Streetcars Have Lost . . . Washington, D.C.?

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

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Back in May 2014, at the groundbreaking of the 2.2-mile streetcar line, city leadership held up the streetcar projects in the Washington, D.C., area as examples for Kansas City. However, Arlington County, Virginia, has cancelled their streetcar line, and Washington, D.C., may follow suit.

Roll Call newspaper in Washington, D.C., wrote as much in their piece, “Survival of New D.C. Streetcar Now in Doubt.” Here’s the best part:

“I’m trying to prudently and responsibly prepare the service to be started. But if I can’t get to that point, I’m not going to be enchanted by some philosophy of transit that leads me to do something that doesn’t make sense,” [District of Columbia Department of Transportation Director Leif A.] Dormsjo told the Post.

“This project over 10 years was developed in an unprofessional, haphazard, contradictory and inconsistent manner,” he said.

If the transportation folks in and around Washington, D.C., are complaining about and even cancelling streetcars, why are leaders in Kansas City still onboard?

Kansas City’s Orwellian “Open Streets”

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

cycleinthestreetsThe Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department is hosting an “open streets festival” called Cycle in the City on Ward Parkway between Meyer and Gregory Blvds. on May 16. A community festival can be a good time, but is this a worthwhile use of funds when the department is cutting other important services?

What’s more, in order to have the open streets event, the streets will be closed, presumably so people can use them for anything other than what they were designed to handle: automobiles.

The Show-Me Institute obtained the details of the event’s $85,000 budget through a Sunshine Request. The event includes arts and crafts, bounce houses, and face painting ($7,000) and other “entertainment” that includes a DJ ($8,000). The two biggest line items are advertising ($13,000) and the event management fee ($25,000).

Kansas City government is facing  cuts in many places, including the Parks Department. In fact, the City of Fountains’ own Parks Department has cut funding for citywide fountain maintenance so much that it has had to rely on a private charity to help. (Many more fountains are maintained by the various home associations in which they are located.)

Parties in the park are fun; everyone loves face painting and bounce houses, but should they be a priority when Kansas City is in financial straights and cutting services and staff while raising fees and taxes?

Bill Addresses Government Union Transparency Gap

Posted on by John Wright

What is the difference between a government union, like the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the union representing folks at the brewery downtown?

In the Show-Me State, one big difference is that unions representing public workers, like teachers, police, and firefighters, are not required to be as transparent as traditional private-sector unions. Whereas your neighbor who works for a private business can look up his union’s financial filings and see how union executives use his dues, the dues-paying teacher down the block can be left in the dark about where his membership fees are going. This transparency gap is unfair for workers, but it should also alarm the public, which negotiates with government unions and pays for the services provided by union labor.

transparencySo why do private-sector unions share information about their finances with the public, while Missouri’s government unions do not?

Federal law requires most unions to make annual filings that disclose basic financial information, including assets, liabilities, and money spent on political activities. The federal government makes these filings publicly available and searchable online. This way, a member of the public, including a dues-paying worker, can see how their union spends money. However, federal labor law does not apply to unions representing state and local government employees.

Other states, such as Michigan, have enacted some financial transparency requirements for their government unions. These state laws ensure state and local government unions that fall through the cracks in federal law still have some basic standards of financial transparency. Unfortunately, Missouri lags behind.

Right now, the Missouri Legislature is taking up a government union accountability bill (SB 549) that aims to correct this disparity between private-sector unions and government unions. Among other things, the bill would require government unions to disclose their finances in an annual filing very similar to the LM filings that private-sector unions already make. These filings would allow workers and the public to see how government unions spend taxpayer-funded union dues.

Government unions should be at least as transparent as private-sector unions. Bringing government union transparency up to the same level as private-sector union transparency is simply common sense.

Missouri’s Fuel Taxes in Context

Posted on by Joseph Miller

On March 1, Iowa increased its fuel taxes by 10 cents per gallon. Other states, including Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Illinois, are considering following suit. The Missouri Legislature is currently entertaining multiple proposals for increasing the state gas tax, and just recently a new bill was introduced in the senate (SB 540) calling for a 6 cent increase over two years.

Why the push to raise the gas taxes? Missouri, like other states, depends on its fuel tax to fund its state highway system. In 2014, the state’s fuel taxes brought in approximately $489 million for the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). Furthermore, because 30 percent of fuel tax revenue goes to cities and counties, local governments also rely on fuel taxes for road improvements. In 2014, fuel taxes provided $179 million to local governments statewide.

However, given the amount MoDOT claims it needs to maintain the state highway system, current revenue may be insufficient. Missouri’s fuel tax has not increased since 1996. With Missourians buying less gas, and the costs of maintaining the state highway system growing all the time, MoDOT warns of a large budget shortfall by 2017. As fuel taxes allow people who benefit from the roads to pay for them, it is an attractive funding source for roads in Missouri and other states.

Fortunately for Missourians, any fuel tax increase would be from a low base. At 17 cents a gallon (both regular and diesel), Missouri has the fifth lowest regular fuel tax and fourth lowest diesel fuel tax in the nation. As of January 2015, the average national state fuel tax was 29.89 cents per gallon regular, 30.02 cents per gallon diesel. Missouri also has a low fuel tax compared to its neighbors:

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As the map above demonstrates, Missouri has a lower fuel tax than any neighboring state save Oklahoma, which substantially tolls its state roads. The size of Missouri’s state highway system adds to the problem. With more than 33,000 lane miles, Missouri has the nation’s seventh largest state highway system, the largest of its neighbors.

If SB 540 becomes law, MoDOT would see approximately $165 million additional dollars per year, which likely would stave off the implementation of the 325 Plan. It would also mean more revenue for cities and counties. For example, Saint Louis City could see almost $4 million more per year to spend on local roads from the passage of SB 540.

Missouri has comparatively low fuel taxes, and low taxes benefit residents. But a well-maintained highway system has benefits of its own. Missourians should consider whether preserving that system is worth paying a little more at the pump.

Are Charter Schools the School Transfer Fix?

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

When Stella Erondu moved to America from Nigeria in 1977, she was surprised to find the streets were not in fact paved with gold. Now the principal at North Side Community School, a charter school in North Saint Louis City, she feels that at least in education, they should be: “This is America. All over the world, people just beat themselves up to get here. . . . Then, you get here and children are stopped from growing.”

Erondu is referring to the lack of educational opportunity in the lowest performing school district in the state, Normandy Schools Collaborative. “If the public schools aren’t working, get alternative educational systems . . . or let them come to schools like mine so that we can take care of them,” she said.

The failing district is only five minutes from North Side, which earned a perfect score on the state’s annual progress report. Charters like Erondu’s have increasingly shown improvement, outperforming some traditional public schools. Yet, only children within Saint Louis City and Kansas City are allowed to attend Missouri’s charter schools.

Students should be allowed to cross school district boundaries and attend charter schools. There are several reasons why.

First and foremost, they offer the chance at a superior education. This is certainly true for North Side students, who come from an almost identical neighborhood as Normandy. Abandoned properties and condemned buildings line the streets. There is poverty. There is crime. But, at North Side, students are succeeding.

“They don’t know the names of their letters. They don’t know the sounds of their letters. They don’t know their shapes,” said kindergarten teacher Sonya Taylor of what she encounters in North Side students when they are just entering grade school.

But North Side has a strategy. “We have to start over, we have to start from age six months old . . . reading to them as if they were being read to in their younger ages,” said Erondu. From there, the school focuses intensely on communication arts and math. In 2014, 46 percent of North Side students were proficient in math, while only 21.5 percent of students at Barack Obama Elementary in Normandy were proficient—same population, different outcomes.

What’s more, charter schools actually want to educate these students. Last June, the Francis Howell School District refused to accept 350 students. Parents have had to resort to lawsuits in order for their children to return.

While it is true charter schools are able to open in unaccredited school districts like Normandy and Riverview Gardens, the student populations are much smaller than the Saint Louis and Kansas City districts. If students were able to cross district boundaries, charter schools may be more likely to open within these failing districts, as they could attract students from a larger community base.

Missouri should pave the way for educational opportunity by allowing students to cross district boundaries and attend charter schools. American streets may never be paved with gold, but that doesn’t mean roadblocks should stand between a child and a path to a quality education.

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

 

What Teachers’ Unions Could Learn from Koufax and Drysdale

Posted on by John Wright

After the Los Angeles Dodgers won the 1965 World Series, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the two great stars of the Dodgers’ pitching staff, jointly negotiated their contracts for the next season. In effect, Koufax and Drysdale formed a pact—a voluntary mini-union, if you will—hiring a Hollywood lawyer to present their demands. Koufax ended up getting $125,000 and Drysdale $110,000, which was quite a bit of money for a Major League player back in 1966.

Sandy_Koufax_1961-248x300Reviewing the literature on collective bargaining recently reminded me of this little bit of baseball history. The Missouri National Education Association (MNEA), one of Missouri’s teachers’ unions, published a pamphlet arguing that successful collective bargaining requires an “exclusive representative” who negotiates a contract on behalf of all employees, whether or not all employees want to join the union. I pointed out in a recent post that a teachers’ association need not represent all of the teachers in a school district in order to effectively represent its members. The Koufax-Drysdale holdout illustrates this point.

DrysdaleIt would have been absurd for Koufax and Drysdale to force the rest of the team into their mini-union. More importantly, forcing everyone to accept representation from the same negotiator would be wrong. If another member of the Dodgers’ pitching staff would have refused representation from Koufax and Drysdale, it would have been his choice to make.

MNEA could learn a thing or two from the Koufax-Drysdale holdout. Rather than forcing every teacher in a school district to accept representation from their organization and negotiating a contract on behalf of all teachers, MNEA could seek to represent teachers in a members-only capacity. Members-only representation is where a union only represents its own members and neither forces nonmembers to pay fees nor forces them to accept a contract the union negotiates. Members-only agreements allow workers the freedom to choose whether or not to be represented by a union. They also give unions the freedom to withhold services from nonmembers.

The Koufax-Drysdale holdout is just one example suggesting that there are alternative ways for groups of employees to bargain with their employers. These alternatives can be as effective as exclusive representation—and they can be done in a way that fosters individual freedom.

Domes, Development, and Downtown Saint Louis

Posted on by Joseph Miller

A couple weeks ago, I filmed a video in the Bottle District, just north of the Edward Jones Dome, in which I talked about how unlikely it is that a new football stadium will spark urban regeneration. The area north of the existing dome illustrates the fact that being near a football stadium is certainly no guarantee of development. The economic literature supports this observation.

Some, however, have criticized this characterization and claim that Washington Avenue developments (and downtown growth in general) are examples of regeneration that can be tied to a football stadium cum convention center.

The idea that the Edward Jones Dome has led to a rebirth of Saint Louis is mistaken for a number of reasons. First, the success of downtown can be overstated, and should be taken in context. Consider the changes in population density in Saint Louis City as a whole from 2000 to 2013:

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As the census data above illustrate, the city’s population density has been falling in general, as the city shrinks to a few core neighborhoods. While the areas within one mile of the Edward Jones Dome did add population from 2000 to 2013, the total magnitude of the increase is small (4,475 residents) and represents growth from a very small base. In 2010, Saint Louis had the 18th largest metro area population, but it had only the 88th greatest population within one mile of city hall.

Even if one sees the modest growth (in an abnormally under-populated downtown) as major progress, it is a stretch to attribute that growth to the Edward Jones Dome. While it was an expensive project ($280 million in 1992 dollars), development has not radiated from the Dome, as the empty Bottle District can attest. Most of the growth in population is further west along Washington Avenue, likely due to the extensive use of tax subsidies in the area, not the Dome. Incentives from 1999 to 2011 within one mile of the Dome are shown along with population density changes from 2000 to 2013 below:

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As we have written before, pushing development downtown via subsidies and lopsided public investment has been the consistent strategy of city hall. All told, from 1999 to 2011, more than $472 million in tax credits have been awarded within a mile of the Edward Jones Dome. With a total population growth just under 4,500 residents, that’s more than $100,000 in tax credits per resident gained.

One would think that if a football stadium drew in residents, such subsidies would be unnecessary. There would be plenty of development north, south, east, and west of the stadium. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. And it’s not likely to be the case with a new riverfront stadium either, unless you consider a sea of parking to be development.

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