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How Much “Choice” Is in Senate Bill 1?

Posted on February 18, 2015January 13, 2026 by Brittany Wagner

This session, the senate has worked to create a veto-proof bill that will “fix” the school transfer law. Does the 84-page document provide the educational opportunities families in unaccredited districts are hoping for?

There are a number of things the bill will do, but whether or not students will have more choice remains to be seen. Here are a few points dealing with educational options (the bill addresses many other issues):

First and foremost, the bill does not contain the voucher portion that resulted in Gov. Jay Nixon vetoing the transfer legislation last year. In the area surrounding Normandy High School, there are 17 private high schools within five miles. Check these options off the list.

As the word cloud above indicates, the focus of this year’s legislation is charter schools. The bill allows charter schools to expand in provisionally accredited districts. There are currently 10 provisionally accredited districts. Charter schools designated as “high quality” will have an expedited opportunity to gain charter reauthorization as well as replicate. These portions of the legislation may or may not expand choice. Thus far, zero charters exist outside of Saint Louis and Kansas City.

The proposed legislation allows students in unaccredited school districts to cross district boundaries and attend a charter school with an APR of 70 or higher. Here are the Saint Louis City charter school options for Normandy students. There is only one existing option for Normandy High School students.

Under the new law, students would have to live in an unaccredited district for at least one semester and apply to transfer by a March 1 deadline. The new policy would exclude students from transferring if they were homeschooled, attended a private school, or moved into the community due to a change in guardianship. Students whose parents do not understand application procedures and miss the application deadline will remain within an unaccredited school.

The proposed legislation allows students to attend a virtual school either within a district or charter that sponsors the school or under transfer guidelines. A virtual school under the new law must meet a set of conditions. It is unclear which, if any, current virtual schools will meet those conditions.

Senate Bill 1 attempts to provide more choices for students in struggling schools. It also tries to resolve issues within the transfer program, such as who operates the transfer program and how transportation and tuition works. But this bill falls short in many ways. First, the proposed additional options in many cases do not yet exist. Until those options exist, students are limited. Second, the proposed law restricts open charter enrollment to unaccredited districts, which may deter charters from opening in places like Jennings, a provisionally accredited district with low student enrollment. Third, the transfer guidelines themselves are restrictive and arbitrary. As Senator David Pierce pointed out, one of the bill’s goals is to reduce the number of transfer students.

Judge Michael Burton ruled last week that Normandy is in fact unaccredited. He wrote, “As the transfer statute makes abundantly clear, every child deserves to be enrolled in a non-failing school district—now.” This bill may provide options for some students, but for many students, choice is still restricted. Until lawmakers see providing quality options as more of a priority than reducing transfers, we are unlikely to see a real “fix” to the transfer program.

Don’t Ban Tesla to Protect Middlemen

Posted on February 17, 2015January 13, 2026 by Joseph Miller

Missouri auto dealers, through the Missouri Automobile Dealers Association (MADA), is on the offensive. Their target is Tesla, the luxury electric car manufacturer, and their goal is to prevent the company from selling cars in Missouri. They backed a bill in 2014 which would have banned Tesla, and now that that effort has failed, they have filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri.

The essence of the dispute is that Tesla, uniquely among U.S. car companies, does not use middlemen (dealerships) to sell its cars. MADA, which represents those middlemen, wants it to be illegal for a car company to directly sell its vehicles to consumers. They claim it already is illegal, under the Missouri Motor Vehicle Franchise laws. But the Missouri Department of Revenue disagrees, claiming the laws are only applicable to manufacturers that have dealerships in the state and are not designed to enshrine dealerships as the only method of selling cars.

Along with their legal and legislature maneuvering, MADA is publicizing why Missouri should create more regulations to enshrine the dealership model as the only way to sell cars. They argue that without car dealerships the state’s economy would suffer and that consumers need the type of long-term car care that only they, and not the manufacturer, can provide.

Without a doubt, using car dealerships as a sales and maintenance unit has many advantages for manufacturers and consumers. After all, it became the dominant mode of selling cars for a reason. However, it is not an intrinsically superior way to buy and sell a car and certainly should not be afforded new legal protection.

For example, according to a report from the Department of Justice, dealerships can raise the costs of selling cars. Experiences from General Motors sales internationally have shown that manufacturer-direct sales can lower the cost of a car by 8.6 percent. Furthermore, consumers may prefer manufacturer-direct sales over the uncertainty of haggling with car dealers, if they are given the choice. One poll conducted in the United States found that half of respondents would prefer to buy from the manufacturer even if they were not offered a lower price.

MADA’s efforts would take that choice away. They claim that buying a car is an important financial decision and that dealers provide the long-term care customers need. But there is no shortage of ways consumers could choose to service their vehicles if they buy directly from Tesla, including agreements with auto-repair shops. Car buyers are no less capable of looking after their assets than homebuyers, who somehow manage to purchase and maintain houses without house dealerships.

As for the economy as a whole, protecting a certain way of selling cars is no way to increase jobs or increase competitiveness. Business models change constantly and create new opportunities and products even as they replace older ones. That sentiment underlined the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) criticism of Missouri’s legally entrenched franchise system. They stated, “[C]onsumers are the ones best situated to choose for themselves both the cars they want to buy and how they want to buy them.” That may not always be to the benefit of car dealers, but it’s good economics and good for the state.

Still Movin’ On Out

Posted on February 17, 2015January 13, 2026 by Rik W. Hafer

In a recent analysis of Missouri’s migration patterns since 2004, Michael Rathbone and I found that Missouri’s net out-migration—more people moving out than in—has been especially pronounced since 2008. The most current information used in that study ended in 2013. Because some of the data have been updated, has there been any change over the past year in Missouri’s migration pattern?

Our earlier analysis used information provided by Atlas Van Lines and United Van Lines. These moving companies track outbound and inbound moves for all states. Calculating the ratio of outbound moves to total moves provides a rough gauge of whether more households are relocating into or out of a state.

Both companies recently published their findings for 2014. The table below reports the ratio of outbound to total moves for Missouri and its neighboring states. The evidence from Atlas Van Lines shows that more households moved out of Missouri (55.5 percent of total moves) than in. United Van Line’s 2014 National Movers Study also finds that outbound moves exceeded inbound moves.

Here are two aspects about these numbers. First, they prolong a trend that began several years ago: more households moving out of Missouri than moving in. Second, in 2014 Missouri’s percent of outbound moves exceeded that of most neighboring states. The Atlas report found that the percent of outbound moves was lower in six states relative to Missouri. Five states had relatively fewer outbound moves than Missouri, according to the United study.

“Relying on data sources as varied as moving companies to the Census Bureau and the IRS,” Rathbone and I noted, “our evidence reveals that, especially since 2007, more of Missouri’s residents have relocated out of the state than others have moved in.” Updating the moving company figures does not alter that conclusion.

	Outbound (%) in 2014
State	Atlas	United
Arkansas	52.4	51.7
Illinois	60.1	63.4
Iowa	54.6	52.5
Kansas	54.7	58.2
Kentucky	50.3	55.0
Missouri	55.5	53.1
Nebraska	57.8	46.2
Oklahoma	45.4	43.4
Tennessee	44.4	50.0

Balance Through Transparency – Part 3

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

I previously wrote about the problems with overly adversarial government labor relations. This wasn’t to say that a cozy relationship between government and government unions is always a good thing either.

Another firefighter I spoke with, who wished to remain anonymous, seemed to think the situation in the Saint Louis region was much worse. He told me that at more than one fire protection district the board routinely asks shop stewards for permission to make personnel decisions. According to him, the union packs fire district boards and management positions with people who answer to the union, which, in effect, gives the union control over the management.

Undoubtedly, the union representing firefighters in Saint Louis County, IAFF Local 2665, has another perspective to contribute. It has not yet responded to any of my requests for comment, but I believe there are multiple sides to this story, and I look forward to hearing from them.

It can be tricky to find the right balance in government labor relations. On the one hand, industrial strife leaves citizens dependent on, and paying for, shoddy government services. On the other hand, too cozy a relationship between a government and a government union yields a “fox in the henhouse” situation, where taxpayers get fleeced by a private entity with exclusive control of a government entity. The trick is to find balance. And the best way to achieve balance is to open up the process to the public and let Brandeis’s policeman sort things out.

Port Strikes, Panama, and the Future of Missouri Freight

Posted on February 16, 2015January 13, 2026 by Joseph Miller

Since last July, freight companies and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) (which represents dockworkers from all 29 West Coast ports) have been in negotiations over a new contract. In the last week, negotiations have heated up, with threats of port lockouts and counter threats of strikes. Half of all inbound and outbound U.S. freight use the ports in question.

At the same time, a $5.3 billion expansion of the Panama Canal, long delayed, is nearing completion. New locks that can handle much larger ships are expected to open in early 2016. The expansion will also increase the number of ships that can traverse the canal, decreasing congestion at this critical bottleneck.

While these developments are taking place more than a thousand miles away from Missouri, they may have a large impact on the state’s freight system. Currently, about 97 percent of the $1.2 trillion of freight that flows through Missouri does so by road and rail. That includes goods shipped to and from the West Coast as part of international trade movements. Despite Missouri’s access to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, only 1 percent of freight by value move by barge in the state, and most public port authorities see little river freight.

But that could change. With the widening of the Panama Canal it may become cheaper freight to move large container ships directly to and from the Gulf and Atlantic Coast rather than rely on West Coast ports and cross-continent truck or rail networks. Labor unrest on the West Coast is reportedly incentivizing international freight companies to diversify their freight networks.

The hope among many Missouri transportation planners is that these changes to the international freight network will improve the competitiveness of Missouri’s freight network, and especially its inland waterways, by lowering costs and increasing reliability. For example, grain from Missouri could be put on barges down to the Gulf Coast where it could be directly shipped to Asia. MoDOT and other government bodies are looking at possible investments to take advantage of increased traffic.

However, the optimism should be paired with prudence. Freight experts at Missouri’s annual transportation conference have cautioned that the state lies in an area of the country where it is unclear whether the Panama Canal’s expansion will have great impact. Exporting internationally may become cheaper, but Missouri’s principle markets are likely to remain in neighboring states. Currently, only $12 billion of Missouri’s outbound freight is headed for international markets.

In terms of investment, Missourians should also remember that barge travel is inexpensive in Missouri partially because shippers pay very little of the cost of maintaining the navigable rivers on which they rely. If the Panama Canal expansion truly makes barge freight more competitive, barge companies should be able to afford new port investments without state funding.

Balance Through Transparency – Part 2

Posted on February 14, 2015January 13, 2026 by John Wright

In writing about how increased transparency can help improve government labor relations, I thought it might be useful to illustrate two ways government labor relations can become problematic. The first situation is one where the relationship between a government union and government becomes toxic, making it hard for government employees to deliver public services.

David Richard, a former fire captain and union member in Saint Louis County, told me that somewhere along the line the collective bargaining process became “infected.”

“The union became radical,” David told me. David believes a firefighters union can serve a good purpose, but the situation in many districts has become too adversarial. “The district needs a dialogue, a common ground.” And with the infected relationship between management and the union, ordinary procedures, such as employee review, are compromised.

“I was torn between my duties as a captain and my duties as a good union member,” David said of the employee review process. As a captain, he had the duty to review employees, but as a union member, he had a duty to protect his fellow union members. As the union became more militant, it became increasingly difficult for him to play both roles.

What’s the big deal? People complain about their union being too radical or too soft all the time.

The difference here is that we’re talking about our government.

If a traditional private-sector union is too radical and labor relations suffer, then it’s only a private company that suffers. It’s bad for employees and owners of that company, but society as a whole can always buy Toyotas instead of Fords. If government labor relations suffer, then citizens serviced by and paying for that government entity are stuck with the consequences.

An Imminent Eminent Domain Case

Posted on February 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by Michael Rathbone

When most Saint Louisans think about eminent domain abuses, they tend to conjure up thoughts of Maplewood razing neighborhoods in order to build a Walmart or Clayton trying to seize land to hand over to Centene. But what of eminent domain in the case of government agencies? Can that justify taking families’ homes?

If you are a Saint Louis City alderman who wants to keep the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from moving to Fenton or Mehlville or even possibly Scott Air Force Base, there is a good chance that you’d say yes. That’s why plans to use eminent domain to seize property as part of the plan to keep the NGA in Saint Louis are moving forward. Yet despite this “progress,” that doesn’t mean the aldermen are correct. For the people of North Saint Louis, the abuse of eminent domain is imminent.

Eminent domain has a legitimate purpose. Sometimes it is necessary to seize property to use for the public good, such as highways or sewers. Yet, there is no reason in this case to think that using eminent domain would serve as a public good. Unlike highways, which must go more-or-less in a straight line, the new NGA headquarters is flexible in how it is laid out and where it can locate. Even if the NGA moves to the county or to Scott Air Force Base, NGA employees living in the city are unlikely to move. Why violate somebody’s private property rights when it is not necessary?

The truth is that the city stands to lose millions in earnings taxes if the NGA moves out. It’s understandable, especially when budgets are tight, that the city would want to try anything to avoid losing even more revenue. However, people’s homes matter more than extra tax revenue. Being hard up for money doesn’t give the city a valid reason to take people’s homes.

Finding Balance Through Transparency

Posted on February 13, 2015January 13, 2026 by John Wright

One of the biggest issues in public policy today has to do with the collective bargaining agreements, or CBAs, that are negotiated between some government unions and the government entities that employ union labor. These agreements can have huge implications for our communities’ future budgets and, ultimately, our tax levels.

That’s why recent, troubling news out of Saint Louis County should concern anyone interested in good, effective, and financially secure government. I’ve spoken to a number of firefighters in Saint Louis County recently, and the stories I’m hearing are not good: self-dealing, intimidation, fire district board members using bulletproof vests in their meetings. Something has gone awry.

In response to this strife, some fire districts are trying something new. At Monarch Fire Protection District, instead of holding collective bargaining meetings behind closed doors, the board has decided to open up the process to the public, as Missouri’s Sunshine Law requires them to do with most other meetings. So far the results have been promising.

So why isn’t this already standard practice with government collective bargaining? After all, collective bargaining meetings are deliberative processes where public officials set public policy, including employee compensation, work rules, and grievance procedures.

Missouri Sunshine Law (a.k.a. Open Meetings and Records Law) provides that public government bodies may close meetings, records, and votes to the extent they relate to a negotiated contract until that contract is executed or all proposals are rejected. Hence, government bodies close collective bargaining sessions with government unions under the theory that collective bargaining is a contract negotiation.

Collective bargaining is a contract negotiation of sorts, but it is not the same as contracting with an outside firm. Collective bargaining is a negotiation between staff and management over internal operations. Because policy can be set in these bargaining sessions, exempting government collective bargaining from the Sunshine Law is a mistake, especially when the public is concerned about labor relations at a government entity upon which they depend.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote,

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

Expanding the scope of Missouri’s transparency laws to cover collective bargaining meetings and access to government records would be one good way to alleviate the labor relations problems we’re seeing in the public sector.