Just in time for holiday travel, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended banning the use of cell phones while driving. The news came when the NTSB completed its investigation of a tragic accident that occurred in Missouri in which two people died and another 38 were injured.

This provides the perfect narrative for what some might consider to be very compelling and policy-minded journalism: A tragedy has occurred and a cell phone was involved. Shouldn’t there be a law against that?

Consider this line from the New York Times’ series of articles on the subject: “With virtually every American owning a cellphone, distracted driving has become a threat on the nation’s roads.” Indeed, in September 2009, the newspaper wrote that it was time to crack down, saying that “…texting at the wheel is a national hazard that calls for a firm federal response.”

This weekend, I heard an interview on National Public Radio with Matt Richtel, the author of several Times articles regarding the dangers of cell phone use while driving, discussing whether he considered himself to be an advocate. Richtel provided the standard journalist line, saying that he just thinks it is important to ask tough questions.

Well, here are two more.

1. Traffic fatalities, crashes, accidents, etc. have declined dramatically. If driving is safer than ever, why is there such concern?

The argument I hear again and again (most recently when I sat in on Donnybrook) is that banning cell phones while driving is about safety. However, Missourinet reports that this year, traffic fatalities are headed for a 62-year low. The same trend is seen on the national level. Fatality, injury, and crash rates have all declined substantially since 1990.

If fatalities, crashes, and injuries are down, then I hardly think that we are experiencing a “national hazard” that warrants an outright ban on cell phone use while driving. Of course, there have been accidents where cell phones were clearly the cause. However, with traffic accidents and fatalities down during the same time period that cell phones became popular, cell phone use is clearly not as dangerous as some fear.

And, even if an action comes with a small amount of risk, that does not mean we should pass a law to ban it. In fact, driving with children in the car may be more distracting than those pesky cell phones. Should we ban driving with children? Are we in the midst of a national driving-with-children epidemic?

2. How could this possibly be enforced? And, do we really want to create another vague reason to stop and question citizens?

How on earth could a ban on cell phone use be enforced? Would a police officer be able to pull you over if you look down briefly while driving? How could the officer discern whether you are talking on a hands-free phone or merely singing along to the radio?

The New York Times should know better than to advocate for additional vague ways for police to stop and question individuals. After all, the Times did an excellent study of a “stop, question, and frisk” policing policy. The newspaper found that after a drastic decline in violent crimes in New York City, the number of stops the police made increased dramatically.

Knowing that police officers can sometimes abuse their ability to stop, question, search, and detain individuals, why would anyone advocate for more vague reasons to stop and question people? Driving dangerously is already illegal. What more do cell phone ban advocates need?

Indeed, the last thing I want to see after the passage of federal legislation that allows for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil is another vague reason that police can use to stop and search citizens.

The solution is not to ban cell phones.

I do not condone texting while driving. I also am not a fan of eating while driving, or letting your adorable pet distract you while driving. Though it would make an excellent point and is legal, I do not recommend that you hold a banana to your ear and pretend to talk to it while driving.

I was in a nearly fatal car accident when my family first moved to Michigan. The culprit? Ice. Should driving in Michigan be banned from October through April? Obviously not. Instead, I support independent groups working to inform drivers about dangerous winter driving conditions. Similarly, efforts to educate drivers about the dangers of distracted driving may end up saving lives.

But an outright ban? It is an overreaction to a tragedy.

During the special session of the Missouri Legislature, there was no shortage of personal attacks levied at individuals and organizations who dared to question the wisdom of offering more than $300 million in tax credits to corporate interests in the state.

As the St. Louis Business Journal put it: “…devotion to God, country and the region was [questioned] by almost anyone who dared question the planks of the China proposal.”

From today’s St. Louis American, which is generally sensitive to incorrect negative stereotypes: “…and some rhetorical heat was added by tea party types who created hysteria around a threatened ‘Chinese invasion’ of Missouri subsidized by Missouri taxpayers.”

The claim above is similar to those echoed in online forums and elsewhere that the widespread public opposition to the Aerotropolis tax credits was based on a fear of increased international trade with China, or that concerns voiced came from uninformed individuals.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the tax credits was to encourage increased international trade at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. However, the tax credit proponents made numerous claims that lacked evidence, or were flat out wrong.

I don’t dispute that well-informed individuals can disagree on a policy proposal. But throughout the past year, I have spoken to many community groups about tax credits and answered questions from many other individuals who were concerned about the Aerotropolis proposal. The accusation that those concerns are rooted in xenophobia is false.  I am disappointed that some tax credit proponents have characterized the advocates for reform in that way.

Look, the primary concern I heard was genuine interest in encouraging legislators to abandon corporate welfare policies of the past. True, some focused specifically on the Aerotropolis tax credits. But many voiced skepticism and concern about tax credit programs in general — on the grounds that state government shouldn’t be favoring some industries or individuals over others.

I hope that when the legislature reconvenes in 2012, we can have a public debate regarding the merits of tax credit programs, instead of resorting to name-calling.

I’ll be on the Voice of Merrill this Monday morning at 10 AM on 980 AM KMBZ. We’ll be discussing property assessments and real estate taxes in Jackson County. Please listen in if you can.

Here is the Show-Me Institute’s latest study on property assessments and taxation in Missouri.

The Post-Dispatch revealed this weekend that after an embezzlement investigation into Brentwood City Administrator Chris Seemayer, police discovered that Brentwood firefighters were allegedly paid “sham overtime” for 24 years.

Would it surprise you to learn that the State Auditor does not have the jurisdiction to audit the Brentwood Fire Protection District?

According to the State Auditor’s website:

The State Auditor’s office does not have original jurisdiction over most local governmental entities except school districts or counties with no county auditor. Therefore, the only way the State Auditor’s office can obtain jurisdiction to perform an audit in these areas is either through the petition process, or through a governor’s request.

This year, the Brentwood Fire Department has been allotted $2,190,664 from the city budget. The Post-Dispatch alleges that anywhere between $12,000 and $28,000 was misused every year.  The city could hire an independent auditing firm to investigate, but various firms have missed this is in the past.

If Brentwood residents want the State Auditor to review how their taxpayer dollars are spent, residents must petition for an audit. According to Ch. 29.230 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, the petition requires a minimum number of signatures. In Brentwood’s case, the petition would need 15 percent of the total number of ballots cast for a gubernatorial candidate in the most recent election.

In the 2008 General Election, 4,805 of the 5,738 registered voters in Brentwood cast ballots, according to information provided by the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners.  Some of those ballots may not have included votes for a gubernatorial candidate, but, assuming that they did, 721 registered voters must sign the petition to trigger an audit under state law.

For additional information regarding an audit request, please visit the State Auditor’s website by clicking here.

Hundreds of St. Charles County residents received a surprise letter from the Department of Revenue (DOR) this week — requiring them to pay several hundred dollars in sales tax on vehicles purchased one, two, or even three years ago.

In a recent audit, the city of O’Fallon discovered that the license office had undercharged residents for the sales tax due on their motor vehicles. Now, DOR has billed many residents for the difference in what they paid and what they should have paid in taxes. (Even three years later, the DOR may legally assess these taxes under Chapter 144 of the Missouri Revised Statutes.)

This case is an example of how inefficient government bureaucracy results in undue burdens on citizens.

To a family hit hard by the recession, several hundred dollars can be difficult to come up with on short notice. This isn’t a case of citizens paying their fair share; it’s a case where a relatively minor governmental mistake can have unexpected and burdensome consequences on individuals.

Sales tax rates in Missouri differ from municipality to municipality because the total is comprised of special, local, and state sales taxes. While there is a general state rate of 4.225 percent, each municipality may charge its own additional rate. On top of that, special taxing districts within a municipality may impose relatively small sales taxes for specific purposes, causing sales tax rates to differ block by block in some areas.

In this case, the multiple layers of taxing authorities did not properly communicate and failed to charge residents the correct amount.

It is unclear who exactly made the error, but it likely occurred because of outdated maps that did not reflect O’Fallon’s recent annexations. Many vehicle owners were charged sales tax rates for unincorporated St. Charles County, when, in fact, they lived within O’Fallon’s city limits. When they paid the sales tax on their vehicles, the licensing office apparently acted on incorrect information.

According to Tom Drabelle, O’Fallon’s Director of Public Relations:

“It is very possible some of the maps being used by the local office, maybe even the state, weren’t updated as they should have been with all the annexations that took place and the changes that occurred literally on the fly sometimes.”

Because of confusion at different levels of government, hundreds of Missouri taxpayers are forced to bear an immediate burden. For more information, please see the article on KSDK’s website.

“Extreme Makeover,” indeed. After previously likening the project to a “developer’s relief act,” last Friday it appeared that the St. Louis Business Journal had reversed its position on “Aerotropolis,” hinting in a staff editorial that it supported having the legislature go into a special session to take up the project’s tax credits.

The editorial was in fact one of a battery of at least five neutral-to-positive stories that dealt directly or tangentially with Aerotropolis that week, a strange reversal by the Business Journal but coming only a week after Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay’s chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, wrote a letter to the paper in support of the project. (My response to Rainford’s letter appears here.) It’s of course one thing for the Business Journal to change its mind on such an enormous budgetary issue, and present a united front in its support; it’s another thing to do it all without substantial justification, which the publication unfortunately did not provide in any of its five stories touching on the subject.

Still more unfortunate is the manner in which the Business Journal mused that Aerotropolis could make it to the special session: by hitching it to the tragedy in Joplin (emphasis added):

The view from St. Louis looks directly at China. Those who represent Aerotropolis as Joplin’s lifeboat are just silly. We need to respect the severity of their plight and not tie it to anything but the survival of their community.

It would be great for lawmakers and the governor to brand this session the economic development moment for Missouri: investing in Joplin and supporting a China hub while reorganizing (read “shrinking”) tax credits.

That could make for a truly special session.

The Business Journal lectures that Aerotropolis supporters should “respect the severity” of Joplin’s tragedy, but then basically says that if proponents play their cards right, maybe — just maybe — there will be something in it for Saint Louis, too … just have to “brand” it right. Keep in mind that Joplin is set to get about $50 million from the state. Under the Business Journal’s plan, Saint Louis would receive more than seven times that amount in such a “truly special session.”

Sad? Yes. “Truly special”? No.

The path of devastation caused by the EF-5 tornado that ripped through Joplin does not lead all the way to Saint Louis, and it was wrong for the Business Journal to suggest that the tragedy should be lined up with unrelated pet projects, and the session “rebranded,” to benefit Aerotropolis.

The Business Journal was right the first time: Aerotropolis is a developer’s relief act. It’s sad that the newspaper and others would attempt to pair their project with genuine relief efforts.

This is one of the biggest supposed selling points of spending $300 million on warehouses, and yet apparently none of the proponents can agree on what one third of a billion dollars buys taxpayers.

From Wednesday’s Patch, which seems to be a very pro-”Aerotropolis” publication (emphasis added):

Mike Leblanc, co-chair of the Northwest Chamber’s economic development committee, said if the legislature waits until September to look at the issue, the Chinese may discover Kansas City, MO or Memphis, TN are more serious than St. Louis about establishing a partnership.

Leblanc said establishing the China Hub would create 5,000 jobs in the St. Louis area. He wondered how the legislature would leave the 2011 session without addressing the issue.

“To leave session without addressing this issue and the possible creation of 5,000 jobs is unacceptable to most of the voters in a nonpartisan way,” Leblanc said.

“Possible creation.”

Then, from Thursday’s St. Louis American, which also seems to be a very pro-Aerotropolis publication (emphasis added):

On May 13, the last day of Missouri’s 2011 legislative session, the so-called “Aerotropolis” proposal died when legislators couldn’t resolve their differences on tax credit reforms to a larger economic development bill. Aerotropolis had been bundled as part of that development package.

Advocates of Aerotropolis claim its tax incentives would spur the creation of 23,000 construction jobs and 13,800 new permanent full-time jobs.

It appears that the St. Louis American’s numbers originate from a St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA) study dated April 19, claiming 23,325 construction jobs and 13,844 full-time “operations” jobs would result from the project, or 37,169 jobs total.

Two Saint Louis chambers of commerce, two radically different answers for the job impact of Aerotropolis, one 700 percent greater than the other.

The RCGA on Friday produced even more recent numbers than those cited by the American, in response to Michael Webber’s piece in Air Cargo News. The difference? The newer analysis, apparently dated April 27, now says that the project will lead to 18,468 construction jobs and 10,941 full-time “operations” jobs, or roughly 29,000 jobs, a reduction of more than 20 percent from the original numbers.

So, now we have three figures for the number of jobs promised, two of them originating from the RCGA.

Perhaps worse? The RCGA repeated their larger April 19 job numbers in their May 2 Monday briefing, after they apparently had new jobs numbers to distribute. Before it released these April 27 numbers to Air Cargo News, had the RCGA made these downwardly revised numbers available to the public? We know that the St. Louis American certainly relied on long-outdated information.

More importantly, are supporters just making up these jobs figures as they go along? None of the proponents seem to be able to keep their job numbers straight.

This morning, KMOX’s Charlie Brennan interviewed air cargo expert Michael Webber, who earlier this week gave a scathing review of the “Aerotropolis” legislation that may go before Missouri’s House and Senate in a special session. Webber said that he was highly skeptical of the current Aerotropolis plan, and that the more he hears about how supporters were promoting the project, “the more [the project] falls apart.”

“As you start stripping away carriers that automatically won’t be part of the Saint Louis equation,” Webber said, “I think any expert that isn’t on the payroll of the proponents of this project would probably come up with a likelihood of [Aerotropolis] being successful at something under 1 percent.”

In response to a question about local cattle farmers flying their herds overseas, Webber told Brennan that a livestock export facility built in Kansas City was used fewer than 10 times after it was constructed two decades ago. Atlanta had constructed a similar facility for transporting horses, used during its 1996 Summer Olympics, but even in that international hub, he said, use for the facility plummeted after the games to levels similar to those of Kansas City’s livestock facility.

And Webber was particularly skeptical of the warehouse component of the legislation, which constitutes the bulk of the tax credits.

“When you see the projections as wildly exaggerated as this is, you don’t only smell a rat. You smell a rat that’s wrapped in week-old fishpaper,” Webber said.

“So, when you start talking about folks going from 100,000 square feet of proven need for warehouse space to asking for 27 million [square feet], you’ve got to think this thing is really rotten.”

Be sure to listen to the full segment.

And doesn’t pull any punches in doing so. Published in Air Cargo News under the headline “St. Louis Air Cargo—An Aerotropolis Too Far?,” airport consultant Michael Webber lays into the very fundamentals of the bill (emphasis added):

St. Louis area business leaders and airport operators propose to divert regional air cargo now dominated by Chicago O’Hare International Airport to what locals call the “Midwest China Hub” and “the Big Idea”. Rather than test the likelihood of the hub’s success, proponents and their enablers simply assume Lambert will attract the required service and then promise benefits based on that success. The proposition’s champions and their consultants performed a meager analysis. Shockingly, the State of Missouri has already directed millions in public money on that basis and the Missouri Legislature almost approved hundreds of millions in additional support without any independent analysis.

Had an independent analysis been conducted, overwhelmingly critical concerns would have been exposed.

Mere context is damning enough. According to Airports Council International – North America, St. Louis ranked 39th among North American airports end of calendar year 2010. By comparison, Kansas City International Airport was ranked 45th and until 2009 had led St. Louis for a decade. In fact, St. Louis not only trailed Kansas City but also Des Moines. During a decade that found the U.S. air cargo industry in collapse, St. Louis’ annual air cargo volume declined 20% comparing 2010 levels with calendar year 2000. St. Louis’ air cargo slide is not atypical of the industry but nothing suggests it is in expansion mode.

Worse, an unprecedented surplus of on-airport air cargo capacity exists after a decade of nationwide contraction that witnessed the disappearance of such formerly common on-airport all-cargo names as Airborne Express and Emery Worldwide, as well as sharp contraction by BAX Global and DHL. Medium-sized U.S. airports are fortunate to still have both UPS and FedEx. The two integrated carriers account for at least 90% of air cargo at most U.S. airports, including St. Louis.

Lots, lots more at the link. Cross-state, Tony’s Kansas City picks up the story under the headline “MUST READ!!! GROUNDBREAKING EXPOSÉ UNCOVERS BIG MONEY STL AIR CARGO FACILITY “FLEECING” AND A SECOND-CLASS KANSAS CITY CONNECTION!!!”:

Just like most development schemes . . . The economic promises and utility of this project are suspect.

But even more importantly for this town, his reporting and analysis reveals. . .

WHILE IT MIGHT BE A BOONDOGGLE, KANSAS CITY WAS COMPLETELY OVERLOOKED IN THIS IMPENDING MISSOURI AIR-CARGO FACILITY HOT MESS!!!
[...]
Local politicos overlook this kind of IMPORTANT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM at their own peril, and it’s troubling that $400 million of taxpayer cash to support a competitor across the state doesn’t arouse any concern from either our local legislators or local business media.

More is coming. Stay tuned.

Last week, Jeff Rainford, Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay’s chief of staff, wrote to the St. Louis Business Journal in opposition to the evaulation of the “Aerotropolis” bill that a few Show-Me Institute policy analysts have offered, suggesting that we have been “misstating the legislation and [supporters’] intention.” We have not, and I’d like to take this opportunity to unpack Rainford’s letter for a critical analysis.

Rainford asserts, in contradiction to the “China Hub” proposal’s own experts, that the “Big Idea” (as he calls it) is designed to “sustain 20 to 30 international cargo flights per week.” Thanks to a Sunshine law public records request of email records related to the China Hub, we know that the current $60 million tax credit proposal would require quote “volcanic demand” to reach just the 20-flight level. It’s more likely, documents reveal, that the credits would attract half that number. It is not clear whether Rainford was aware of this March reassessment.

Rainford says that the credits will result in “thousands of new jobs.” He does not justify his claim on any grounds whatsoever. Are these jobs saved and created? And what of the jobs at the warehouses already vacant in Saint Louis, encompassing 18 million square feet of unsubsidized real estate?

Rainford evokes imagined ownership of the Lambert–St. Louis International Airport by “a Wall Street hedge fund, Carl Icahn or the Chinese” as stark warnings against proposed privatization plans. Setting aside for the moment the stunning slam that Rainford levels at the very Chinese trading partners he wants to do business with, the idea that the airport under public management has been a success over the last few decades is a stunning delusion. Lambert’s flights have been reduced to a fraction from their highs only 20 years ago. In the private sector, that would spur a change in management. In the world of government bureaucrats, it apparently means throwing good money after bad, leaving the historic fundamentals unchanged.

Moreover, Rainford tells us that the bill’s supporters “are not gambling” by pushing the Aerotropolis legislation in its current form. He’s right. Gambling suggests that Missouri’s taxpayers might win by fronting the money for this exclusive group of developers. They won’t. The present bill — 85 percent of which is geared toward building unneeded warehouses, not even subsidizing flights, and 100 percent of which is funded by taxpayers — raises a couple of obvious but apparently overlooked questions. If this proposal is so dynamic and rich with potential profits, why haven’t private developers been pushing such a lucrative deal on their own? And why then are tax credits needed at all?

We certainly understand the desire to jump start the Saint Louis and Missouri economies, but we believe that public officials have taken off on a “flight of fancy” when it comes to the Aerotropolis bill.

Friday’s Kansas City Business Journal had a terrific piece about the problems with corporate welfare and economic development in Missouri, written by Clint Anderson. You need a subscription to read the whole thing, but I wanted to point it out anyway. It hones in on the recent incentives given to Applebee’s to move back to Missouri. Anderson wrote:

Here we are in the spring of 2011, and the Applebee’s division of DineEquity has secured $12 million of tax giveaways from Missouri taxpayers to cross the state line by 500 feet. Being the “Show-Me State,” Missouri has been shown the path for such nonsense by none other than Kansas’ former Secretary of Commerce David Kerr.

Kerr presided over Kansas’ handouts to Applebee’s in Lenexa, and now heads up the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Kerr is experienced at shoveling taxpayers’ money into Applebee’s coffers.

If you can’t read it online, try to get a hard copy of this week’s Business Journal to read it. It is worth your time.

I appeared on KMOX radio with John Hancock and Mike Kelley this morning to discuss property taxes. I appreciate both of them giving me the opportunity to appear alongside new county assessor, Jake Zimmerman. You can listen to the broadcast here, if you missed it, and if you are as interested in property taxation as I am — or if you just want to learn more about how to appeal your assessment and ultimately lower your taxes, which is also a perfectly fine reason to listen. Please stay tuned for some major work from the Show-Me Institute on property taxes, soon to be released by Christine Harbin and me.

I received a text message from one friend after the show stating that he planned to be the first person in Missouri history to appeal his assessment in order to get it higher, not lower, per our joke about that on the show. So, it is good to know that I accomplished something this morning.