Missouri’s Population Growth Is Still Lagging

Posted on by Elias Tsapelas

The U.S. Census Bureau just released its updated state populations from the 2020 census, and the results were not good for Missouri.

Over the past decade, Missouri’s population grew by only about 160,000 residents, or 2.8 percent. This growth badly trails the national rate of 7.4 percent and every neighboring state except for Illinois. In fact, only eleven states in the country experienced less population growth than Missouri. Missouri dropped one spot in total population rank, from 18th to 19th. This is a significant decline from the state’s high-water mark of 5th at the turn of the 20th century.

Census results are important because they have real-world implications for states. Aside from being a measure of a state’s relative desirability, these population totals determine the apportionment of representation in Congress over the next decade. After losing a seat following the 2010 census, Missouri’s population is still sufficient to maintain eight congressional districts for another ten years, but Illinois was not so lucky. Along with Missouri’s neighbor to the east, six other states will be losing a congressional seat: California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. States gaining these lost seats will be Florida, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas, which gets two additional seats.

While it can be difficult to fully understand what is driving the country’s population shifts, there appears to be a relationship with cumulative tax burdens. The state’s losing seats rank 1st, 8th, 10th, 18th, 23rd, and 26th in total tax burdens. On the other hand, the state’s gaining seats rank 11th, 21st, 32nd, 34th, 43rd, and 47th (Texas). While this isn’t the only factor in migration, people are indisputably moving from high-tax states to states with lower taxes.

State and local governments competing for residents via tax rates is not a new idea, and is something my colleagues have written about for years. Charlies Tiebout originally proposed the idea that people would “vote with their feet” by moving to communities with their preferred level of public services and taxes. If Missouri’s population growth continues to lag much of the country, there’s reason to believe the state’s taxes are contributing to the problem. Over the next decade, it should be a priority for Missouri’s elected officials to bring more people to the Show-Me State, or we could face the same fate as Illinois.

Wednesday, May 12 – Ramesh Ponnuru: The Case for a Conservative Economic Agenda

Posted on by Posted

Conservatives have traditionally favored freeing markets and shrinking government. But new political and economic trends are leading many conservatives to question these old commitments. Join us on Wednesday, May 12 at noon for a talk by Ramesh Ponnuru who will make the case for a new conservative economic agenda.

Register Here 

Questions may be submitted prior to the event by emailing them to [email protected] and during the event via the Q&A feature on your Zoom screen.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a senior editor at National Review, where he has covered national politics and policy for 25 years. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, which syndicates his articles in newspapers across the nation. He is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and he serves as a contributing editor to National Affairs, the quarterly journal of conservative ideas. His articles are frequently published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2015, he was included in the “Politico 50,” Politico’s list of “the thinkers, doers, and dreamers who really matter” in American politics.

In 2014, Ponnuru contributed to and (with Yuval Levin) edited the book Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and A Thriving Middle Class. New York Times columnist David Brooks called the book “the most coherent and compelling policy agenda the American right has produced this century.” Ponnuru was subsequently featured in a New York Times magazine cover story about reform-minded conservatives. In 2013 he was a resident fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. He is a regular speaker on policy, politics, and constitutionalism at the nation’s leading college campuses and law schools. He also appears regularly on television programs about public affairs. He is the author of a book on the sanctity of human life and American politics and of a monograph on Japanese industrial policy. Previously he has been a columnist for Time magazine and WashingtonPost.com. Ponnuru grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and graduated from Princeton University. He now lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and three children.

If at First You Don’t Succeed . . .

Posted on by Corianna Baier

Try, try again, right? Unfortunately, that seems to be the motto developers are using with the Crestwood Plaza mall site. New developers are seeking tax-increment financing (TIF) and other taxpayer assistance to develop the long-vacant site into a subdivision and grocery store. This isn’t the first time that developers have tried to get government assistance to develop this property.

In 2016, $25 million in government assistance (including TIF and special taxing districts) was approved for this site but the developers never moved forward with the plans. It’s not yet clear exactly what developers will be asking for this time, but whatever it is, it’s too much. Crestwood is not a blighted community and even if the property is an eyesore, there is no reason for government to be giving out incentives for this property. There’s already a Schnucks and an Aldi right across the street. Do we really need subsidies to build another grocery store in this area? And is it fair to the existing stores to have the government subsidizing their competition?

Using taxpayer dollars to fund private projects isn’t a good idea. Developers aren’t going to quit asking for these unfair advantages, but lawmakers need to stop giving them out

Jackson County Assessment Facts, Part 3

Posted on by David Stokes

This is the third in a series of posts on assessment practices in Jackson County, Missouri. It comes a mere 8 years after the first two posts. (My time in a different role for the Institute, and then at a different organization, explains this time lapse.) Unfortunately for me, and even more so for many Kansas City taxpayers, 2019 was the most critical and controversial reassessment for Jackson County in years. With home prices rising substantially right now, will those issues in Jackson County repeat?

But first, some history. One might have reasonably guessed that the historic underassessment of property (finally corrected, for better or worse, under orders from the state tax commission [STC] in 2019) was a response to the famous judicial-desegregation case tax increases from Judge Russell Clark. After all, the best way around a big property tax hike is to keep assessments low. The tax rate doesn’t matter much if the assessed value is low enough. But Jackson County assessments were low compared to St. Louis prior to Judge Clark’s order in 1987 that doubled the Kansas City school district tax rates.

In 1985, Jackson County had 44 percent of the population of St. Louis City and St. Louis County, but only 32 percent of the residential assessed valuation. That is a significant difference, especially when you consider that the Case-Schiller real estate value index ranked Kansas City’s housing values higher than St. Louis’s, both then and now. That difference in assessed values grew over time. In 2018 (before the STC ordered redo), Jackson County had 54 percent of the population but only 36 percent of the assessed value of St Louis City and County. What to make of this and how it relates to Judge Clark’s order? I make of it that Jackson County was under-assessed from the start of the current system in 1985, and that the judge’s tax increases gave Jackson County politicians, voters, and taxpayers an incentive to keep those assessments low instead of trying to make them more accurate until more than thirty years later.

That matters for a number of reasons. As Kansas City is within multiple counties, if homes in Jackson County are under-assessed, but similarly valued homes in Platte, Clay, or Cass county are properly assessed, then those taxpayers are paying more property taxes to Kansas City than their Jackson County neighbors based on the same municipal tax rate. That’s just one example. There are many taxing districts that affect your property tax bill; some cross county lines and some don’t.

I don’t think it is far-fetched to believe that something along these lines happened. Judge Clark’s tax increases were outrageous (and some were quickly overturned), and Jackson County officials stated they were going to oppose them at the time. Once the income tax aspect of the order was overturned, keeping assessed valuations low would help deal with the property tax increases.

Fast forward to 2019. Jackson County was compelled (properly) to make its assessments more accurate and property assessments jumped. However, one last holdover from the desegregation case is the Kansas City school district’s exemption from the property tax rollback rules. So, when the assessments increased substantially, the school district had no obligation to lower its tax rate. Final result? Very large tax increases for many people. That is not supposed to happen through reassessment, but it did. This is all a very complicated issue, but there is one change that should be made going forward. It is time to remove the Kansas City school district’s rollback exemption, which is turning assessment increases into a tax windfall for Kansas City schools.

Missourians May Lose Their Homes Because of State-Supported Loans

Posted on by David Stokes

As reported by ProPublica’s Jeremy Kohler and Haru Coryne, more than 100 homes with PACE loans in metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis are at risk of being sold at public auctions after their owners fell at least two years behind on payments, according to a ProPublica analysis. Of those homes, at least 29 are slated for sale at auction this year.

Read the full story from ProPublica 

David Stokes joined The Gary Nolan Show and The Pete Mundo Show to discuss what PACE loans are, the issues with them and why oversight is vital when the government decides to outsource to the private sector.

Should Missouri Mandate Biodiesel?

Posted on by Jakob Puckett

Should the Missouri Legislature require all diesel fuel sold in Missouri be blended with corn and soybean oil? A bill passed by the House and currently in the Senate would require that diesel fuel sold in Missouri consist of 5 percent biodiesel by volume until April 2024 and 10 percent thereafter for seven years. The bill also mandates that half of the biodiesel content come from Missouri-grown and raised crops and animals. Biodiesel is a type of diesel fuel made from renewable, biodegradable materials such as plants, animal fats, and oils.

Supporters of the bill argue that the mandate makes sense because customers ask for biodiesel and it would support local industries. Yet if biodiesel truly is popular, a mandate wouldn’t be needed to convince people to buy it. Supporters also argue that this mandate would be a good way to support Missouri farmers, as it would require half of the mandated biodiesel to be made from Missouri-grown materials. Forcing everyone to buy a certain state industry’s product is not only a heavy-handed way to “support local industry” but also certain to give rise to legal challenges. Has anyone heard of the Commerce Clause?

Detractors of the bill argue that biodiesel is more expensive at the pump than regular diesel and that mandating a more expensive fuel will harm the state’s economy. While prices do fluctuate, the true cost of biodiesel appears to be more expensive than regular diesel, although the price at the pump is trending downward. In 2015, biodiesel was 12 cents per gallon more expensive than regular diesel. In 2019, biodiesel cost roughly the same as diesel in the Midwest and was actually less expensive than diesel when calculating a nationwide average. But this calculation omits the current subsidies that biodiesel producers receive each year of $1 per gallon of biodiesel produced. Without these subsidies, that extra dollar will show up in the price at the pump.

The prudent course of action is to let the market work. If biodiesel is truly popular and cheaper than regular diesel, a mandate is not necessary. A mandate, particularly as this one is drafted, amounts to little more than a handout to certain farmers at the expense of anyone who buys diesel fuel.

Tides Turning Against TIF?

Posted on by Elias Tsapelas

Public support is growing for efforts to protect local funding from bad tax-increment financing (TIF) deals, but will the elected officials of Boonville listen?

In the April 6th election, voters in the Boonville R-1 School District approved Proposition 2. Proposition 2 allows the district to borrow $4 million to repair and improve the area’s schools; it passed by a more than 50-point margin. The overwhelming support for the proposal serves as a reminder of how important the Boonville community views sufficient funding for public schools. But if so many residents of the district believe schools deserve millions in new funding, why would the city’s elected officials consider using TIF to divert future tax dollars away from schools and into the pockets of a private developer?

Cities across Missouri are finally catching on to how bad of a deal TIFs can be for local schools. In fact, the Boonville R-1 Board of Education recently joined the ranks of the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts by formally opposing the use of TIF.

The reasoning behind the school’s opposition is simple: When a home is built within a TIF district, the families that live there will pay the same property (real estate) taxes as everyone else in the community, but instead of their tax dollars funding schools as they normally would, some of those funds go to the developer. In effect, this means that children could be attending public schools without the necessary funding.

The support for protecting local taxing districts (schools, public health, etc.) has become so widespread that the issue is finally receiving attention in Jefferson City. Over the past few weeks, Missouri’s legislature has moved closer to passing much-needed reforms to the state’s TIF laws. The bill being considered, SB 22, would make it harder to unnecessarily use TIF to the detriment of local taxing districts, and would represent a significant improvement for all of Missouri.

While we’re still waiting to see the final TIF proposal for Boonville and whether SB 22 gains final passage, it’s easy to see which way the winds are blowing. It’s time for Boonville’s elected officials to protect local funding for the Boonville R-1 School District by saying no to TIF.

SMI Podcast: What We Got Wrong About School Reopenings with Andy Smarick

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

Andy Smarick joins the podcast to discuss his recent piece in The Dispatch titled What the Narrative on School Reopenings Has Missed.

Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where his work focuses on education, civil society, and the principles of American conservatism.

He currently serves as the chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission and was previously the president of the Maryland State Board of Education.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Is it Time to Merge Two St. Louis County Police Departments?

Posted on by David Stokes
David Stokes

On Tuesday, April 27, David Stokes, Director of Municipal Policy for the Show-Me Institute, joined The Mcgraw Show on The Big 550 KTRS  to discuss push back from a local community on merging police departments with another municipality and provide some thoughts on the current state of the St. Louis County Auditor’s Office.

LISTEN HERE:

 

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