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On Kit Bond Bridge, Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Posted on April 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by Joseph Miller

In this week’s episode of Ruckus, which covers local policy issues in Kansas City, one of the panelists defended using other people’s money to plan luxury apartments near the Missouri River. When the Show-Me Institute’s Patrick Tuohey expressed concern over that plan, the other panelist demanded to know whether Tuohey was also against the new Kit Bond Bridge (see video at 12:30). The implication was that the city had built a great new bridge for people to drive on; why not spend money developing the riverfront?

Of course, this reasoning is flawed. First, basic infrastructure usually is considered a reasonable recipient of government investments. A bridge that carries tens of thousands of vehicles a day fits that definition; luxury apartments and bar districts do not. Second, let’s be clear here: The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), not the Kansas City government, led the planning and oversaw the construction of the bridge. As those who follow this blog will know, MoDOT does not usually fund projects with general tax dollars, a fact that Kansas City would do well to recognize and emulate.

In fact, the $245 million KcICON project, which included the Kit Bond Bridge, was funded with proceeds from Amendment 3 (which is tied to motor vehicle sales taxes) and federal dollars (mostly derived from federal road user fees) set aside to pay improvements to the national highway system. The city didn’t kick in at all for the bridge; the city only put forward $10 million to guarantee a specific type of interchange at Front Street. That’s less than Kansas City plans to spend to subsidize just one new luxury apartment building.

Bottom line: The Kit Bond Bridge was built by the state transportation department for a legitimate government purpose, with funding based from state and federal vehicle fees. That’s nothing like subsidizing a luxury apartment with taxpayer dollars; to act otherwise is to misunderstand what good public policy looks like.

K-12 Funding in Missouri-What’s the Solution?

Posted on April 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by Brittany Wagner

I hear “Missouri’s public schools are underfunded” from educators, administrators, and concerned taxpayers on a regular basis. The Post-Dispatch recently published an op-ed by Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow James Shuls addressing this issue.

Shuls explained that we shouldn’t view our public school system as underfunded. Rather, we should view the system as set up poorly. He suggested reforming Missouri’s K-12 foundation formula:

We can make the formula far more rational. We can stop paying districts to educate students who no longer live within their boundaries. We can stop pegging funding targets to the wealthiest districts. We can stop holding local effort constant by using current assessments. And, if we’re going to have a system that allocates state aid fairly, we must.

The number of solutions he proposed was the most persuasive aspect of his examination of the funding “problem.”

He concluded, “It’s time to stop asking why we are underfunding our formula and start asking how we might design a better school funding system.”

The Show-Me Institute on Television

Posted on April 10, 2015January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

In recent weeks, Show-Me Institute representatives have appeared on several public policy television shows in Missouri, most recently on KCPT’s April 9 episode of Ruckus in Kansas City.

Other recent television appearances include:

On March 19, CEO Brenda Talent appeared on Donnybrook in Saint Louis to discuss Missouri school district transfers, among other things.

On the same day in Kansas City, Institute Board Chairman Crosby Kemper III appeared on Ruckus. The explosive growth in Kansas City government spending was among the topics discussed.

Patrick Tuohey was on KCPT’s Kansas City Week in Review on March 13.

We are grateful to be part of the public policy debate in those cities and across Missouri in newspapers, blogs, and radio.

Report on Parking in Saint Louis Finds Employees Take Best Spots, Don’t Pay

Posted on April 10, 2015January 13, 2026 by Joseph Miller

Last year, Saint Louis City began a long-awaited overhaul of the city’s parking meters. After a pilot period where different forms of modern meters were tested in the Central West End, city officials chose new meters that take credit cards and electronic payment through Parkmobile.

Adding new payment options and modernizing parking fee collection is a step forward for the city. Even better, the city commissioned a study to find where demand was highest and where meters were making so little money they could be removed. However, in addition to identifying where and when parking meters should be replaced, the report also scrutinized the city’s existing parking policies. Specifically, the city is allowing government employees to improperly obtain free parking.

According to the report, the city allows any individual employed by the city or county, regardless of their position, to park for free at any metered spot. They only need to display an approved parking permit, and they can park long-term. While some jobs require the ability to quickly access a vehicle (such as police officers), most do not. When city employees take some of the most demanded spots in the city, they hurt local businesses, make it more difficult for residents to park, and reduce the city’s income.

To make matters worse, the city apparently has had no policy for issuing parking permits, nor does it even know how many permits exist. As the report puts it:

In St. Louis, the problem of employees parking in the most convenient on-street parking spaces and not paying is exacerbated by the fact that there is no comprehensive list of authorized and outstanding City issued permits, or a specific set of rules governing which departments are permitted parking permits and why they qualify. This makes it nearly impossible to determine which vehicles displaying permits are parked for legitimate City business and which are not.

The obvious solution is for the city to come up with guidelines that decide which positions require parking permits and only issue permits necessary for these employees. The city should also track who has permits and for what reason. These common-sense fixes will improve parking downtown, to the benefit of Saint Louisans and the city’s bottom line.

Brenda Talent on School Curriculum Transparency

Posted on April 10, 2015January 13, 2026 by Brenda Talent

Show-Me Institute CEO Brenda Talent appeared on Jamie Allman's radio show April 9:

The Incredible Shrinking City

Posted on April 9, 2015January 13, 2026 by Jessica Stearns

According to recently released U.S. Census data, the population of the city of Saint Louis has once again decreased. In 2014, Saint Louis’ population dropped to 317,419, a decline of 1,946 people since the 2010 Census. Although the drop is only 0.6 percent, the trend of a declining population continues for Saint Louis. In fact, ever since the 1950s, Saint Louis City’s population has been sinking.

In 1950 Saint Louis was the eighth largest city in the United States with a population of 856,796. According to the 2014 Census estimate, Saint Louis has two-thirds fewer people than in 1950.

Such a dramatic decrease in population has major effects on local government. As the population declines, taxable income and sales leave the area and revenue declines with it. Lower population levels exacerbate other issues such as abandoned buildings, lower property values, and, as a result, fewer funds for public schools.

Saint Louis is a city that has much to offer. So why are people continuing to leave? What should the city do to halt the deflating population?

Shedding Light on Anti-transparency Arguments

Posted on April 9, 2015January 13, 2026 by John Wright

A bill is making its way through the Missouri Senate that would require public universities to disclose basic information about college courses. Ordinarily, a bill like this wouldn’t be necessary, but a recent court decision gave Missouri’s public universities cover for keeping syllabi and other course content closed from the Sunshine Law. The professors and administrators trying to keep course content from the Sunshine Law argue that transparency laws harm their intellectual property interests. This argument rings false for three simple reasons:

The anti-transparency faction at the University of Missouri argues that professors own the content of their courses, while the University of Missouri’s own rules suggest otherwise. According to 100.030.A.2 of the Collected Rules, the university owns the copyright to “works that are commissioned for University use by the University” and “works that are created by employees if the production of the materials is a specific responsibility of the position for which the employee is hired.”

Even if professors have an intellectual property interest in syllabi, nothing about making this information publicly available would prevent professors from enforcing a copyright claim. If a member of the public accesses a syllabus through the Sunshine Law and then plagiarizes the syllabus, the professor could still sue for a violation of copyright. Making information publicly accessible is not a bar to enforcing copyright.

Fair use should protect disclosure of public records pursuant to state sunshine laws. Fair use doctrine allows for copyrighted work to be transformed or appropriated, within limits, for certain educational, scholarly, satirical, and noncommercial uses. In other words, fair use protects creators and commentators alike, facilitating discussions about ideas and, ultimately, building knowledge for society. For a publicly funded university system to reject this well-established framework suggests that it wants neither the comment nor the discussion the publication of these syllabus materials may generate. If that’s the system’s goal, it’s an appalling objective for an institution of higher learning, public or otherwise.

I doubt college administrators and university professors are ignorant of these facts. I suspect that the intellectual property argument is just an excuse for avoiding the transparency requirements that every other public entity is subject to. If you don’t want the potential scrutiny that comes with transparency, then perhaps you shouldn’t work for a public institution.

Election of Convicted Felon to Wentzville School Board Should Sound Alarm

Posted on April 9, 2015January 13, 2026 by James V. Shuls

On Wednesday, voters in the Wentzville School District (of which I am one) found out they may have unknowingly elected a convicted felon to the school board. Michael Feinstein, one of two Wentzville school board candidates supported by the Wentzville National Education Association (WNEA) and the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA), was previously convicted of felony charges in Iowa. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Feinstein pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his use of a credit card to steal about $105,000 from the health foundation he was working for in the early 2000s, news and court records say. He lost the money gambling.

Feinstein served a 38-day sentence in an Iowa prison. He completed his four years of probation.

Allegedly, the WNEA found out about the felony conviction on March 30. On March 31, the union pulled support by issuing a letter to WNEA members (see below).

Apparently the group also removed posts about Feinstein from its Facebook page. However, the WNEA did not alert the public to the issue or to the fact that they dropped support. As voters drove to their polling places, they passed scores of WNEA-approved signs supporting Feinstein. Some claim WNEA representatives were even standing in front of polling places holding these signs.

The election of a convicted felon to the school board brings up many questions. Should Feinstein have disclosed this information sooner? Did the union do its due diligence in vetting the candidate and disclosing the information once they found out about the prior conviction?

While these are important questions, there are some much more basic questions about the role of public-sector unions in elections. To which, this election should sound an alarm.

First, as the Show-Me Institute’s Brittany Wagner has written before, teachers’ unions are a special interest group that can have significant sway in elections. Teachers’ unions may be the sole special interest group active in local school district elections. The Wentzville School District has more than 1,800 employees, roughly half of which are certified teachers. Even in a relatively large district such as Wentzville, this can be more than enough to sway the vote when, as in Tuesday’s election, only a fraction of registered voters bothered to vote. The two candidates endorsed by the WNEA were victorious in the election and received almost the same number of votes. This fact leads to another question: Should we be concerned that when the union sits down to bargain with the school district, there are school board members whom the WNEA helped elect?

Second, dues-paying union members have no say in which political causes their dues support. Would most WNEA members have wanted any portion of their dues to be used to support Feinstein? This election, however, would probably just a drop in the bucket. Teachers’ unions are among the largest political contributors in the country.

This incident illustrates why Missouri should reconsider how we elect school board members and how those members interact with any unions in their districts. For example, should school board elections be in November where turnout is greater? Should collective bargaining negotiations be open to the public, not behind closed doors? Should public-sector unions have to make annual financial filings, just like private-sector unions, so their members and the public can know where union political support is going? Finally, shouldn’t teachers who want to be in the union for professional development and liability insurance purposes have the option before paying any dues to limit their payments to fund only those activities and not the union’s political activity?

These types of reforms may not prevent the election of convicted felons, but they would go a long way to ensuring taxpayers have a seat at the table when it comes to their local schools.

Spring into Action on School Board Reform

Posted on April 7, 2015January 13, 2026 by Brittany Wagner

With apologies to T. S. Eliot, April is the coolest month. In Missouri, the fish are jumping, the dogwoods are blooming, and major league baseball fans are looking forward to another Opening Day.

April also means school board elections. It would be nice to think that this annual rite of spring would renew and refresh our public schools in the same way that nature restocks our streams and repaints our forest, but this isn’t the case. To proponents of school reform, April really is the cruelest month.

Rather than healthy change and renewal, school board elections will come and go with minimal disturbance to the education establishment in school districts across the state. The system, as it is now, invites apathy and increased union control, perpetuating long-standing problems.

For starters, voter turnout in school board elections is extremely low. In Greene County, for example, only 12 percent of eligible voters made it to the polls in 2013, despite multiple school districts holding elections.

Additionally, parents and taxpayers know very little about the candidates.

While a candidate’s occupation, age, and education may be available—information regarding a candidate’s stance on key education issues is harder to acquire.

With so few people paying attention and so little information disseminated, special interest groups—such as teachers’ unions—can have a disproportionate impact on these elections. While it’s unclear how large a role special interest groups have played in Missouri public school board elections, the danger is that unions are taking bites out of both sides of the apple—campaigning for candidates, then negotiating with union-friendly board members during closed sessions.

Historically, Missouri opted for a system aimed at keeping partisan politics out of school board elections, choosing a month to hold elections in which voters would not be burdened by having to make other electoral choices.

Fifty years ago, this way of thinking may have made some sense, but it makes no sense today. It is time for a complete overhaul of a badly antiquated system.

Here are three suggested reforms.

First, Missouri should move school board elections to coincide with other local, state, and national elections. Scheduling elections in November would assure far greater voter participation. In comparison to April, turnout in the 2012 general election in Greene County was 64 percent.

Second, Missouri should close the loophole in our Sunshine Law that allows school board members to negotiate with teachers’ unions in closed sessions. Taxpayers have a right to know what demands unions are making.

Third, public officials should push for the dissemination of more information during school board elections. Candidates should be encouraged to state their positions on important issues.

Missouri’s system of local public school control is precious, but to ensure that the interests of taxpayers and students are protected, it requires not just reform, but rebirth.

Brittany Wagner is a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute.

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