According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Richmond Heights has been entertaining proposals since 2003. Things looked great back in 2006, when the Richmond Heights City Council found a serious suitor in Michelson Commercial Realty and Development. But three years later, Michelson still could not get the financing together even with Richmond Heights officials pledging $46.2 million in TIF. The project was scrapped and Michelson pulled out of the 86 contracts it had signed to purchase all the homes and businesses in the affected area. All told, four separate development plan proposals just like Michelson’s failed.

The (eternally) pending developments have sent the neighborhood into a state of disrepair. Richmond Heights City Manager Amy Hamilton told the Post-Dispatch prior to the City Council’s latest vote that more than 35 properties are in “poor or severely deteriorated condition, and the majority of these properties are owned by land speculators.” Hamilton blames speculators and absentee landlords for the degradation, but more likely, Hadley Township property owners are responding to the incentives the city has offered. Who would really invest significant time and money in home improvements while the city unsuccessfully plots deal after deal to snatch up their properties?

And what do Richmond Heights taxpayers get for all their trouble? With Menards, they get yet another big-box home improvement store on South Hanley Road. If the market really drives Menards, Lowe’s, and Home Depot to locate within a half mile of each other, that is great. But it should not be government’s role to plan the local economy. More importantly, however, taxpayers get to finance $19 million of Menards’ $56.1 million development and $26.6 million of Pace’s $125 million development. (Bonus!)

This really is TIF at its worst.

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Read David’s testimony that was presented to the Saint Louis County TIF Commission.

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The Commission voted 7-4 against using tax incentives to finance the development, but despite the commission’s opposition, we may very well see a Walmart Superstore in Ellisville. That is because, in this case, the Commission’s recommendation has little practical effect. The Ellisville City Council still has final say and the negative recommendation’s only effect is to require a supermajority vote of the City Council (five of seven members), whereas a positive recommendation would have required just a simple majority (four of seven).

The Ellisville situation exemplifies just how broken the TIF system is in Saint Louis County. Despite overwhelming opposition from the County (all seven negative votes came from County representatives), Ellisville could still easily get its TIF. This approval process favors point-of-sale cities and plays down the importance of the County TIF Commission’s decision.

The Missouri Legislature needs to revisit the TIF approval process in Saint Louis County. In order for a TIF to pass, the local city government and the county commission should each have to approve the project, independent of one another. Independent approval requirements would encourage collaboration between cities and the county, in contrast to the current adversarial process that threatens the sales tax pool and encourages point-of-sale cities to abuse eminent domain.

Charles Pavlack, the Commission chairman and a former Ellisville City Council member, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch: “For us to say we’ll take the moral high ground and make a brave stand to turn down TIF, when others have used the same method to take our business, doesn’t make sense.” But this should not be about Ellisville versus Saint Louis County. After all, there is overwhelming evidence that an Ellisville TIF is bad for everyone, including Ellisville. According to the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, TIF creates one retail job for every $370,000 in taxpayer subsidies. As David Stokes testified last night: “That is not a road to growth — it is a road to poverty.”

The post The City of Ellisville Versus the Saint Louis County TIF Commission appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. In the past 10 years, the Parkway School District in Saint Louis County, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated five teachers. Perhaps all the teachers at Parkway are above average. More likely, poor-performing teachers continue to teach Parkway students.

Teachers can make all the difference in a child’s education. This is precisely why we should reward our best teachers while encouraging teachers with a track record of failure to find another job. The only way to do this is to reform Missouri’s existing teacher tenure law.

The Missouri Legislature is considering a bill that would end teacher tenure and help districts and school boards implement performance-based evaluation systems.

If the bill passes, teachers could be fired for doing a bad job. For most of us, consistently doing bad work means losing our job. Not so for teachers. Current laws state that a tenured teacher can be fired only for egregious conduct, such as willful or persistent violations of the school laws, excessive or unreasonable absences, and felony convictions. Even then, a severely truant (or criminal) teacher receives generous procedural protections. Teacher tenure reform would allow schools to dismiss teachers for unsatisfactory performance.

The reform bill would eliminate “permanent” teachers and indefinite contracts. Most of us operate with at-will employment. Again, not so for teachers. Currently, a teacher who survives a five-year probationary period becomes “permanent personnel” with an indefinite contract. Even if a district reduces staff due to budgetary constraints, school boards must thin the ranks on a last-in-first-out basis. The most senior teachers stay on the job regardless of their teaching ability.

The proposed legislation gives school administrators more discretion to retain the best teachers. Schools could contract directly with teachers for up to four years, but the board would retain the power to terminate a multi-year contract if the teacher scores poorly on evaluations. The last-in-first-out policy would be eliminated and school boards would be required to base staffing decisions on teacher performance.

Teacher tenure reform would ensure that teachers get paid for what they do, not how long they have done it. School districts currently are prohibited from basing salaries on performance-related criteria. Instead, districts pay their teachers based on length of service and level of education. The proposed bill removes this prohibition and requires school boards to consider teacher evaluations when making decisions related to pay, retention, promotion, and dismissal.

Enacting a performance-based scheme would be a big change for Missouri school districts. But the bill addresses implementation as well as substance. It requires districts to create a performance evaluation system, and mandates that certain criteria be considered in teacher evaluations, while allowing school boards and administrators to tailor the system to fit their own needs.

Not surprisingly, teachers’ unions have criticized tenure reform. Missouri National Education Association President Chris Guinther told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “we’ve got to be given the protection that we need to give those kids the quality education that they need.” Teachers do not need protection. They need accountability. A bad teacher can teach bad classes for years. Year after year, students cycle through this teacher’s classroom, only to receive an inadequate education. Wouldn’t these students have a better education if teachers were held accountable?

Teachers do not have a right to their jobs. The Missouri Constitution gives students the right to a public education, and they should have good teachers.

Audrey Spalding is a policy analyst and Ben Barnes is an intern at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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Herein lies the problem: students want to transfer, and have the right to transfer; but accredited schools cannot accommodate all of them. The “Passport Scholarship Program,” which Missouri Rep. Scott Dieckhaus (R-109) and Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham (R-7) introduced in their respective houses, addresses at least part of this conflict. The program promotes school choice in the purest form, and could ease the burden that Turner created for suburban schools in the Saint Louis and Kansas City areas.

Under the Scholarship Program, private Missouri taxpayers would receive a tax credit for donating money to any “educational assistance organization,” which must be private, non-profit, charitable organizations. The educational assistance organizations would administer the donations, and distribute money to eligible students in the form of tuition scholarships. Any student residing in an unaccredited district could then apply for a scholarship to attend any qualifying private school in Missouri.

The Passport Scholarship Program has great potential for success in Missouri because it is a market-orientated solution that limits state involvement. Individual taxpayers personally decide whether to donate,  and the educational assistance organizations administer the funds privately. The government has only a minor oversight role in the process. And students could apply the funds to any private school, religious or not, because the Blaine amendment does not affect private scholarships. Any student receiving a scholarship could actually go to the school of his or her choice. So if our goal is school choice — and it should be — the Passport Scholarship Program is a step in the right direction for students stuck in failing schools.

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1. Teachers could be fired for doing a bad job.

Most of us live in a world where doing consistently bad work means you lose your job.

Not so for teachers.

Under the current laws, a tenured teacher can be fired only for egregious conduct, such as willful or persistent violations of the school laws, excessive or unreasonable absences, and felony convictions. Even then, a severely truant teacher would get generous procedural protections from termination: a majority of the school board must vote to fire the teacher, and the teacher can appeal the board’s decision through an administrative hearing.

If this bill passes, boards could not only fire convicted felons, but they could also dismiss teachers for unsatisfactory performance.

2. No more indefinite contracts for teachers.

Most of us also have to live with the reality of at-will employment.

Again, not so for teachers.

Under the current laws, a teacher who survives a five-year probationary period becomes “permanent personnel” with an indefinite contract to teach.

The proposed bill, on the other hand, gives school administrators more discretion to retain teachers they actually want teaching in their schools. Schools could contract directly with teachers for up to four years; and what’s more, the board would retain the power to terminate a multi-year contract if the teacher scored poorly on evaluations.

3. Teachers will get paid for what they do, not how long they have done it.

That is right, teachers do not live with the reality of performance-based pay either.

Under the current laws, school districts are prohibited from basing salaries on performance-related criteria. Instead, districts pay their teachers based on length of service and level of education. The proposed bill removes this prohibition and requires school boards to consider teacher evaluations when making decisions related to pay, retention, promotion, and dismissal.

Not surprisingly, the unions started speaking out against HB 1526 before it was even proposed. Missouri National Education Association President Chris Guinther told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week: “we’ve got to be given the protection that we need to give those kids the quality education that they need.” Wouldn’t our kids be getting a better education if school boards could dismiss failing teachers more easily, like this bill would allow? The problem with the union perspective is that it focuses on teachers, not on kids. Tenure is not about having due process, as Susan McClintic, president of the Columbia Missouri National Education Association, told the Columbia Missourian last week. On the contrary. Teachers do not have a right to their jobs; it is the students who have a right to a public education, and they should have good teachers to boot.

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Since January 2009, accidents increased at 11 of 17 monitored intersections, and fatal crashes increased at 13 of those locations. Kansas City is not the first to see this happen with its red light camera program. The Star interviewed University of Illinois at Chicago Assistant Professor Rajiv Shah, who studied a red light camera program in Chicago:

“I’d say [Kansas City’s results are] very consistent with what cities across America have found . . . There’s really not a hard connection between reducing accidents and red-light cameras.”

The results of this study should have red light camera proponents reevaluating their positions. As we have pointed out before, red light cameras have many problems: they invade privacy and create a constitutionally suspect presumption of guilt. They are also prone to mistake. Brenda Talent, executive director of the Show-Me Institute, was fined for a violation she did not commit in Kansas City last year, and 1,000 lucky drivers were falsely accused of running red lights in Arnold, Mo., just two weeks ago.

Not surprisingly, American Traffic Solutions, the company that runs the program, publicly criticized the police department’s findings. ATS identified weather patterns, impaired drivers, and cell phone usage as the cause for increased wrecks. In other words, ATS identified anything but the red light cameras, which the company receives $1.6 million a year to operate, as the culprit for the increased crashes.

Despite the police study, it is likely that camera proponents will not rest. The Star editorial focused on a study by city engineers that found a decrease in total violations at monitored intersections. The Star praised the decrease in violations and declared that “red light cameras are working in Kansas City.” Fewer people running red lights, maybe; but if more accidents are occurring at monitored intersections, it is a stretch to conclude that red light cameras improve safety just because total violations have dropped.

Much to the dismay of proponents like the Star, the police study just confirmed what we already knew. Red light cameras are not about public safety, they are about generating revenue through traffic enforcement. The program has been very lucrative in Kansas City. The police study reports that officers have written nearly 200,000 tickets at $100 per ticket — adding $20 million to the city coffers.

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