St. Louis City And County: Divided With Love
Today’s Post-Dispatch has the history behind the famous 1876 split between St. Louis County and city. This coincides nicely with an opinion piece that the Show-Me Institute just released, about St. Louis city rejoining the county. I discussed both this op-ed and the overall subject it addresses on the McGraw Show a few weeks ago, on The Big 550. (Scroll down to 8/3/09.) It’s always nice when things tie together so well.
I won’t add any more here, because it would just be repeating what I wrote in the op-ed and said during the radio interview, both of which you should all go read and listen to without delay.
Well done. This would also leave Baltimore as the only area with this strange separation.
Comment by Mike — August 26, 2009 @ 7:41 a.m.
I agree with some of the your desired ends, but certainly not the means.
Are you seriously suggesting its bad for local govts to compete to be most attractive to business?
If you disagree w specific methods used (TIF, eminent domain) those should be argued against in their own right. I doubt the logic that a city+county govt would suddenly stop using offensive revenue tactics just bc it was bigger. In fact the opposite. A reduction in jurisdictional competition, would make them less responsive to complaints about tax and property abuses.
Decentralization should be preferred as a default. This is like west and east germany re-uniting, which was strictly bad for west germany. Right now we have the choice to not live in the city to avoid their higher tax rate. If they merge and the rates average out (or are “pooled”) everybody loses. Bc you are naive in the extreme to think they will go down.
In terms of political strategy, if the county is more conservative in general, why would we want to dilute that w a gerrymandered influx of democratic voters from the city? We are better off segregating liberal voters as much as possible. Smaller political units are easier to take control of, and more vulnerable to outside economic pressure. This is good!
The costs of govt that would be consolidated (various record keeping requirements) are miniscule part of budget, and would not offset the reduced freedom to vote with feet.
The outcome of a “merger” would be bad across the board.
Comment by vroman — August 26, 2009 @ 12:23 p.m.
I have nothing against cities making themselves attractive to all businesses, but I do have something against cities using selective incentives for a few businesses in a manner that distorts market decisions and keeps taxes higher on the rest of us. We can toss theory aside, because it is a fact that cities within the sales tax pool offer far less incentives to a few, select retail establishments and abuse eminent domain less (actually almost never). According to 2007 budget totals, cities in the pool spend less tax money per person than cities who keep their own sales tax dollars – and theoretically compete more. It was over $200 per person less.
I didn’t say taxes would go down for everyone, just the people in the county. There is simply no way the city re-entering the county would lead to a tax increase in the county, and I won’t support it if I am wrong. They may go up, overall, for people in the city, but that will be the subject of a future piece.
I avoid the political issue in my work here at SMI. What you say may be right, but that is not my role here.
You would still have full freedom to vote with feet if the city rejoined the county. The county, even with city influence, would still have very limited say in the larger county municipalities, and no earnings tax, etc, would be expanded.
Comment by David Stokes — August 26, 2009 @ 4:46 p.m.