Traffic Fine Law on the Verge of Passing

Posted on by Joseph Miller

On April 22, SB 5, which greatly strengthens a law that limits how much revenue a city can raise via traffic fines, passed the Missouri House.

The bill has changed somewhat since it was introduced in the senate. Starting in 2016, the cap on how much a municipality can raise from traffic fines will fall from 30 percent to 20 percent of general revenue, unless the municipality is within Saint Louis County, where it will fall to 15 percent. These provisions are somewhat weaker than the original bill, which would have brought the cap down to 10 percent in populous counties. The amended bill includes more provisions that make courts transparent and protect people arrested due to unpaid fines.

The bill’s text still includes the enforcement provisions that the existing law, known as the Macks Creek Law, lacks. No enforcement has meant fines have become a significant revenue stream for cities, especially in Saint Louis County.

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If this bill passes, revenue from fines and fees will be well defined, reporting requirements will be strict, and penalties for failing to comply are significant, including triggering a vote on disincorporation.

Many municipalities still object to the law, claiming that this prevents them from enforcing the law. But as we wrote before:

This argument falls flat because revenue collected in excess of SB 5’s provisions is simply remitted to the state, which in turn gives that money to the school systems in the county of the municipality in question. If police in local cities need to fine people to protect health and safety, they can still do so. But SB 5 takes away the narrow financial interests of the city government.

If the senate agrees to the house’s alterations to the bill, SB 5 will only require the governor’s signature to become law.

Missouri Bureaucracy Seeks to Tie Yoga in Regulatory Knots

Posted on by John Wright

The Missouri Department of Higher Education is seeking to regulate yoga teacher training programs (YTTs) as “vocational schools” under its Postsecondary School Certification Program. From the Yoga Alliance:

Regulation under this program means that YTTs must comply with extensive requirements and pay expensive fees. We share the concerns of Missouri yogis that regulation of YTTs in this manner is not only unnecessary, but harmful to the yoga community and small businesses in this state.

Other states, including New York and Minnesota, have attempted to license yoga teachers as well.

Yoga is an old practice, and it has done just fine without state occupational licensing. I don’t think we need the state to start tinkering with it now.

I hope Missouri government bodies have the common sense not to butt in here—like they have with African hair braiding and massage therapy.

Of Stadiums and Economic Spillovers

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Recently, we wrote a letter to the Post-Dispatch that criticized the idea that new tax revenue from a riverfront stadium would “pay” for $405 million in public subsidies. In response, one Saint Louis County resident claimed that: 1. spending on the Rams is not diverted from other areas; and 2. he trusts the governor and his numbers, not the Show-Me Institute’s.

First, we’ll address the substitution effect, or the idea that money spent on the Rams does not necessarily mean new economic activity. Our critic claims that if the Rams leave, he and many others would not be spending their dollars downtown. The problem with that reasoning is that it conceptualizes the Saint Louis region as municipally balkanized, and not as part of a regional or state economy, which in fact they are. Thus, if he and other county residents stay in the county on Sunday and spend money there, the regional and state economy is unaffected, along with the regional and state tax base.

Addressing the second point, if our critic does not believe Show-Me Institute’s numbers, why not the Brookings Institution, which wrote:

A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. . . . No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighborhood, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the economic benefits of sports facilities are de minimus . . . most tax collections inside a stadium are substitutes: as other entertainment businesses decline, tax collections from them fall.

Or our critic could also read a review of the economic literature, which finds:

Because sports facilities are not expected to generate additional net output in a metropolitan area and no systematic empirical analysis ever finds evidence that they do, sports facilities cannot be counted on to augment tax collections.

Put simply, the evidence on whether sports stadiums generate economic growth or sufficient tax revenue to justify large subsidies is overwhelmingly in the negative. Our findings accord with these prior results, the governor’s and Post-Dispatch’s do not. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whose heart is leading whose head.

Health Care Bills On the Move from the House to the Senate

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

We’re approaching the end of the session, and it’s worth highlighting a few health care-related bills that are winding through the Missouri General Assembly.
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  • HB 769 makes “medical retainer agreements” exempt from regulation by the state’s Department of Insurance. MRAs are direct-pay arrangements—where a patient and a doctor contract directly for care. Such contracts are not a matter of insurance, but in other states there have been pushes to regulate them under the “insurance” umbrella. HB 769 would preempt such a move.

  • HB 985 enhances Missouri’s Medicaid eligibility verification system by leveraging the resources of a third party. Over the past year MO HealthNet has been hit by a series of embarrassing reports of waste and mismanagement. Suffice it to say, money wasted is money that cannot go to the poor beneficiaries who need it most. HB 985 tries to tackle the problem of waste on the enrollment side by trying to make sure those limited dollars flow to beneficiaries who, in fact, qualify for them.

  • HB 319 expands on an existing state law dealing with MO HealthNet telemonitoring services, also known as telemedicine. Telemedicine allows medical professionals to diagnose medical problems remotely, which for people in medically underserved communities is a great technological innovation and benefit. Section 208.670.1 of current law already allows for reimbursements for telehealth “in the same way as reimbursement for in-person contacts”; HB 319 pushes MO HealthNet to further adopt and advance telemedicine practices.

Tolling Coming to I-70?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

With the prospect of a fuel tax increase looking more and more remote in the Missouri Legislature, policymakers are once again looking to the possibility of tolling I-70 as a method of staving off an impending funding crisis at the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT).

Tolling would be an effective way of raising funds to rebuild the aging I-70, with only those using the new highway paying for its reconstruction and maintenance. Tolls can be set higher for vehicles that do more damage to the roads, like interstate trucks, which on many parts of I-70 make up more than a quarter of total traffic, as the chart below demonstrates:

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Furthermore, if the state would lease I-70 to a private entity, it potentially would generate billions for MoDOT. To get an idea of just how much a toll road can be worth, a 66-year lease of the Indiana Toll Road (with similar traffic levels to I-70) is in the process of being sold for $5.7 billion. If Missouri can raise even a small fraction of that amount, MoDOT could retire Amendment 3 debt and ensure sufficient matching funds for federal dollars. A bill in the Missouri Senate, SB 534, sets up the framework to make this kind of lease possible.

Using a public private partnership to rebuild I-70 is not without pitfalls. If the state does not ensure competitive bidding or make sufficiently stringent lease requirements, the project could come out poorly for highway users. Furthermore, using large upfront lease payments on I-70 to bail out the rest of the state highway system will require higher tolls so that the private company can recoup its costs. In essence, I-70 drivers would pay for both I-70 and other state roads. That being said, given many examples of successful privatization in Missouri, as well as numerous privately operated highways worldwide, Missouri can and should navigate these obstacles.

Using a public private partnership to toll I-70 would be a big step forward for Missouri, and lease payments could be used to plug short-term gaps in MoDOT funding. However, without more extensive use of tolling (not currently allowed under federal law), it would be best for the state to combine a small gas tax increase now with plans to increase use of tolling in the future.

An Idea for Better Transit in Missouri: Raise Fares

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Public transportation in Missouri’s major cities is heavily subsidized; taxpayers cover more than 80 percent of total costs in Saint Louis and Kansas City. The main culprits of these subsidies are high costs and low utilization. For example, most bus routes in Saint Louis roll around the city nearly empty. But a contributing factor to this problem is fares, which remain inexpensive in both cities.

KCATA_MAX_DowntownFor instance, in Saint Louis, fares are $2 for the bus and $2.50 for the MetroLink. In Kansas City the bus costs only $1.50, aside from a few more expensive routes. Monthly passes offer a steep discount in both cities, and reduced fares are available for the young, the elderly, the disabled, and students.

Low transit fares are generally sold with two arguments. First, and most common, is that public transportation provides transportation to those with little or no income. Higher fares would therefore be a tax on the poor. But not everyone who uses transit is poor. In Kansas City about 78 percent of transit users are above the poverty line (79 percent in Saint Louis). Moreover, wealthy transit users are more likely to use high-capital-cost rapid transit, so they end up receiving a larger subsidy than poorer riders. In Saint Louis, MetroLink ridership is greatly buoyed by well-off passengers using the rail to get to Busch Stadium or summer festivals (the Cardinals effect is noticeable). They too hardly meet the criteria of a group in need of cheap tickets.

To justify subsidizing the well off, many public transportation advocates use the second argument for low fares: high transit ridership is in the public’s interest. They claim that getting people out of their cars and on to transit is good for the environment and good for congestion, thus worth subsidizing heavily. More than a few have advocated getting rid of fares altogether.

However, low transit fares have not gotten people to ditch their cars; less than 5 percent of Saint Louis and Kansas City residents use transit to commute, and those numbers aren’t increasing much. And the low fare revenue makes it difficult for public transportation to make the investments that might make transit more attractive to more residents. That is why even some transit advocates are calling for higher fares.

Saint Louis and Kansas City could set up a system with much higher standard transit fares with lower prices for those below the poverty line. In addition, tickets to stations near sporting events could be more expensive on game days. By looking for ways to make riders pay for more of what their service actually costs, transit agencies might be able to provide better services without going to the general taxpayers for aid. That could be better for everyone, whether they use transit or not.

Getting the True Value of Farmland

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

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It’s interesting when there are two wildly different takes on the same thing. For example, take me vs. the general public on Dances With Smurfs or Michael Burry vs. the rest of Wall Street on the value (or lack thereof) of sub-prime mortgage bonds. Another instance—one that is costing all of us—is the State Tax Commission vs. everyone else on the value of farmland. This difference can affect many our tax rates.

In a recent paper (H/T David Nicklaus), David Larson of the Bureau of Economic Analysis performed a valuation on all land in each of the lower 48 states for 2009. Based on his calculations, Missouri farmland is worth $64.236 billion. Based on my calculations, using data contained in the State Tax Commission’s 2009 Annual Report, the total value of Missouri agricultural property in 2009 would come out to $13.3 billion. That’s a gap of more than $50 billion!

A reason for this big difference is that, instead of assessing all agricultural land at a flat 12 percent rate, actively farmed land receives a different assessment rate depending on its productive capacity. This practice results in an effective assessment rate of around 2-3 percent.

Such low assessments erode the property tax base. Even if the true value of farmland in Missouri was half of Larson’s estimate, if it were assessed at a flat 12 percent rate, the state would have an agricultural property tax base nearly two-and-a-half times the size of its current base. This larger tax base either could allow property tax rates in some areas to be cut or some localities could see an influx of new revenue.

I don’t want farmers’ property tax bills to skyrocket. However, the truth is their property is under assessed to such an extent that governments are forced to rely on other more destructive forms of taxation (i.e., income taxes), which the rest of us have to pay, in order to fund essential services. We should value farmers for the work they do, but we should also properly value the land they work on lest we pay more than we should.

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