Key Question in Lindbergh: What Does Your Evidence Say About Full-Day Kindergarten?

Posted on by James V. Shuls

There is a debate going on right now in the Lindbergh School District regarding kindergarten. Lindbergh, one of the top performing school districts in the state, provides students only half-day kindergarten at no charge. If parents want their children to go full-day, they have to pay $3,500 in tuition. According to the Post-Dispatch, Lindbergh is the last district in the state to charge for full-day kindergarten. Some parents in the district want full-time kindergarten to be offered free of charge.

The debate among parents and school administrators, as far as I can tell, has been all about money. But there is more to education policy than just dollars and cents. Both the district and parents should ask a fundamental question: Is this better for our students?

On the whole, research is not entirely clear as to whether full-day kindergarten is better than half-day kindergarten for students. There is evidence that suggests that the academic benefits fade over time (Example 1, Example 2).

But Lindbergh has an advantage. The Lindbergh School District has decades worth of student-level data on students who have and have not attended a full-day Kindergarten program (because some Lindbergh students have gone to full day while some have gone to half day). They have the attendance data, behavioral data, test scores, grades, you name it. They have everything they need to evaluate the effectiveness of their full-day kindergarten program. That should be the first step before launching a new program that will cost millions of dollars in operating expenses and construction costs for new facilities.

The district shouldn’t offer a full-day kindergarten program just because everyone else is doing it. Remember what your mom asked you about jumping off a bridge? Nor should they decide to do it simply because parents want it for free. They should offer full-day kindergarten if it is the best thing for the students—and they alone have the data necessary to make that determination. Yet, they haven’t.

If the evidence indicates that Lindbergh students who attend full-day Kindergarten are significantly better off than students who attend for a half-day, then the district should commit to finding a way to put the program in place. If it turns out that there is not a difference between the two groups, however, the decision should be based solely on costs or cost-savings for the district.

The Lindbergh district is fortunate to have access to data tailor-made to help them make an important decision for their students and for the community that supports the district. Parents and taxpayers should demand that the data be used.

(Disclosure: The author attended half-day kindergarten.)

Prop A Facts

Posted on by Joseph Haslag

If you’ve turned on your television lately, you may have seen an ad in which a gentleman from Oklahoma tells viewers that after Oklahoma adopted right-to-work, everybody “lost.” Specifically, he says he lost his job because of it, and he claims that tens of thousands Oklahomans lost their jobs, too. To make matters worse, in the ad’s telling, wages in Oklahoma even fell for those who kept their jobs because of right-to-work.

Hard-luck stories are a common feature in election-year advertisements, and I hope the gentleman from Oklahoma has found his way out of his job loss—which, based on Oklahoma’s right-to-work timeline, may have happened nearly twenty years ago. But that doesn’t alter the underlying facts about Oklahoma’s economy and the effects of right-to-work laws generally—facts which the ad either ignored or mischaracterized.

First, let’s look at the employment facts for Oklahoma. Oklahoma voters passed a right-to-work law in 2001. In March 2001 (before the recession that year and before the passage of right-to-work) there were 1.53 million people employed there. As of May 2018, there were 1.68 million Oklahomans employed. Simple arithmetic reveals that 150,000 more people are on Oklahoma’s payrolls now compared with payrolls before right-to-work passed, so since 2001, tens of thousands of jobs have actually been added in Oklahoma, not lost.

Could the gentleman be referring to what happened to employment between December 2001 and July 2002, when Oklahoma payrolls declined by 40,000 workers? Maybe, but that decline was unlikely to have been related to right-to-work legislation. The recession of 2001 is a much better explanation for why employment fell in Oklahoma during that period, as payrolls were declining in many places at the time.

But the issues with the ad don’t stop with the numbers themselves. The ad essentially claims that right-to-work laws lower employment and lower wages, but economically speaking (and, as seen in practice,) that claim is highly suspect. Here’s how it works in terms of old-fashioned demand-and-supply: When the cost of labor is no longer driven up by the bargaining power funded by compulsory union dues, it becomes less expensive for employers to hire new workers. The less expensive labor is, the more of it employers can buy.

Claiming broadly that “wages will fall” as a result of right-to-work is grossly misleading. Employers are not going to slash the pay of the current workforce. Without union interference, newly hired workers will be paid what they are worth, and there will be more of them.

Somehow, our ad-man argues that both wages and employment will decline. He doesn’t explain why making it less expensive to hire workers will lead businesses to hire fewer of them.

Unfortunately, the ad conceals a great deal in its depiction of Oklahoma and of facts in general, cocooning a host of dubious conclusions inside a hard-luck personal story. That might be politics, but it ain’t economics.

Luckily, people throwing numbers at Missourians also need to show us why their explanation is better than the one suggested by basic economics. I look forward to an exchange of ideas rather than thirty-second sound bites.

Gratuitous “We Told You So” on KCI Airport Vote

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

City leaders were surprised to learn the other week that things were amiss with planning the new airport terminal. As a result, the completion was delayed about a year and the price increased about 50 percent.

First, on June 14, The Kansas City Star reported that the opening would be delayed six to twelve months. A week later, the delay was confirmed to be eleven months. Among the reasons for the delay: The contractor, Edgemoor, hasn’t finalized labor union contracts, the FAA had yet to approve environmental analyses, and the previous cost estimates relied on dated information and were for fewer gates than the current plan envisions.

In a November 8, 2017 press conference recorded by the Star, City Manager Troy Schulte said, “our goal is to deliver a new terminal to this city by the end of 2021.” But on June 27, 2018, Schulte tweeted, “November of 2021 was never a realistic date.”

The problem—as I have argued repeatedly, and as the video above documents—was that the ballot measure voters approved was so bereft of details that it amounted to a blank check. Before the election, it was disheartening to see that the Star editorial board was so eager to endorse a new airport that it misrepresented the facts, possibly because it was relying too heavily on pro-terminal talking points. Now, of course, the same editorial board is dismayed city leaders aren’t delivering what was promised.

What I wrote in September 2017 remains true today,

Process is important in public policy, and while the Star editorial board and others may be relieved that Kansas City finally has a vendor and we’re cleared for a November vote… to advocate for this plan simply because the process is over amounts to letting policymakers off the hook for years of bad behavior. Kansas City deserves much, much better.

No one should be shocked that the voters of Kansas City are not being given what they were sold. Those we expect to represent the public interest—civic leaders, pundits, and the Star’s editorial board—lose their credibility in calling balls and strikes if they root too eagerly for one side. This was an unforced error.

St. Louis County Council Ethics Committee Issues Stinging Rebuke of County Executive

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Jeremy Kohler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month on a St. Louis County ethics committee report investigating county leases with Northwest Crossings.

While Kohler’s piece is worth reading, you might want to start with the ethics committee report. The report, which is available through a link at the bottom of this post, lists 14 findings in the executive summary on page 3. In short, the committee found that the County Executive’s personal staff negotiated a lease with Northwest Crossing that failed to properly represent the county and did so against the advice of the career professionals who usually conduct such negotiations. The staff is accused of misleading others about the costs and the process by which the contract was negotiated, and that additional costs for the lease were paid through budgetary sleight-of-hand. The committee also found that the Executive and his staff refused to provide documentation when asked.

The deal appears to have exposed county taxpayers to a lot of additional costs. The Post-Dispatch concludes that the lease “will cost taxpayers at least $69 million and could run as high as $77 million.” Skeptics might write this off as mere bureaucratic bungling, but the ethics committee report suggests darker motives.

Because the committee lacks the resources to further investigate, it recommended the full St. Louis County Council refer the matter to both the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri and the Missouri Attorney General.

Irrespective of whether a crime has been committed, the report makes it clear that the County did not have in place the type of basic policies necessary to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity. Taxpayers should be asking why not.

Who Runs the KCPD?

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Mayors in Kansas City long have complained about a lack of control over the police department. But the truth is more nuanced. While Kansas City mayors thankfully do not have the raw political control that mayors elsewhere do, they are not as powerless over policing as some seem to suggest. What they do seem to be lacking during this year’s long spike in homicides, however, is willpower.

In 1939 the power to appoint members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners was given to the governor in order to combat rampant local corruption. Kansas City is the only major city in United States whose local elected political leadership does not control the police. In speaking with several former members of the Board of Police Commissioners—appointed by different governors and serving at different times with different mayors—I learned that governors are not all powerful nor are mayors powerless.

First, the observation that the Kansas City police department lacks local control is misleading. Members of the commission, including a seat reserved for the sitting mayor, are all local figures who must be residents of Kansas City. The tradition for appointing commissioners is to choose people who already have distinguished themselves in the community—thus reducing the chance that people use their position as a political platform. And while the appointments are made by the governor with Senate approval, none of the former commissioners with whom I spoke ever felt as if they were serving a gubernatorial agenda. Some reported hearing from the governor’s office about every 12 to 18 months, and then just to be kept abreast of lawsuits. Despite the power of appointment, Republican and Democrat governors alike do not exercise significant authority over the KC police in practice.

While the police board provides local control, they do not represent local political control. In other cities, police chiefs must be wary of municipal politics and palace intrigue that can only distract them from their main concern: public safety. In Kansas City, police chiefs are a step removed from politics because they do not owe their position directly to elected officials.

None of this is to say that the mayor does not have a significant amount of power. Commissioners all indicated that there was deference given to the various mayors who served on the commission—even though their level of participation varied. For example, Mayor Funkhouser was engaged in police processes. Mayor Berkeley was attentive but passive. Mayor Barnes’ attendance was sporadic and picked up toward the end of her tenure.

Though Kansas City has a city manager form of government, the mayor has one power that researchers have found is among the most consequential any mayor can have: the veto. While a mayoral veto can be overridden by the vote of 9 councilmembers, it presents him with a great deal of influence over legislation—including the budget of each city department. What greater power over local policing could there be than the budget?

If a mayor wanted the police department to hire more social workers, hire more uniformed officers and/or provide more and different training, decrease the number of officers with take-home cruisers, or increase foot patrols and community policing, he has a great amount of leverage to do so. The power of the purse makes the mayor a more consequential figure than any single governor, any single police board commissioner, any single police chief. No Missourian has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor—should he wish to use it.

The current extraordinary challenge to public safety requires an extraordinary response from city leaders. The tools are in place—but will we have the leadership?

Another Study Is Just What St. Louis Doesn’t Need

Posted on by Graham Renz

Kicking bad habits can be tough. When you know you’re doing something that’s bad for you, planning to quit is the easy part. In the end, no matter how carefully you plan, you won’t succeed unless you have the willpower to change your behavior.

St. Louis City officials, who have a serious bad habit to kick in the form of development subsidy giveaways, plan to study how they can reform their use of these subsidies as part of an overall, city-wide development plan. The half-million-dollar study will come after years of pressure to change (read: provide some rhyme or reason to) how the City awards tax subsidies.

A report released in 2016 showed that the City gave away more than $700 million through programs like tax-increment financing (TIF) and tax abatement from 2000 to 2014. (In just the 2016–2017 fiscal year, the City and school district lost nearly $30 million due to these incentives.) That same report concluded (p. 6) development subsidies generally fail to accomplish their goals of spurring economic growth and eliminating blight.

While I’d like to celebrate the City’s commitment to reshaping its development policies, I’m skeptical much will come of the exercise. Taxpayer-funded studies—even fancy half-million-dollar ones—are no substitute for the willpower to do what’s right.

It ought to frustrate taxpayers that, with numerous studies and reports replete with reforms on hand, the City has decided to—in St. Louis fashion—study incentive policies once again. Not only will the study itself be costly, but the longer reform takes, the more projects will receive taxpayer-funded subsidies. If officials are serious about reform, they should put subsidy requests on hold until new policies are in place.

More importantly, officials have not shown much interest in limiting their own power to award incentives. Indeed, they have little political or financial incentive to do so. (The City even reportedly lobbied against TIF reform this legislative session.) For example, even though the City has a policy of limiting TIF incentives to 15% of a project’s total costs, it frequently awards much larger subsidies, and often to developments with numerous other subsidies in hand (see, for example, here and here). When a luxury high-rise in the Central West End gets a 15-year abatement, it’s reasonable to question whether the City has no intention of taking its foot off the gas even though it clearly could.

St. Louis (like Kansas City) desperately needs incentive reform. Taxpayers, schools, libraries, and other jurisdictions need incentive reform. If St. Louis is serious about reshaping how it awards subsidies, officials should show that now by enacting policy changes. No more studies, no more plans, no more wasting of taxpayer dollars.

Missouri’s Economy Struggles Despite a Low Unemployment Rate

Posted on by Emily Stahly

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released some good news about the employment numbers from May: Fourteen states saw their unemployment rates decrease, and the rest of the states’ unemployment rates stayed the same. Missouri’s unemployment rate held steady at 3.6 percent last month—below the national average of 3.8 percent. Looks like Missouri’s economy is doing pretty well then, right?

Missouri’s low unemployment rate is welcome news, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are other important factors that predict economic well-being, such as labor force participation and statewide output, where Missouri’s economy is underperforming compared to other states. Tennessee, for example, is a demographically similar state but has shown significant growth compared to Missouri while also boasting a 3.5 percent unemployment rate.

As shown in the graphs below, Missouri’s labor force is stagnating. During an economic expansion, one would expect the number of interested laborers to increase. Missouri, however, defies these expectations. Our labor force shrunk by almost 30,000 people from 2016 to 2017. In this same period, our neighbor to the southeast, Tennessee, saw a spike in their labor force with 81,000 people joining.

People are entering the workforce in Tennessee to take advantage of the employment opportunities there. Some are Tennessee residents who have decided to look for work, and some are coming from outside the state. The state’s low unemployment rate suggests that Tennessee is capable of absorbing these additional potential workers and turning them into payroll employees. Compared to Missouri, Tennessee is attracting and employing people at a faster rate.

Labor force comparison, Missouri vs Tennessee

Additionally, Missouri’s production lags behind that of Tennessee as well. Missouri’s real gross domestic product, the measure of overall economic health, is growing slowly. Since 2012, Tennessee routinely experienced 2 to 4 percent annual growth in real GDP. Missouri struggles to hit 1 percent annual growth. The growing gap between Missouri’s and Tennessee’s GDPs, shown below, is stark.

GDP comparison, Missouri vs. Tennessee

Such slow growth is problematic for Missouri’s economy. The national economy is doing well, but Missouri is failing to take advantage of the rising levels of consumption, investment, and employment found throughout the country and is consequently losing out on major economic opportunities.

So what about Tennessee as compared to Missouri makes its economy grow faster and pull more people into the workforce? There are a few possibilities. First, Tennessee has no income tax, and two years ago Tennessee began to phase out the tax on investment income and will eliminate it entirely by 2022. Second, beginning in 2014 Governor Bill Haslam started reforming higher education by offering all high school graduates the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree or professional certification at no cost to them. Moreover, there has been greater coordination between colleges and businesses to ensure that the curriculum fits employers’ needs so that students learn skills that are in high demand. Third, Tennessee is a Right-to-Work state. Fourth, Tennessee is known as having a business-friendly environment.

It may be hard to pinpoint exactly what has led to Tennessee’s success, but tax-cutting policies combined with investment in workforce development and other pro-business policies like Right to Work stand out as reasons Tennessee is experiencing growth that Missourians can only envy. Continuing to push for elimination of the individual income tax and exploring potential workforce development policies could work just as well in Missouri.

City Chooses Highest Bidder to Conduct Economic Development Analysis

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

While we wait for the city’s report on economic development incentives, over a year late at this point, we thought we’d look over the other companies that bid on the project. After all, Kansas City is spending twice the amount on this study that St. Louis spent on a similar project just two years ago. And the vendor they chose, the Council of Development Finance Agencies (CDFA) isn’t exactly the sort of organization you’d turn to for a disinterested study of incentives.

Kansas City issued a request for proposals with the deadline of June 12, 2016. Eight companies submitted bids to complete the work. The companies and their total bid prices are listed below. Note that CDFA, which was awarded the project, was the highest bidder. The final contract award was even higher: $350,000.

Bids

I have attached electronic copies of the RFP and all the bids at the bottom of this post. Feel free to dig through them and let us know what you find. Here are some things we found noteworthy:

  • Collins Noteis & Associates (“a WBE-certified firm specializing in urban planning, community planning, economic development planning, and government affairs”) is listed as a subcontractor on at least two of the bids: EPS and EDR.
  • EPS’ bid includes as a subcontractor Parsons & Associates, which is a Kansas City–based public relations firm whose work would account for just over 10 percent of the cost. Why is a PR firm contracting to provide economic analysis?
  • CDFA’s winning bid included participation of the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. This is promising because the Upjohn Institute recently published a study concluding that:

The existing research on incentives is that in some cases they can affect business location decisions, but that in many cases they are excessively costly and may not have the promised effects. The new research suggests that much of this consensus is justified.

  • CDFA’s bid lists the Hardwick Law Firm LLC as a “team member.” Herb Hardwick, founder of that firm, still serves as counsel to the Kansas City TIF Commission—whose work CDFA will be assessing. This could be a significant conflict of interest.

The CDFA contract is operating under its fourth deadline extension, which ends in late July. We don’t know if a fifth extension will be sought or granted. But given the great cost, the delays, and questions raised by the choice of vendor, one wonders if anyone at City Hall is interested in a serious analysis of our incentive regime.

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