Metro, as previously announced, made cuts to its service yesterday. Bus service will be reduced by 44 percent, MetroLink by 32 percent, and the call-a-ride service by 15 percent. Also, the call-a-ride service will no longer provide transportation to those who reside west and south of I-270. Metro predicts that job access in Saint Louis County will fall from 98 percent to 71 percent.

This could cause the unemployment within Saint Louis County to increase in the medium run, especially when added to the 600 employees that Metro itself plans to terminate. In testimony before the Metro Board of Commissioners, Show-Me Institute policy analyst David Stokes contributed possible alternative solutions to cutting services while still making the budget. He found that one potential solution to avoid making the cuts would be to “increase the cost of individual tickets more than the cost of monthly passes. That way, regular riders who depend on mass transit would not be priced out of the system, and would still be able to purchase affordable monthly passes.”

In short, it seems there is an alternative revenue source method, and — as Stokes suggests — Metro could have avoided the service cuts and minimize the costs of restructuring. Overall efficiency should be at the heart of the debate.

This post in Political Fix immediately reminded me of this classic Onion article. Sometimes government officials have no idea how funny they are. Try to guess which lines are from the news article and which are from the joke article:

• Some suspect that the rise is the result of a citywide “Hey, Elkhart, Come To Your Census!” campaign.
• Assistant Regional Census Manager Craig Best brought out census-themed gear, including coffee mugs, pens and a bag.
• No one lives in St. Louis.
• Members of the committee — mostly government officials and community organization members — threw out ideas such as tapping into Facebook.com to reach college students, and Simmons brought up the possibility of Tweeting.

Just hysterical. I don’t think I would want to go on living without my home subscription to the Onion. Thanks for Combest for the catch — you know he loves the Onion, too.

The St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, which I mentioned in this op-ed about charter schools and foreign language instruction, have a new video up here. The schools offer both full language immersion and the International Baccalaureate curriculum, a combination not to be found in any other elementary school in the state.

I expect to see more innovation like this from charter schools as that sector of the education market continues to grow.

Katy Steinmetz writes about exotic pets in the Missourian. She comes down squarely on the side of the St. Louis County chickens. (Chickens are exotic? Only in St. Louis County.) However, she’s not in favor of allowing larger, potentially dangerous animals as pets.

The column elicited some interesting comments about the downsides of exotic pet regulation, not all of which I agree with. Such as:

While on the surface your logic seems quite appropriate, but may I point out that all species, even your golden retriever, started out as a “wild animal” in some form or another.

Yes, but it’s been a really long time since our ancestors were coaxing wolves to come closer to the fire. The average golden retriever is ready to be a pet. The average wolf isn’t.

Any pet, regardless of species, can be a good pet, as well as be a bad pet. It’s all dependent on the humans involved.

Even lions? I don’t think so. Some big, dangerous, undomesticated animals are just objectively bad pets.

The commenter anticipates my thought about lions:

You may think a lion, tiger, bear, or chimpanzee may seem terribly dangerous, but they actually account for such a miniscule amount of deaths and injuries each year per capita.

Not convincing, because so few people keep those animals. I can accept that a wild cat roaming the mountains and avoiding people by nature isn’t dangerous, and a bear confined in a zoo isn’t dangerous. But it would be dangerous to allow these animals in residential neighborhoods. If more people had them in their houses, they would “account for” more deaths.

This is a good point:

One problem with regulation is it creates a lack of new people learning the regulated skills. The fewer people that live in areas that are “allowed” to own a species, the fewer can have enough contact with the animals to learn to be able to handle that species.

But I still don’t think that outweighs the safety issue. If people want to learn to handle exotic animals, they should work in a zoo, and learn the skills in an environment where they’re less likely to endanger others.

This Southeast Missourian article (link via Combest) opens up discussion on the state of public pension funds in light of the economic downturn. Public pension funds are problematic right now, because defined-benefit plans promise individuals the same amount of return from an unstable economy as they would receive from a stable economy — regardless of how much the investment has lost value.

Investment losses have turned a source of revenue into a deficit, which has hurt the pension funds. As a result, current public employees could see a rise in contribution payments.

For more detailed information regarding public pension funds, be sure to read the Show-Me Institute’s policy study on the subject, “Missouri’s Challenge: Managing Long-Term Employee Benefit Costs,” by scholar Richard C. Dreyfuss.

Last week, the Journal reported on a comedy troupe that’s being hounded by regulators. Today, there’s another article about regulators overstepping their bounds, this time to put obstacles in the path of potential tour guides. The city of Philadelphia requires tour guides to pass a history test and get a license — and that applies to anyone who talks about history in exchange for money.

Here’s the best sentence in the article:

As Robert McNamara, a lawyer who took on the case, distills his argument, “Government can’t make sure you understand the Constitution before it has to abide by it.”

Read the whole thing. And feel free to leave a comment, if your municipality allows you to discuss current events without a license.

Every single county in Missouri should follow Jackson County’s lead and allow people to file personal property tax declarations online. This is one of the simplest ways for local officials to save residents time and money (either the cost of a stamp, or through lower taxes because fewer government employees would be needed to sift through the mountains of declarations). If any other counties are doing this, please feel free to let me know.

The idea that Saint Louis County should have an elected assessor (thanks to Combest for this Business-Journal link) in Saint Louis County is a very good one, for reasons you can find in minute detail in my recent study of Missouri government. Let’s just say that the reasons involve logarithms. Fancy, eh?

The plan to require an actual vote in order to lower the tax rate ceiling in South St. Louis County (the Mehlville Fire District) is terrific. I think this has an excellent chance of passing, and it will go a long way to limit the unnecessary spending that fire districts have been engaging in for far too long. My concern is not that the current Mehlville board will spend too much. Rather, the ceiling decrease proposal would ensure that future boards have to go to the people for tax increases, instead of just automatically spending to meet the existing (high) rate ceiling. More local governments in Missouri need to examine this idea. From the article in the Call:

[Board President Aaron] Hilmer continued, “… One question people ask is: If the board can decide what the tax rate is, why let voters decide on this? All it would take is a vote of two Board of Directors members next year to, in effect, double the taxes that people are paying to the fire district. This is a chance for voters to ensure that never happens in the future …”

In fairness, I would not write about this if I didn’t live just down the street and drive by it nearly every day, but I am sad to report that the Historic Pevely Dairy building suffered a devastating loss to fire on Sunday.

I have no historic context for the loss, having grown up in north county and being no connoisseur of dairy, but I feel the tragedy on some level. I’m sure that the building was, at one time, the livelihood of many, though it’s been unused recently. According to the article, it was shut down last November and the site was scheduled to be sold.

This brings me to my point. There is and always will be tragedy and unexpected loss in the world. We can never escape this. But people fight the hardest to overcome and return to “normal” when their livelihood is on the line. When property is the sole responsibility of one person — or, occasionally, when owned by a few people — with a vested interest in its proper functioning, they will go to great lengths to maintain and preserve it. One (perhaps unpalatable) logical extreme of this insight that a friend proposed to me is, “If environmentalists want to save endangered species, they should find a way to commercialize them.” They could be pets, or have some industrial application, whatever it takes to make it in the interest of firms or individuals not only to preserve them, but to proliferate them. No one worries that cows, dogs, or cats will disappear. Indeed, many are concerned about overpopulation of dogs and cats.

I am not saying that this building burned down because it was abandoned or nationalized, only that if it were an active concern, it would be rebuilt in short order. The sad scar of loss would be healed with the revitalizing touch of a new and modern factory, perhaps producing Pevely milk and butter more cheaply and benefiting customers and workers alike. At present, I don’t anticipate a speedy rebuild. More likely, the lot will languish awaiting a buyer interested in owning one more vacant lot, this one with some singed rubble included. The lesson rings in the background: If you want to save it, create a market for it.

The Post-Dispatch ran a story yesterday about how Chesterfield is considering an ordinance that would tackle the growing menace of urban chickens. The article looks into the phenomenon of chicken husbandry in residential neighborhoods, and also discusses how municipalities across the metro area have addressed the chicken question, all of which is kind of interesting. But my real reason for pointing out the article is to direct your attention to all the commenters who (at least where chickens are concerned) share my thoughts about property rights.

This article in the Post-Dispatch is a perfect example of the issues Josh considered in his great post about public goods a few weeks back. The St. Louis Zoo, and other entities in the zoo-museum district, are clearly non-rival, because the person standing next to me at the zoo who does not pay taxes to the district in no way diminishes my capacity to enjoy the zoo. However, the zoo, art museum, etc., are also fully excludable, because it is pretty easy to keep someone out who didn’t pay, if that is what you desire to do. So, they are not the type of pure public goods that Josh discussed.

Should people from surrounding counties tax themselves to pay for the district like people in St. Louis county and city do? Or should the free riders just be allowed to continue enjoying the zoo without paying for it? I support the bill before the legislature requiring counties like St. Charles, Franklin, and Jefferson either to tax themselves or face having their residents pay an admission fee when they go to the zoo, history museum, et al. If they don’t want to pay the property tax, that is fine, but then say goodbye to free admissions for people outside St. Louis County and city.

I think the St. Charles county executive makes a fair point, though:

[...] Steve Ehlmann said his constituents would be unlikely to vote to join the district unless some of the tax money is earmarked for some institution or service in their county.

I think it is very reasonable to add one park or institution in each county that elects to pay the property tax into the fold of entities supported by the tax. We could add the Daniel Boone home in St. Charles, the historic Washington riverfront park in Franklin County, the first meth lab ever busted in Jefferson County, and — if Illinois got in the game — Pops could be included.

P.S. — Just kidding, Jeff Co., you know I love you. …

Over at Prime Buzz, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver — who represents Kansas City, in case you didn’t know — is quoted making a simply amazing statement of regret over his recent vote regarding AIG (link via Combest). Apparently, there has been some sort of scandal over bonuses, or some such?

Kidding aside, this reminds me of the time Sen. John Danforth took to the Senate floor to admit he was wrong and change his vote on the flag-burning bill. Whether you agree with these votes or not, Rep. Cleaver’s honesty, candor, and willingness to admit he was wrong is impressive.