Spring 2018 Internships

Posted on by Show-Me Institute Staff

The Show-Me Institute is pleased to offer internship opportunities for Spring 2018.

  • Internships are open to current undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates. 
  • Spring internships will last approximately four months. The exact starting and ending dates are flexible, but each intern is expected to work at least 10 weeks.  No internship shall start prior to January 15. Spring internships will end on or before May 4, 2018.
  • Spring interns can work a full-time schedule (9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with one hour for lunch), or arrange for a part-time schedule to accommodate class schedules. 
  • Interns will be involved in virtually all aspects of the Institute’s operations. Interns will work closely with senior staff on a wide variety of projects. They can expect greater responsibility and personal attention than they would receive at larger organizations.
  • Interns will assist staff members with a variety of tasks. These may include researching public policy topics, assisting with social media, organizing events, and writing and editing op-eds, newsletter articles, studies, and other documents. Some administrative and clerical tasks will also be required.
  • A Show-Me Institute internship is an excellent opportunity to improve your research and writing skills. Each intern will produce regular blog posts and an op-ed on a public policy topic of interest. Each intern will receive feedback and assistance from SMI staff members throughout the process.
  • Communication and development internships are also available. If interested, please state this in your application.
  • Internships are offered in both the Saint Louis and Kansas City offices.
  • Interns will be paid on an hourly basis.

Those wishing to be considered for an internship should submit an application (link below) and the requested supporting materials no later than December 8, 2017. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. We will begin conducting interviews as applications are received. Applicants can expect a decision no later than Monday, January 8, 2018.

Attendance Matters

Posted on by Emily Stahly

Last week, a principal and a vice principal from the Riverview Gardens School District filed a lawsuit alleging that district administrators falsified attendance records. The district has denied the claims.

At this point, nothing has been established—all we know is that an accusation has been made and denied. But in any case, attendance numbers are more important than many people realize. Not only do attendance data affect how much funding the district receives from the state, but they also factor in the Annual Performance Review and the district’s accreditation classification.

Last December, the State Board of Education voted unanimously to reclassify Riverview Gardens as provisionally accredited. According to state law, because the district was no longer unaccredited, students from Riverview Gardens lost the right to transfer to better-performing districts. If the accreditation of the district was based on incorrect attendance information, then students may have been unfairly deprived of better educational opportunities.

I do not doubt that there has been real progress in the district in the past few years, but the integrity of the attendance numbers is vital so that the district can be evaluated according to its true performance. We will continue to watch this story closely as it develops. 

Is Amazon Getting into the Pharmacy Business? Let’s Hope So

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Competition and supply are good things, and as we’ve said before, health care needs more of both. Innovations along those lines could mean interstate licensing of doctors to ensure wider access and lower prices for Missouri patients. It could mean making sure innovative primary care practices are able to practice medicine without undue government interference. It could mean reimagining the Medicaid program into one that breaks the network limitations of the current program and empowers patients. Indeed, competition and supply are good things for customers and patients—patients, of course, being customers by another name.

That’s why news broken by Samantha Liss at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch should be very welcome to patients in Missouri and elsewhere, as it appears the market for at least some pharmacy services is about to grow:

Throughout the past year, and without much fanfare, Amazon.com Inc. has gained approval to become a wholesale distributor from a number of state pharmaceutical boards, according to a review of public records….

According to a review of records by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Amazon has received approval for wholesale pharmacy licenses in at least 12 states, including Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alabama, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Idaho, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee.

An application is currently pending in the state of Maine.

An Amazon spokesperson told the Post-Dispatch via email that the company does not comment on “rumors and speculation.”

It’s a little complicated, but one of the big questions surrounding the Post-Dispatch report is the ultimate aim of the Amazon filings—that is, whether Amazon wants to open up a pharmacy benefits management business only, or whether a soup to nuts model is also in the tech giant’s future. Does Amazon want to be Express Scripts? Does it want to be Walgreens? Or does it want to be both? I would welcome all of the above, actually, and I suspect millions of Amazon customers would feel likewise.

And despite the failure of our Federal representatives to actually do what they said and repeal Obamacare, there is still reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of care in this country. Along with the reform initiatives above, tech innovations like 3D printing of prosthetics, and much more, the potential entry of Amazon into the pharmaceutical space reiterates that the future of health care as some government product remains anything but assured. After all, people are markets, and markets are powerful things.

Crosby Kemper III and Patrick Tuohey Discuss KCI and Country Club Plaza on Ruckus

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

The Show-Me Institute’s Chairman Crosby Kemper III and Director of Municipal Policy Patrick Tuohey appeared on KCPT’s Ruckus on Thursday, October 26, to discuss criticisms of the low tax evaluation of the Country Club Plaza, the future of the American Jazz Museum, and the ongoing debate over a new single airport terminal at KCI.

Taxes: Hitting Some Missouri Businesses Harder than Others?

Posted on by Rik W. Hafer

In their essay, “Taxing Business in Missouri,” Professors Rik Hafer, Ph.D., and Howard Wall, Ph.D., review the research of the Tax Foundation to better understand tax policy in Missouri. Their meta-analysis explains why Missouri’s economic performance remains below the national average. If Missouri reformed tax policy to lift the burden on all businesses, would that improve the Show-Me State’s economic performance?

TechNet Companies: Want More Education Funding? Then Pay Your Fair Share.

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

In a recent opinion column, Linda Moore, the president and CEO of TechNet, a “national, bipartisan network of technology CEOs and senior executives,” heralded Amazon’s seeking of a new headquarters as a wake-up call to policymakers about the need for increased computer science and STEM education funding. While her goals are laudable, she overlooks a significant problem with the growth of companies such as Amazon and others: it often comes at the expense of local education funding.

Moore is correct that metropolitan areas are falling over themselves to lure Amazon. In doing so, many will offer all sorts of taxpayer subsidized goodies such as tax credits, property tax abatements and tax-increment financing.  Philadelphia offered to forgo property tax for 10 years; New Jersey is offering 7 billion dollars of tax incentives. Here in Missouri, Saint Louis and Kansas City areas have both submitted proposals—but won’t share them with the public. If the past is any indication, they will likewise be loaded with such taxpayer giveaways.

Therein lies the problem. Big companies seek and get a great deal of public assistance. Using the online subsidy tracker developed by Good Jobs First, one can see that the companies constituting the executive council of TechNet have received at least $1.2 billion in state and federal subsidies—almost five times more than the $250 million Moore calls for in additional federal education funding.

Like any company, Amazon doesn’t want to pay any more taxes than it has to. The problem is that subsidies such as those being offered for their new headquarters actually divert money away from schools, libraries and other basic services funded by property taxes. The size of the various Amazon proposals only multiplies the effect. Most of those hired to work at the new headquarters would likely be drawn from elsewhere, placing additional demands on school districts in the form of hundreds of new children—while granting the districts no additional resources. This is in addition to the stresses placed on infrastructure and other services, such as and policing.

Because federal funding for education makes up only a small portion of any school district’s budget, the terrible irony is that even with the increase in federal funding Moore calls for, the school districts in the city that “wins” Amazon’s second headquarters may still be worse off because of the loss of local property taxes.

Seventy-three civic organizations responded to these realities by writing an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding that Amazon pay its taxes—including on “building materials, machinery and equipment.”  The letter also includes the following:

If you want a highly-educated local talent pool you must pay all of your property taxes to fund our schools, public safety, infrastructure and other public goods and services.

If tech leaders like those at TechNet want to increase education funding of any kind, they should stop asking national, state and local governments to subsidize their companies and start contributing their fair share to public coffers.

Teachers’ Opinions of Missouri’s Public School Retirement System

Posted on by James V. Shuls

For years, Show-Me Institute analysts have written about reforming teachers’ pensions. Multiple research projects have demonstrated that poorer districts subsidize pensions in wealthier districts, that pension funds are taking on riskier and riskier investments to chase higher returns, and that pension plans have huge unfunded liabilities.

Given that teachers will be a constituency that would be significantly affected by any changes to pensions in the state, we thought it wise to ask them what they think, both about their current pensions as well as possible alternative arrangements. We worked with both district and charter school leaders to cast a wide net and include as broad a range of viewpoints as we could.

Unfortunately, not long after we put our survey in the field, one of the state’s teachers’ unions instructed its members not to participate in our data collection. It’s unfortunate, but at this stage, not unexpected.

While it significantly curtailed our sample, 53 teachers did choose to respond, and we thought their voices deserved to be heard—even when they disagreed with some of the stances that Show-Me Institute writers have taken in the past. Accordingly, in addition to the complete survey results we have included an appendix with every open response that teachers gave—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

We encourage you to give the paper a read. Teachers have complicated and often conflicting views on their pensions as well as alternatives. Understanding those views will improve public pension policy.

Auditor Report on Tax Incentives and Exemptions

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway has issued a report on the Cost of Tax Incentives and Exemptions. The auditor calls for more rigorous fiscal impact studies—but inadvertently shows how important such studies are by making some questionable assumptions of her own.

The auditor notes that the fiscal impact of proposed pieces of legislation was not followed up by analysis after the fact. 

State law does not require a post-implementation review of fiscal notes to determine the actual fiscal impact of legislation enacted in comparison to fiscal note estimates. Post-implementation reviews would be especially beneficial for legislation impacting the tax base or for which the fiscal note included an estimated impact on tax revenues.

For example, the auditor finds that the estimated fiscal impact of a particular bill (SB 19 in 2015) was estimated at $15.2 million annually, but she claims the actual cost for the first two years of implementation was about five times greater. To reach that number, the auditor simply examines revenue from before adoption with revenue post-adoption and assigns all the impact to a single bill. Officials from the Department of Revenue make this exact point in the text of the auditor’s report (page 9):

DOR personnel could not identify the actual cause in the reduction in corporate income taxes, but indicated SB 19 (2015) was likely one of the contributing factors along with other potential factors including “other legislative changes” and “changes in the overall economic market.”

The point the auditor is making is valid and laudable: we don’t know the actual cost of the tax laws we’re adopting. Public policy is only as good as the information it relies upon. The Show-Me Institute welcomes any thorough analysis of tax policy—but the auditor’s report may be worse than doing nothing at all as it ascribes all the change in revenue to a single legislative act.

The DOR indicated in the report that such data are often misleading and collecting it can be a burden to businesses, but that the department is implementing a revenue system that may allow for more analysis. Undertaking such an analysis “would require a substantial increase in full-time employees,” which is politically unlikely.  Perhaps allocating more resources to track fiscal impact of legislation is something the legislature should consider—if only to guard against the overly broad assumptions being made in the auditor’s report.

Broadway Economics

Posted on by Joseph Haslag

The Broadway Inn is convenient for all the universities in Columbia, and its owner wants to build a $20 million expansion that would include a second hotel tower. Adding on to the hotel could be good for the area and a worthwhile investment for the owner, but the $2 million in tax-increment financing (TIF) built into the expansion proposal make it a bad deal for Columbia.

Let’s walk through this. The project will add about $20 million to the productive capital in Columbia. Between 2001 and 2016, each dollar of capital added, on average, 17 cents to the value of output—that is, goods and services—produced in Columbia. Based on this historical average, Columbia would produce an additional $3.5 million in output when the project is completed in a couple of years. One more piece of information: Columbia collects about one cent of revenue for every dollar of output produced. Consequently, city coffers would increase by about $35,000 in the first year that the expansion was operating. However, even allowing for this additional output to increase at Columbia’s average annual growth rate, which is 1.8 percent, there is not enough revenue for the city. After discounting future revenues to their present value and summing over the 23-year period, the value of the stream of city revenues comes to about $650 thousand. In other words, the city gives the developer $2 million to get back $650 thousand. Not a good return.

Proponents of the deal contend that without TIF, the expansion (and accompanying economic growth) won’t happen at all—that without an infusion of taxpayer money, development won’t be profitable enough to attract investment. However, data from cities like Chicago, Saint Louis, and Kansas City say otherwise. Comparing employment or income, the evidence indicates that economic outcomes are no better in areas that award TIF than in areas that do not.

The Broadway expansion proposal offers the appearance of certainty. At the very least, we have a good idea of what a new hotel tower will look like, so it’s easy to imagine that it will lead to an increase in economic activity. It can certainly seem riskier to turn down the proposal and wait to see what (if any) productive use the land next to the current hotel is put to. But there is no guarantee that the expanded hotel will be successful, either.

Fundamentally, economies grow when people put labor and machines and capital together in a way that yields more valuable stuff. Growth is the product of creative and innovative people who are trying to earn a profit. The law permits people to ask the city government for a subsidy to make a profit. But city officials must determine if granting the request is the best use of resources collected from citizens. Looking at the numbers, one is hard pressed to show that the Broadway expansion is the best use of city funds.

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