Now that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has delivered his State of the State address, legislators in Jefferson City are prepared to tackle spending in their own way. The Missouri Legislature is considering a constitutional amendment that would cap state spending increases to the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index plus population growth. Any excess money would first go to paying down public debt, then a special reserve fund (not a bad idea considering some of the potential natural disasters this state faces), and then any remaining money would go towards temporarily reducing income taxes.

Along with the Hancock Amendment, this amendment would restrict the power of the legislature. Therefore, the legislature should be commended for proposing this amendment. Constitutional amendments like this, along with a balanced budget requirement (which Missouri has), give legislators an easy way to say ”no” to special interests.

Now, this is not a full-throated endorsement of the proposed amendment. There are a couple of things that bother me. First, there was an amendment that passed setting the cap at fiscal year 2008, the so-called “high water mark” of state revenues. Considering that the general revenue is expected to increase 3.9 percent  from $7.3 billion this year and that net general revenue for fiscal year 2008 was slightly more than $8 billion ($8,004,309, to be exact), the cap probably will not matter for . . . a while. Second, the spending limits will expire in five years unless lawmakers extend the time limit. So even if the voters approve the amendment, there is a distinct possibility that the cap can expire before it ever has the chance to restrict spending. Finally, the cap only applies to general revenue, which is where lawmakers have the most leeway in regards to spending, but it is not hard to imagine lawmakers putting down in statute specific spending items they want preserved and directing specific monies to funding them.

Despite my issues with the proposed amendment, the legislature should be commended for trying to push spending restrictions. However, it is unfortunate that such restrictions would have to be so watered down before it can pass.

Another session of the Missouri General Assembly has begun and lawmakers in Jefferson City, by law, must close the projected shortfall in the state’s budget. The actual amount of the shortfall is difficult to determine. One source estimates it is $500 million, another says the shortfall ranges between $400 million and $600 million. Needless to say, the number is not insubstantial.

The question arises about what to cut. However, what if appropriators flipped this picture upside-down? What if the legislators asked what should be funded first, instead of what should be cut?

It turns out that the authors of the Missouri Constitution gave this some thought.  The state Constitution provides a list of the order in which money is to be appropriated. It seems the authors of the state Constitution tried to tell us the state’s spending priorities. Those funding priorities are (in order):

1. For payment of sinking fund and interest on outstanding obligations of the state.
2. For the purpose of public education.
3. For the payment of the cost of assessing and collecting the revenue.
4. For the payment of the civil lists (in this case, state employees).
5. For the support of eleemosynary (charity) and other state institutions.
6. For public health and public welfare.
7. For all other state purposes.
8. For the expense of the general assembly.

Now, I am not saying cuts in say, education spending, are completely off limits. If there is waste, get rid of it, no matter where it is. However, the legislature should prioritize spending based on the guidelines of what is emphasized in the Constitution, and if spending cuts are needed, they should be in lower priority items. One example of something that might not qualify as “high priority” is the Missouri Wine and Grape Board. Another example is state ethanol subsidies. Between these programs and K-12 education, which is a higher priority to you?

The Missouri Democratic Party has announced that it will be launching an initiative petition to reduce the number of state representatives. The Missouri Record has hosted a debate about the proposal between former auditor Susan Montee (in favor of lowering the number), and former state Rep. Ed Emery (opposed). Ed is one of my favorite politicians, but this is one instance in which I agree with the Democrats.

I have been making this argument for a while, and I am excited that one of our two major parties will undertake a serious effort to reduce Missouri’s number of state reps.

Missouri has the fourth-highest number of state reps. I support lowering that number for several reasons. There is strong economic evidence that, in general, the more members in an elected body the more that body spends. It is called the “Law of 1/N.” There is evidence to support this theory at the national level, the state level, the county level, and the local level. However, the Law of 1/N has been found to have less of an effect on state Houses than on other types of political bodies. Nonetheless, common sense tells us that more legislators means more pet projects, more legislative horsetrading, more tightly defined benefits, and more easily diffused costs. Just because something appears to be a partial exception to the rule does not mean the rule should be completely ignored.

Second, I don’t like that many people to have the ability to make rules about my life. I don’t believe that having more reps makes it harder to pass new laws. I’d bet that if I went through the bills introduced by all 163 state reps, I would find that every one of them introduced a bill this year that I think is silly, useless, or worse — although I also think some of them are doing a number of good things this year.

It is human nature to want to act when given a role. For elected officials, that means offering laws to justify their salaries, etc. Too many people in office means too many new proposals and too many people with a say about my life. If Missouri’s legislature met less frequently, for shorter sessions, and received lower salaries (like New Hampshire’s state house), I might change my mind about the number.

Of course, one might wonder why the state’s Democrats are doing this now, because they could have done it at any time when they had several decades of total legislative power. Ultimately, though, I don’t really care. This is about going forward, not casting blame backward. I hope Missourians give this a close look.

For more information about these general public choice economic ideas and how they apply to Missouri, please read my policy study about government in Missouri.

On Wednesday, lawyers from the Institute for Justice will argue before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Saint Louis on behalf of Jim Roos, whose anti–eminent domain mural has become familiar to most of us in the Saint Louis metro area.

Roos painted the mural to protest the city’s decision to use eminent domain to seize numerous properties from his low-income housing nonprofit organization, Sanctuary in the Ordinary. After Roos completed the mural in 2007, the city cited him for violating its sign code and ordered Roos to remove the mural. Roos refused, and fought the case in federal court on First Amendment grounds. Last March, a U.S. District Court ruled against Roos, remarkably claiming that the mural would be legal if it were devoid of political content, like a fleur-de-lis or a Cardinals logo. This turns the First Amendment on its head, because it was explicitly added to the Constitution with the intent of protecting political speech.

The case also illustrates the unity of property rights and civil rights. If the government can legally regulate away Roos’ most effective platform, it will have the same chilling effect on free speech as direct censorship. Similarly, freedom of religion is useless if zoning laws prevent groups from building places of worship; freedom from search and seizure only applies if your home is your castle; and freedom of the press will not get you very far if the government can block access to all the presses. Many people think of property rights and civil rights as fundamentally different things, but if the government places enough restrictions on how you can use your property, it must necessarily interfere with our fundamental political rights. Let us hope that the appeals court will understand this connection and allow Roos to speak his mind.

Headline allusion here.

Here is a fantastic video made by the students of Young Americans for Liberty at the University of Virginia (full disclosure: in my spare time, I am the Missouri State Chair for YAL) showing how we can make more people happy by keeping the ability to make choices at more local levels:

The idea has almost innumerable applications, but the most relevant example for Missourians today is the federal health care reform bill. Missourians overwhelmingly rejected the portion of the law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance when they voted for Proposition C in August. However, barring repeal (effectively impossible) or a court injunction (more likely, especially if more attorneys general, like Missouri’s Chris Koster, join the pending lawsuit on the matter), we will all be forced to participate in a program that most of us dislike.

If decisions about health care policy were left up to the states, we could have a multitude of systems, which would better reflect the wishes of individual voters and generate more information about which policies work best. Some politicians in Vermont, including the new governor, have floated the idea of creating a single-payer health care system for the state. I think that’s a terrible policy because it removes competition from the system, and along with it any incentive to perform better-quality work for less money, but it is certainly within Vermont’s rights under the Constitution to try it. If the program succeeds, great. If it fails, we can all learn a valuable lesson and it will be far easier to change a state law than federal law.

Of course, the best system would be no system at all: Allow all individuals to decide what kind of health care plan they want. (We could design a health insurance voucher program for those without the means to pay for it on their own. This would allow them to choose among a number of options instead of being forced into a government program.) Government rules are one-size-fits-all by nature, but each person has different needs and wants. We are happiest when we can pursue those goals as we see fit.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article about something that we here at the Show-Me Institute have discussed previously: the idea of unicameral state legislatures. I mentioned this issue briefly in my “Government In Missouri” opus, and Josh wrote a blog post on the subject last year that lead to one of our better comment-section discussions.

Josh’s blog post adds important information that today’s WSJ article is missing. Many state legislatures used to be structured like the federal model, with a House based on population and a Senate based on the number of officials per county, or something like that. After the Supreme Court ruled that all public bodies had to be based on population (except the U.S. Senate), the purpose of having separate bodies declined.

So, how do you reconcile these potentially conflicting goals (which I assume many of you visiting this blog share, at least to some degree)?

1. Greater efficiency in government, as measured by lower costs rather than by greater ease of passing laws.
2. The desire for a wide range of viewpoints in government, i.e., enough elected officials that various viewpoints can be included. (Think Ron Paul and Nancy Pelosi both serving in the same House.)
3. The knowledge that legislative bodies with more members spend more money. This is the “Law of 1/N,” a generally accepted rule of public choice economics.
4. The desire to have a system in which it is difficult, not easy, to pass new laws or spend money.

I think points three and four are the real conflicts. I can imagine moving to a unicameral Missouri General Assembly, which would save significant operating costs and would allow for enough members to represent a variety of views. But, once established, it would need to have strict rules that would restrict the incentives to spend more money, but make it easier for the leadership to pass the laws they want (i.e., no filibuster); or, you could do without those rules and empower individual members in a way that would make passing new laws harder but also increase logrolling opportunities and incentives to spend more. (Passing laws and spending money don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Many laws that infringe on our freedoms don’t cost much, and most of the spending occurs within the budget process that every elected body will have.)

I think you can also achieve these goals if you are willing to sacrifice the second goal — a variety of viewpoints. A very small unicameral legislature with empowered individual officials could reduce the logrolling incentives to spend, and make it hard to pass new laws, but this situation would sacrifice the presence of more divergent views in favor of very large districts. However, if it had a very short session length (meeting for one month a year, say, or even just every other year), you might be able to accomplish these goals and also have a larger number of representatives. As with the number of members, time is an important constraint.

Most of the papers that support the statements above are not available for free online. You can read about them, though, and see the citations in sections three and four of my policy study.

Are people inherently born with the right to an important and well-paying job? How about a decent house? The author of a recent article in the St. Louis Beacon certainly thinks so. He advocates a larger government role in job creation and cites Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights,” or a similar economic bill of rights, as the prism through which the entire economy should be viewed.

FDR’s Second Bill of Rights includes:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

The framers of the Constitution saw the need for a Bill of Rights as a means of protecting the people from an overbearing and oppressive government. They drafted a bill of negative liberties, or protections that define what the government cannot do. They gave no guarantee of housing, food, or employment because they saw the dangers that the notion of positive rights pose as a potential threat to liberty — the idea that, just by being born, people are entitled for others to provide them a comfortable life.

Because the government does not produce any wealth, even the most basic obligation to one individual must be paid for by taking from another. In order to guarantee one person a profitable job, a decent home, or adequate food, wealth must first be taken from those who have rightfully earned it, infringing on their liberty to do as they wish with their own money.

Unfortunate individuals who receive assistance do not receive those benefits because it is their inalienable right, but because it is irresponsible to let them starve or freeze in the streets. No one is entitled to anything that is not their own, no matter how basic of a necessity; however, it is the responsible duty of able individuals to help those in need through their charitable impulses.

Although the end result may be the same, in terms of the needy receiving necessary aid, there is a stark distinction between an unalienable right to something and the responsibility of an able man to care for their fellow man. The difference can be summed up in one word: liberty. The liberty of every individual to do as he pleases with his own money and resources. Although it is repulsive — and, at the very least, irresponsible — for an able individual to let those less fortunate starve, I have no right to infringe upon their liberty to do as they please with their own money.

This is by no means an argument against all government assistance. Obviously, the government cannot allow its citizens to starve or children to live on the streets, homeless. Rather, my objection is with the larger issue of entitlements justified through a notion of positive rights. When fully implemented positive rights lead to socialism, a concept that has been tried and found ineffective at growing economies, raising standards of living, or even helping the very poor. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

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.

One hundred ninety years ago, on July 19, 1820, Missouri’s founders signed the state’s first constitution. It was far from a perfect document — it permitted the abhorrent practice of slavery and prohibited free blacks from moving into the state, among other deficiencies — but the Missouri Constitution of 1820 represents the beginning of self-government and constitutional protections for liberty in this geographical region. As such, it is a critical milestone on the path toward liberty for all Missourians. And, at roughly 9,400 words, it makes for far easier reading than our current 70,000-word monstrosity. I hope you’ll consider looking it over, or — at a bare minimum — that you’ll take a few moments to consider the words of Article XIII, section 16, which provides in part: “That the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and that every person may freely speak, write, and print, on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.”

If you happen to be in the St. Louis area and near a radio (or at a computer pretty much anywhere) today around 11:00 a.m., please consider tuning in to KWMU 90.7 FM, where I’ll be a guest on Don Marsh’s Legal Roundtable. We’re planning to discuss a wide range of topics, including recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the ruling in the NorthSide redevelopment case here in St. Louis, and some other fascinating and timely legal issues.

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.

On Wednesday next week, the Show-Me Institute and the Saint Louis chapter of Liberty on the Rocks will co-host a discussion of the use of cameras in public places as a law enforcement tool. During the past few months, red light cameras and surveillance cameras have been in the news, and we’re excited to have Sen. Jim Lembke and Alderman Antonio French, both of whom have taken strong stances on these issues, speaking at this event!

The discussion will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 9,
at the Show-Me Institute Office at 4512 W. Pine.
Please RSVP either by email, to info@showmeinstitute.org,
or by phone at (314) 454-0647,
or by commenting on this blog post.

Sen. Lembke, who represents part of the city of Saint Louis and Saint Louis County, has spoken out against the use of red light cameras, on the grounds that they entail the presumption of guilt. As he said in a Post-Dispatch article, “[the use of red light cameras] takes liberty away in that there’s no other crime that I know of on the books where I as a citizen am guilty until I prove my innocence.”

Alderman French, who represents the 21st ward, has been campaigning hard to have surveillance cameras set up near high-crime areas in his ward. In the Riverfront Times blog, French explained that the crime is coming from a small group of people, and that surveillance cameras might deter that activity. From the RFT:

“It’s the same group of bad guys doing bad things,” French says. “We’ll advertise the hell out if it, that there’s cameras. One of reason people do things is because they think that can get away with it. If they know somebody is watching it’s very likely they’ll go somewhere else to do drug activity and violence.”

One of the most interesting aspects about the use of both red light and surveillance cameras is that the cameras will likely soon be able to identify, without a doubt, the individual committing a crime. At that point, although camera surveillance seems to be a particularly un-American activity, is there any constitutional argument against it? Do cameras really infringe upon our liberties if they are placed in public places where any police officer could also be placed?

French and Lembke will have the opportunity to answer these questions, and others, on June 9. If you are free, please drop by. The discussion will be informal; it our hope that attendees can ask the elected officials questions directly, and be part of an engaging conversation about the trade-offs between liberty and security.

Liberty on the Rocks is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, social organization that seeks to unite individuals, regardless of political affiliation, who desire liberty. With the goal of facilitating networks, friendships, and intelligent conversation, Liberty on the Rocks seeks to initiate the energy and dialogue necessary to move America from the grassroots up, toward the constitutional principles of freedom used to found this nation.