James Shuls, Ph.D., talks about the Goodloe family’s decision to leave the Normandy School District and return to Francis Howell School District.
Support Local Control? Oppose Teacher Tenure Mandates
In November, Missourians will vote on a constitutional amendment that would change the way school districts manage the teacher workforce. The amendment would strip away current teacher tenure protections for new teachers and limit contracts of these new teachers to a maximum of three years. Additionally, it would require school districts to use student performance data in teacher evaluations.
Now, there are good and compelling arguments on both sides of this issue. Ironically, however, one of the main arguments against Amendment 3 is that it constitutes a loss of local control.
Amendment 3 is a top-down mandate will shift local control away from parents, teachers and local school districts. #MoNoOn3
— Protect Our Schools (@LocalSchoolsMO) October 14, 2014
There is some truth to that claim, but it is important to ask the question, “As compared to what?”
Under current state statutes, Missouri public school districts are forced to enter into an “indefinite contract” when teachers receive tenure and that it shall last for an “indefinite period.” Talk about top down!
What’s more, state statutes mandate a specific process for removing a tenured teacher. This is illustrated in the graphic below (from my paper, “The Power to Lead”).
It is perfectly fine for opponents of Amendment 3 to call it a “top-down mandate” that will strip away local control. I just hope that after November 4, these groups will continue to support local control and oppose top-down mandates for teacher tenure.
Brakes Still On for Uber and Lyft
After living in Saint Louis for several years, I’ve learned from experience that cabs are unreliable and too expensive for many individuals on a tight budget. As a college student who has used Uber many times in other cities, I know that Uber and Lyft bring more competition into the market and lower prices for consumers while still providing them with a safe and efficient service—elements that are nonexistent in the Saint Louis taxicab market.
This past week, when the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC) unanimously approved Uber’s application to function as a third-party dispatcher for existing premium sedans, I was initially excited, figuring that cab services would be cheaper and easier to use. My excitement, however, was misguided, as the commission’s recent decision still puts the brakes on any meaningful competition that Uber and Lyft would provide.
The MTC, “in its continuing endeavor to provide safe, high quality taxi service to St. Louis,” has retained and added regulations that will prevent Uber or any other ridesharing company from offering anything but an expensive, premium service. Some examples of these regulations include:
- The price of a premium sedan must be greater than $33,000.
- The price of a premium SUV must be greater than $42,000.
- The vehicle cannot be more than six model years old while in service.
- For-hire services must have a non-residential business address.
It gets worse. Aside from controlling the downstream pricing of ridesharing services, the MTC still plans to tightly control the supply of premium sedans available to Uber through the issuance of permits. Initially, the MTC will only issue 26 permits for premium services, and only five will be rewarded to new, single-vehicle operators. The rest will go to existing sedan companies that can afford three or more sedans. These smoke and mirror tricks, designed to make it appear that the MTC is becoming friendlier to other services and companies, are in reality reinforcing the restrictions on the entry and pricing of the taxi market.
These arbitrary restrictions become even more evident when trying to order an Uber. When I attempted to order a car through the Uber app, the message appears that “no Black cars are available.” So even after the changes, trying to use Uber is just as difficult as when they were barred from entering the market. Clearly, the MTC’s decision is not doing anything to fulfill their duty of providing enough supply to meet the demand.
The Columbia Police Department and Pennies from Heaven
As Columbia residents prepare to decide whether to increase the budget of the police department through property tax increases, they might be interested in how the police department spends the funds available today. In the video below (begin viewing at 8:43), from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Columbia’s chief of police explained how the department used funds derived from civil asset forfeiture. Reducing the tax burden for Columbia residents, however, was not one of those uses.
Without addressing the propriety of civil forfeiture laws, a department does not inspire confidence when it claims it needs more taxpayer dollars although it spends the proceeds of assets seized from residents on “toys,” as though they were “pennies from heaven.” Columbia residents might consider whether the funds the department currently receives are prudently managed before more is allocated.
Ain’t No Sunshine: What’s Going On Behind Government’s Closed Doors?
This month, the Missouri State Auditor’s office released a report on state and local government compliance with Missouri’s Sunshine Law. The Sunshine Law requires government bodies to keep meetings open to the public, provides procedures and safeguards when a meeting needs to be held in private, and imposes other requirements on government bodies to ensure transparency. According to the auditor’s report, state agencies and local governments across the state are not complying with these laws.
The report includes numerous violations of public records and public meeting requirements. The following government bodies failed to abide by the proper procedure for making meetings closed to the public:
- Gentry County
- City of Savannah
- Ste. Genevieve County
- City of Liberal
- Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District
- Daviess County
- City of Brentwood
- Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency
- City of Buckner
- City of Diamond
- Cedar County
- Caldwell County
- McDonald County
- Lake Lotawana Community Improvement District
- Vernon County
- Montgomery County
- Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners
- Clark County
- Stone County
- The School District of Springfield, R-XII
- Monarch Fire Protection District
- Natural Resources/Soil and Water Conservation Program
- Higher Education/Southeast Missouri State University
- Madison County
Most of the government bodies that failed to keep meetings open were cities and counties, but some of these bodies, including the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, the Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency, and the Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District, are charged with ensuring public safety. The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, for example, failed to comply with the provisions of Missouri law that require a body in a closed meeting to properly document issues discussed, to discuss only authorized topics during the closed meeting, and to properly disclose the final disposition of matters discussed in closed sessions.
Government bodies have the power to deprive us of life, liberty, and property. They are charged with providing public safety and education services that Missourians depend on. They are given the power to extract payment for these services whether an individual wants them or not. The open government requirements of Missouri’s Sunshine Law are essential safeguards against abuse of government power.
Increasing the Health Care Supply to Meet Health Care Demand
Robert Graboyes is a senior research fellow for the Mercatus Center. Later this month Dr. Graboyes will release a report about health care innovation, which I intend to talk about at some length on this blog. In the meantime, I want to re-up the Reason video from earlier this year. The video features Dr. Graboyes talking about a wide array of reforms that would get care to the neediest among us. If you’ve read our work before, you’ve probably heard of many of the recommendations he talks about, including regulatory, Medicaid, certificate of need, and scope of practice reforms. I highly recommend the video, particularly the section about prosthetics and 3-D printing, which captures well how quickly the market for health care could change in the coming years.
Wastewater Privatization: Case Studies
As Arnold residents prepare to decide whether to sell wastewater facilities in their city to Missouri American Water, they should consider cases where privatizations of this type have already occurred. Water and wastewater privatization in Saint Louis County and Illinois provide some useful comparisons.
Increasing budget constraints and needed upgrades have pushed many cities to privatize public systems in recent decades. A Saint Louis-area example is the privatization of water services in Florissant in 2002. The city divested its water services to Missouri American Water for a total of $14.5 million. The results, as a Show-Me Institute case study on privatization in Missouri noted, were positive:
Florissant took its $14.5 million and immediately budgeted $2,758,000 for street repairs, police projects, and public works projects. It deposited $10 million into a newly created special reserve fund, which served the city for several years after the sale of the water division. The remainder was placed into the city’s existing reserve fund. According to a 2007 city memorandum, “The timing of the sale of the water distribution system was extremely fortuitous and gave the city the cushion necessary to work through the dramatic drop in revenue without correspondingly dramatic service cuts.”
Florissant officials have been satisfied with the service, and Missouri American Water continues to provide water services to large parts of Saint Louis County.
While a wastewater privatization deal has not occurred in the Saint Louis area, many cities nationally have privatized this type of utility. A nearby example is in Mount Vernon, Ill., which contracted with a private company to design, build, and operate a wastewater treatment plant for 20 years in 1986. At that time, Mount Vernon did not have the resources to upgrade its aging treatment plan, thereby running afoul of environmental protection laws and preventing new industry from locating in the city. Environmental Management Corporation (EMC) entered into a deal with the city to build a new treatment plant in return for operating the system for 20 years, retaining and even retraining the existing employees. The city has since extended the agreement to 2023.
As these cases show, privatization of water and wastewater systems can be an effective way of providing public services in fiscally constrained cities.
Free-Market Health Practitioners Get a Group
Late last month, supporters of the newly established Free Market Medical Association (FMMA) converged on Oklahoma City for the organization’s first ever annual conference. As the name suggests, the organization is intended to bring doctors and providers together to share ideas and defend “the practice of free market medicine without the intervention of government or other third parties.” Given the sorts of reforms American health care needs these days, the FMMA’s entry onto the national stage is a welcome one.
Along with noting the FMMA’s existence, there’s also a reason worth teasing out for why the FMMA held its first conference in Oklahoma City. The short answer is “it’s where the FMMA’s organizers are based,” but a more complete answer is it’s where some very interesting free-market business models are being put into practice.
Advocacy of free market health care is the longtime passion of Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma [and the FMMA]. The center began to post fixed prices for common medical procedures years ago, and has provoked widespread admiration within the medical profession for efficiency, reasonable cost and frequent support for those who are less fortunate.
At the Surgery Center, Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steve Lantier have established an operational structure and market-oriented billing as explicit alternatives to the third-party payer systems that now dominate U.S. health care.
The center posts online an up-front price for medical procedures in diverse areas of practice, including orthopedics, ear/nose/throat, general surgery, urology, ophthalmology, foot and ankle, and reconstructive plastics. In all, a total of 112 procedures are listed.
Translation? Transparent pricing plus direct pay works out to a pretty good business model premised on competition and service. Price transparency is huge because it’s generally pretty difficult to price shop in the U.S. health market, in part because the third-party payer system disincentivizes it, and because many providers aren’t willing to publish those prices. That makes it difficult to force prices down through competition. Posting prices should be common practice in the industry; unfortunately, it’s not.
It’s good to see folks in the movement getting organized when it comes to demonstrating that, yes, free-market reforms to health care do exist and can work. In the coming months, Show-Me readers will hear a lot more about free-market health care alternatives. Stay tuned.
Debate: Does More Government Help Or Hurt?
This debate hosted at the Kansas City Library and sponsored by the Show-Me Institute addressed the question: does more government help or hurt? Stephanie Kelton, Ph.D., chair of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Department of Economics, and Joseph Haslag, Ph.D., Show-Me Institute Chief Economist and University of Missouri economics professor debated the government’s role in the economy. Following the debate, moderator Mike Shanin of KCPT-TV’s Ruckus, led a question and answer session with the audience.
