Closing Loopholes in the Sunshine Law

Posted on by John Wright

government hallwaySometimes we like loopholes. Maybe you’ve used one to get out of a traffic ticket or to pay a little less tax. I remember hearing about a poorly thought out tax credit for electric vehicles that folks were using to pay for golf carts. Cute. A little scummy, but cute. But when the government uses a loophole to set policy behind closed doors, it’s not so cute.

There is a loophole in Missouri’s open records and meetings law that allows government entities, such as cities, fire districts, and school boards, to negotiate with unions and set public policy in meetings that are closed to the public. State law should open the collective bargaining process because the public pays for, and depends on, the policies set in these meetings.

Some government agencies have already opened collective bargaining meetings. In 2014, the Columbia Public Schools opened its collective bargaining meetings. It has held open meetings ever since. According to Christine King, president of the Columbia Public Schools Board of Education, the board opened the process because they felt open meetings advanced the public’s interest in full transparency and openness. Such openness in public affairs empowers citizens to hold their representatives in government accountable.

Since the Columbia Public Schools began holding its collective bargaining meetings in open sessions, the local paper, the Columbia Daily Tribune, has covered these meetings, parents, teachers, and anyone else is welcome to attend, and members of the public can view meeting minutes online and see that the parties negotiate in good faith with one another.

Open collective bargaining, as practiced by forward thinking local government entities like Columbia Public Schools and Monarch Fire Protection District, should be standard practice for Missouri state and local governments. One bill, SB 549, promises to do just that by closing the loophole in Missouri’s sunshine law that some public entities use to justify closing collective bargaining sessions. Reform that requires these meetings be held in the open would be a win for anyone who wants transparent, accountable government.

A Public School and a Private School Experience

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Two hours—that was the amount of time it took me to get dressed, do my hair, get dressed again, decide which shoulder my backpack looked cooler on, and make it to first period on time. Concern about physical appearance is a shared concern for many high school students, but that’s not often the case for students who attend an all-girls or all-boys high school.

Across Missouri, there are about twenty private schools offering single-sex education. On average, these schools cost $12,320 per year. Aside from alleviating opposite gender social pressures, single sex education can offer many benefits for students in need of an alternative environment. Unfortunately, students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds do not often have access.

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Because of school choice, adolescent girls from low-income backgrounds in Saint Louis now have access to the option for the first time. This fall, the state’s first all-girls public charter school – the Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls – will open its doors. An affiliate of the Young Women’s Leadership Network, which boasts 100 percent college acceptance rates, Hawthorne will focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Founder Mary Stillman fondly remembers her experience at Holten-Arms, an all-girls college prep school in Bethesda, Maryland. Stillman founded Hawthorn to provide low-income, urban students with the joy and rigorous academic focus associated with private same-sex education. According to the charter’s brochure, young girls should expect a sisterhood with traditions, celebrations, and strong relationships, as well as 1 to 2 hours of homework per night.

Though Hawthorn will be the first public school option of its kind, it won’t be the first public school to use a gender-specific educational approach. Woerner, an elementary school in St. Louis Public Schools, adopted a gender-sensitive model four years ago. According to a recent article in St. Louis Magazine, the school divided students by sex, giving boys more hands-on learning, while instilling more confidence in girls in math and science. The school has moved from provisional to full accreditation.

This isn’t to say that single-sex education is the right choice for every student, but the option, if it’s a better fit, should be available to every student. In the absence of a private school choice program, charter schools are one way to expand the option which previously was experienced only by students whose parents had the financial means to afford private school tuition.

 

In Support of An Outside Audit of Missouri’s Medicaid Program

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Last month we wrote about a state audit of the St. Joseph School District that turned up tens of millions of dollars in questionable stipends, given out over the course of a decade. Good government requires constant vigilance over how our officials spend taxpayer money; events in St. Joe underline that fact.

But the state’s school districts aren’t the only state programs that deserve a closer look from Missourians. So, too, does the state’s Medicaid program, and neighboring state Illinois serves as a good example. From the Wall Street Journal late last year:

The federal government requires states to do an annual audit of the Medicaid rolls to ensure that participants are eligible, but in most states few people are removed. Ms. Bellock wanted to use an outside, private firm, Virginia-based Maximus, to audit [Illinois’s] 1.3 million Medicaid case files—which represents about 2.7 million individuals. The company has more extensive databases than the state and would likely identify more ineligible Medicaid beneficiaries.

Maximus recommended removing 249,912 cases by the end of February 2014, according to the state. By law, state employees had to review the recommendations and decide if cancellation is appropriate. The state removed 148,283 cases—about 234,000 individuals, as many cases represent families—from the Medicaid rolls.

Many of the removals suggested in Illinois were probably the product of expected churns in incomes; as people earn a little more money, they may no longer qualify for the Medicaid program. There’s nothing necessarily nefarious about that.

But whether people receiving benefits improperly are doing so because their incomes have recently changed or because they’re unambiguously defrauding the system, that doesn’t change the fact that the money has been misspent—and misspent needlessly. No one knows for sure if the same kind of waste that happened in Illinois is going on in Missouri, but that’s sort of the point; like in the St. Joseph School District and Illinois, the only way we can prevent future problems is with vigilance today.

Wasted money hurts the people Missouri is trying to help by siphoning off limited state resources, and that’s why Illinois’s third party eligibility verification framework, which appears to have effectively identified thousands of ineligible beneficiaries in the Land of Lincoln, is one Missouri may want to consider. Our state’s auditors deserve our immense appreciation for the work they do currently, but they don’t always have the resources or data to do some of the analyses some of these private vendors can do. As a supplement to our auditors’ work—and mark your calendar, because I don’t say this often—the state should think about following Illinois’s lead.

Can Laclede’s Landing Survive Government Planning?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Recently, the Post-Dispatch reported that many businesses in Laclede’s Landing, a riverfront entertainment district in downtown Saint Louis, are struggling to stay afloat. Half of the district’s 14 bars have closed in the last 18 months.

The immediate culprit of the decline is construction: work on the area’s road system and renovations to the Arch grounds have made the Landing difficult to get to for tourists and residents alike. With construction slated to continue for the next couple of years, many local businesses are calling it quits. According to some business owners, regional planners were so focused with large improvements to the riverfront that they were unwilling to heed the concerns of the neighborhood.

Officials can argue that, despite the present hard times, the area will be better served in the long run by riverfront improvements. However, Laclede’s Landing has deeper problems than transitory construction disruptions. Saint Louis has changed since the 80s and 90s, when the Landing was downtown’s premier entertainment district. From the mid-90s onward, Laclede’s Landing has had to deal with the rise of competitor bar districts, often heavily subsidized by the city and state government.

We can see evidence of the declining comparative vitality of Laclede’s Landing in the neighborhood’s building permits. In the 1990s, Laclede’s Landing had a greater value of building permits per square mile than other entertainment districts in the city, excluding the Central West End.

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Since the 1990s, Laclede’s Landing has been eclipsed. Whereas the Landing had more building permits than the center of Washington Avenue in the 1990s, in the 2000s Washington Avenue had more than ten times the permits of Laclede’s Landing. From 2011-2014, Laclede’s Landing had the least new building permits by value of any of the neighborhoods sampled, even falling behind the upstart Cherokee Street. Lacelde’s Landing was also the only entertainment district to have fewer building permits in the 2000s than it had in the 90s.

One entertainment district being eclipsed by others is no reason to blame regional planners. However, the competition has not been on a level playing field. The region and state have given extensive tax credits to much of Laclede’s Landing’s competition (especially nearby Washington Avenue), as the map below shows:

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In just the sample area of Washington Avenue, the city handed out more than $60 million in tax credits from 1999-2011. The sample area of the Central West End received almost $50 million. Laclede’s Landing, by comparison, received less than $2 million in tax credits.

The future of Laclede’s Landing is uncertain. But it seems assured that Saint Louis will continue to make where people spend their free time a matter of public policy. And while government preference can create well publicized winners, it can also make losers. In the 70s, Laclede’s Landing was arguably part of the former, now, it is in danger of joining the latter group.

Saint Louis Riverfront Stadium: The Maintenance Dimension

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Missouri officials say they need a new stadium to keep the Rams. They plan to pay $405 million toward the riverfront stadium by extending existing bonds and offering millions in state tax subsidies. Unfortunately, they do not talk about how that new stadium, along with the teamless dome, will pay for upkeep.

In 2015, the Edward Jones Dome’s maintenance and renovation is $7 million. In the next decade, regular maintenance costs are expected to vary between $7 million and $9 million annually. The upkeep of the dome is paid for by the public, not the Rams or conventions. Approximately $4 million a year comes from the city and county. In addition, the state pays $2 million toward maintenance as part of the deal that originally financed the dome ($10 million for construction debt, $2 million for upkeep and renovation). As the Post-Dispatch reported last year, the dome is in a relatively serious financial hole, and Missouri officials are going to need to find new revenue sources to maintain Saint Louis’ current stadium.

The riverfront stadium plan, unlike the Edward Jones Dome, apparently does not have a revenue stream for its upkeep. However, if costs are anything like the dome’s, the stadium will require at least $5 million to $9 million a year over its useful life. Setting aside the unlikely event of the Rams deciding to cover that cost, Missouri and the Saint Louis region should be preparing to spend at least $125 million in present-value dollars for the upkeep of a new stadium, over and above the initial capital cost.

The additional cost of maintaining a new stadium, and not just its initial cost, makes justifying the project, on economic terms, very difficult. A $405 million upfront cost, plus $125 million for maintenance, far exceeds even rosy projects for the additional tax revenue a stadium might generate. Since the vast majority of economists agree that stadiums do not spur urban regeneration or create economic development, there is only one defense for the new stadium plan: civic pride.

Florida Story Shows Risk of Conflating Medicaid Waivers With “Block Grants”

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

HealthcareEarlier this week I was asked by the Kansas City Star for my thoughts on a Medicaid expansion proposal being marketed as a “block grant” that’s currently circulating in the Missouri Senate. The problem? It’s not a block grant but rather a waiver, and I noted that as structured, the proposal could “guarantee Obamacare’s expansion but would not guarantee key reforms.”

The concern with waivers (Medicaid and otherwise) is their time limitations. When a waiver’s term expires, it’s up to the Federal government to determine whether that waiver will continue — and if the waiver continues, under what conditions.

Enter Florida.

The CMS will not renew a Medicaid waiver in Florida expiring at the end of June that provides more than $1 billion a year to help the state’s hospitals with uncompensated-care costs for low-income and uninsured patients. That may put additional pressure on Florida Republican leaders to consider expanding Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act.

Since 2005, Florida has had a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver establishing a low-income funding pool to aid the state’s hospitals. The state has received between $1 billion and $2 billion annually to support safety net providers.

To have genuine block grant Medicaid reform at the state level, the Medicaid laws would first have to change at the Federal level. Short of that, states and their Medicaid programs will always be subject to having the policy rug pulled out from under them. Florida is seeing this firsthand with a waiver that existed long before Obamacare passed but whose continued existence may hinge on implementation of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

It’s good to hear politicians at least give lip service to a substantive change to Medicaid, but if little more than lip service is all that can be guaranteed in the Medicaid reform discussion, then Missouri taxpayer: beware. A waiver may look like a carrot, but it can easily be used like a stick. Just ask Florida.

Until flexibility in state reform is enshrined in Federal law with unambiguous block granting language, enduring and dynamic Medicaid reforms will be little more than a policy mirage. Unfortunately, a request for a waiver under Obamacare simply doesn’t cut it if long-term, state-based and patient-centered Medicaid reform is going to ever be a reality in the Show-Me State.

New Study on City Spending Confirms What We Already Know

Posted on by Michael Rathbone
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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 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.

evergreen2See 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.

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