Thanks are due to Combest for linking to this article about Missouri’s minimum wage, which slowly continues to go up. The new minimum will be $6.65 an hour.

That doesn’t seem like much, and I’m not predicting mass layoffs in response. But little changes can add up to make a difference. For example, employers might respond to a small minimum wage increase by requiring their employees to be a little more productive, perhaps by spending less time training them to do new tasks. In the short term, the employee earns a little bit more an hour. But he could miss out on learning new skills that would have enabled him to earn much higher wages in the future.

The Post-Dispatch reports that the St. Louis Public Schools are seeking input from parents — and that we shouldn’t consider this to be deja vu all over again.

Virtually everyone involved with the St. Louis Public Schools is well-intentioned. But the system doesn’t work. The only progress the district has achieved has come from charters and magnets, the schools whose entire purpose is to try new things. The district has received dollars and advice, but it can’t put new ideas into practice. It’s like a big semi-trailer truck on the highway. It’s been going in one direction at high speed for a long time, and it’s built up a lot of momentum. It can’t just stop and turn around.

People quoted in the article talk about creating a sense of urgency, but there’s been a sense of urgency for several years and we haven’t seen results. It’s like district officials think that if they get stressed out enough, something good will happen. What we really need is less urgency and more calm willingness to experiment and be flexible.

I’m not the only one with little faith in the process. This quote by Melanie Adams sums it up best:

"We have to convince them that this is not going to be like the other seven times they were asked to come into a room and brainstorm," she said.

I was surprised that Forbes gave St. Louis excellent grades for public schools, while the area’s libraries earned only a C+. Now Edudiva points out a ranking that gives St. Louis high marks for its libraries, and wonders how the two studies reached such different conclusions:

One difference between the two is that the Central Connecticut State University library study just looked at St. Louis city; whereas, the Forbes report looked at the entire metropolitan area. [...]

I couldn’t find the specific methodology for the places ranked (Forbes) study, but it discussed number of volumes and turnover. It looks like the CCSU study looks at a wider variety of factors by adding in accessibility and number of librarians.

The St. Louis Public Library does have some great resources (watch the video in Edudiva’s post to learn more) but you have to know exactly what you’re looking for. Some things are off in special reading rooms. Most books are in the closed stacks, so you can’t just wander around and browse. I guess the library does that for safety and to protect the books, but I’ve always appreciated the county library’s open stacks policy.

I’m not sure how this affected the rankings, though, because the study that considered only St. Louis city was much more positive about library services than the study that included the county. Maybe the county’s many bookstores compete with the libraries and bring circulation statistics down.

The Post-Dispatch is featuring Lift for Life Academy in a deservedly glowing aricle. It’s fun to read the quotes from all the happy kids and parents. What’s even more impressive is the solid progress the students have made:

For instance, just one of last year’s 45 eighth-graders entered sixth grade doing grade-level math. But, over three years, 80 percent of them progressed at least two grade levels. And well more than a third finished eighth grade doing ninth-, 10th-, even 12th-grade work.

The article notes that the school is quick to adopt improvements suggested by its sponsor, Southeast Missouri State. I think this charter school’s flexibility and ability to learn and change play a big role in its success.

The Post-Dispatch adds:

Five charters opened this year alone. Now 15 campuses serve 7,700 students. This story is the first in a periodic series profiling each.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

I’m happy to point out a public education success story. The New York Times profiles this school that teaches disadvantaged students — and I don’t just mean eligible for reduced-price lunches. Ninety percent of the students are minorities, many of them refugees from civil wars and natural disasters. When they first enrolled, they knew no English.

For several years in a row, the school has made "adequate yearly progress" under No Child Left Behind. In fact, the academics are so good that upper-middle-class parents are choosing to send their kids there.

The word "choosing" might sound out of place when discussing a public education success story. But the International Community School is a charter school, one good enough to appeal to both white suburbanites and former goat herders from Mauritania:

“The fact that we don’t have anything in common is what we all have in common,” said Shell Ramirez, an American parent with two children at the school.

Too bad we can’t do this in Hazelwood.

Before I take off for the holidays, I wanted to link to this article in the Post-Dispatch about an assessment task force made up of residents of the Lindbergh School District. This task force has really done some good work and come up with some excellent ideas. In particular, the parts on capping the district’s reserve funds, reconsidering the heavy use of TIFs, and standardizing the assessment process are worthwhile goals. My own ideas on assessments can be found in this op-ed, which was carried today by the St. Louis Business-Journal, for which we thank them.

That’s it. I am out of blogging until January 2nd (probably). Don’t forget to pay your property taxes by December 31 — leaving aside for now the issue of how high they are. Happy holidays to all of our readers. I wish all three of you the very best.

Here’s another Internet harassment city ordinance, just as vague and hard to enforce as the others that have been in the news lately. The ordinance makes it illegal to communicate "through the Internet of any other telecommunication medium anonymously or using a false identification" [sic] in order to frighten or disturb someone else.

I see two problems with this part of the statute. First, you have to determine whether someone’s intention was to disturb. In the case of Megan Meier, the people who talked to her online claimed they were just trying to find out what she was saying about them. Whatever their intention was, we can all agree it was childish and irresponsible. But in other cases that will come up, we may have a hard time discerning the intentions of a misunderstood email or ambiguous text message.

Second, I’m guessing that everyone who has used the Internet has employed an anonymous or false identification in some context. It’s not convenient — and probably not safe, either — to fully identify yourself in all Internet communications. In fact, when I was a kid, teachers advised us to make up random screennames or change aspects of our identities online to avoid predators. I don’t think that was the purpose of the people who harassed Megan Meier. But when so many people present false identities on the Internet, how do you decide which are legitimate precautions and which are intended to hurt others?

Governor Matt Blunt has requested federal disaster relief aid for 42 Missouri counties affected by December’s winter storms.

On the surface, federal disaster relief sounds like a wonderful idea. Shouldn’t the federal government (with its deep pockets), be called upon to help communities affected, through no fault of their own, by natural disasters? Surely no one would object to such a magnanimous act of charity, particularly not in the richest country in the world.

Yet it always reminds me of an old Davy Crockett story (forget about George Washington and his cherry tree — growing up in Texas, we learn stories about the "real" Founding Fathers, who all died at the Alamo).

When Davy Crockett was a congressman from Tennessee, he voted for a bill which appropriated $20,000 to assist with a rebuilding effort in Georgetown after a fire. Two years later, while campaigning for reelection in Tennessee, a farmer criticized him for his charitable appropriation, to which Davy Crocket responded:

"Certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just the same as I did."

To which the farmer replied:

"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. … The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a [tax], which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be. … So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he.

"If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. … You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other.

"The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."

So maybe you think the government should have the power to assist with disaster relief; that’s fine, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But I’ve always liked this story because I think it illustrates an important point about the proper role of government. All too often, we turn to the government to fix our problems. A dollar here, a dollar there — who is it hurting if it’s for a "noble" cause?

But who decides what’s noble and what’s not? And how much should be spent on such acts of "charity"?

The power to spend other people’s money is one of the most dangerous powers a government is entrusted with. Missouri’s request for $28 million is just one example of the flippant attitude we take toward our tax dollars. How many jobs could that $28 million have created? How many people could it have helped it if was donated to charity instead? And how many struggling families’ pockets did we tap so that we could relieve the suffering of others?

At the very least, we should be asking ourselves those questions with every tax dollar spent.

I just stumbled across this blog: The World Is Your Campus. The author, Maya Frost, is writing a book about creative ways to get an education. Some of her posts deal with school reform issues, too (like this one about combining middle schools and high schools). So I optimistically followed her link to Top Ten Global Trends That Force Us to Rethink Education, expecting to feel validated for all the hard work I put in here, writing and blogging about reform.

It starts out OK, pointing out that skilled workers are essential for our knowledge-based economy. I’m nodding my head. Then it starts to degenerate into truisms, like: "Jobs that exist today will not necessarily exist when today’s students finish school." Yeah, but so what? There’s no policy implication.

The worst is at the end of the list:

The Singularity is almost here: Human-surpassing intelligence will guarantee that the future is far more different than we can imagine. Are we supplying students with the creative skills required to thrive in a future that demands routine human creativity?

Beam me up, Scotty.

There is an interesting article in the Post-Dispatch this morning about taxicab regulations in St. Louis, a subject we have written about before. There are some insane statements in the story, as well as some very promising ones from a practical perspective. First, the crazy ones (emphasis added):

Louis Hamilton, chairman of the taxicab commission, said he suspects there are still too many cabs for the St. Louis market, and Mundy’s study should either confirm or dispel that notion.

You know what does a good job of determining the proper number of cabs? It’s called the free market, something the taxicab commission apparently has very little faith in or knowledge about. Here’s another commissioner, who works for the largest cab company in the area (emphasis added):

Rudawsky said the cab industry is "always feast or famine." When there are major events in town or on holidays such as New Year’s Eve, there are times when there aren’t enough cabs, he said. "But the majority of time, you could say there are too many."

This reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke’s writings on population control, which I believe he titled, "Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You." What are the odds that when Mr. Rudawsky says there are too may cabs, he means too many of his competitors’ cabs?

We have been discussing this issue around the office today, think-tank style. It seems that this new report they have commissioned is going to attempt to answer the question of whether there are too many cabs, but I doubt it will even consider the idea that a commission like this should not be setting any number at all. That said, there are some promising statements from the researcher, including this one about the fact that airport cabs can only take people away from the airport, but not to it:

"It’s not efficient at all," Mundy said. "And sadly enough, it’s not as unique as it should be. But most communities around the country are starting to realize that … it really makes no sense to have one-way traffic in either direction."

The best thing the Metropolitan Taxi Commission has done is remove the restrictions for driving between county and city lines. Now, if they would get rid of those restrictions at the airport, too, that would be real progress — even if they continue to think it is their job to determine the "correct" number of taxis.
   

Just in case you didn’t know, Missouri is among the worst states in the country when it comes to eminent domain abuse. The Missouri Supreme Court recently decided to hear arguments in City of Arnold v. Tourkakis, which will likely determine whether the state Constitution presents any barrier whatsoever against government officials who would trade their citizens’ constitutional liberties for private developers’ promises of tax revenue.

Several weeks ago, the Show-Me Institute filed a brief in that case to remind the Court that property rights are at the very heart of the Missouri Constitution, despite the disregard they have been shown by recent court decisions. The brief also highlighted the fact that during the last five years, non-charter cities have threatened at least 1,500 properties with eminent domain, more than three times the number of properties threatened across the entire state from 1999-2002.

Thanks to Bill McClellan’s fantastic work in recent weeks, readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch have been getting a glimpse of what life is like for the thousands upon thousands of Americans whose homes, businesses, and houses of worship are threatened with eminent domain. Valley Park, a non-charter city in the St. Louis area, has for months been considering the creation of a redevelopment corporation that would have the authority to take property from some of the city’s current citizens and hand it over to new owners that the city would prefer. McClellan has done an excellent job of capturing the constant struggle of the threatened owners to make their voices heard and hold on to what rightfully belongs to them in the face of city officials who would demand the sacrifice of their citizens’ property rights on the altar of "redevelopment."

In a stunning turn of events, however, the regular protests of the property owners appears to have finally made an impact on the city’s officials. At its last meeting, the Board of Aldermen not only announced that it would no longer seek the creation of the redevelopment corporation, but that it would also pass a city ordinance banning the use of eminent domain for private development!

It is very important to note that Valley Park residents are still potentially at risk, even after the passage of this new provision. It doesn’t take much to change the law again, and, at any rate, cities frequently say they are using eminent domain to clear "blighted" areas rather than to promote economic development. But it is heartening to see at least a step in the right direction. Hopefully, this will allow that city’s property owners to sleep a little easier.

As for things that don’t surprise me …  In 2006, the General Assembly modified its eminent domain laws somewhat to require that a finding of "blight" must assess properties on a "parcel-by-parcel" basis, rather than using the broad snapshot of an area that had previously enabled findings of "blight." Under this new provision, an area may only be declared "blighted" if a preponderance (more than half) of the area is determined to be blighted. This change was exceptionally weak, because cities still have extreme discretion to decide what constitutes "blight" — meaning they could rig the findings by setting their own standards — but it at least imposed a restriction on the use of eminent domain that would presumably add some protection to well-kept neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, however, a three-judge panel in the Missouri Court of Appeals gutted even this meager level of protection. An ordinary reading of the new law suggests that those evaluating targeted areas must determine the number of properties in an area that meet the definition of "blight," and that they may only use eminent domain if more than half of those properties are determined to be "blighted."  The judges, however, held that the law merely requires surveyors to look really closely at an area before stamping it with a "blight" label. Where the law requires a "preponderance" of the area to be blighted, in practice it just means "to the court’s satisfaction." Oh, and it’s perfectly acceptable for the surveyors to rely on records from 1994 to determine whether an area should be considered "blighted" in 2007.

If Missourians are ever to be truly assured that their homes, businesses, and houses of worship cannot be taken from them for someone else’s benefit, someone — and perhaps a large number of people — must make a stand for the proper enforcement of constitutional protections. Thus far, the General Assembly has failed to do so. Despite some small successes, dozens of cities have failed to do so. And, most importantly, the courts have failed to do so. Valley Park’s citizens have learned a lesson that should be taken to heart across the state: Eternal vigilance truly is the price of liberty.

Seriously, how can you not imagine the leadership of Springfield City Utilities hiding their worst employees in the basement when the state auditors came by to inspect the plants? Then they would have to send them off to remedial utility training at Missouri State, where they would do battle with the nerds and a crusty old dean who is clearly a stupidhead. I could go on and on, but you can just click here instead.

It was not the role of the audit to ask whether Springfield should be providing these utility services in the first place, which is unfortunate. A 1970 study by University of Missouri economists demonstrated that public electric utilities that produce their own power are less efficient than private utilities. Unfortunately, we had to pay for our copy of the study, so I can’t link to it online. But here’s a passage from its conclusion:

The tax-interest subsidy, however, does not explain why some municipalities invest in new generating equipment when their costs, even after adjusting for capital costs and taxes, are still higher than alternative purchase arrangements. Such action appears to depend on other explanations, e.g., bitter rivalry, legal barriers, incorrect information, etc.

Here is an op-ed I wrote on this issue, as it affects Kirkwood. Kirkwood, though, merely distributes the water and electricity it purchases wholesale from private utilities (which the above-mentioned study showed was more efficient than a municipality producing its own power). Springfield is much worse — it still produces and treats its own water and electricity. Here are the stats. There are very few large cities left that still do this, for reasons detailed in the study.

Springfield should sell its electricity, gas, and water systems to the private sector. That would bring in a huge amount of money for Springfield, and allow the city to focus on things the private sector does not also provide, like police and local roads. It should sell its computer network, too, while we are on the subject. Then City Utilities can concetrate on transit and the 911 call center it operates. The leadership of CU, though, remains deluded by the idea that a government-owned system is somehow better for the citizens than a private system.