Lee Habeeb is CEO and founder of American Private Radio and host of Our American Stories.
Download the Our American Stories podcast on Itunes, Google Play, Spotfiy or wherever you find your podcasts and visit ouramericanstories.com to find an affiliate station near you.
And, Join us on Thursday, March 18 for a special virtual event with Lee Habeeb.
All drivers are familiar with Missouri’s state fuel tax, which raises money for road maintenance.
But what many Missourians don’t know (and even many local leaders) is that cities and counties can implement their own fuel taxes to raise money for local roads. Seven cities in Missouri currently use local fuel taxes to supplement what they receive from their distribution of the state fuel tax (cities get about 16 percent of state fuel tax revenue). These taxes raise up to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and the cost rarely exceeds 1 cent per gallon for drivers.
Here are Missouri’s seven cities with local fuel taxes:
Why should more Missouri localities consider local fuel taxes? The most common method of increasing local road funding is sales taxes levied through transportation development districts. But funding roads through sales taxes is fundamentally unfair—people who use the roads should pay for them. People who drive on roads without paying for their upkeep also have no incentive to reduce their driving, resulting in extra pollution, traffic, and road deterioration.
As my colleague David Stokes and I wrote recently, local fuel taxes do a better job of connecting the act of driving with paying for road upkeep. Buying a gallon of gasoline is more associated with driving—and thus how much damage a car does to the road to necessitate its upkeep—than buying a TV or a loaf of bread. Moreover, the money raised by local fuel taxes is constitutionally required to be spent maintaining local roads.
Local fuel taxes are a secret weapon that cities and counties have for adequately funding their roads. They allow municipalities to raise money for local road maintenance responsibly with little room for playing fast and loose with the money.
Join us on Thursday, March 18 for a special virtual event with Lee Habeeb.
Lee Habeeb is CEO and founder of American Private Radio and host of Our American Stories.
Download the Our American Stories podcast on Itunes, Google Play, Spotfiy or wherever you find your podcasts and visit ouramericanstories.com to find an affiliate station near you.
Lee Habeeb got his start in radio co-creating The Laura Ingraham Show, which launched in 2001. By 2007, it was the #1 show in America in its time slot. He moved to Salem Media Group, where he serves as VP of Content, overseeing shows hosted by some of conservativism’s greats: Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, and Eric Metaxas. Habeeb also writes a weekly column at Newsweek. A University of Virginia Law School graduate, he lives in Oxford, MS with his wife Valerie and daughter Reagan.
Months ago, I wrote about the new St. Louis City cap on delivery fees that food delivery services can charge restaurants in the city. I pointed out the clear government overreach and interference in the market and how “this bill could ultimately hurt consumers, delivery drivers, and restaurants in St. Louis City.”
Well, the cap was enacted and consumers can already see the difference it’s making. I was considering an order on DoorDash and I noticed a new fee included during checkout. As shown below, I saw a “Regulatory Response Fee” included with the other taxes and fees.
When I clicked on the symbol for more information, the below image appeared:
And there it is. The new fee on customers in St. Louis City is a direct response to the regulatory cap that the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed.
I don’t revel in this “I told you so” moment. Lawmakers thought they were protecting small businesses, but instead they are hurting consumers by increasing the prices of delivery services. If consumers respond to this by using delivery services less, the small businesses this move was designed to protect will be the ones that end up getting hurt.
Previous fees were mutually agreed upon in the market and neither party was forced to partner with the other. Consumers may have paid a portion of the higher fees before the cap, but they are certainly paying this fee now. This $1 fee may not be budget-breaking, but consumers are only subject to it because lawmakers interfered. Lawmakers should let the market work to avoid unintended though predictable consequences.
On this episode of the podcast, Howard Wall joins Susan Pendergrass. Dr. Wall directs the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise and is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Economics and the Environment. He is also a Professor of Economics in Plaster School of Business & Entrepreneurship at Lindenwood University and a research fellow at the Show-Me Institute.
They discuss the recent GameStop stock controversy, the idea of a $15 federal minimum wage and more.
I don’t know what the City of Chesterfield is thinking by rejecting the recent community improvement district (CID) proposal for the Wildhorse Village Development. Look, people, when Ruth’s Chris Steak House can’t get a tax subsidy, something is deeply wrong with America. Without a tax subsidy, the steak there might get expensive . . .
Joking aside, the developer of Wildhorse Village (which includes Ruth’s Chris) is seriously angry that he did not get his tax subsidy from the Chesterfield City Council. That is how bad Missouri has become with the constant corporate welfare giveaways. The developer is actually mad that elected officials did not give him other people’s tax dollars to help him make more money from his development. He assumed (and past history in our area justifies his assumption, unfortunately) that those tax dollars were his for the taking. All he had to do was fill out some forms, make the required official statements, and Chesterfield would give him his tax subsidy.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the finance meeting. The city council finance subcommittee voted the subsidy down. Four votes against, zero in favor. As one councilmember said:
We don’t need to subsidize developers to come into Chesterfield and build. It’s some of the most desirable real estate with the best demographics in the area. We don’t need to bribe people to come in.
He is completely right about this. The same thing can be said about many other parts of the state where tax incentives and subsidies are ubiquitous. In the Central West End of St. Louis, for example, the tax incentives are so unnecessary that they are simply capitalized into a higher price for the property since it is just a given that the new owner will get tax subsidies. More money for the entity that makes the sale, less money for public services, all caused by an unnecessary government market distortion in the first place (the final part is the key point here).
There are very few cities in Missouri that typically take a hard look a tax subsidy requests. Most say yes to the proposals faster than a contestant on The Bachelorette. There are rumors the developers will come back and request money again—hopefully Chesterfield sticks to its gun here. If Chesterfield were to take the lead in turning down at least some of these requests, that would be a big step forward for municipal policy in Missouri.
In his recent State of the State address, the governor mentioned the need to keep Missouri’s roads in good shape. Show-Me Institute analysts have written about ways to generate adequate funding for quality roads, such as highway tolling or raising the fuel tax.
These policies have been implemented successfully in many states, but in this post I’ll address some objections to these policies and see if they hold water.
Objection: We shouldn’t toll commercial trucks because the trucking companies will pass those costs along to the people buying their products.
Part of the price of a product is the cost it takes to transport the product somewhere. If trucks carrying products are causing more damage than they’re paying to repair, then underpaying for the products’ transport is in effect subsidizing it. Any tolling costs passed on to customers would be less overcharging for a product and more reflecting its true price.
Objection: Tolling is unfair to local communities near interstates that depend on highway traffic for their customers.
As my colleague Graham Renz has said before, this is another way of saying that communities near toll roads will not be subsidized. Not paying the true cost of driving means that some businesses benefit from more drivers due to an artificially low cost of driving.
Tolling may mean that traffic on these routes decreases, but adequately charging drivers for the damage they do to the roads can hardly be described as unfair. Moreover, the current situation of Missourians who do not live near interstates subsidizing the travel that benefits communities near interstates hardly seems like a fair proposition.
Ultimately, while these two objections may initially seem like they raise serious problems for tolling proposals, they only tell half the story. The benefits of tolling still outweigh the costs, so tolling should be on the table as an option for funding road maintenance needs.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri took important steps in 2020 to increase the supply of health care across the state. Reforms include removing licensing barriers that prevented out-of-state licensed professionals of all kinds, and health care professionals in particular, from readily providing services to Missourians and the relaxation of the state’s telemedicine and scope-of-practice regulations.
During this virtual town hall, you will hear from a panel of experts on why these supply-boosting measures should be made permanent in 2021, and how they could be the starting point for other necessary reforms. Join us on Thursday, February 25 at 11:00 AM CT.
Patrick Ishmael– Director of Government Accountability at the Show-Me Institute
Rea S. Hederman Jr. – Executive Director of the Economic Research Center and Vice President of Policy at The Buckeye Institute
Naomi Lopez – Director of Healthcare Policy for the Goldwater Institute
Josh Archambault – Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability
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.
This event is sponsored by Show-Me Institute and Show-Me Opportunity
There are several occupational licensing bills being considered in the legislature right now. In general, occupational licensing is red tape that makes it harder for workers to get jobs and unnecessarily involves the government in the market. Putting aside the specifics of the legislation for now, there are some basic points on occupational licensing that policymakers should keep in mind.
Ultimately, occupational licensing increases costs to consumers, limits competition, and hinders Missouri’s economy. Missouri has lost thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in output due to licensing requirements. During pandemic-related shutdowns, it is especially important to encourage entrepreneurship and remove regulatory barriers to work. Last year, Missouri took a huge step forward by allowing occupational licensing reciprocity and temporarily waiving some occupational licensing requirements. Let’s make sure that policymakers continue to move Missouri in the right direction.
