Paul, Bill, David, Steve, Michael. It’s not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the most common superintendent names. “Mary” shows up much less often.

In fact, nearly 79 percent* of Missouri superintendents are male.

Though it’s getting better, it’s a sad fact that men tend to earn higher salaries than equally qualified women. It’s a sad fact that there are more men in leadership positions than women.

But in school districts, where superintendents tend to come from the ranks of teachers and administrators, this is shocking. It’s not just that a large majority of Missouri superintendents are male. It’s that a large majority of superintendents are male while a large majority of school district employees are female. According to the National Center of Education Information, 82 percent of all teachers in the United States were female in 2005.

Continue reading "For the Ladies (All 105 of Them)" »

Today, the Post-Dispatch editors chastised the leading Republican gubernatorial candidates for turning the Missouri ethanol mandate into a major campaign issue. The editors may well be correct that “the mandate makes very little difference in the bank accounts of drivers, grocery shoppers, or even farmers.” However, contention over the mandate might provide a worthy outlet for opinions about larger issues, such as the government’s involvement in ethanol production and the appropriateness of direct intervention into other markets.

As a practical matter, the future of the current ethanol mandate will not have a large effect on the commodity prices Missourians face. Our study, which was a narrowly focused rebuttal of another study, estimates a considerable, but not overwhelming, price tag of $29 per Missouri driver per year. The P-D suggests that “for drivers, there’s probably only a tiny savings.” Regardless of whether the mandate is a net positive or net negative, we both agree that the effect is relatively small. After all, the legislation only touches statewide consumption of globally traded commodities in the event that their associated market prices are lower than those of conventional gas.

Even so, the current discussion is anything but frivolous. The ethanol savings figures given by the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council are patently false. Further, the use of coercive intervention into a fully functional market raises legitimate doubts. The Republican candidates obliviously feel that they can effectively offer different shades of conservatism through a real — although perhaps not earth shattering — debate. Whether their attempts to differentiate themselves will pay off remains to be seen, but we can’t blame them for trying.

As a link from this website has previously shown, Missouri Citizens for Property Rights gathered more than 400,000 signatures in its effort to give Missourians the opportunity to end eminent domain abuse this November by passing two proposed amendments.

Concerned that the amendments’ adoption would cut off their ability to give away their citizens’ homes and businesses to commercial developers, some cities are now setting aside taxpayer dollars to try to prevent the vote from happening. This is every bit as outrageous as school districts gambling millions of dollars in taxpayer funds in an effort to get billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. You should consider doing a little research to find out whether your local officials are using your money against you in a similar way.

According to the Post-Dispatch, St. Louis County is considering a $120 million bond issue to address infrastructure needs. This comes as the county’s Blue Ribbon Capitol Investment Commission is supposed to wrap up its findings and issue a report shortly. My main question is whether or not another shoe will drop. Sure, it is a big bond issue, but St. Louis County has a great deal of bond capacity capable of being used — it is currently just using about 3 percent of its allowable bonding. If this bond issue is the primary way they are going to address these infrastructure issues — like a new Family Courts building, for instance — then this should be a good plan. If an additional tax hike proposal comes down the chute in a few months (on top of the Metro tax proposal), I won’t necessarily feel this way.

For your reading pleasure, here is a copy of the testimony I provided to the Blue Ribbon Commission about these issues last month (ignore the date on the page, that’s just when we finally got around to putting it online).

I appeared on the McGraw Millhaven Show Monday to discuss a number of items, but for the point of this post I will limit it to our case study about ethanol. The Missouri Corn Growers Association appeared on the show yesterday to give their side of the issue, which is what debate is all about. I was unable to listen in yesterday as I was driving to Kennett (damn, the Bootheel is far away!) to give a presentation about another topic. Dapper Dan the intern, however, listened carefully and gave me detailed notes about the corn growers’ appearance, so that I could respond via this blog.

The corn grower’s rep, Gary Marshall, (not that Garry Marshall) achnowledged that E-10 ethanol gasoline has reduced fuel efficiency. He said that our estimate of a 2.5-percent reduction was too high, though, for much of the gas. He also speculated that no Missourian finds a decline in mileage, which I will further speculate is wrong, and point my valued readers here and here. The most important thing is that they admit they did a study claiming cost savings by E-10 gas and did not account for the reduced fuel efficiency. The study that the MCMC commissioned is not sound public policy research — it’s propaganda.

Next, the interview got into a canard that the ethanol industry likes to use in regard to the ethanol subsidy. The reasoning goes that we should logically ignore the subsidy, because the oil industry is subsidized, too (which it is), so they cancel each other out. Is that correct? No. Let’s go to the ultimate authority on this, the Energy Information Administration with the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Just last year, they released a report about the subsidy amounts provided to the overall energy industry. The 2007 value of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit was just less than $3 billion dollars ($2,990,000, to be exact; figure on page 21). Let’s compare this with oil. The federal subsidies for ALL natural gas and oil prodiction (much more than just automobile fuels) was just more than $2 billion ($2,090,000, to be exact — page 23). That is almost a billion dollars more in subsidies for ethanol alone than for the entire oil and natural gas industry combined, which, again, includes home heating oil, gas for your car, etc. Now consider that the oil and gas industry dwarfs the ethanol industry, and it is inescapable that one industry (ethanol) is MUCH MORE HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED than the other industry (traditional oil and gas).

Now, to be fair, you might say we should have incorporated the lower oil subsidies into our case study analysis. But our study never stated that oil and gas didn’t get subsidies. It refuted the calculations used in the MCMC study by insisting that they don’t get to claim the 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy as savings for Missourians, as though taxpayers didn’t pay for that subsidy in the first place. The oil and gas subsidies, small and non-distortionary as they are, were fully included in the cited gas prices used by ethanol supporters in their claims to save us money.

There is much more to consider here, but this post is already too long. I have nothing against ethanol. I dislike the subsidy, in the form of the tax credit, in the same way I dislike all agricultural subsidies. But most other agricultural subsidies are not forced upon me via mandate, like E-10 gas is. It is the combination of mandating a subsidized product that I dislike, and I like it even less when supporters of the dictate use poorly reasoned and flawed studies to tell me it’s a good thing.

P.S. — I hope you all get just how ridiculously clever the title of this post is!

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the North Carolina midwives who want the state to license them. Here’s an article about Massachusetts midwives who have followed suit. A state representative argues in favor of occupational licensure:

If the bill passes, they would have to apply for licensure and pass a series of requirements to practice legally in the state. “It will give any of the births currently being done more regulation and oversight,” Khan says.

This push for licensure might just be a strategy to legalize midwifery. Many Missourians, especially in rural areas, had a positive view of midwifery before the state allowed the practice. The legislation was controversial, but there hasn’t been public outcry about the fact that a private organization is licensing the midwives here. In states where the population is more wary of midwives, establishing a state board to oversee the profession could be the only way to legalize it.

On the other hand, lobbying for state oversight could be a way for the midwives to keep out competition and earn more money. The article notes that home birth with a midwife is much less expensive than seeing a doctor in a hospital. It doesn’t draw any connection between that and all the bureaucratic hurdles doctors have to jump through to be certified. If midwives have to go through a similarly long and costly certification process, you can expect the price for their services to jump.

If Massachusetts midwives need a state board to be recognized as legal, then I guess that’s what they have to do. But licensure should be a last resort.

Help America Vote Act. It sounds pretty innocuous, even appealing. But even the most well-intentioned laws can have unintended consequences.

“It started with HAVA,” Kristy Urich, Grundy County’s clerk, said. “We had to have very expensive electronic equipment, and it forced us into having fewer polling places.”

Grundy County underwent precinct consolidation in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, meaning it reduced the number of polling places available to voters. Why? To save money.

HAVA requires that federal money be given to states: “to replace punch card voting systems or lever voting systems (as the case may be) in qualifying precincts within that State with a voting system (by purchase, lease, or such other arrangement as may be appropriate) [...]”

But even though federal funds were available, there was only so much money to go around.

“They allocated X amount of dollars per location,” Urich said. “And they don’t pay for ongoing maintenance. Although they paid for most of the original setup costs, they don’t continue to pay.”

Without enough federal funds, changing over to more high-tech voting systems was cost prohibitive. And, just like that, places to vote disappeared from Grundy County.

Continue reading "Helping Missourians Vote?" »

I have previously blogged about the nefarious — but unintended — consequences of disaster relief. This seed has germinated into a longer piece about flood relief, which Missourinet has covered (link via Combest).

The idea is simple. By bailing out the victims of flood relief, the government unintentionally encourages people to move into flood-prone areas, leading to more flood damage in the long term.

In 2004, the Plato R-V School District held financial elections in April, August, and November. Two years later, the bond that district officials hoped to pass showed up again on the November ballot.

“We were trying to pass a bond issue two or three years in a row,” said Superintendent Victor Slape. “Trying to pass it whenever we could, really. … More people vote in November, and we wanted to make sure people got the opportunity to vote.”

Turns out that Cynthia’s suspicion, that school districts will sometimes continue to put a financial issue up for vote until it passes, is true. And that’s a primary reason school districts occasionally add elections to the November ballot, despite the higher cost.

Superintendent of the Albany School District Ted Spessard said the costs of any school election in his district are “in the thousands.” He estimated that the district pays about two to three thousand dollars in order to put an issue on the ballot.

Continue reading "Explanation" »

It would be wonderful if everyone took into account the full social consequences of their actions before making a decision to act. Almost every action you take has some effect on someone other than yourself. And you probably don’t completely take that into account. Consider, for example, your decision to take Eager to Hanley to cross over highway 40. This imposes costs on everyone who must line up behind you in traffic. And, as the Post-Dispatch notes, the traffic is terrible … and confusing:

On most days, getting from Eager to Hanley is a guessing game for drivers unfamiliar with the intersection. Figuring out which lane leads where causes some drivers to cut over at the last minute, triggering road rage.

Hanley Road is one of the most traveled streets in the county, with more than 50,000 vehicles using the stretch near Highway 40 daily, according to the county.

An ideal solution would force drivers to take into account the costs they impose on each other when they drive through congested areas, while also providing an incentive for firms to provide alternatives or improvements to the route. Tolls are about as close to that ideal as you can get. If drivers were forced to pay a small fee to cross the highway at Eager and Hanley when it is congested, many of them would find alternate routes or perhaps try to cross when there is less congestion. This would relieve the congestion and provide a quicker route for those who were willing to pay for it.

The tolls would also send a clear signal to anyone who provides transportation services, both governments and firms: If you can provide an alternate route or means of crossing the highway, or improve the intersection, you can make a tidy profit.

It looks like it’s a bit too late for tolls at Hanley and 40, though:

St. Louis County and Missouri transportation officials announced Monday an agreement to add the intersection to the $535 million Highway 40 (Interstate 64) rebuild. The intersection that leads to dozens of stores and restaurants will be rebuilt as a “jug handle” intersection, eliminating left turns to and from Eager.

Perhaps next time, transportation officials will keep our work in mind when deciding how to fund their next project.

November elections garner higher turnout. But they cost more, too. So, if a school district puts a finanical issue on the ballot in November, they’ll get more voters to the polls than they would in April — but boosting the voter count will cost them. It’s not a question of just typing a few more lines on the ballot.

How much does the cost increase?

“It varies,” said Darryl Kempf, Cooper County’s clerk. “There is no magic number.”

Political subdivisions — school, fire, and hospital districts, to name a few — help split the election tab.

“Missouri law requires that election costs be shared proportionally,” Betsy Byers, elections outreach and education coordinator for the Missouri Secretary of State, said. When determining how much each subdivision pays, the county charges based on the number of registered voters.

Continue reading "Their Fair Share?" »

Those of you who read this blog for in-depth analysis and riveting commentary, I’m sure you haven’t noticed my absence, but for everyone else: I HAVE RETURNED! After a wonderful week in San Diego, I have returned to my cubicle and have resumed normal intern duties. St. Louis is just as I remember — hot, humid, and no beaches.

The past week was an awesome experience. For those of you who don’t know, my fellow intern Dan Grana and I were Bastiat scholars at Cato University, which is a weeklong seminar organized by the Cato Institute that focuses on enhancing freedom and liberty through lectures and discussions. It is a great experience, and I recommend it to any libertarian — or anyone who is just generally interested in promoting freedom. Although the days were somewhat long (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), it was completely worth it. The days were filled with incredible speakers, ranging from Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute to Rejoice Ngwenya, who is a leader against Zimbabwe’s corrupt president, Robert Mugabe. Even after the daily lectures were finished, the conversation continued. We spent most nights at the Veranda Grill discussing liberty and other issues with like-minded individuals.

The entire week was a first-class experience. The food and hotel were awesome, and the speakers were even better. Before I arrived in San Diego, I was a little apprehensive about the trip. I was worried that the speakers would not be entertaining, or the days would be too long, but it turned out that my notions were unwarranted. Again, if anyone ever has the opportunity to go to Cato University, I highly recommend it. I’m even thinking about going again next year.

The Contrarian has a great article over at MSN.com about the loathsome taxpayer bailouts that occur every time something fails in modern America. I recommend it without hesitation.

I will be a guest on The McGraw Show, with Mr. Millhaven himself, this Monday morning on KTRS — The Big 550 AM. I will be talking about whatever McGraw wants to talk about, be it ethanol, tax incentives, or earnings taxes. I am excited to be appearing on the show — please listen in, if you can!

In 1982, the state of Missouri decided to give more money to schools, and to lower each school district’s property tax levy.

The first part, giving more money to schools, is working well enough. For the 2005–06 school year, the state handed out about $839.5 million from the designated-for-schools one-cent sales tax. That’s up from the $634 million it gave to schools in 1983–84 (both figures adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars).

But school districts have, through local elections, bypassed the state’s effort to keep property taxes down. While local property taxes are lower than they were before 1982, they have crept up from a little more than $2 to about $4.

To give schools more money, the state levied a one-cent sales tax, in legislation known as Propsition C. Each year, revenues from that tax are collected and divvied up among each public school student.* Very roughly, that comes to about $845 per student, according to Roger Dorson, director of finance for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The money is then sent out to schools, but it comes with strings. Half of the Prop. C money is new money for schools — a gift, if you will. But the other half is more complicated.

When a school district takes the second half of the Prop. C money, it must “roll back” the local school property tax levy. By how much? Well, enough to lower its tax revenues by the amount that the state gave it. For example, if a school district were given $1 million from the state, it would have to lower its levy so that it took in $500,000 less in property tax revenues.

Effectively, the state was trying to move some of the burden of funding schools from property owners to the people who spend more.

But school districts have gone to the ballot box to get more money, on top of what the state began to give them in 1982. Since Prop. C took effect, school districts have been asking voters give up the state-mandated reduction in local property taxes.

Voters have said yes. As of this year, 430 school districts (of 524) have full waivers, according to Dorson. That means those districts do not — and, unless their voters asked for it, will never — have to reduce their property taxes because of Prop. C revenues.

I won’t say that Prop. C rollbacks are unfair. After all, district voters are the ones who approve them (though which voters vote is something to watch out for). But it is apparent that the state’s goal to keep local property taxes low is slowly eroding. And that a statewide sales tax now helps foot the ever-growing cost for schools.

* In determining state aid, each school calculates its average daily attendance. Students are weighted differently if they come from low-income families, are not native English speakers, or are special needs students. After those factors are taken into account, the state awards aid based on each school district’s “Weighted Average Daily Attendance.”

Sixty-five percent. If you get it on a test, you’re barely scraping by. If you get it as turnout in a presidential election, you’re thrilled.

In fact, Missouri’s average county turnout in the 2004 presidential election was just about that — 65.12 percent. But that’s in the highest-profile election in the United States. So, what happens in local school board elections? Well, obviously, turnout dips. Or plummets.

In a June 2008 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 83 percent of Americans said that education was either ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ to them in making their decision on who to vote for this November.

If education is so important to so many people, selecting the president is just step one, right? We should expect to see high turnout in local elections, too, because it’s those elections in which voters ostensibly have the most direct influence on their own local education policy.

In Missouri school districts, at least, the exact opposite is true.

Continue reading "Extremely Important?" »

The Post-Dispatch reports that 2 million Americans will get a raise today. Why, you ask? They probably bet on the Brewers. … Actually, today the federal minimum wage increases by 70 cents, to $6.55 an hour. This is the second of three annual increases that will bring the minimum wage up to $7.25 an hour.

A raise for 2 million Americans sounds like a wonderful thing, almost too good to be true. Indeed, the Post-Dispatch reports one of the negative side effects:

The bad news: [...] some small businesses will pass the cost of the wage hike to consumers.

This is one of many things businesses can do to cope with an increase in any of their costs, whether or not that increase takes the form of labor costs, but this isn’t the only option. Suppose you run some sort of business that employs minimum wage workers, such as a restaurant or a car wash. Keep in mind that in running this business, your main goal is to maximize your profit — within the bounds of the law, of course.

Now, suppose the minimum wage rises, increasing your labor costs. What do you do to keep your profit as high as possible? Well, what would you do if anything else you bought increased in price, like, say, gasoline? You’d probably find a way to buy less of it, either by cutting back entirely or by finding some workable substitute. In this case, you would be trying to find ways to cut back on the use of unskilled labor in your business.

There are numerous ways to cut back unskilled labor. The Post-Dispatch already mentioned one: raising prices. How does this cut back on unskilled labor, you might ask? Higher prices will drive some consumers away, so your business won’t need as much unskilled labor as before.

There are also many substitutes for unskilled labor. You could hire someone more skilled, or replace the worker with machinery of some sort. Something as simple as adding a timer onto the fryers at a restaurant can cut the amount of labor needed to produce fried food.

Your could also find ways to decrease compensation without decreasing wages. Cutting benefits is one example. Or, you could remove some costly “luxury” like air conditioning, making the work environment less pleasant in the process.

The main question is, how much of each of these effects actually occurs? If businesses find ways to significantly cut the use of unskilled labor, unemployment among that group will rise, and perhaps so will unemployment in general. If businesses opt primarily to raise prices, low-income individuals will be hurt the most. If businesses instead cut non-monetary compensation, or reduce workplace amenities, the increase in wages seems to be a wash. A classic Show-Me Institute study has even more detail.

The intended goal of a minimum wage, of course, is to reduce poverty by helping low-income families. However, the minimum wage is a terrible policy tool for accomplishing that goal. According to another one of our classic studies, the typical minimum wage worker is still in school, living with a relative, and part of a family earning $57,000 a year. On the other hand, the typical poor worker is older, out of school, earning $9.58/hour, and the sole earner in a family with children. They are poor not because of low wages, but because they don’t work very many hours. In fact, only 25 percent of low-wage workers are below the poverty line. As a result, the study estimated that Missouri’s increase of the minimum wage to $6.50 would only reduce poverty by less than half of a percentage point.

Increasing the minimum wage won’t do much for most of the people it is intended to help, because it does a poor job of targeting them. Something that targets poor families explicitly and directly, like, say, the earned income tax credit, is far more effective at reducing poverty.

This article from the St. Charles Journal is a few days old, but it’s still an interesting read. The subject: Tom-Jan Meeus, a journalist from the Netherlands who is traveling around the United States, and writing about politics and culture here. The article describes some stories Meeus has reported on recently, and one of them is the midwifery issue in Missouri. Meeus notes that midwifery has gained wider acceptance in the Netherlands:

“My two kids were born with the help of the midwives,” he says.

The author of the article seems more interested in Meeus’ predictions about Obama, and quickly moves on to discuss politics and the upcoming election. The comments to the article, though, pick up on the midwife issue. Here’s what “Natalie” has to say:

I love that he interviewed the woman and her midwife. Very cool. That is definitely a big issue right now, whether women here will have the freedoms women have in other states and countries, and the access to skilled and personal care during pregnancy and birth.

I rarely find myself arguing that Missouri should resemble Scandinavian countries, but on the question of freedom for midwives and expecting parents, I’ve got to agree. Oh, and we could use more parental choice in education, too.

Steelman fields another question of interest over at the Post-Dispatch:

Brian R.: Urban decay and poverty is a problem that has been ignored in Missouri for far too long. As governor, what will you do to stimulate positive economic activity and lift people out of homelesness and poverty in North St. Louis and Kansas City? Additionally, how do you plan to address rural poverty?

Sarah Steelman: That is a very good question. I believe that any economy, including local economies, have to be allowed to grow themselves. One of the main problems in both Kansas City and St. Louis is the earnings tax. This 1% tax is levied nowhere else in Missouri. In St. Louis, you need look no further than the hole next to Busch Stadium to know that the status quo is not working. In addition, no major corporate headquarters has moved to downtown St. Louis in 50 years. The state should support economic growth in our cities.

She is just on fire this afternoon, isn’t she? The earnings tax is a terrible idea, and should be eliminated in both Kansas City and St. Louis. As Steelman notes, the earnings tax deters businesses, as well as people, from moving into affected areas. If tax revenue is needed, there are much less distortionary means to raise it, such as through a tax on sales or on the value of land.

Over at the Post-Dispatch, gubernatorial primary hopeful Sarah Steelman participated in a live Q&A session with the readers. Here is one interesting question:

Joe Hodes, St. Louis: Ms. Steelman,

I was inclined to vote for you until I saw your ad on the ethanol mandate. While corn ethanol has been shown to play a tiny part in driving up food prices (far less than foreign demand, oil prices and speculation), it has driven DOWN the cost of gas by 10 cents or more a gallon.

There have been over a dozen studies by universities, economists, researchers and even the energy industry showing that ethanol REDUCES the cost of gasoline–Missouri’s E10 mandate leads MO to have the CHEAPEST GAS in the nation.

Yet you say in your ad that the ethanol mandate has caused gas prices to rise. No one–even ethanol’s other critics–has been foolish enough to make such a counter-factual statement.

How could you get your facts so wrong?

Thanks,

Joe Hodes
St. Louis, MO

The mandate may be keeping the price of gas 10 cents lower than otherwise, but this gain is lost once you take into account the decreased efficiency of ethanol. E-10 fuel is 2.5 percent less efficient than regular gas, meaning it takes more fuel to go the same distance that normal gasoline would allow. If you want to drive 100 miles with a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, with ordinary gas costing $4 per gallon at the pump, it will cost you $20 for 5 gallons.

With E-10, fuel only costs $3.90 per gallon at the pump, but you now need 5.125 gallons to travel 100 miles, costing you $19.99. A paltry savings of one cent. But this analysis so far doesn’t even take into account the ethanol subsidy that Missouri taxpayers pay. That subsidy is currently 51 cents per gallon, and will fall to 45 cents when the new farm bill takes effect. So, it would actually cost you an additional $2.61 to drive 100 miles, but that cost is paid in taxes instead of at the pump. So, it comes to $22.60 for the same trip. If all actual costs were shown at the pump, E-10 would be priced at 41 cents per gallon more than normal gasoline.

Here is Steelman’s response:

Sarah Steelman: The facts speak for themselves. The studies from the Missouri Corn Growers and others don’t take into account the subsidies that we pay on our tax bills for ethanol. Secondly, they don’t take into account the decreased fuel efficiency of ethanol, meaning that you have to fill up your tank more times to go the same distance. I would invite you to read the Show-Me Institute’s recent study on the topic. The Show-Me Institute, unlike other groups, does not have a financial interest in ethanol. The Show-Me Institute study states that the ethanol mandate will cost Missourians over $1 billion over the next decade. This figure doesn’t even take into account the increased price of food caused by the mandate. I am the only candidate willing to stand up against the special interests who forced the ethanol mandate on our state. If ethanol can stand on its own two feet, let it do so in the free market.

Check and mate. The study in question, detailing the real costs involved with Missouri’s ethanol mandate, can be found on the Show-Me Institute website.

This is a continuation of my prior post about the history of school finance in the United States.

The adage holds: Nothing is free. When states began to pay school districts to educate children, the money came with regulations — and those regulations drove the system of attendance reports, standardized testing, and school administrators that we have today.

After school districts began taxing their communities to pay for schools, states started to step in, according to Elwood Cubberly in his book Public Education in the United States. And the moment a district began to depend on state money, it had to cope with the threat of the state taking that support away.

What began as a small effort by states to funnel land — as well as revenues from liquor and marriage licenses — to schools has expanded enormously. The state pays out more than $3 billion per year to Missouri school districts alone, according to numbers from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Continue reading "Strings (or, With State Dollars Come Bureaucracies)" »

The Kansas City Star has a story on the failures of the planning process in Kansas City’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. I encourage you to read it carefully. Now, I have never, to my knowledge, been to Beacon Hill. But this entire story is a perfect example of the failures that come when the government steps in to plan things that should be left to the free market and individual choice.

The historically revitalized neighborhoods in Saint Louis, such as Soulard and Lafayette Square, did not come about because of a government plan. They happened because free people made choices and put time, money, and effort into their neighborhoods. The government did not “plan” for Lafayette Square becoming what it has become, and it certainly did not mandate its development with legal contracts, etc. (I am certain that there are similar neighborhoods in Kansas City that have been revitalized in the same way as Soulard.) I will admit that the government does provide historic tax credits that encourage much of the revitalization, and they should continue to do that in historic parts of Missouri.

But the city should not get to “choose” who is allowed to buy property. From the Star article:

He and two other buyers were chosen to purchase and fix up the homes.

Even if the city had owned the homes by then, they should have taken the best offer. Somebody who wants to “mothball and flip it” might be doing just as much for the economy as someone who gets a lot of government tax money to subsidize revitalization. The Kansas City planners have no way of knowing what the best long-term plan is, and they have apparently not been making cost-effective decisions (emphasis added):

Beacon Hill so far is known mostly for exorbitant spending of federal dollars on two bungalows in the 2500 block of Tracy Avenue.

Government should stick to governing, rather than trying to predict the future and take risks with public money. That should be left to the private sector.

School board members negotiate how much school district employees earn. They’re the ones who determine salary raises for teachers, and they’re the ones who choose a district’s superintendent and how much he makes.

So, who chooses the school board members?

Voters. But some of them have more on the line than others. A school district is one of the few places where employees have some say in choosing the people who will ultimately affect the size of their paychecks.

Continue reading "How Much Say Do They Have?" »

After 38 ½ years of service, Barbara Trzeszkowski reported for her last day of work on Monday at the Keansburg Board of Education. If her contract with the district withstands a number of legal and governmental challenges, the superintendent will ease into retirement with a $740,876 severance package that the state’s top education official compared to the “golden parachute” awarded to retiring Fortune 500 executives.

That’s the first paragraph (emphasis added, in all of this post’s quotations) from a New York Times article about superintendent pay in New York. After hearing more about Trzeszkowski’s contract, according to the article, New York politicians were outraged at the taxpayer expense involved in such an enormous retirement package.

Trzeszkowski’s benefit package is plump, to say the least:

In the next few weeks, Ms. Trzeszkowski, 60, was scheduled to receive $14,449 for unused vacation days, the first third of the $170,137 she had amassed in unused sick days, and the first 20 percent of $556,290 in severance pay. This was in addition to the $103,889 annual pension she was to collect from the district for the rest of her life.

To put this into perspective, many Missouri contracts I’ve seen have caps on the number of unused vacation or sick days for which a superintendent can collect pay. But some don’t. Several Missouri superintendents earn more than the $170,137 Trzeszkowski collects. However, the factor sending her benefits sky-high is the 38 and a half years she spent with her district, about 10 of which were as superintendent, the others as a teacher.

What can I say? The numbers speak for themselves. She is set to receive a great deal of money for the rest of her life in exchange for working for a single school district for more than 38 years.

Is it a fair trade? After all, Trzeszkowski certainly was loyal to her district. Was it her job to draw attention to the size of her benefit package? Well, at the very least, her school district’s board of education should have known better when negotiating her contract. At least one of them didn’t, according to the article:

Although he seconded the motion to approve Ms. Trzeszkowski’s five-year contract in February 2004, James Cocuzza, a former board member who is now a borough councilman in Keansburg, said he did not remember it.

“For 15 years, I always fought for zero increases in taxes,” he said. “I don’t see myself giving away three quarters of a million dollars.”

While Mr. Cocuzza said he regrets not paying more attention, he added that he was probably not alone in allowing such contracts to slip through.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We’re not professionals. That’s what we have the attorneys and negotiators for. But wait until the state checks out all the other districts and sees the contracts that got through. I bet they all got nice packages.”

Somehow, I messed up my prior post, so the following portion did not get added.

The disaster movie references were leading up to the fact that, last night on the 10 p.m. news, Channel 5 hit a new low in nanny-state obsessing. Leisa Zigman (who lives right by me, although she’s moving) had a story about the “silent danger” of hot plastic slides in St. Louis playgrounds. Needless to day, the station went just hyperplectic (might not be an actual word) [Editor's note: "hyperplectic" sounds so nicely intemperate that I'm resisting the urge to change it to "apoplectic" — EDD] about the danger of hot slides. A two-year-old recently suffered second-degree burns from a plastic slide in Corondolet Park. And, of course, according to the story, it is the government’s responsibility to protect people from this danger.

I loved how the representative of the city of St. Louis basically told them the city was not going to do anything. Cities around the county have spent many millions replacing metal playground equipment with plastic pieces during the past decade. It is still not good enough for some people. I swear, some nanny state control freaks won’t be happy until we all have to put on our safety helmets before we get out of bed in the morning. Hey, parents: When it’s 95 degrees out, touch the frickin’ slide before you put your kids on it! This is St. Louis in the summer — it gets hot. And the city should not pay the medical expenses of the family. It is not the city’s fault or responsibility.

Clayton, apparently, isn’t following my advice. According to the Post-Dispatch, the municipality is currently looking at an incentive plan for Centene Plaza. Yes, that Centene. Something tells me that tax incentives would be completely unnecessary in a town growing as quickly as Clayton. Robert Wislow, chairman and CEO of U.S. Equities of Chicago, the developer of Centene Plaza, confirms my suspicions:

Asked about the private financing, Wislow said, “We don’t think that we will have a problem with a project as well pre-leased and well-located as this.”

So, why are the tax incentives necessary again?

Kansas City’s mayor, Mark Funkhouser, is likely to appoint a new task force to help develop the urban core, the Kansas City Star reports. A number of ideas have already been tossed around, including:

• Create a private investment funding source, with the help of financiers and foundations, to assist small businesses with loans or in other ways.
• Provide college or vocational opportunities for needy high school students.
• Create work force training centers in distressed areas.
• Improve transportation and child care offerings to assist people in getting to work.
• Provide specific incentives to employers who hire people living in distressed communities.

Kansas City could follow a simple recipe for growth: low taxes, lax regulations, and strong property rights. Implementing this isn’t necessarily easy, however. To start, the city could repeal the earnings tax, because it provides strong incentives for productive people and businesses to locate elsewhere. A sales tax or a tax on the value of land could raise the same amount of revenue without having as much of a negative effect on growth. A general rule of thumb would be to avoid TIFs, tax abatements, tax credits, and other special tax exemptions. Consumers and businesses will take notice and move in … perhaps with the help of our handy tax estimator.

As our regular readers (hi, Frank and Mary!) know, I detest the way in which our lives and laws are constantly being regulated, in matters both large and small, for our own safety. We have been discussing how this situation came into being, where we are just so happy to let the government take care of us and our children. I run the risk of sending this post into book-length territory, so let me make this quick. Who do I blame for this?

I blame the following people and groups (this is fun): Hollywood, trial lawyers, consumer reporters, and parents too willing to let other entities take responsibility for their own children (and, yes, I have a child, and, no, it’s not your job to take care of him, unless his nanny is reading this, in which case it is indeed your job to watch him between 8:30 and 6:00). I honestly bet that you could trace a line from the consumer movement to our overwrought safety obsession with the disaster movies of the 1970s. This point hit home for me a few years ago, when I was watching The Towering Inferno. Check out these lines:

Chief O’Hallorhan: You know we were pretty lucky tonight, body count’s less then 200. You know, one of these days, you’re gonna kill ten-thousand in one of these firetraps, and I’m gonna keep eating smoke and carrying out bodies until someone asks us… how to build them.
Doug Roberts: Ok, I’m asking.
Chief O’Hallorhan: You know where to reach me.

Or:

Doug Roberts: I thought we were building something where people could work and live and be SAFE! If you had to cut costs, why didn’t you cut floors instead of corners?
James Duncan: Now listen. Any decisions that were made for the use of alternate building materials were made because I as a builder have a right to make those decisions. If I remained within the building code and god-dammit I did!
Doug Roberts: [Chuckling] Building code? Jesus. Building code. Come on, Dunc, I mean now that’s a standard cop-out for when you’re in trouble. See, I was crawling around up there. I mean duct holes weren’t fire-stopped! Corridors without fire doors in them, sprinklers that won’t work, and electrical system that’s good for what? I mean it’s good for starting fires! Phew, where was I when all this was going on? Because I’m just as guilty as you and that god-damned son-in-law of yours! What do they call it when you kill people?

Resolved, that next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.
Resolved, that the public funds should be appropriated (to a reasonable extent) to the purpose of education upon a regular system that shall insure the opportunity to every individual of obtaining a competent education before he shall have arrived at the age of maturity.

So voted New York City’s party of Mechanics and Workingmen in 1829.

There wasn’t always public education in the United States. And the state didn’t always pay. Our current system, in which property owners pay for public education regardless of whether they have children in school, came about after decades of debate. My most recent posts have touched on school district tax levies and state funding. Before going further, I wanted to reach back to where this all began. How did we arrive at this system of partial federal and state funding combined with local property tax levies?

There is a fantastic reference, Public Education in the United States, that discusses education’s history from the founding of the colonies until the book’s publication in 1919. The book itself is out of print, but a used bookstore should be able to track it down for you cheaply. Or, even better, the entire book is free to read online.

Its history of public finance for schools is something I want to summarize, in part. Our current system of public education, which seems like such a basic right now, was an argument that spanned decades in the mid-1800s. Author Ellwood Cubberly wrote: “Excepting the battle for the abolition of slavery, perhaps no question has ever been before the American people for settlement which caused so much feeling or aroused such bitter antagonisms.”

Continue reading "Foundation(s)" »

The Show-Me Institute appeared in two major newspapers this past weekend. The Kansas City Star carried an op-ed by Dr. Joe Haslag, which johncombest.com also linked. To review the full op-ed (the Star had to do some length editing) you can check on the version hosted by the Missouri Political News Service.

The Springfield News-Leader also ran a very detailed article on ethanol use in Missouri, written by Chad Livengood. I was quoted a few times in it, and wish to make one correction. The article says that our study did not count the decrease in fuel efficiency that results from using E-10 fuel instead of ordinary gasoline, as part of the additional cost to Missouri drivers. Actually, our study does include it as part of the additional cost. I may have misspoke in my phone interview, or perhaps was unclear somehow, but it’s not a big deal — these things happen, and blogs are a quick and convenient way to make a brief correction. While our study was a very focused piece, this News-Leader article takes a wide look at ethanol in Missouri and I recommend it highly.