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Unfortunately, Exeter’s response to our request didn’t live up to the cheery atmosphere of its Facebook account, which has the city’s brightly colored logo of a cartoon tree as its profile picture. Two days after we sent our initial request, city attorney Darwin Groomer responded with this:

“Before the City will comply with your records request, you must tell me who you are and why you believe you need the information. No one has ever heard of you. Your request/demand is denied, until you comply with our demands, and until we deem it necessary to comply.”

Obviously, there are some real problems with Mr. Groomer’s response. I’m not a lawyer, but it was just as clear to me as to the attorney on our checkbook request team that there’s no loophole in the Sunshine Law requiring the government in question to have heard of the person making the request. The law is intended to make government documents accessible to anyone who wants to see them, not just those who city officials decide meet their personal criteria. After we informed the Attorney General’s office of Exeter’s violation, we received a second email in which Mr. Groomer told us that at some point he would provide an estimate. We received the estimate, $15, almost 2 weeks later.

Of all the cities in this year’s municipal checkbook project, Exeter’s initial flat-out refusal to comply unless we met a standard set not by a democratic process, but arbitrarily by a single attorney, showed the least interest in transparency. Even though the city eventually complied with our request at a fair price, I believe Exeter residents deserve better than a government that may decide to invent exceptions to a law that protects citizens’ right to know how city officials make important decisions and spend public money.

The post In Denial: Municipal Checkbook Hall of Shame appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“We don’t have any of our records on electronic format,” the email read. “Everything is done by hand on paper.” I typed up my standard response to this type of email, asking Linneus’s clerk to copy and mail the city’s expense records if she could, and to inform us what she thought the copies, work, and postal service fees would cost so we could make a budget decision before she started working. I assumed that, like several other small towns before, Linneus would send an estimate, I would note it in an ever-expanding spreadsheet, and the case would be left alone until the municipal checkbook team could decide whether we would fund the inquiry.

Linneus’s city clerk, Patricia Brandes, had a different idea. After telling me she didn’t know what the cost for over 100 copies would be at the Linneus courthouse, she sent me one of my favorite emails of the entire municipal checkbook project.

“Maybe I could try taking pictures of them with my phone and email them to you. Would that work?”

That did work. Patricia sent me the cellphone photos later that day, and you can see all 64 of them for yourself in Linneus’s folder on our online drive. Although they may not be as instantly readable as the Excel sheets and PDFs sent in by some of our state’s municipalities, the images still reveal Linneus’s dedication to transparency. Patricia turned in every page of the city’s pen-and-paper operating expense record from July 2021 to July 2022, including amounts paid and names of vendors. What’s more, she was willing to take time to think of a creative, free solution that fulfilled our request, despite the limited resources of a city as small as Linneus. That’s a clear demonstration of the culture of transparency our project hopes to find in all of Missouri’s municipalities, and reflects well on  Linneus’s city government’s commitment to serving the public.

The post Clerk with a Camera: Municipal Checkbook Hall of Fame appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Although policy on scooters hasn’t changed in the last month, it has become clearer that scooters weren’t as much to blame for the Saint Louis crime spike as the Post-Dispatch suggested in the article that inspired my first scooter post. An article from the same source on June 27 quoted several downtown business owners and residents who all agreed that although teenagers on scooters may have been a traffic disturbance, the real danger wasn’t young riders disobeying the rules of the road.

The owners of the downtown Insomnia Cookies location have moved closing time to midnight from 3 a.m. and no longer accept cash because of robberies by armed youths. The owner of NAPPS Natural Hair Salon has seen an increase in crime among adults who come downtown to party. Some residents report seeing children who aren’t yet teenagers carrying guns near apartment buildings. Clearly, teens on scooters aren’t the biggest threat to public safety and commerce downtown. The ban on scooters for the last few weeks has been a band-aid solution to what is often literally a bullet-hole problem.

There are changes that should be seriously considered to improve the scooter situation, such as the rider age and speed limit restrictions suggested by rental companies, which I discussed in my prior post. But a complete ban on scooters seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Safety in downtown Saint Louis is a problem with no simple solutions, but aldermen should start by finding a solution to the scooter issue that doesn’t punish law-abiding residents and visitors instead of scapegoating a useful means of public transit.

The post The Scooter Ban Revisited (Or Not) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

To avoid letting voters decide on this tax increase, Missouri lawmakers included a provision that ostensibly stopped the new law from triggering the Hancock Amendment by providing a mechanism to decrease revenue. As Show-Me Institute Senior Analyst Elias Tsapelas pointed out when the tax increased last year, the refund included in the law is effectively a mail-in-rebate gimmick. The state seemingly hopes to profit off Missourians and people driving through the state who will not go through the hassle of collecting gas station receipts and filing refund claims.

The gas tax is currently set to increase by 2.5 cents each year until 2025, and every time it does, drivers will be eligible for a larger refund. In 2025, Missourians who keep their receipts and file the required paperwork will get 12.5 cents back for every gallon of gas purchased. Tammi Hilton, creator of the No MO Gas Tax app, which digitally stores receipts until forms are due, estimates that a person who bought gas one to two times per week since October could receive a refund of $40 to $45 this year. That number will only increase in the future.

The form to request a refund can be found here. It requires personal and vehicle information along with a detailed list of all gas purchases between October 2021 and June 2022. The form must be postmarked by September 30. But if you didn’t think to take down the name and address of every gas station you’ve visited since last fall, and the exact amount of gas you purchased there, don’t worry – you will have another shot at claiming a refund next year. The tax increases by another 2.5 cents on July 1. If the form, which requires a separate log of transaction details for each fueled vehicle, seems designed to discourage refund seekers from getting their money back, thank the legislature, which enshrined these requirements in the law.

The post A Little Good News on Gas appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post SCOTUS, Scooters, and a Gas Tax Holiday appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the years since Wright’s appointment, Mississippi has reversed its last-in-the-nation status with an impressive increase in the percentage of its fourth graders who can read at grade level. In 2013, only 21 percent of Mississippi fourth graders achieved a score of proficient or above on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), well below the 2013 national average of 34.8 percent. By 2019, Mississippi had improved that by a whopping 11 percentage points, a magnitude of gain that is rare on NAEP. In just six years, Mississippi fourth grade reading scores were equivalent to that year’s national average of 34.6 percent.

While scores have only just hit the average mark, Mississippi’s literacy growth in 2013 to 2019 exceeded that of every other state by seven points. During the same time period, Missouri continued to tread water. Our fourth-grade proficiency rate actually decreased by one point, from 35 to 34 percent. So, what did Mississippi do differently?

In 2013, along with appointing Wright, Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), requiring third graders not reading at grade level by the end of a school year to remain in third grade for intensive reading intervention. This requirement stems from research showing that students learn to read in kindergarten through third grade, then read to learn from fourth grade onward. Because of this, third graders who can’t read proficiently are four times more likely to fail to graduate from high school than those who can. Mississippi’s retention of students with literacy deficiencies gives them another chance to reach this important milestone and ensures that students are fully prepared to hit the ground running in fourth grade.

Missouri has already made some progress on this issue. Governor Parson signed SB 681 this spring, which requires reading intervention for struggling K-3 students. The new law, however, doesn’t require that third graders who demonstrate reading deficiencies be retained, and early research suggests that Mississippi’s strict enforcement of its retention policy may have played a major role in the NAEP score increase. If that proves true, Missouri lawmakers should consider taking a page out of Mississippi’s book by requiring that students read proficiently before starting fourth grade.

The post A Lesson on Early Literacy from the Magnolia State appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Saint Louis Alderman James Page suggested in the Post-Dispatch article that the ban may last about two weeks. City leaders should take that time to ask themselves several questions about how best to manage this unique mode of transportation.

First, how will a scooter ban impact law-abiding residents and visitors? The fleets of young people roaming the streets on weekends may be an issue, but they are far from the only ones in the market for cheap, short-range transportation. With gas prices reaching historic highs and continuing to rise, some city dwellers find scooters a less expensive alternative for short trips. For those who rely on public transportation, scooters also address the “last mile problem,” eliminating walks from transit systems to a destination. Some visitors who choose not to drive in the city rely on scooters as well; previous Post-Dispatch articles include photos of businesspeople scooting to conventions.

Second, if new city­-level regulations are under consideration, will they be the best solution to the youth scooter problem? Lee Foley, Lime’s director of community and government relations for the Midwest, has already put forward several possible restrictions the company could implement on its own units. These include requiring ID to restrict rider age, reducing maximum speeds, and limiting the Group Ride feature that allows one rider to activate multiple scooters. City leaders already plan to discuss solutions, likely including these options, with scooter companies in the weeks ahead.

Saint Louis officials are right in that they cannot continue to allow roaming youths on scooters to monopolize downtown police attention. However, they might want to consider the negative impacts of a long-term ban and the possibility of private solutions before instituting any new and permanent regulations.

The post Is a Scooter Ban the Answer in Saint Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most special taxing districts in Missouri, the Buc-ee’s CID will use public funds for private infrastructure. The new sales tax rate at Buc-ee’s will only benefit the company itself—the tax dollars collected at the gas station will mostly go toward constructing the building, access road, and parking lot. From its first day of operation, corporate welfare will support the business one Springfield resident referred to as “a beaver Walmart.”

Most residents of Springfield will have no say in this matter. The city drew the boundaries of the CID in such a way that all voters are excluded—only the city council got to vote on this. Show-Me Institute Director of Municipal Policy David Stokes called this “tax gerrymandering” in his testimony on this issue. In addition, four out of the five members of the Buc-ee’s CID board are listed as “Owner Representatives,” leaving only one seat for a citizen to provide a public perspective. Even once the CID is in effect, most of Buc-ee’s customers will likely have no idea about the extra hit to their wallets, since the CID Act doesn’t require any posting of added sales taxes.

Years of writing and research from Institute analysts on CIDs prove that proposals such as these are nothing new. Private developers use the public’s money to subsidize corporate interests with almost no public input. This process with special taxing districts has played out countless times before, both in Greene County and around our great state. You can see for yourself just how widespread CIDs are in Missouri by following the link to this interactive map from the Missouri Department of Revenue. Hopefully Springfield, and cities across the state, will soon learn that this isn’t a mistake worth repeating.

The post More of the Same in Springfield’s New Buc-ee’s CID appeared first on Show-Me Institute.