Page 191 – Show-Me Institute

Incentives Will Never End Unless City Leaders Say No

Posted on October 23, 2019January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

Waddell & Reed was just granted $62 million in state subsidies, but apparently that is not enough; now they want more. Kevin Hardy at The Kansas City Star reports:

The company is seeking a major property tax abatement to move into a new office tower in downtown Kansas City, according to economic development documents posted online . . . The agenda for Wednesday’s meeting of the Enhanced Enterprise Zone Board, which is under the umbrella of the Kansas City Economic Development Corporation, (EDC) shows Waddell & Reed plans to occupy a build-to-suit high-rise that will “add to the skyline in Kansas City.” The company plans to make a nearly $90 million capital investment, which includes about $80 million in lease and improvement costs and about $10 million in personal property investment.

Hardy’s piece goes on to detail the other subsidies sought by developers for downtown office space, such as the awful Strata proposal. The election of a supposedly incentive-skeptic mayor has not slowed down the demand for public money for private development. At a recent meeting of the Missouri Economic Development Financing Association, it was made clear that despite all the research showing incentives don’t deliver as promised and are viewed negatively by taxpayers, the organization sees no need to seek any changes or reforms.

City leaders need to do more than complain about incentives or say they “don’t pass the smell test.” They need to say no. Repeatedly. Only then will developers get the message.

Overregulated Food Trucks

Posted on October 23, 2019January 13, 2026 by Corianna Baier

Food from a truck just tastes better, right? Grabbing a treat and enjoying the weather can make for a great day. It’s too bad that St. Louis food trucks continue to be bogged down with operating restrictions.

Several years ago, Show-Me Institute’s Patrick Ishmael discussed the overregulation of food trucks, with emphasis on the then-new food truck map that outlines the numerous no-park zones for food trucks within the Downtown Vending District. So, years later, have we seen food trucks gain substantial freedoms in the market?

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, no.

The map mentioned above is still in effect and places a large barrier between food trucks and success in the market. As the map shows, food trucks cannot set up within 200 feet of a restaurant or in the stadium or conference center areas. Though this map may be a little outdated in terms of restaurant placement, the rules are still in place and still very restrictive. These regulations make large parts of the “vending district” off-limits to food trucks. According to the city’s vending rules and regulations, trucks must stop serving by 11 p.m., cutting off access to late-night crowds after a concert or hockey game.

St. Louis ranked 12^th out of 20 cities in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s report on regulatory burdens for opening and operating food trucks in 2017. Much of this low ranking is attributed to what Ishmael pointed to years ago: operational limitations.

Food trucks are still bogged down with regulatory restrictions that make it much harder to succeed. If we want more success stories like Balkan Treat Box, the popular food truck that grew into an award-winning brick-and-mortar hotspot, we need to give food trucks the freedom to meet our ever-increasing demand for delicious, on-the-go food.

Missouri in the Middle on Regulations

Posted on October 22, 2019January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

According to a dataset from a new project released by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Missouri is ranked 22^nd in regulatory restrictions overall.

The Mercatus project to analyze state-level regulation is a continuation of the state-level analysis on regulations conducted in Missouri for the No Mo Red Tape campaign initiated under Gov. Greitens. Mercatus says of the effort,

Mercatus researchers Patrick McLaughlin and Oliver Sherouse created QuantGov, an open-source policy analytics platform designed to help create greater understanding and analysis of the breadth of government actions. The platform allows researchers to quickly and effectively examine bodies of text using some of the latest advances from data science, such as machine-learning and other artificial intelligence technology.

The top-regulated industries in Missouri are utilities followed by ambulatory health care and chemical manufacturing. Only three other states bordering Missouri have utility regulation in their top ten, and they are much further down on the list (Kentucky 7^th, Tennessee 7^th, Iowa 8^th). It would be interesting to learn why Missouri regulated utilities so much more than our neighbors and the degree to which that might be driving up utility rates in Missouri.

While this study does not explicitly make the link, it is generally understood that regulation drives up cost. The difficult work is to determine which regulations are necessary and what costs are reasonable. Researchers and policymakers looking for more efficient ways to regulate may find this data useful.

Fight for 15 . . . Hours Per Week?

Posted on October 22, 2019January 13, 2026 by Jakob Puckett

Activists have spent years trying to persuade lawmakers to raise the minimum wage to $15. In a possible effort to get ahead of the curve, the retail giant Target decided to voluntarily raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Who could object to that?

It turns out, Target workers themselves.

After Target raised its employees’ wages, Target then proceeded to cut their hours. A CNN story highlighted the workers’ frustration.

“I got that dollar raise but I’m getting $200 less in my paycheck. I have no idea how I’m going to pay for rent or buy food,” one worker commented.

Workers didn’t just lose hours—some lost benefits. Target employees must average 30 hours per week to qualify for health insurance benefits. But the reduction in hours worked pushed some employees below 30 hours, costing them health care benefits. The negative impact of such a policy was predictable.

The vast majority of people earning the minimum wage are not trying to live solely on that wage. The typical minimum wage worker is someone who is under 25, still in college, working part time, and living in a family well above poverty. According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, only 13 percent of households with someone earning between $7.25 and $12 per hour were in poverty.

Raising the minimum wage benefits some lucky teenagers at the expense of the working poor. Show-Me Institute analysts have discussed this problem many times before, most recently regarding Missouri’s decision to raise the state’s minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2023.

Perhaps Target’s situation will help people see that the negative consequences of minimum wage increases are more than theoretical. Policies targeted specifically at the desired recipients, like the earned-income tax credit, are more effective at incentivizing hard work than a one-size-fits-all policy.

If we want to help the working poor, raising the minimum wage is simply not the way to do it.

More Hotels; Fewer Taxes

Posted on October 21, 2019January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

Despite the fact that Kansas City just held an election in which the city’s profligate use of tax subsidies played a major role, the city council is at it again. This time, the council is using its public borrowing power to help developers avoid the taxes that all other Kansas Citians are expected to pay. To add insult to injury, the goal is to build something Kansas City may already have too much of: hotels.

First, let’s make clear that the hotel market in Kansas City is already crowded. The Kansas City Star made this point just a few months ago, and it’s something developers themselves admit. It’s so bad that the city’s tourism board is asking for more public funding to help sell rooms to address the fear that too many hotels will reduce hotel rates (as hotels compete for guests). In short, problems created by subsidizing hotel construction resulting in foregone tax revenue are to be solved by directing even more of the remaining tax dollars toward subsidizing hotel sales departments. If you think this is crazy, it gets worse.

Despite all this, some Kansas City Councilmembers want to offer more tax breaks to build two hotels near Country Club Plaza. (Regarding a crowded hotel market, the immediate area around the plaza area is already served by 12 hotels.) Specifically, the plan this time around is to have taxpayers underwrite $80 million in bond debt. With Chapter 100 bonds, the property taxes may end up being abated as long as the bonds are outstanding. This means that for up to 20 years, there may be no property taxes paid on the projects—taxes that might otherwise be used for police, public safety, and roads.

Twenty years is a long time to abate property taxes. Back in 2004, the council passed an ordinance in which it agreed, “Bonds will be issued for a term not to exceed 10 years. Bonds issued for personal property shall have a term limited to the life of the personal property, but not to exceed 10 years.” This new effort, however, just waives that 10-year limit. Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Mayor Quinton Lucas told KCTV5 News,

There is no money coming from taxpayer sources to directly fund this. The question on the bond obligation is to what extent is the city pledging its full faith in credit in connection with the lending?

The first claim is misleading at the very least. The project doesn’t use existing taxpayer sources, but it may abate or redirect the taxes that would have been paid but for this ordinance. It’s a distinction without a difference. As for the second part, that is a whole other consideration: If the project goes belly up and no taxes are being redirected to bond payments, will bondholders come after the City of Kansas City, the folks who issued the bonds? This is not an easily resolved question.

If hoteliers want to invest their own resources in Kansas City—and themselves reap the rewards—that is welcome. If they agree with VisitKC that the market is already saturated and choose not to invest, that is understandable. But taxpayers should not be asked to go without so that one more developer, one more well-heeled lobbyist or one more connected attorney can earn a few bucks selling Kansas City what we may already have too much of.

Meet the New Report Card, Same as the Old Report Card

Posted on October 18, 2019January 13, 2026 by Susan Pendergrass

I’m a researcher. When it comes to data I like digging in, and I like unpacking. So, when I heard that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) was releasing the latest year of test scores, I was super excited. But even more exciting was that DESE had redesigned how the data would be presented to parents. This was something I’ve complained about a ton and it was finally getting fixed! But like the kid who’s hoping for a pony on Christmas morning, I should have known better.

The data are fine and I have a bunch of enormous new spreadsheets to start analyzing. The presentation of the data, on the other hand, was the big letdown.

For example, if you were to look at the new report card for a school or district, you would see the following types of graphs:

The Commissioner of Education said that she hopes people use these graphs to ask questions. Well I certainly have a few. I would like to know—are students getting a year’s worth of growth in a year? This particular district is “On Track,” others are “Floor,” and the rest are “Exceeding.” I’m guessing that “Floor” is below average growth of all schools in the state, “On Track” is average growth, and “Exceeding” is above average growth. Why not just say that? Why use words like “Floor” when what you mean is below average?

Here’s another question that most folks are interested in—what percentage of students can read (called English language arts, or ELA, here) or do math on grade level? The set of colored bars that would seemingly reveal this information say 331.9 for ELA and 324.4 for math. What does that mean? The words that go with these bars are “Floor,” “Approaching,” “On Track,” and “Target.” Is “Target” the same as “Exceeding”? Why don’t these reports just show the percentage of students who scored Proficient or above?

Finally, is the district’s performance getting better or worse? This district scored -1.9 in ELA and -1.1 in math. I’m guessing that not’s good, since they’re on the orange side, but what do those numbers actually mean?

Collecting and reporting data is one of DESE’s main jobs. They’re supposed to have gotten parent input in designing school and district report cards that are parent friendly. These are not even research friendly. Why do states like Delaware, Illinois, and Michigan have terrific school and district report cards while we have these? When will DESE step up?

Fighting Blight Can Help Address Crime

Posted on October 17, 2019January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

A new article from the Manhattan Institute details research that indicates addressing blight can have a positive impact on crime. While this is not a surprise—the broken windows theory has been around for decades—it shows concrete results for programs in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

The Philadelphia LandCare (PLC) program was started when residents of a particularly bad-off neighborhood team up with the state horticultural society to clean up vacant and trashy lots. The article reveals:

PLC is simple and was designed to be applied across the neighborhood. Trash and debris are removed from a vacant lot. The land is then graded, and grass and a few trees are planted. A low wooden post-and-rail fence is installed with openings to permit residents access to the newly greened spaces. The fence prevents illegal dumping of garbage and construction debris; it is also a visual sign that someone is maintaining the property. The result is a small “pocket park.” The rehabilitation of such lots takes less than a week to clean and green. The lots are maintained through twice-monthly cleaning, weeding, and mowing during the growing season (April through October). The cost to clean and green a typical lot is roughly $1,000–$1,300, along with $150 per year to stabilize the lot through biweekly cleaning and mowing.

The maintenance costs are higher in Missouri. St. Louis City’s Forestry Division (yes, St. Louis has a Forestry Division!) bills $108 per property per time they mow, and try to visit each property (there are 11,000) only 3 or 4 times each year instead of biweekly. As for Kansas City, a few weeks of calls and emails to various city departments and individuals have yielded no results on the costs of maintenance.

Kansas City is slowly making good on its promise to demolish dangerous structures, an important part of blight remediation. Addressing blight requires more. Churches, community groups, and charities of all kinds need to work together to address blight just like the people of Philadelphia. We clearly cannot expect government to do it for us.

Stop Debating School Choice. Give Us Options Now!

Posted on October 17, 2019January 13, 2026 by James V. Shuls

At a recent legislative forum hosted in Boone County by the Missouri State Teachers Association, state lawmakers debated the merits of charter schools (h/t Columbia Missourian). Some were in favor of expanding charter schools; others were opposed. Currently, Missouri only has charter schools in St. Louis and Kansas City. The Show-Me State limits the expansion outside of these cities and currently has no private school scholarship program.

We have been debating the issue of school choice in Missouri for more than 20 years now and it doesn’t look like our lawmakers are any closer to reaching a consensus. Meanwhile, a revolution has taken place in Florida. Ron Matus has documented this change in his terrific piece, “Miami’s Choice Tsunami,” appearing in the winter edition of Education Next.

Matus explains:

Today, 45 percent of Florida students in K-12 attend something other than their assigned schools. Charter schools are part of the mix. So are private schools that can be accessed with choice scholarships. So is an ever-growing array of district options.

This wave didn’t just happen.

In 1996, the Florida Legislature passed a law allowing creation of charter schools. The first opened that fall in Miami’s Liberty City community. Two decades later, Florida had 295,814 students in 655 charter schools—and one of the largest charter sectors in America.

In 1997, the Legislature created the Florida Virtual School to ramp up online learning. It started with 77 students and five courses. Today, it serves more than 200,000 students a year.

In 1999, the Legislature created the McKay Scholarship, a state-funded private school voucher for students with disabilities. In 2018-19, it served 30,695 students in 1,525 private schools.

In 2001, the Legislature created the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students. As of June 2019, it was serving 104,091 students in 1,825 private schools. In students and funding, it is the largest private school choice program in the U.S.

The results in Florida speak for themselves. The state is seeing incredible gains in student achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” As the Orlando Sentinel reported, “Something very good is happening in Florida.” Indeed, it is.

In Miami, the focus of Education Next article, the beloved superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, embraced school choice. Matus writes, “Instead of resisting the inevitable forces of choice and customization that are re-shaping public education, Carvalho and Miami-Dade chose to harness them . . . They realized it was too powerful to avoid—and too brimming with opportunity not to embrace.”

It is time for Missourians to stop debating the merits of school choice. Choice is good. Options are good. Competition is good. While we fail to act, innovation is happening elsewhere. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to expand educational opportunities in Missouri.

If You Love it, Let it Go

Posted on October 15, 2019January 13, 2026 by Graham Renz

All good things must come to an end; many misguided policy initiatives and programs must come to an end too.

As some readers will be aware of by now, the 8^th wonder of the world, the Delmar Loop Trolley, is in a financial pickle. The head of the company said that it needs $200,000 by next month to continue operations through the year, and $500,000 more to operate in 2020. One could call this a shocking policy failure, but I think many of us saw this coming. Whether it’s putting together or working within a reasonable budget, finishing a project on time or with appropriate permitting, or coming even remotely close to meeting ridership projections, the trolley leadership has proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted by policymakers or taxpayers.

(You should know that when your plan to boost ridership is to have stand-up comedians ride the rails, your project is absurd.)

But what I do find shocking this time around is the total lack of accountability exhibited by trolley leadership. They claim the trolley’s failure should be chalked up to delays in getting additional trolley cars on the tracks. So, the firm renovating the trolley cars is responsible for the delays, and thus responsible for the trolley’s laughable performance.

But this finger-pointing is all too easy to see through. First, the firm renovating the cars is accountable to the trolley company, its customer, and so, the trolley company should be compensated for the delayed product delivery. If the trolley company cannot be compensated by a contracted vendor for its failure to deliver, then the trolley company simply entered a bad agreement.

Second, it seems there are a number of other and far more reasonable explanations for the trolley’s failure. For one, the project was delayed for years and developed a sort of toxicity, and so would-be riders just gave up on ever riding. When you fail to deliver half a dozen times, people tend to just give up on you. Another explanation is that the trolley just doesn’t provide a valuable service, and so people just don’t ride it. Who wants to pay to sit on a glorified bus that takes you down the loop slower than the pace of an average pedestrian? And how many people do you honestly think are going to drive to the loop just to pay to take the trolley to the history museum? I’ll let you in on a little secret: not very many! (I am in the loop every day, and the most common number of riders I see is zero.)

But what about the $200–300 million in development the trolley has apparently spurred? Doesn’t that make the project worthwhile? Well, no. For one, most if not all of the recent development around the trolley has been subsidized. Who can tell if it was the trolley or the subsidies that spurred the development? Two, the loop is hot real estate, and so I think the strong market, rather than the presence of a needless novelty, is what spurred development. Three, the only reason for thinking the trolley spurred this development is that it occurred after the trolley was in place. But temporal succession is not identical to causation. Moreover, there is little evidence in general to suggest that vintage streetcars or streetcars in general spur investment.

So what should policymakers do at this point? Well, they needn’t rip up the tracks and say goodbye to the trolley forever. Here is a modest proposal: Don’t bail out the trolley company again. Force its leadership to find the funding on its own. In the meantime, shut the trolley down if need be. The more the trolley company is responsible for itself, the better it will be. And, let’s be honest; it won’t be leaving many riders stranded.

The work of the Show-Me Institute would not be possible without the generous support of people who are inspired by the vision of liberty and free enterprise. We hope you will join our efforts and become a Show-Me Institute sponsor.