Page 397 – Show-Me Institute

New Study on City Spending Confirms What We Already Know

Posted on March 16, 2015January 13, 2026 by Michael Rathbone

800px-Union_Staion_Kansas_City_6169 — Photo: Union Station in Kansas City by Dual Freq

Visitors to Show-Me Daily have probably come across the numerous ways that Kansas City has wasted money. Now, it’s possible that these were isolated incidents. However, WalletHub published a new study that points to Kansas City having a larger, systemic problem with how it spends taxpayer dollars.

According to this study, Kansas City ranks 61st out of 65 cities in regards to spending efficiency. I won’t bore you with all of the gritty details on how WalletHub came up with their figures. The Reader’s Digest version is that this study divides a city’s total park acreage, test scores, and crime rate by it’s per person spending on parks, education, and police. The city with the highest quotient is the “most efficient”.

Besides pointing out the ways that Kansas City has wasted money, the Show-Me Institute has also shown that Kansas City spends a lot of money overall. In a 2013 case study, I examined St. Louis and Kansas City’s per person expenditures compared to six other other cities. Kansas City spent the 3rd most, just barely behind Denver. The case study didn’t say whether Kansas City was being efficient or not with taxpayer money, but with such high spending, the chance for inefficiencies increased. The WalletHub Study lends further credence to the notion that Kansas City taxpayers aren’t getting the best bang for their bucks.

The WalletHub study isn’t the definitive work on city spending, but it should serve notice to policymakers that maybe Kansas City should take a good look at how to improve the way it runs things.

How to Fix the Evergreen Clause

Posted on March 16, 2015January 13, 2026 by John Wright

I previously wrote about how less than 16 percent of home care workers were able to force the rest of the people involved in that program to accept representation from the Missouri Home Care Union. If you followed that issue I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear that when the union negotiated a contract with the state it made sure to include an evergreen clause in the deal. An evergreen clause makes a labor agreement, and all of the work rules and policies provided for in that agreement, unchangeable without the union’s consent.

See for yourself:

This Agreement shall take effect upon signature of the Parties and shall run for a period of thirty (30) months. If a successor Agreement has not been reached upon the expiration of this Agreement, the Agreement will continue in effect until a successor Agreement is finalized.

This is how an evergreen clause works. The agreement has a term, in this case 30 months, but after that term is up, the policies set by the agreement remain in effect until both parties settle on a new agreement. In this way, a union that wins a contract with an evergreen clause gets veto power over any new policies proposed by government representatives or the people. This shift of power from democracy to union negotiations is the real danger.

Senate Bill 549 aims to correct this egregious practice by limiting government labor agreements to a term of two years. If it passes and the courts decide to apply it correctly, then it’ll be a big win for anyone interested in good, flexible, democratically accountable government.

Hashtagging Education in Missouri

Posted on March 14, 2015January 13, 2026 by Brittany Wagner

Social media is a platform for discussion, and education policy is a popular topic. In a recent study, researchers looked at the Twitter hashtag, #commoncore. Over a six-month period, there were 25,000 to 35,000 tweets per month using the CCSS hashtag. Not surprisingly, researchers found that the discussion more often surrounded larger political issues rather than the standards themselves.

I looked at two popular Missouri education hashtags: #moedchat and #motransfers from March 9 to March 11. Using arguably less sophisticated methods, here are a few interesting things I found.

On just one of the days, most of the Twitter users participating in discussions were educators, administrators, or fell under an “other” category. At a glance, these were usually tech specialists or professional development representatives. Looking at only the #motransfers hashtag, there were seven Twitter users participating (including myself, Show-Me Distinguished Fellow James Shuls, DESE, and state house reporter Alex Stuckey).

Over a three-day period, several issues were discussed. The content was related to technology, teaching and learning, policy, and testing. Here is the breakdown:

The more popular hashtag is #moedchat, despite recent legislative actions concerning interdistrict choice. From my very short and quick dive into the data, I found that Missouri educators use Twitter to find out about professional development events, as well as connect with other educators to share ideas. The area that receives the most action is teaching and learning, but connecting and promoting is second.

I’m glad to see Missouri educators engaging in Twitter. Technology is a useful tool both in and out of the classroom, but if this small glimpse is any indication of social media participation among all educators in Missouri on a daily basis, there is room for improvement.

More teachers should participate in policy conversations—140 characters can go a long way.

Show-Me Now! Convention Hotel or Another Money Pit?

Posted on March 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by Patrick Tuohey

Kansas City may soon be talking about building a convention hotel downtown. Just as with other promises of economic development, convention hotel business in other cities have never lived up to projections. Kansas Citians are right to be wary.

Make Metro Sustainable, not House Poor

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

Planners are pushing for a new multibillion-dollar North-South MetroLink line in Saint Louis. While light rail expansion would increase mobility in the city (unlike some other “transportation” modes), the high capital costs of expanded rail imperil Metro’s ability to provide flexible and effective transit over the long term.

Transit spending, and especially rail transit like MetroLink, skews toward capital-intensive projects that make agencies “house poor”—that is, even if an agency can get most of the start-up costs of a transit project paid out of federal funds, that agency still may not have much money to pay for a project’s predictable long-term costs. That’s relevant to Saint Louis, where about 30 percent of the region’s transit funding comes from federal grants that usually require the the expansion of transit service.

Local governments don’t usually take this longer view on transit proposals; instead, projects are sold to residents based on their immediate local cost, with little consideration to how the city or agency will pay for the system’s eventual maintenance and reconstruction. This gap in logic on the part of many planners is a very real concern for taxpayers and transit riders alike; Boston’s transit agency has essentially bankrupted itself through rail expansion, and Chicago will need $36 billion to repair its transit system in the next decade.

Saint Louis is hardly different. Its MetroLink rail system cost more than a billion dollars to build, but MetroLink costs more than $80 million to operate each year, just as it is. This revolving pricetag, paired with MetroLink’s paltry fare take of $20 million per year, helps to explain why Metro has never replaced a MetroLink car: the agency simply doesn’t have the money for it. Indeed, MetroLink’s 83 vehicles are now more than 15 years old, on average. Even building a new station on the existing line had to be entirely funded by the federal government. Expanding the rail system—as Saint Louis planners want to do with the North-South MetroLink line—will only exacerbate the system’s substantial, and predictable, long-term liabilities without also solving the problem of reliably paying for either existing or proposed rail maintenance and improvement.

Saint Louis planners should take into account the full costs of the projects being proposed and look toward increasing efficiency. Yes, a new MetroLink line may be an exciting possibility for many Saint Louisans, but if the entire Metro system is to have solid financial footing in the future, superficially attractive prestige projects like the North-South MetroLink line may need to defer to practical, efficient, and effective improvements to the region’s bus system.

Show-Me Now! Wrapping Up Obamacare?

Posted on March 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by Patrick Ishmael

What does the pending U.S. Supreme Court case King v. Burwell mean for Missouri? Director of Government Accountability Patrick Ishmael notes that moving away from Obamacare is the first step to putting patients first.

St. Louis Public Schools Saving School Buildings for a Rainy Day

Posted on March 12, 2015January 13, 2026 by James V. Shuls

Yesterday, the Senate Education Committee conducted a hearing on House Bill 42. Brittany Wagner and I submitted testimony with suggestions for improving the bill. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the hearing. For some reason, college professors are actually expected to regularly attend class. Go figure. Still, I was able to keep up on some of the deliberations via Twitter. One tweet in particular caught my attention.

Alex Stuckey, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tweeted:

Officials with St. Louis Public Schools said they need to hold buildings back in case enrollment increases #motransfers #moleg

— Alex Stuckey (@alexdstuckey) March 11, 2015

This was in regards to a portion of the bill that requires districts to sell their vacant school buildings at fair-market value to charter schools. Here is what Brittany and I said in our testimony about the abandoned building provision:

While charter schools continue to grow in Missouri’s urban cities, HB 42 addresses the acquisition of real estate by charter schools from public schools. Overall, these schools are outperforming their traditional public school counterparts. Charter schools are doing well despite receiving less funds than traditional public schools. For example, they do not receive public funds for building expenses. Lack of access to affordable real estate often prohibits charter school expansion and the replication of quality charters. St. Louis and Kansas City Public Schools, however, both have their share of abandoned buildings. As a result, taxpayers are basically funding vacant buildings. Neglected facilities increase the risk of drug and crime incidents in urban communities. Allowing public charter schools to purchase taxpayer-owned real estate at fair-market value could increase educational opportunities while revitalizing blighted neighborhoods.

Now, here is what I find particularly interesting about the notion that St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) needs to hold on to buildings in case enrollment increases. First, enrollment has been steadily declining since the late 1990s. Since 1999, the district has lost half of its students. The district has had to close many school buildings in that time. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the district had 130 operating schools in 1991, 113 in 1999, and 77 in 2013.

Using the enrollment figures and the number of school buildings, I can compute the number of students per building. Of course, this is an average, and the actual enrollments vary. In 1991, the average enrollment per building was 333, in 1999 it was 396, and in 2013 it was 327. The enrollment today, per building, is less than it was at each of these times. In other words, SLPS buildings are no more crowded today than they ever have been.

The largest enrollment increase in the past 20-plus years was 2,684 in 2013. This was the year after the Imagine Charter Schools closed their doors. Using the average building enrollment figures, this increase is roughly the enrollment of six to eight schools.

Yet, according to information gathered by Abby Fallon, a former Show-Me Institute intern, SLPS has 35 empty schools. The district currently has 25 buildings listed for sale.

It is always nice to save for a rainy day, but saving 30-plus buildings seems a bit much. SLPS must be expecting it to pour new students! In the unlikely event that SLPS had a large influx of students, it might make sense to have a couple of buildings on reserve. Still, this hardly justifies blocking the sale of two dozen other buildings that could be put to good use as a charter school.

Charter schools paying fair-market value seems like a pretty good deal to me. There is even a strong case that charters should have access to these buildings for free. As Doug Thaman of the Missouri Charter Public School Association said, “Why should a charter school use public dollars to buy a public building that’s already been paid for by the public? It’s almost like buying your home twice.”

Bill Would Give Workers a Vote

Posted on March 12, 2015January 13, 2026 by John Wright

Imagine you could vote for the president only one time, and then you were stuck with the results until he or she were impeached. This wouldn’t be very democratic would it? For many of our government employees, including teachers and firefighters, this is the sort of democracy used to determine whether workers are unionized.

I previously wrote about the government union transparency gap and a bill addressing it, but if you are a government worker subject to union representation, not knowing where your dues go is only part of the problem. In many cases, you also have very little say in who represents you, and you have no recourse to ensure that your voice is heard. That’s why we need reform that would give all unionized public employees the ability to vote in regular union elections.

Consider the example of personal care attendants enrolled in the state’s consumer-directed health care program. Attendants get paid out of a state-managed program to take care of home-bound Missourians. In 2009, the attendants had an election to determine whether they would all be represented by the Missouri Home Care Union, a joint local union affiliated with both AFSCME and SEIU.

Out of 13,151 eligible voters, only 2,085 voted for the union. According to the state board running these elections, 294 ballots were challenged and 1,405 voters voted against the election. The challenged ballots plus the number of votes against the union were not enough to affect the outcome of the election. So in a low-turnout election with hundreds of challenged ballots, less than 16 percent of personal care attendants were able to force union representation on every other person enrolled in this program.

You might think, “Well, that’s just democracy. If you don’t vote, you deserve the representation you’re given.” The problem is that after a one-time election there will not be another election unless workers organize and go through a notoriously difficult decertification process. Depending on how a union contract is written, the union may even sue workers for trying to decertify the union or supporting another union. There’s nothing democratic about voting for a representative once and then being stuck with the results indefinitely.

If public employees are going to be subject to union representation against their will, then they at least should get a regular vote so that they can hold their union accountable. The Missouri Legislature has a bill, SB 549, that would require these regular elections. Regular union elections could help ensure that public employees, like teachers, police, and firefighters, are only subject to unions that work for them.