

In essence, I believe a property assessment should be set at the exact value of a sale price, and then all property within a county should be increased each year by an average amount determined by an impartial real estate value index. That would get rid of the entire reassessment system and eliminate the crazy discrepancies between neighbors we all see every reassessement year.  Also, certificates of value need to be required statewide. If some counties want to keep the sale amount private from everyone but the assessor, that’s fine, but we shouldn’t have a system where people in some counties are assessed more accurately than others.

While the MSBA was too busy attacking the competition to notice this, I found a public school success story. Governor Blunt wants to expand the virtual school program:

In a statement released on Friday, Blunt announced that he is recommending to the state legislature a $1 million increase for MoVIP, bringing the total funding for the program to $6.2 million.

"Working with Missouri’s General Assembly, we have increased funding for elementary and secondary education by half a billion dollars," Blunt said in a news release. "The $1 million increase I am recommending for Missouri’s virtual schools will help to ensure that all Missouri students have the educational options they need to reach their full potential."

The new Virtual Instruction Program is popular with students and parents, especially those who live in rural areas with limited course offerings.

There are other public school success stories out there. When parents can choose — whether it be choosing a charter or magnet school, or an online course — they’re happy to choose public school options. But when you tell them their kids have to go to the nearest brick-and-mortar school, even if the school is failing or unresponsive to their kids’ needs, they complain.

The MSBA is blogging away … telling us about the successes of public schools in Missouri, right? Well, not quite. Their latest post smears the Show-Me Institute and a few other organizations, cites some studies that fail to find benefits of private schools (for Justin Hauke’s criticism of one such study, click here), and comments:

MSBA and Missouri’s Education Roundtable strongly oppose voucher schemes such as tuition tax credits because they divert precious resources from our public schools and subsidize private schools that are not accountable to the public.

I hope the MSBA will show us some evidence that traditional public schools use resources well or are accountable to the public. When I looked through this week’s education headlines in search of public school accountability, I found this story about the St. Louis Public Schools. The district can’t even explain the education jargon in its new plan, let alone get parents to support it.

But the disaster in St. Louis isn’t even mentioned in the MSBA post, which they categorized under the heading "Religion." Huh? Apparently in the eyes of the MSBA, traditional public school success is a revealed truth that needn’t be backed up with empirical evidence.

Not really, but I like the image. Dr. Homer Tourkakis’ fight to keep his dentistry practice going at the location he owns in Arnold is going to the Supreme Court. The full story is in the Suburban Journals. Our own Tim Lee discussed the good doctor’s case in his recent study on eminent domain abuse in Missouri. I urge you to pay attention to this case as it moves ahead. The state Supreme Court took a strong step forward for property rights when it decided in favor of Clayton property owners over Centene Corp. recently. We’ll see if we continue to go further on that path.

Dr. Tourkakis sums up his position succinctly:

According to Tourkakis, his dental patients and the city’s general population have continued to support him.

"They don’t feel that private property should be transferred to another for profit," Tourkakis said.

He added that property is not easy to obtain and that once it is acquired, it just doesn’t seem fair to have the property taken away.

Much, much more on this case, and others like it, to come from the Show-Me Institute.

A front page article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal detailed (and criticized) Wal-Mart’s aggressive accounting methods, designed to minimize its state corporate income tax liability. The company pays an inordinate amount of money to accountants and attorneys to exploit custom-tailored loopholes in state tax codes. So, while the average state corporate income tax is 6.9 percent (on top of the 35 percent federal rate), Wal-Mart paid, on average, 3.8 percent in state income taxes over the past decade.

A lot of people hate Wal-Mart. I’m not one of them. I think the company has done more to provide for low-income families in this country than any government transfer program in history. They’ve provided savings to untold numbers of consumers by focusing on the bottom-line, even if you despise their approach. And I generally find that the harshest critics of Wal-Mart are those with the luxury of having the resources to shop elsewhere.

But the point of the Journal article shouldn’t have been to demonize Wal-Mart and its “aggressive” accounting; instead, it should have focused on the gross inconsistencies in the nation’s tax code. Far too often, state legislators utilize the tax code to protect favored industries and to encourage or reward particular behavior. But this indirect approach simply benefits large corporations, which have the resources to exploit the loopholes and evade taxes, leaving small businesses and individuals with the burden of higher effective tax rates than their wealthier counterparts. This defies any conventional notion of an equitable tax system.

If state legislators would stop using the tax code as their personal “thank you” card to their corporate supporters, then companies like Wal-Mart would be forced to pay a flat tax, regardless of how creative their accounting is. Instead, big-box retailers have every incentive to circumvent the law. And in a high volume/low margin industry such as retail, the only way Wal-Mart can even justify expansion into high-tax states is if they are able to evade taxes and increase their margins.

So maybe instead of criticizing Wal-Mart, we should criticize the state legislatures and their inconsistent tax codes.

I see, by way of Combest, that the Missouri School Boards’ Association has started a blog. One of its stated objectives is to "get the word out about public education success stories in Missouri." In case you’re concerned that a blog like that will be updated only once in a blue moon, another stated goal is to discuss legal issues and federal and state legislation — about which, we can all agree, there is much to say.

I don’t expect this new blog to be a local version of Cato-at-Liberty, but I’m looking forward to the exchange of ideas it’s sure to trigger.

Liberty, Mo. (Clay County), is considering raising utility fees, aka taxes, on its citizens as part of its 2008 budget. The Kansas City Star has the story here (scroll down to the third story). The kicker here is that nowhere in the article, or from what I can find on their website, do they appear to even be considering selling off and privatizing their water services. The op-ed I wrote here about Kirkwood, in St. Louis County, applies even more to Liberty, as Liberty treats its own water, as well as using its own distribution system.

Liberty does not need to do this. Missouri-American is more than capable of purchasing the water system and serving the needs of the citizens. And with the proposed Liberty rate increase, they can almost certainly do it at a lower cost to the city and its residents, even after you remove the one-time profit of the sale from the equation.

To Liberty’s credit, they do seem to have bid out their trash collection services, which are handled by BFI. Plus, the city has one of the better municipal websites I have visited, so let’s give them props for that, too.

Along with David Stokes, I had the pleasure of attending two all-day sessions training Missouri broadcasters how to use the techniques of Computer-Aided Research and Reporting, first on Friday at UMKC and, the following day, at UMSL. This is a program started about eight years ago by a couple of folks at the Heritage Foundation — Bill Beach, director of Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, and Mark Tapscott, formerly director of Heritage’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and now editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner. They were joined at our sessions by Greg Elin, chief data architect for the Sunlight Foundation, and Robert Bluey, who now holds Mark Tapscott’s old position at Heritage. In fact, Robert currently has a couple of entries on his blog about their Missouri trip.

The Show-Me Institute sent me to DC in July to take a look at one of Heritage’s CARR seminars, and decide whether the program was worth bringing to Missouri. Not only is the program incredibly valuable — for younger newcomers to journalism and old hands alike — but in a way, bringing this program to Missouri is like bringing it home. The textbook given out during the training sessions was written by none other than Brant Houston of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

One of the primary benefits of a program like this is that it shows essential skills can be taught in a non-ideological environment, even if the teachers have their own political points of view. Folks at the Show-Me Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation — in addition to all the attending reporters and editors — would all undoubtedly find many things to disagree about (and did, as evidenced by our lunch and dinner conversations). But the material presented in the training sessions was entirely informational — about how to use computers in researching articles, checking claims of fact, analyzing the use and misuse of statistics, and learning about all the new and varied ways Internet technology allows information to be gathered and used in ways unimaginable only a few years earlier.

These events wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support and organizational efforts of Don Hicks of the Missouri Broadcasters Association. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

On October 17, Judge Richard G. Callahan rendered a decision in the case brought by many of Missouri’s school districts alleging that the State of Missouri does not adequately fund public education. Judge Callahan concluded that the state is meeting its constitutional obligation to spend 25 percent of the state budget on K-12 public education.

Legal proceedings are not cheap. According to an Associated Press article written by David Lieb, two organizing bodies of Missouri’s school districts — The Committee for Educational Equality and the Coalition to Fund Excellent Schools — have spent $1.9 million and $700,000 respectively. In addition, the St. Louis School District spent $600,000. Overall, plaintiffs have spent $3.2 million in trying this case.

At the time the case started, the school districts would have thought of this as an investment. In this context, the return is abysmal. After spending $3.2 million, the additional funding — after enforcing Judge Callahan’s ruling — will be zero. So, from the school district’s perspective, the return is negative-100 percent, so far. Perhaps it is too early to measure the returns. Often, it takes time to realize the gains from such an investment. I cannot accurately forecast how this trial will affect Missouri’s legislature. Hence, it is possible that the school districts will realize significant gains in the future.

What is the likelihood that Missouri’s General Assembly will feel compelled to increase their contribution to K-12 education? In my view, the answer is that they will not. For the sake of disclosure, I should mention that I computed the Legislature’s obligation for this trial, presenting evidence that the state was more-than-meeting its constitutional minimum. Indeed, my independent calculations indicated that the state spent more than 35 percent of its discretionary budget on K-12 education in each of the last three years. Based on my calculations, it is difficult to imagine that the Legislature will feel compelled to increase its contribution to elementary and secondary education, given that it is spending more than one-third of its discretionary budget on this activity. By this reasoning, the most likely event is that K-12 education will receive the same funding, as a percentage of the state’s general revenue, as it did last year.

Thus, unless Missourians want to specify an even larger fraction of state resources to funding elementary and secondary education, the return to this trial investment will not improve much from this year’s utter failure during the next few years. In economics, the question starts with the opportunity cost of the resources spent on this trial. Even if the per-district expenditures are a small fraction, the relevant question is whether the school districts would have had a higher return by spending those resources on producing education. It is hard to imagine that the return would be negative-100 percent if spent on books, teachers, science equipment, etc. Elementary economics tells us that resources should flow to their highest valued use. It is time for school districts to apply this logic.

Regular readers of this blog know that I like to include references to literature in the titles of my posts. So, of course, I was intrigued to learn that Gov. Blunt is now seeking a poet laureate:

Blunt is working with the Missouri Center for the Book to determine length of term and a basic job description. The center is a nonprofit group that promotes the importance of books and reading.

"This is a public acknowledgment of the value of literary arts," said Mark Tiedemann, board president for the center. "It puts a face on what is all too often overlooked."

We have official state invertebrates; now we’ll have an official poet.

The problem with this phenomenon is not that it burdens taxpayers — the poet laureate won’t receive a salary, just like the crayfish aren’t compensated — but that it gives the impression that everything worthwhile needs government sanction or approval. Why don’t we just appreciate our state’s wildlife and writers without official designations? And no matter how diplomatically the poet is chosen, any choice is sure to annoy somebody out there because of subject matter or poetic style.

In some ways, this might be a better move than giving crayfish a special title. Most states do have poet laureates, and many people like the idea. If a laureate is chosen once every few years, that doesn’t waste elected officials’ time the way hundreds schoolchildren lobbying for official bugs could.

On the other hand, a choice of a partisan poet could lead to unnecessary public discord. At least crayfish don’t write anything controversial.

I have written before about the proposed new 911 tax on cellular phone bills. There is a great article in the Sikeston Standard-Democrat (link via Combest) about the latest meeting of the legislative task force considering how to improve 911 service in Missouri. In prior posts, I had worried that a statewide 911 fee/tax would not be used just to improve the location ability of 911 cell calls, but to add 911 service to the parts of Missouri that had never bothered to institute it in the first place at their own cost. Needless to say, I appear to have been justified in the concern (emphasis added):

As it is also proposed that 40 percent be diverted to help rural counties without 911 establish their service, that means his center would only get about 30 cents per cell phone —minus 3 cents that would be deducted for processing, Wells said. He said that means it would take five cell phones to make up for a single land line.

It should absolutely be required that if this cellular tax passes, rural counties that have never established 911 service be forced to institute a local phone tax as well to pay for a portion of their new emergency service. They should not be allowed to make taxpayers statewide pay for something they should have paid for themselves decades ago. If the state does not make that a requirement, I’m going back to a beeper.

There is a debate in Kirkwood about the proposed library district tax rate increase on the ballot next month. This is a good thing — debate about issues is always healthy. In the interest of full disclosure, I am chock full of conflicting biases on this one, what with my general desire for streamlined government, my work as president of the University City Library Board, and my appreciation of historic areas like Kirkwood Junction. Mr. Larry Allin is a leading opponent of the measure, and he makes a number of good points in the Post-Dispatch article, except for the part about better service which would strictly be his opinion:

The county library has its headquarters and a branch near Kirkwood. They provide better service and parking, Allin said. The county library benefits from economies of scale — and its 14-cent tax rate is lower than the Kirkwood library’s, he said.

Liz Walker, my counterpart in Kirkwood, offers a number of retorts:

Liz Walker, chairwoman of the library’s trustees, on Thursday said the tax increase would preserve "a huge asset for all citizens of Kirkwood. It’s convenient, and it brings in people from all parts of the community."

I think that a having a public library in the heart of a downtown area really adds something to the area, such as in the University City Loop, Downtown St. Louis and Downtown Clayton.  I also think that the property tax increase proposal is going to be a victim of bad timing, coming a few months after voters approved another tax increase and a few days after voters will have received their property tax bills in the mail.  But speaking of timing, the voters and citizens of Kirkwood could always consider selling off their municipal utilitites, which would give the city and its taxing districts a number of options moving forward. (Thank you to the Missouri Political News Service for hosting my latest op-ed.)

The citizens of Kirkwood get to decide between some obvious choices: higher taxes and a quality library right in the heart of their downtown area, or lower taxes and a reduction in local libarary services, which may or may not be offset by the presence of two county libraries nearby. I am not going to presume to tell the voters of Kirkwood what they should do, but I look forward to following the debate and decision.

On November 6th, Kirkwood residents will vote whether or not to approve an additional 12 cents in taxes per $100 of assessed property value in order to (primarily) finance improvements to its municipal library.

Dave wrote a great entry on the St. Louis Country Library system a few weeks ago, but I have to disagree with him on the benefits of Kirkwood maintaining its own library, rather than consolidating with the county. Kirkwood residents already pay 16.7 cents in taxes per $100 of assessed value in order to maintain their city library (compared to 15 cents for St. Louis County residents). The proposed tax increase would push this to nearly 30 cents.

Does such an expensive library system make economic sense? The building may be impressive and have an extensive collection, but is it really worth an extra $45.60 per year (for an owner of a $200,000 house) to maintain such a facility, when it could be consolidated with a country branch right down the street? By consolidating, you’d have the benefit of economies of scale, which would allow the two libraries to combine their collections and charge less in taxes.

Dave disagrees with me (and he should know, he serves as president of the University City Library Board of Directors) since he argues that Kirkwood residents like their own library and feel that it’s worth the cost. But residents have previously rejected municipal bond proposals to renovate their library. And I guess I just don’t see the point of paying twice as much in taxes to maintain a library on my block, as opposed to paying half as much for one the next block over, especially if it would have twice the books (and yes, that’s a little bit of hyperbole, but the point is there).

Immigration’s back in the news. The Post-Dispatch reports on a personal angle: State Rep. Tim Flook is Mexican-American.

Since many of the foreign-born workers in Missouri are Hispanic, it’s understandable why the Post-Dispatch wanted a profile of someone from an Hispanic background. But on another level, it doesn’t make sense why they singled out Flook. According to the article, his mother’s family left Mexico in the beginning of the 20th century. The article doesn’t mention the ethnicity of Flook’s father, nor does it say when his family immigrated.

If having "ancestors who came here about 100 years ago" means you have a special perspective on immigration policy, probably most of our lawmakers meet that criterion. It’s also interesting to note that Flook’s family learned English long ago, and Flook didn’t learn Spanish until well after he had graduated college.

Flook’s story doesn’t point out any sensitive issues or potential conflicts of interest in accepting immigrants. Instead, it highlights the fact that immigrants do learn English and assimilate, and that most of us have ancestors who were immigrants if you look back far enough.

Although I don’t agree with the premise that Flook’s family background is unique, it’s fun to read about him and his very reasonable stances on state immigration policy:

Flook opposed a bill that would have penalized employers for hiring illegal immigrants. The plan "was turning every employer into a junior varsity investigator on all his employees," he said.

Hear, hear. The federal government should be enforcing federal laws, not micromanaging every small business owner in Missouri.

It seems that an attempt by local governments in Southeast Missouri to work together and share revenues from overlapping developments is coming to an end. The Southeast Missourian has the story via Combest. Local governments in St. Louis County share sales-tax revenues via a pool, and if it can work here it can certainly work elsewhere. Here is an op-ed I wrote on that subject.

I was interested to learn that last session the state Legislature passed changes to the law making it easier for local governments to share revenues from developments along city borders. That is a very good move. And before anyone cries "socialism," please remember we are talking about money that already goes to the government — this isn’t a proposal to send more private money to the government. It’s not socialism to have different government entities share the same pot of money. The mayor of Jackson, which — rather than Cape Girardeau — is the county seat, summed up the failure to reach an agreement nicely:

Jackson Mayor Barbara Lohr said unwillingness to share revenue now could have an impact if Jackson is asked to support a major development with tax revenue.

Sounds fair to me. Why would Jackson support projects with tax dollars (which they should not do for other reasons, too, but let’s stick to the point at hand) if all the revenues from the project are going to go to other governments? At least when St. Louis County sends money to St. Louis City, the county hopes to get something for it, like more county hotel room bookings, etc.

It is a shame that the two cities and the county could not work out an agreement on how to split the pie of the proposed Wal-Mart development. If 91 cities in St. Louis County can do it, it amazes me that Jackson and Cape Girardeau can’t work something out. It sounds like their local leaders need to take a junket to Clayton and Richmond Heights to see how local communities can share services and save tax dollars.

An article in the Post-Dispatch today reports that the National Women’s Law Center and Oregon Health Sciences University have given Missouri an "unsatisfactory" grade in their survey of women’s health in the 50 states:

Missouri dropped to 38th out of 50 states in the overall ranking, down from 35th in 2004. The state fared well in getting prenatal care to women in the first trimester of pregnancy, ranking seventh in the nation for that measure. But more than a third of Missouri women have arthritis, placing the state at 48th of 50 states. And Missouri is one of a few states that has lost ground on the number of poor women covered by Medicaid, Waxman said.

I don’t think we need to be very concerned about this report. First, the life expectancy for women is higher than for men, and men are at greater risk for some big killers like heart disease. And while the statistics on conditions like obesity may appear disconcerting, they have a lot to do with people’s personal lifestyle choices, which are outside of the control of state health policy.

I also think it’s a mistake to give a state a bad grade because not everybody eligible for Medicaid uses it. As Dave Stokes has explained, low participation rates in government programs can be a sign of self-reliance rather than of unused resources.

There’s a great op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader about the proposed interest rate cap on payday loans. If you want to read the entire history of interest rate regulation going back to Plato, the FDIC has a paper for you. But the News-Leader op-ed does a good job in a few hundred words of explaining why rate caps are harmful. Here’s an excerpt:

Banning the industry would deny Missouri consumers the right to make their own choices, limit their credit options and force many to risky and more costly options such as unregulated offshore Internet lenders and bouncing checks.

Read the whole thing!