On Sunday, Jessica Bock of the Post-Dispatch reported that the superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant school district was awarded health insurance for life as an incentive to get him to stay at the district for an extra year. This is incredibly rare, if not unprecedented. In my study of Missouri superintendent pay, I did not see any other Missouri school district award its superintendent perpetual health insurance.

According to his contract, the superintendent, Jeffery Spiegel, will begin to receive free health coverage for both himself and his dependents after June 30, 2011, until the end of Spiegel’s life. The superintendent and his dependents will not have to pay any premiums for this coverage after June 30.

This is pricey. According to Bock’s article, district officials estimates the cost of the lifelong health insurance to be more than $200,000.

A more typical health insurance benefit for superintendents at larger school districts is to provide health insurance to a superintendent and his or her family while the superintendent works at the district. (The Pleasant Hill superintendent’s contract is a good example).

If the Ferguson-Florrisant school board members were having a difficult time persuading Spiegel to stay at the district, they could have awarded him an increase in salary for that year, or an increased annuity payment — something that other school districts occasionally do. The health insurance that Spiegel was awarded is an unknown expense. It is impossible to know how long he and his dependents will use the benefit. Estimates, such as the $218,398 figure calculated by district officials, are only estimates.

Really, why would the Ferguson-Florissant school board, which oversees the district’s budget, prefer to award a benefit with an unknown cost to one that can easily be budgeted for? If board members thought Spiegel was worth an additional $218,398, the board members could have increased his salary by that amount. That approach would result in Spiegel’s salary increasing to $430,051. Of course, if the school board had taken that approach, the additional compensation would have been awarded in a much more transparent manner.

School districts report their superintendent’s salary each year to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. But districts do not report the non-salary benefits, such as annuity payments, car allowances, or, in this case, health insurance for life. So, Spiegel’s additional compensation cannot be found by looking at state data. Additionally, if an education reporter or interested district resident were to request Spiegel’s employment contract, which is where you can find information about non-salary benefits, they would only see that he was awarded health insurance for life — not the monetary value of that benefit. It took diligent reporting to suss out the $218,398 figure.

It is impossible to tell whether school board members thought that they could obscure the enormous sum of money awarded Spiegel by providing lifelong health insurance to its superintendent and his dependents. But, regardless of the intention, that is the end result. I’m glad the Post-Dispatch caught it.

Incidentally, the next Ferguson-Florissant school board meets next on Sept. 8.

For advocates of free markets, St. Louis city presents a disturbing environment for the conduct of business. Indeed, the fact that so few construction projects occur here in the absence of subsidy necessarily makes the rare market-based development a news item in its own right. But what about projects that do not make the news?

Pictured above in August 2010 is the 1818 Washington Ave. Building in downtown St. Louis. Paired main entry doors punctuate the center of the building’s primary facade, while four ground-level storefront bays are at right. A pizza restaurant occupies this retail space, displaying a bright red-on-white background ”Now Open” sign, in addition to handsome neon signs for Bud Light and Bud Light Lime.

Two blocks to the southwest, at 2001 Olive St., a one-story building features plywood boards over the entirety of its glazed area. Permanent signage for the pizza place remains atop this building, while a banner reading “We Will be Relocating to 1818 Washington Ave. July 1st, 2010,” with red lettering on a white background, hangs from a ground-level storefront bay at left.

In a truly competitive free market, the story would end here: A business moved from one building to another. So what?

As this business relocation occurred in St. Louis city, however, legislated market distortion and an administrative exercise in symbolic violence likely contributed to the outcome pictured above.

On the legislative front:

Ordinances 67319, 67462 and 67463 designated 1818 Washington Ave. as a redevelopment area, executed a redevelopment agreement between the developer and the city of St. Louis, and authorized “$2,380,000 Plus Issuance Costs” in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) notes for the construction of 1818 Washington and another nearby project.

On the administrative front:

In addition to TIF, the 1818 Washington project stands to utilize “Federal and State Historic Tax Credit programs.” Combined, they could yield up to 45 percent of the project’s costs in tax credits for the developer — 20 percent for the federal credit; 25 percent for the state credit. (The building is a contributing resource in the “Lucas Avenue Industrial Historic District (Boundary Increase),” after all.)

In a free market, favorable lease terms or a street address on the vaunted Washington Avenue could prove enticements enough for a business to relocate. In St. Louis city, we are instead left to ask what role public monies are playing in a business location decision, and whether associated municipally approved TIF legislation is actually legal.

Missouri TIF law states the following in §92.805(4), RSM0:

For redevelopment projects or redevelopment plans approved after December 23, 1997, if a retail establishment relocates within one year from one facility to another facility within the same county and the governing body of the municipality finds that the relocation is a direct beneficiary of tax increment financing, then for purposes of this definition, the economic activity taxes generated by the retail establishment shall equal the total additional revenues from economic activity taxes which are imposed by a municipality or other taxing district over the amount of economic activity taxes generated by the retail establishment in the calendar year prior to its relocation to the redevelopment area;

If the pizza restaurant succeeds at growing its revenues dramatically at its new location, the rehabilitated building’s developer will prosper as government loses funds that it would receive were the restaurant not in a TIF district. Had the rehabilitated building attracted a business truly new to St. Louis city, government would receive a greater share of the TIF project’s associated revenues.

Subsidizing projects that displace economic activities from one site to another is a losing proposition for cities and their residents. In St. Louis city, the elimination of TIF would allow our community to awake from its current nightmare of ever-increasing taxes and instead move us toward broadly shared prosperity, courtesy of the free market.

The Columbia Missourian ran a story earlier this week about allegations of police abuse at a convenience store last fall:

Ricky Gurley has opened up his firm’s private investigative files on a Sept. 28, 2009, incident in which police said area car salesman David Riley, 31, tried to rob an undercover police officer at a gas station and then resisted arrest.

The case concluded Aug. 9 in the 13th Circuit Court of Boone County when Riley took a plea deal of two years in prison for a felony charge of resisting arrest. [...]

According to video recordings and witness statements, Riley, along with local woman Desiree Kemp went to buy beer at the Ultra Mart at 2102 Paris Road. Riley and Kemp were leaving the store when Columbia Police Department Officer Chris Hessenflow started watching Riley. Hessenflow was working undercover with a teenager to see if the gas station was selling alcohol to minors.

Video surveillance from the convenience store, provided by Gurley, shows Riley standing at the passenger door of his car as Hessenflow walks toward the entrance of the store. When Riley noticed Hessenflow looking at him, police said Riley cussed at the officer and demanded his wallet — a claim Gurley said is ridiculous.

“How do you rob a guy from 15 feet away?” Gurley said. “What do you say: ‘Throw me your wallet’?”

The store’s surveillance video shows Hessenflow drawing his gun on Riley. Then, Riley gets on his knees with his hands behind his back, facing away from Hessenflow.

Although the video is partly obscured, Hessenflow can be seen kicking Riley to the ground. That, Gurley said, led an angered Riley to resist arrest when more officers arrived on the scene. Gurley also said Riley was not handcuffed soon enough; handcuffs could have prevented at least some of Riley’s resistance to officers, as well as some of his injuries.

The justice of the arresting officer’s actions hinges on three questions, in my mind. Did Riley demand the officer’s wallet? Did the officer identify himself as a police officer when he pulled his gun? Did the officer use excessive force to restrain Riley?

I strongly recommend that you watch the video for yourself and read Gurley’s two blog posts on the topic, so you can make an informed judgment of evidence on your own, but, to me, the hardest question to answer is the first one. Both Riley and Kemp maintain that Riley said something antagonistic — not a demand for the officer’s wallet, although the officer could have misheard him. As to the second question, however, three witnesses claim that the officer did not identify himself as a member of the police force: Riley, Kemp, and Kendrick Hardrick, who is wearing a bright blue jacket in the surveillance video. Finally, as far as I’m concerned, kicking a man in the torso when he is already on the ground qualifies as excessive force in almost all circumstances. Unless the officer can show evidence that Riley was an imminent threat at that point, he acted inappropriately.

There is probably more evidence from this story yet to surface, and it deserves further investigation.

On Friday, August 20, the Show-Me Institute, along with Liberty on Tour and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), will host an informal panel discussion about recording the police. Recently, individuals in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts have been arrested for filming either their or others’ arrests. In Maryland, police raided a motorcyclist’s home after he had posted video footage of a traffic stop on YouTube. Anthony Graber, the motorcyclist, faces up to 16 years if convicted of violating Maryland’s wiretap laws. The Illinois legislature has explicitly made it illegal to record an on-duty police officer without his or her permission. A man arrested for filming an arrest in Boston has recently filed suit against the city.

These arrests raise interesting questions of privacy expectations, free speech, differing state laws, and, as Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko has noted, your right to petition the government. This panel discussion is our attempt to explore the issues of liberty at stake, as well as provide the opportunity for anyone who is interested to meet the panelists and to ask questions.

The discussion will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, August 20, at the Show-Me Institute’s office at 4512 W. Pine Blvd in the Central West End of Saint Louis. Please RSVP either by email to info@showmeinstitute.org, by phone to (314) 454-0647, or by commenting on this blog entry.

The event is free and snacks will be provided. However, because Liberty on Tour is traveling across the country, we suggest a $5 to $10 donation to help pay for the group’s travel costs.

Our star-studded panel includes:

• Adam Mueller and Pete Eyre of Liberty on Tour, a project to tour 13 cities in 13 weeks to talk about the principles of voluntaryism. Adam is also a founder of Cop Block, an organization devoted to watchdogging police officers who break the law. Pete Eyre currently works for the Future of Freedom Foundation, which advocates for individual liberty, free markets, private property rights, and limited government. Both Adam and Pete were part of the Motorhome Diaries project.
• Redditt Hudson, of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. Redditt is a former Saint Louis police officer, and part of his work at the ACLU is to lead workshops that educate people about their rights under the law, including practical advice about how to interact with the police.
• John Payne, a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute, will be moderating the discussion. John has argued for greater transparency and recording of SWAT raids in Missouri, and follows issues of civil asset forfeiture closely.

If you have the time, please drop by, and don’t hesitate to bring questions! The panelists will speak briefly about their perspectives on recording the police, and then we will open up the discussion for questions from the general public. After about an hour of discussion, we will move the group to Sasha’s on Shaw for dinner and drinks.

If you can’t make it, you can send questions you’d like asked to info@showmeinstitute.org, tweet them to @showmeinstitute, or post questions on the event’s Facebook wall. Finally, we will film the discussion and post it online for those who cannot attend.

What a difference a month makes.

In July, the city of St. Louis’s Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) Board of Commissioners heard public testimony from six persons seeking to purchase property, and the board actually approved three of the sales! (Commissioners deferred action on one of the properties and offered a five-year “garden lease” on each of the other two parcels subject to public testimony.) Per its usual practice, the LRA sent buyers off with the encouragement that they “will receive a letter in the mail” enumerating their required next steps for taking title to the city-owned properties.

All other agenda items received their recommended actions.

The above may seem like nothing more than minutiae to persons unfamiliar with the problems associated with LRA ownership of formerly private lands, but for persons who live next door to any of the LRA’s thousands of parcels in the city or for taxpayers anywhere in the city, the above actions are of particular significance.

One person who testified this month seeking to purchase a vacant lot adjacent to her home spoke of how burglaries are “a constant problem,” and that she hoped the acquisition of the lot would allow her to better protect her property. Another potential purchaser expressed her desire to become a homeowner, only to be rebuffed by the commission with an admonishment that she “talk to the alderman,” demonstrate stronger financial abilities, and await further review by the commission at the next meeting. A husband and wife expressed their desire to purchase the lot adjacent to their home in order to provide space for room additions to accommodate their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. Two representatives from a church spoke about how the purchase of a fenced parking lot would greatly assist in the church’s programming and outreach.

Considered together, the myriad of motivations and the multitude of proposed uses for LRA-owned land parcels suggest to me that individuals, when free to conduct land transfers, make better decisions about land use than do any seemingly well-intentioned bureaucrats on an executive commission.

The LRA meets in the Board Room at St. Louis Development Corporation, 1015 Locust Street, Suite 1200, at 8:30 a.m. on the last Wednesday of each month.

I bristle when public policy advocates contend that persons who oppose a favored policy simply lack an understanding of “how well the program works.” Instead of wasting breath on patronizing dismissals of those who offer alternative perspectives, perhaps a policy advocate’s time would be best spent providing the public with valuable, unbiased information with which we can form our own opinions.

It is in this spirit that I present one of my works in progress from my summer here at the Show-Me Institute.

Backers of the 25-percent Missouri Historic Preservation Tax Credit often cite the statistic that our state is “first in the nation” for “federal historic rehab tax credit projects,” so I thought that it could prove valuable to see exactly where said federal projects occurred.

Click here to view a draft map of Missouri rehabilitation projects that received the 20-percent Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit. Data comes from a June 2010 information request to the National Park Service, and includes projects dating from 1996 to mid-June 2010.

I see no need to editorialize about the map at this stage in my research, but I think that those who proudly support historic tax credit programs would do well by the public to explain why spending millions on certain construction activities is an appropriate use of public funds.

However, given that “historic preservation” is a catchall for education, place-making, job creation, and aesthetics, defining the precise function of public expenditures made in the name of preservation is an impossible task. Our positions as taxpayers, historians, developers, contractors, homeowners, tenants, policymakers, and tourists necessarily inform our differing and potentially divergent perceptions of these policies and expenditures. Our propensity toward repeated engagement in the same argument about the relative worth of a tax dollar spent on historic preservation as opposed to one spent on public education, while refusing to acknowledge some basic facts about the program in question, often leaves us blowing hot air.

At present in Missouri, recipients of historic preservation tax credits need not acknowledge the receipt of public funds in any format on the project site. In fact, recipients of historic preservation tax credits need not even acknowledge the historic significance of their taxpayer-supported property on site, such as in the form of a plaque. If we are to have a truly informed debate about the worth of the historic preservation tax credit, I would hope that we can all agree that disclosure is a good place to start.

Without good information, our state will never make good policy.

In my mind, the verdict is still out on whether the historic preservation tax credit really does what its backers aver.

One legislative sponsor of legislation to cap interest rates on Missouri’s payday loans, responded to my op-ed on the subject in this Sunday’s edition of the Joplin Globe. The end of the response quotes a line from The Merchant of Venice about the devil’s ability to use scripture for his own purposes, as a way of criticizing my use of fairly basic statistics provided by the payday loan industry. I’m not entirely certain whether this is meant to imply that I am the devil, or that payday lenders are, but I find it oddly flattering. No one has ever written about me as though I possess superhuman powers.

Hyperbole aside, the piece does make some good points about the lack of transparency in the hearing. Only representatives of the industry were allowed to speak, and the chairman of the committee does own a payday lending business — a clear conflict of interest. Although I happen to agree with the industry in this instance, the political process should be an open one. In the long run, legislative stalling and one-sided presentations will not preserve a healthy democracy or the free market. (It is worth pointing out, however, that town hall meetings on the issue also presented only the opposing side of the debate. Admittedly, those were not official government hearings, but the principle remains the same.) An open market produces better outcomes than a monopoly, and I believe that rule applies just as much to ideas as to physical goods and services.

Finally, I think this phrase shows a misunderstanding of my argument: “Mr. Payne’s point that usury today is not as bad as it was in Shakespeare’s time provides little comfort to the working poor and to those trapped in a spiral of debt.” My point is that if payday lending is regulated out of existence, people who currently rely on those loans for short-term credit will be forced to seek out loan sharks every bit as brutal as Shylock, who will demand a pound of flesh from those who cannot pay up.

According to the United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the city of Saint Louis has an estimated 21.5-percent residential vacancy rate. This rate compares unfavorably to the 12-percent rate for the nation as a whole and aligns closely with those found in Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y. In raw numbers, this amounts to 38,743 empty housing units within the boundaries of Missouri’s second-largest city.

With vacancy pervasive throughout our community, St. Louisans may often logically conclude that said emptiness is the direct consequence of the stark reality that persons simply do not want to live here in the same numbers that they once did. In fact, it would be difficult to argue that losing nearly two-thirds of the city’s peak population would have a negligible impact on the appearance of the city’s landscape.

But does so much property necessarily remain vacant from a lack of market demand for single-family homes, larger yards, and new business locations, or could vacancy be the product of market distortion by a governmental agency?

At the urging of a colleague, I attended my first ever hearing of the St. Louis Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) on Wednesday morning, looking for an answer.

Within moments of its commencement, the meeting shattered every expectation that I had for a body with the following statutory mandate (emphasis and link added):

The land reutilization authority is hereby created to foster the public purpose of returning land which is in a nonrevenue generating nontax producing status, to effective utilization in order to provide housing, new industry, and jobs for the citizens of any city operating under the provisions of sections 92.700 to 92.920 and new tax revenues for said city.

Instead of operating in a manner consistent with its above-enumerated legislative intent, the LRA appeared to operate according to a morass of opaque cultural practices that stand divorced from any legislative language. Indeed, the insistence by the assembled commissioners that prospective buyers of tax-foreclosed properties have the express written support of the alderman representing the ward that is home to the vacant property struck me as patently absurd. (After all, the word “alderman” does not appear in Chapter 92 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri.) Five people attempted to purchase property from the LRA this month without a letter of support from their alderman. Of those five, four offers were rejected, because the LRA purportedly treats a lack of aldermanic support as a reason to reject a prospective buyer’s offer.

After witnessing Wednesday’s proceedings and perusing the many purchase offers on the LRA agenda, I can say with great certainty that much of the vacancy subject to the LRA’s jurisdiction in St. Louis city is not a consequence of a lack of private demand for property; rather, much of it derives from government legitimation and infringements on the free market.

[NOTE, 6/28/10: According to officials at the Department of Economic Development (DED), the DED did undertake a review of NorthSide Regeneration LLC's tax credit application, and fixed the discrepancies it found in the company's application before formal application submission. Show-Me Institute research found discrepancies in approximately 20 percent of the reported property values in the initial submitted application. The DED did not send some of the documentation surrounding the application process after a Show-Me Institute Sunshine Law request, because DED officials say it was part of the issuance process, rather than the review process. We are engaging in further research to verify these claims and will post more as we learn more. Stay tuned.]

Today, I appeared on the Charlie Brennan Show to talk about the discrepancies in NorthSide Regeneration LLC’s tax credit application filed in late 2009 (you can read more about that, and the discrepancies, here).

A lawyer for NorthSide, Irvin Ness, called in to explain the discrepancies, which appear to total more than $500,000. Ness said that the tax credit application we used to conduct our review was outdated — that NorthSide had submitted an updated application in December 2009 to update the reported property prices in a way that would correctly reflect the certificates of value on file with the city of Saint Louis.

Although this explanation could prove to be true, there are at least two reasons to doubt it:

1. I based my review on a copy of NorthSide’s tax credit application, which was provided to me by the Department of Economic Development (DED) in response to a Sunshine Law request submitted on Jan. 13, 2010. If an updated version had been filed before that time, the DED should have sent it rather than an out-of-date version.
2. My request specified that I wanted to receive “Copies of documents and emails regarding the review of NorthSide Regeneration LLC’s application for DALA tax credits in 2009.” I have made the documents they provided available online (in six parts, here, here, here, here, here, and here). They include no mention of property price discrepancies, or that the application had been resubmitted to reflect new property prices. If the application had been updated to reflect different prices than those that were initially submitted, and the DED had any correspondence about such an updated application, the DED failed to fulfill my request adequately.

At least until NorthSide can produce an updated version of its tax credit application that was actually submitted to the DED in 2009, it’s difficult to determine which error was committed — errors on the application, or errors in fulfilling my requests.

In any case, Charlie Brennan has invited me to appear again on his show, along with Ness, on Tuesday morning. Tune in then to hear more!

Thanks to everybody who listened to Audrey Spalding’s segment on KMOX this morning about discrepancies in the tax credit application filed late last year by NorthSide Regeneration LLC.

Audrey’s report is now available on the Show-Me Institute website, detailing how the property value amounts that NorthSide reported to the state appear to be overvalued by more than half a million dollars in comparison to the certificate of value amounts filed with the city of St. Louis.

For more of Audrey’s work covering the north side redevelopment project in St. Louis, follow the article links on her staff bio page.

Let’s call it what it is: a handout, a freebie, a bailout.

By rejecting automotive bailout funds in 2008 and 2009, Ford managed to shield itself from the political hit that was sure to result. As an article in the Columbia Missourian points out, now Missouri politicians are looking to find room in the budget for a $15 million per annum tax incentive program to provide the Claycomo Ford Plant with income tax breaks to reinvest in the plant. This time, the remuneration coming under the guise of tax incentives. As Show-Me Institute scholars have pointed out in the past, when the tax burden is reduced for one targeted business or industry, but overall government spending does not simultaneously decrease, the marginal tax rate for other taxpayers necessarily increases. In this way, Ford would be the beneficiary of taxpayer money.

This illustrates another flaw of the tax credit system, adding to an already long list of inadequacies. Public disapproval of the auto industry bailout in December of 2008 was well documented. This disapproval most likely stemmed from the general public’s disdain of using taxpayer funds to shore up profits for big business. The tax credit system does much the same, except that politicians and recipients of the tax incentives have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too. Missouri’s tax credit system effectively funnels money to a business or group of the government’s choosing while at the same time serving as a buffer to shield the politicians involved from losing political capital.

I understand the importance of keeping jobs at home in a competitive nationwide market, but empowering the government to play favorites through the use of tax credits and incentives is not the most effective way to accomplish this goal (if it’s a successful strategy at all). There are many other potential solutions that would not only help the Ford Claycomo plant stay afloat, but would also help in attracting other businesses to the state. Earlier this year, Show-Me Institute policy analyst David Stokes suggested that lowering the large commercial property tax surcharge in Clay County would help Missouri businesses located in that county retain more of their profits for reinvestment. Policies like this allow all businesses in an area to benefit, spurring reinvestment, stimulating growth, and widening the tax base. By improving the economic climate in general, benefits accrue to far more than just those lucky few businesses that government officials deem worthy.

As I noted in my discussions of the Columbia SWAT raid, police often shoot domestic animals in the course of serving warrants or even day-to-day police work. I blame this on the lack of clear police protocol for dealing with domestic animals, and a recent incident in La Grange provides us with another piece of evidence that we need more exact rules for these situations. A video of the incident is available online, but I must warn you that it shows a police officer shoot a restrained dog at the distance of about five feet. If you lack the stomach for that, here is a description from WGEM:

The video shows a LaGrange police officer shooting and killing a mixed-breed pit bull. According to police reports, the dog acted aggressive toward officers and a young child. But the owner is telling a different story.

“She was a big dog, she was playful, she liked to jump around. But she’s never acted aggressively toward anybody,” says the dog’s owner Marcus Mays.

Mary Coleman says the dog attacked her six-year-old daughter.

“I hear a big dog growling and I turn around and it was running towards us. I shut my daughter behind me and I started to yell and kick at it,” Coleman said.

It was late March when Coleman and her daughter were waiting for the bus. A dog wrestled out of its leash and came running at Coleman’s daughter. Coleman was able to fight off the dog and go back to her trailer to call police.

“It followed me down here and it started acting real calm again. I got the chain around it and fed it some dog food. That might have been the trick, feeding it dog food,” Coleman said.

According to the video, the dog looks calm as officers put a collar around its neck and only gets agitated when police use an animal restraint pole.

The video certainly does not give any indication that this is a vicious dog. At the beginning, it is leashed to a truck and when the officers try to collar it, the dog retreats instead of attacking. It’s at least possible that the dog was a danger to public safety, but given that the dog was restrained at the time, this seems like something that could be determined after a judicial hearing of some kind. Furthermore, the video does show that the police were having some difficulty taking the dog into custody, but they could have presumably tranquilized the dog instead of killing it.

This case once again highlights the importance of recording devices in holding government accountable. The proliferation of cell phone cameras and audio recorders cannot help but shine a light on unpleasant occurrences that previously would have been swept under the rug. However, unless we change the way that police deal with domestic animals, nothing will change in the long run. If we want to prevent the unnecessary shootings of family pets, localities need to start defining more precisely which conditions are necessary and sufficient for police to use lethal force against pets.

The Washington Examiner has an excellent column by Timothy Carney about a subject that just drives me nuts: government using tax dollars to lobby other governments for more tax dollars. We have written about the issue of government lobbying before here at the Show-Me Institute, but I can honestly say that few things make me angrier. (Be sure to check out the comments from the last link!) From the Examiner piece:

State governments have overspent, largely on salaries that far exceed those in the private sector and benefits packages that dwarf what most Americans get. So now those governments are spending their money on powerful high-dollar lobbyists, with the paramount goal of getting access to more federal money. But the federal government is hopelessly in deficit.

The result is this: Local government officials are using your money to hire former government officials to ask current federal officials to give local governments more federal money — and future taxpayers will foot the bill for this whole racket.

Earlier this week, the Kansas City Business Journal reported:

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has signed legislation that would enhance tax benefits for the state’s higher education savings program.

On Monday, Nixon approved Senate Bill 772, which eliminates a 12-month holding period for contributions made to the Missouri Higher Education Savings Program.

Well, not exactly. This bill may indeed be an effort to promote more savings by Missouri families for their children’s future education, but it doesn’t entirely eliminate the holding period for contributions made into a Missouri 529 savings plan. Instead of providing contributors with more freedom pertaining to the control of their accounts, it allows the Missouri higher education savings program board to establish a “minimum length of time that contributions and earnings must be held by the savings program to qualify” for the state tax exemption. Eliminating the language that sets the minimum length of time at 12 months, but keeping the provision that allows the board to set minimum limits, doesn’t provide contributors with more information.

Proponents of the bill suggested that eliminating the mandate would allow the Missouri Higher Education Savings Program to be more competitive with similar programs in other states. Had the legislation eliminated a minimum holding period altogether, it may have accomplished that goal. In reality, it only muddies the water.

I am all in favor of eliminating government mandates, whether it be in health care, energy, or any other area in which the government attempts to control the market, but the removal of this language does not return the pie-slicer to the marketplace — rather, it keeps control in the hands of the people who cut the pie the first time around.

Missouri’s unemployment rate dropped two tenths of a percent from April, according to the Department of Economic Development. The drop in unemployment can be attributed to a net gain of 4,900 new jobs in this state in May. This is a good sign, but how much does it really mean?

Considering the federal government hired 7,300 temporary census workers last month, it doesn’t mean much at all. In the private sector, Missouri actually lost jobs. Employment gains in leisure, hospitality, and “other” services experienced modest gains, but other sectors saw more substantial job losses. Construction, manufacturing, professional and business services, and educational and health services all experienced job losses in Missouri last month. Not counting the newly hired and temporary census workers, Missouri actually lost 2,400 jobs.

Furthermore, some Census workers have alleged that the bureau has engaged in repeated hiring and firing in order to intentionally inflate employment numbers. A personal friend of mine who recently worked as a Census taker in the St. Louis area claims to have filled out new hire paperwork and been retrained every time he finished a neighborhood. The training of a census employee takes three or four days, so taxpayers pick up the check for the “training” — with no actual benefit to the Census efforts — every time a worker is retrained. Ultimately, special interests affect every level of government.

If you missed the discussion about red light and surveillance cameras that the Show-Me Institute hosted on June 9, you can now watch the video online. Both Saint Louis city Alderman Antonio French, who represents the 21st ward, and Missouri Sen. Jim Lembke, who represents part of south Saint Louis city and south Saint Louis County, answered questions from our crack intern moderator Martha King and attendees:

Policing by Camera, a panel Q&A – Show-Me Institute
from Show-Me Institute on Vimeo.

French has spent nearly a year trying to get surveillance cameras installed in some of the high-crime areas of his ward. He maintains that the cameras will help police officers identify criminals, while deterring crime.

Lembke has argued against the use of red light cameras. The cameras, he says, violate due process because the owner of a car seen running a red light is presumed guilty — even if the camera cannot identify the driver.

If you are interested in how our local elected officials view the trade-offs between liberty and security, I encourage you to watch this video. Both the moderator and the public asked probing questions, which Lembke and French answered thoughtfully.

I hope that we can host similar, engaging discussions in the future. You can check back on this blog, join our email list, or become a fan of the Show-Me Institute to get updates about future events.

Recently, the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group ranked the states on issues of transparency and spending openness. Missouri received a “B” in the report, which only assigned one “A,” so I guess we can be pretty proud of the “B.” Kentucky got the only ”A,” which is good for them because I only remember one other thing for which Kentucky was considered a leader.

This ranking is great news for our state government, but openness in local government is still an issue. A recent state audit, detailed here at OzarksFirst.com, determined that local governments in Missouri are still committing numerous Sunshine Law violations. My own selfish goals are best summed up by this ranking from the Sunshine Review in their study of local government transparency in Missouri:

Missouri’s counties received an “F,” a reflection of the fact that 61 of the state’s 114 counties have no Website.

I realize that I am one of a very small number of people for whom researching Missouri county and city budgets is a big part of their job. However, it would be very inexpensive for every Missouri city and county to be required to post their budgets online. It does not even have to involve their own website — they could just email the annual budget document to the state auditor’s office, to be hosted there. That would be much better for open government in Missouri.

According to the Columbia Missourian, an internal investigation into the SWAT raid of Jonathan Whitworth’s home (which I have also covered here, here, here, and here) has cleared all the officers involved of any wrongdoing. Given my vociferous criticism of using SWAT tactics to serve search and arrest warrants for nonviolent crimes, you probably expect me to decry this decision as a miscarriage, but you would be wrong. From everything I know of the case, the officers did not violate any policies or statutes, whether federal, state, or local — but that’s precisely the problem. We need stricter rules for SWAT raids because under the rules in place at the time, there was nothing technically wrong with the raid.

As Radley Balko puts it, “this wasn’t a ‘botched raid.’ It was a routine raid. The police got the correct house. They found the guy they were after. They arrested him. No one was killed. Most of these raids don’t turn up huge stashes of drugs or weapons. Most result in misdemeanor charges.”

There is some reason to hope that — in Columbia, at least — using SWAT teams for nonviolent crimes will become the exception rather than the rule. Columbia Police Chief Ken Burton concedes that the department has “utilized SWAT routinely in circumstances and situations where we should not,” and promises that new reforms should cause the number of SWAT raids to “plummet.” Those reforms should be strengthened and expanded statewide to help ensure that SWAT teams are used for the intended purposes and not to shock and awe nonviolent people.

A commenter on this Show-Me Daily post about SWAT raids wondered how much worse military raids in Afghanistan might be compared to SWAT raids in this country. An Army officer writing to Radley Balko suggests that it is actually easier to obtain permission for a SWAT raid in America than a military raid in a war zone like Afghanistan, and that SWAT teams here use more aggressive tactics:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I’m a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call “cordon and knock”: they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn’t happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we’re going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don’t have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don’t see any reason why they can’t use similar methods.

I can’t personally vouch for anything this officer claims about Army protocol, but if what he claims is true, it’s very disturbing.

Many readers have probably already read about the tragic death of Aiyana Jones, who was killed when a member of the Detroit SWAT team accidentally shot her while conducting a raid on her home. The police in this case were looking for a murder suspect whom they found in the apartment, which seems like an appropriate use of a SWAT team to me. There is good reason to think that a murderer might try to resist police with violent tactics, after all. Still, the case underlines the reason that SWAT teams should only be used when absolutely necessary. Accidents do happen and people can get killed, so unless there is good reason to think that the suspect will react with potentially lethal violence, we should avoid that risk.

Most people probably believe that the mistakes of the SWAT raid on Jonathan Whitworth’s home in Columbia are extraordinarily rare. That is, unfortunately, false. I’m sure most SWAT raids do find the person and evidence they are looking for (even if the amount of force they use is unnecessary for the task), but raids that turn up nothing or hit the wrong house are unacceptably common. Today’s example comes from Georgia:

An elderly Polk County woman is hospitalized in critical condition after suffering a heart attack when drug agents swarm[ed] the wrong house. Machelle Holl tells WSB her 76-year-old mother, Helen Pruett, who lives alone, was at home when nearly a dozen local and federal agents swarmed her house, thinking they were about to arrest suspected drug dealers.

“She was at home and a bang came on the back door and she went to the door and by the time she got to the back door, someone was banging on the front door and then they were banging on her kitchen window saying police, police,” said Holl.

Holl says her house was surrounded and she was scared to open the door. When the Polk County Police Chief finally convinced her she was safe, she let them in.

“They never served her with a warrant. At that point, she said the phones were ringing with the other men that were in the yard and they realized that it was the wrong address,” said Holl. [...]

“My mother has had a heart attack. She has had congestive heart failure and she is in ICU at the moment. She is not good condition and her heart is working only 35 percent,” said Holl.

Holl admits that her mother has had three heart attacks but has been doing well for the past couple of years.

“She was traumatized. Even the doctor said this is what happens when something traumatic happens. He said it’s usually like a death in the family or something like that just absolutely scares them half to death, and that is what has happened,” said Holl.

SWAT raids are designed shock and confuse, which is why, when they occur, many people believe the police are actually criminals attacking them. This can lead to heart attacks or residents attempting to defend themselves from perceived criminals, setting off a deadly firefight. When SWAT raids are used for nonviolent situations, they almost always introduce danger into the situation rather than removing it.

Also, there is this tidbit:

Police say they have had her mother’s home under surveillance for two years.

Holl says if that’s true, how could police get the wrong address?

“We have just found out from a neighbor that they (police) went into some other elderly woman’s home who was on oxygen and took her oxygen off of her and scared her half to death,” said Holl.

If the police really have been watching the house for two years and still raided the wrong house (I have my doubts), it certainly makes the Columbia Police Department’s new rule of keeping houses that they plan to raid under constant surveillance seem woefully inadequate.

Story via Hit and Run.

As many fans of the Show-Me Institute will already know, I have spent a lot of time during the past six months discussing the questionable constitutionality of Congress’ attempt to punish individual citizens who choose not to purchase government-approved health insurance policies. In fact, I’ll be discussing this issue tomorrow morning between 10:15 and 10:45 on Sarah Steelman’s radio show on KWTO 560-AM in Springfield. You can also listen in online.

Early in this year’s legislative session, members of the General Assembly asked me to offer testimony on the Health Care Freedom Act, which was proposed as a constitutional amendment that would recognize the fundamental right of citizens of Missouri to decide for themselves how they will pay for their health care, and that no government could rightfully interfere with that decision. In my testimony, I pointed out that if courts decided that nothing in the U.S. Constitution prevented the government from mandating the purchase of government-approved insurance policies, a constitutional amendment of the sort contemplated in the Health Care Freedom Act could offer a legal “Hail Mary” — a last line of defense that might prevent further congressional intrusion into citizens’ lives.

Despite overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, the Missouri General Assembly did not agree to let citizens vote on this constitutional amendment. Instead, the legislature placed the original bill’s language into House Bill 1764, which would allow voters an August referendum on adopting a new statute. Many of the legislators and citizen groups who had worked to pass the original bill are now hailing the passage of HB 1764, implying that if the people vote to adopt this statute, it will have the same effect as the proposed constitutional amendment might have. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Missouri voters may well use this referendum as a political statement through which they can express their opinions about the federal health care reform law, but the text that might have been legally useful as a constitutional amendment will have zero legal effect as a statute.

The text that will be presented at the referendum states, in part: “No law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.” A court called upon to evaluate whether this provision would be effective against any federal enforcement of the health insurance mandate will first point out that because the language makes no reference to any particular government, it must be assumed to apply only to law- or rule-making subdivisions of the state of Missouri. Not only is it virtually unheard of (and generally futile) for a state statute to attempt to bind the federal government or one of its agencies, the plain text of the bill says nothing to suggest that is its purpose. A court looking at this provision as a statute will almost certainly end its analysis there.

However, even if the court infers that the General Assembly intended to prevent the enforcement of certain federal laws, the statute will fail. In order for the Health Care Freedom Act to have any hope of being effective, it would have to give citizens the basis to argue that health care freedom is a fundamental right beyond any government’s rightful authority to transgress. If the citizen could make that argument, there would be a very slight chance that the U.S. Supreme Court might consider such a fundamental right sufficient to prevent the government from punishing those who chose not to abide by the individual insurance mandate. A statute, however, is not the mechanism by with citizens establish fundamental rights or liberties — they put those in their constitutions, where they are insulated from repeal or avoidance by future legislation. Thus, even if HB 1764 had purported to establish a fundamental right or liberty, courts would have been unlikely to take them seriously. It just so happens that HB 1764 does not even make such an effort, further diminishing any legal usefulness it otherwise might have had.

To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that proponents of the Health Care Freedom Act are intentionally misleading people as to the likely effect of HB 1764. But Missouri’s citizens deserve to know that the bill and the upcoming referendum it authorizes can only be considered a political statement. Even if the people adopt this statute at the August referendum, their rights and liberties will be no more secure than if the bill had been defeated.

From a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

[A]ccording to some analysts and students of corporate behavior, [...] companies that take a limited and more-targeted approach to layoffs tend to do better in economic recoveries than those that slash employment sharply and across the board.

“You can’t shrink your way into prosperity,” says Wayne Mascio, a business professor at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Although the article focused on downsizing in private companies, I think that the conclusion applies nicely to the public sector, as well. This is particularly relevant to state agencies in Missouri as they cope with their budget problems. Instead of scaling back their operations proportionately, governmental agencies in Missouri should take a targeted approach, by identifying programs that are underperforming and subsequently eliminating or outsourcing them. This would increase the likelihood that the programs would recover and perform better in the future.

When determining which programs, or segments thereof, to cut, a firm or a government agency should also consider non-financial and indirect costs. This is because unintended negative consequences could adversely affect a firm or an agency’s bottom line, as well as its ability to perform core functions. In order to increase its overall growth and prosperity, a firm or agency should focus on the activities for which it has a comparative advantage, and then trade amicably with others that possess a comparative advantage in other activities.

The firm or government agency in question should also consider its opportunity cost for providing a program under review. Outsourcing non-core functions enables concentration on core functions, which can improve efficiency and quality. This way, firms and agencies alike could maximize their up-time and productivity.

The SWAT raid on Jonathan Whitworth’s Columbia home — which ended with both of his dogs shot, one dead, and Whitworth pleading guilty to a misdemeanor paraphernalia charge — is generating a great deal of interest both in Missouri and nationally. The best national coverage of the story that I’ve seen so far is Andrew Napolitano’s discussion with Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid and local talk radio host Mike Ferguson. I highly encourage you to watch it:

I certainly agree with McDavid that it is inappropriate to use SWAT teams for nonviolent crimes — but, unfortunately, that is not one of the reforms already implemented by the Columbia Police Department. That said, the department is moving in the right direction, even if not quickly enough for my taste. New regulations for SWAT raids include: an order that search warrants be served within a “reasonable” period (usually eight hours) after they are issued; eliminating the power for the SWAT commander or narcotics sergeant to order such a raid, instead requiring a department captain’s order; and, continual surveillance of the area to be searched before the raid to ensure that the intelligence is correct and that, say, the suspect’s young child is not in the home.

I think there are three major policies missing from these reforms. First, there should be a public record of every instance in which a SWAT team is used, and for what purpose. Without such a record, it will be impossible for the public to hold the police department accountable for any departures from the other policies. (I contacted the Columbia Police Department earlier today to ask whether such a record exists, or whether it will be required in the future, but have not heard back from them yet.) Second, there is no change to the department’s policy on using lethal force against animals. They could consider using non-lethal methods of subduing an animal, such as pepper spray. At the very least, though, a more thorough definition of “aggressive” behavior seems warranted. Finally, the use of SWAT-style raids should be legally confined to violent situations. Unless officers can prove that there is a high probability that the suspect is armed and likely to resist, a SWAT raid designed to confuse and terrify is more likely to lead to violence than prevent it.

It is again worth mentioning that events like this are hardly isolated incidents. Just last month, a police officer in Bellefontaine Neighbors in North Saint Louis County shot and killed a dog under the false impression that it was a different dog that had been reported to be vicious and on the loose. The state of Missouri should institute stricter guidelines for both SWAT teams and the use of lethal force (even against domestic animals) in order to avoid tragedies like these in the future.

One of the hot topics in Missouri policy debate over the past several days has been Senate Bill 844, the legislature’s current attempt at ethics reform. Patrick Tuohey over at the Missouri Record just published a column I wrote assessing the constitutional questions raised by the bill that passed the House of Representatives last week. You’ll have to read the column to get the details, but suffice it to say that the bill merits some of the criticism that various media outlets have leveled against it.

Video of a February SWAT raid in Columbia was recently released and has been causing something of an uproar. The article accompanied by the video on the Columbia Daily Tribune’s website currently has over 450 comments, most of them disapproving of the police officers’ tactics, which included shooting suspect Jonathan Whitworth’s two dogs while his wife and young son were present. I doubt many people would complain if the police employed such aggressive tactics in response to a hostage situation or a bank robbery, but all the police had to show for the violence was a misdemeanor amount of marijuana and paraphernalia.

Regardless of your opinions about marijuana, I think we can all agree that it is an inappropriate use of force to call out the SWAT team for misdemeanor offenses. Granted, the police argue that they suspected Whitworth was selling marijuana, and it is certainly possible that they were right but happened to raid his house when he was essentially sold out. However, the fact that the police department’s intelligence indicated that Whitworth’s son was not present when, in fact, he lived there suggests that they did not really do their homework on the case.

This case highlights the need for greater information about the use of SWAT raids in Missouri, but it is hardly an isolated incident. Cheye Calvo is the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., and in 2008 the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Department deployed a SWAT team to his house after a package containing drugs meant for someone else was delivered to his house. In that case, as well, the officers shot and killed Calvo’s dogs, two Labrador retrievers. (They always seem to shoot the dogs.) Calvo fought back and was instrumental in passing a law in Maryland that requires all police departments in the state to report when and why they deploy SWAT teams. The results so far in Maryland have not been encouraging:

Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. In Prince George’s County alone, with its 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once per day. According to a Baltimore Sun analysis, 94 percent of the state’s SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT teams were originally intended.

If Missouri police uses SWAT forces for similar purposes, we have a right to know and a duty to do something about it.

This month, the Cato Institute published a bulletin titled “Employee Compensation in State and Local Governments,” in which the author examines state and local compensation costs:

State and local governments face large budget deficits as revenues have stagnated and spending has remained at high levels.

I used the Show-Me Institute’s newest web tool, Interactive Database for Economic Analysis by State, to isolate state and local government employment and payroll data from U.S. Census. Next, I used this inflation calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to adjust the data to 2008 dollars.

The following graph shows this information for all states for 2008. Wyoming has the highest number of public employees per capita, at 927, and Nevada had the lowest, at 437. Missouri was in the middle — it was ranked the 29th highest (alternatively, the 23rd lowest) in this category:

The data for Missouri reflect the general growth in the size of government described in the Cato bulletin. From 1993 to 2008, the number of total employees grew by 29 percent, the number of full-time employees grew by 27 percent, and the number of part-time employees grew by 44 percent.

The data also show that payroll is growing at a faster rate than the number of employees. From 1993 to 2008, after adjusting for inflation, total monthly payroll grew by31 percent, full-time payroll grew by 30 percent, and part-time payroll grew by 55 percent:

Given this rate of growth in monthly payroll and number of employees, Missouri’s present budgetary problems are no surprise to me.

Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Jonathan Williams recently published the third edition of Rich States Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index. In this edition, they devoted an entire chapter to a case study on Missouri, “The Missouri Compromise” (PDF), in which they applaud the effort to eliminate state income taxes. From the publication:

As unlikely as it may seem, this middle-aged, middle-income, Midwestern state is pushing the envelope on its way toward fundamental tax reform. [...]

[A]lthough Missouri’s revenue replacement could prove difficult politically, the benefits from reform could be enormous if the process is administered well and the constitutional amendment is carefully crafted.

In their discussion, the authors cite Prof. Joseph Haslag and Abhi Sivasailam’s recent Show-Me Institute policy study, “Previous Estimates Overstate ‘Fair Tax’ Rates, Harms,” in the appendix.

Laffer, et al., also include a comparison of Missouri and Tennessee, and they provide evidence that Missouri would experience additional growth if it eliminated its personal income tax. From chapter 2:

During the past 10 years, if Missouri had just caught up with the average of the states with no income tax, the average Missouri resident’s income would be more than $12,000 higher. That is amazing. Taxes really do matter. [...]

The evidence is clear: States without an income tax outperform in every conceivable fashion than their higher-taxed brethren and have more tax revenues.

Given the data at hand, it is hard to imagine any more conclusive results from a cross-section time series of states that could be obtained in favor of Missouri’s tax proposal. Like many states in our current economic climate, Missouri needs help, and from the looks of it, a switch from onerous income taxes to broad-based sales taxes is exactly what the doctor ordered.

This echoes what Jenifer Roland and Dave Roland concluded in their 2009 policy study for the Show-Me Institute, “All Caught Up: How Tax Policy May Have Allowed Tennessee to Outgrow Missouri.”

The state snapshot for Missouri contains some good news and bad news. In 2008, Missouri’s personal income per capita cumulative growth is higher than the national average, but the state experienced negative net migration for the first time in a decade. This indicates that, when voting with their feet, people are choosing to locate outside of Missouri. On the 2010 ALEC-Laffer State Competitiveness Index, where 1 is the best and 50 is the worst, Missouri has an economic performance rank of 35 and an economic outlook rank of 15.

Last Wednesday, I traveled to Jefferson City in the hopes of testifying about payday lending before the House Committee on Financial Institutions. That didn’t happen, because the session on payday lending became a purely informational presentation by representatives of the industry, with no outside witnesses testifying. (We still have a couple very interesting projects on the subject that should be forthcoming shortly, however.) Still, this was my first trip to the capitol to see Missouri’s democracy in action (so to speak), and I found it extremely interesting.

No, wait … not interesting. What’s that other word? Oh yeah: tedious. I spent three hours in a hearing room with most of the time taken up by an abstruse discussion of appraiser regulation. The only people in the room who seemed to be actually animated by the subject were the interested appraisers and representatives of appraisal management companies. Most of the representatives seemed to idle the time away browsing the Internet on their laptops and phones. The rest sat there, supporting their heads with their hands and wearing the painfully bored looks of people firmly convinced they are meant for something better in life than this.

Even for all the hearing’s spectacular boredom, however, I did learn a thing or two. First, appraisal regulation is a subject far more complicated than anyone should ever want to know. The big change under discussion that night was the move to a greater reliance on appraisal management companies (AMCs) over the old-fashioned kind of appraisers. This shift has been ongoing for some time but received a big boost when the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) essentially became the law of the land. I will spare you most of the further details (if you really must know, I recommend this article) except to say that although it does appear the HVCC is kind of a disaster, the new bill being used to rectify the problems looks like it just benefits the appraisers at the expense of AMCs and consumers.

Now, I fully admit that I am no expert in the field, but when every appraiser testifying for the bill complains that AMCs do less expensive work than appraisers, it sets off my Rent-Seeking Alarm. It sure seems to me that the appraisers are using the problems in the HVCC as a way to limit their competition and raise rates. But I could be wrong. Given the massive complexity of the regulatory code surrounding appraisals, it probably isn’t possible to know how the bill would change the system ex ante, and this presents a massive problem for regulators.

Writing about Democratic members of Congress who did not understand how tax changes in the health care bill would affect large companies, Glenn Reynolds describes this same problem:

The United States Code — containing federal statutory law — is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117pages long and composes226volumes.

No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can’t be aware of all the real-world complications it’s producing, it can’t even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it’s doing.

There’s good news and bad news in that. The bad news is obvious: We’re governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can’t help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or “better” rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system.

The good news is less obvious, but just as important: While we rightly fear a too-powerful government, this regulatory knowledge problem will ensure plenty of public stumbles and embarrassments, helping to remind people that those who seek to rule us really don’t know what they’re doing.

And that’s assuming the legislators actually take the time to try and understand the legislation. What’s more likely is what I witnessed last Wednesday: disinterested representatives killing time until the end of the session by checking their email and text messages. If a regulation is so complex that the regulators can’t even be bothered to understand it, it is likely to be ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst. In regulation, less is often more.

Today, the Show-Me Institute launched a new online tool that enables users to research economic aggregates, fiscal policy measures, and demographics across states and time. It’s called IDEAS: Interactive Database for Economic Analysis and Synthesis, and it incorporates the work of Laffer Associates.

Using the web tool, users can create their own charts and tables, and have access to a large comprehensive dataset. The data, formatted in a user-friendly way, includes:

• Individual state tax burden profiles
• A tool that allows the comparison of specific tax rates on items ranging from property to income to the glass of wine you may buy after hours.
• A 50-state ranking tool that allows you to customize your comparison, based on the category being taxed or year (starting from 1977). In other words, compare taxes based on location, type, or time.

I encourage our readers to play with the site, and I hope that they find this information as valuable as I do.