Some Thoughts on the Proposed Olivette Charter Amendment

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

Next Tuesday, voters in Olivette will decide on whether to approve Proposition 1, which states (in part):

Any real estate, now or hereafter owned by the City of Olivette or any agency or instrumentality of the City, which is principally used or held out for use as a public park, shall not be sold, leased, given away or otherwise disposed of, and shall be used only as a public park, nor shall any structure be built in any such park to accommodate activities not customarily associated with park use or outdoor recreation, unless such sale, lease, disposal, gift or structure is approved by a majority of the qualified electors voting thereon.

To say this language is broad is like saying the Great Wall of China is long. True, but it is also kind of an understatement.

I get why people would be in favor of this measure. They want to have a say in case the city wants to do something drastic, like sell a public park. However, the problem with this amendment covers more than just selling a park. If passed it would require the city to seek voter approval if the city wanted to lease park management to private operators for a whole assortment of activities.

For example, if Olivette wanted to let a private operator open a restaurant on park grounds, like Saint Louis does for the Boathouse in Forest Park, then it would have to be approved by the voters. If Olivette wanted to let a private company open an ice rink in one of their parks, like Saint Louis does with Steinberg Skating Rink, then it would have to go to the voters. There are other successful examples of  private groups operating recreational services,  like Saint Louis does with the golf courses in Forest Park. Olivette residents won’t have to worry about golf courses, but they just go to show that if Proposition 1 is passed then any lease or contract will have to go to the voters.

The ultimate decision on whether to adopt the charter amendment is up to the residents of Olivette. I believe that voters should have a direct say if, for instance, a city decides to sell their municipal parks. However, I also think that city officials should have more leeway when it comes to leasing the park or contracting for services.

Cost of Compliance to Rise for Missouri Wastewater Treatment

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Recently, the EPA released a decision letter approving most of the changes to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ (MDNR) water quality standards. While this will bring the state in closer compliance with the federal Clean Water Act, the new rules mean pollution limitations will be extended to thousands of lakes and tens of thousands of miles of rivers not previously under strict regulation. That will mean higher costs for Missouri’s water treatment utilities.

According to a report issued by MDNR, upgrading the state’s wastewater treatment plants to meet strict federal standards will cost between $430 million on the low end and $1.2 billion on the high end. However, most municipalities did not set high enough utility fees to cover the cost of regular improvement projects when regulation was more lenient. With the cost of needed upgrades now looming, localities will be forced to find more funds, which means wastewater utility rates, or other forms of local taxation, are likely to increase statewide in the near future.

Conforming to higher water quality standards in the most economical manner possible has pushed many municipalities across the nation and in Missouri to privatize their water utilities. Cities usually receive an upfront payment for leasing these systems, and while the private owners often raise rates, the increase is usually less than what the public utilities planned to do absent of privatization.

The city of Arnold in Jefferson County is considering just such a privatization plan partially in response to these types of costs. We have written before how this deal can benefit Arnold financially, and should it succeed, the privatization plan could become a model for other municipalities as they decide how to deal with increasing regulatory burdens for water treatment.

What Uber and School Choice Have in Common: In Missouri

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

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Late last month, founding president and chief operating officer of the Children’s Scholarship Fund James Courtovich wrote an op-ed in the Wall-Street Journal titled “What Uber and School Choice Have in Common.” He said:

When we began the project [Children’s Scholarship Fund] in 1998, teachers, union leaders and their political benefactors said choice was a threat, much as cabdrivers say now. But as [Ted] Forstmann used to say, “Monopolies invariably produce bad products at high prices.” The 1.3 million parents who applied for the scholarships illustrated the tremendous demand for alternatives.

I reread this article after my trip to Washington, D.C., where I took my first Uber and Lyft rides. Reflecting on my positive experience with the taxicab alternatives, i.e., five-dollar fare, I realized—I’m not used to having choice.

In the Show-Me State, it is the status quo to be educated within your zip code. It is also the status quo to pay $40 for a 10-mile cab ride. Saint Louis and Kansas City are two of the largest metropolitan areas to prevent Uber and Lyft from operating their ridesharing services; and there are no private school choice programs in the state. Is Missouri choice-resistant?

As Courtovich suggested, there’s a parallel between the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC) and Missouri’s school choice critics. The MTC claims to protect rider safety, maintaining the balance between cab supply and demand. School choice opponents claim voucher programs will “destabilize” public education, that choice and competition have no place in education.

The MTC and school choice critics are utterly afraid of change, but keeping the status quo has consequences. Children are trapped in low-performing schools, and cab fare is high. Missouri should follow the lead of states that have embraced choice in any context, because as Uber’s tagline suggests, “Choice is a beautiful thing.”

 

 

Saint Louis Municipalities: Who Is in Trouble With Macks Creek Law?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

In previous posts, we have discussed the problem of small Saint Louis County cities supporting themselves through fines and fees, essentially using the police and courts as revenue generators. A report released by Better Together shows the scale of the problem. Twenty municipalities, mostly in North Saint Louis County, generate more than 20 percent of their total revenue from fines and fees.

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The largest portion of these fines usually comes from traffic violations and related penalties. But a state law, known as the Macks Creek law, is supposed to cap traffic fines to 30 percent of a municipality’s operating revenue. Fines in excess of 30 percent are to be redirected to schools, and failure to comply can result in suspension of local traffic jurisdiction. While this cap should arguably be lower, the state should first enforce the cap that already exists. But proper enforcement within Saint Louis County may be lacking.

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As the chart above demonstrates, eight municipalities within Saint Louis County collect more than 30 percent of their revenue from fines, and in some cases much more. These cities may not be in violation of the Macks Creek law if much of their fine revenue is from non-traffic-related citations. However, all eight cities are home to notorious speed traps and have small populations from which to generate non-traffic citations. For instance, Calverton Park, Bella Villa, and Pine Lawn would need to issue more than $200 of non-traffic-related fines per resident in order to comply with the Macks Creek law. That seems unlikely.

That is perhaps why Bella Villa, Pine Lawn, and Saint Ann (along with Ferguson and six municipalities outside of Saint Louis County) are having their municipal courts audited by the state to ensure that they are “about justice and not revenue.” That may be a hard case for those cities to make.

Saint Louis County Municipalities: Should More Consider Disincorporation?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

In the months following the tragic events in Ferguson, there has been increasing scrutiny on the policing practices in small North Saint Louis County cities. The argument, best made by Radley Balko of the Washington Post, is that micro-cities in Saint Louis County are using local police to shake down poor residents in order to support otherwise unnecessary government.

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While we would argue that municipality size is certainly not everything, it is undeniable that many cities in Saint Louis County rely heavily on fines and court fees. One way of curtailing this sort of abuse is the rigorous implementation (or strengthening) of the Macks Creek law, which caps the amount of income a city can receive from traffic fines to 30 percent.

Missouri is preparing to audit some North Saint Louis County municipalities (along with cities in other counties) to ensure that they are not violating this law. However, the enforcement (or reform) of the Macks Creek law is up to statewide officials and voters. What’s more, if the law is vigorously enforced tiny municipalities might be forced to turn to large property tax increases or face insolvency. But local residents do not have to wait on statewide actions or accept a parasitic government. Voters can, and in the past did, disincorporate a city.

Under Missouri law, the residents can disincorporate their municipality if they: a. Gather 50 percent of residents’ signatures calling for an election on disincorporation; and b. 60 percent vote for disincorporation. At that point, the city would receive its basic services (including police and courts) from the county, unless they decide to join with another municipality.

Cities in Saint Louis County have disincorporated before, and recently. Just a few years ago, the poster child for a dysfunctional, traffic ticket-financed municipality was actually a middle-class, 95 percent white city in South Saint Louis County named Saint George. Major police scandals resulted in the city disbanding its police force, and residents ultimately voted to disincorporate in 2011. In 2013, the tiny (pop. 447) city of Uplands Park also held a vote on disincorporation, but that bid failed to reach the 60 percent mark.

The strategy of disincorporation is not without controversy. Loss of local representation, especially in areas with high minority populations, might be more worrying to some residents than fine-seeking officers. The approach also has limitations, as a municipality that funds decent public services mostly by fining pass-through traffic may serve voters’ interests while causing wider harm to the metropolitan area.

Most municipalities in Saint Louis County, including smaller ones, do not attempt to run their governments through aggressive police citations and court fees. However, residents should know that a local government that fails to provide for the common welfare (or openly harasses the poor) can be removed. A wider knowledge, if not actual use, of that option may result in more responsible city governance in Saint Louis County.

An Idea for Kansas City Schools: Give Principals Power

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) is seeking input from parents, school staff, and the community about how it might regain and sustain full accreditation and retain and attract students. To that end, it is forming a School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC) and has been seeking applicants to serve in that capacity. We have a few ideas we’d like to share about strengthening administration and staff, rewarding teachers, and empowering parents.

First, it is noteworthy that the stated purpose of the advisory committee is seemingly small ball. Their email soliciting participation asks only,

What’s it going to take for Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) to regain full accreditation? What’s it going to take for your school to regain/sustain full accreditation? How can we retain and attract students?

In other words, “What do we have to do to provide the minimal state-required level of service?” We’re also suspect that they are looking toward parents and the community for ideas when there is an entire industry of specialists who have researched, written, and talked about what to do to improve schools. We at the Show-Me Institute have our own suggestions, and they aim at rebuilding world-class education in Kansas City. All our ideas have a common theme: Move power away from centralized school districts and toward students and parents.

For his 2003 book Making Schools Work, UCLA Professor and Author William G. Ouchi studied more than 200 schools in six cities and found that a school’s educational success may be most directly affected by how it is managed. The way to increase successful management, he argues, is to give schools more control over their own budget.

While schools may boast large budgets, Ouchi’s research uncovered that very little of it is controlled by the principal or the school itself. In one anecdote, he relates that a Los Angeles principal said her school had a budget of $21 million but added, “It doesn’t really matter because I only control $32,000.” Ouchi’s further research indicated that in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago the local schools only controlled 6.1 percent, 6.7 percent, and 19.1 percent of the budget, respectively.

In school districts that have seen tremendous improvements in their urban school performances, such as Seattle, Houston, and Edmonton, Canada, the percentage of the budget controlled by the local schools was 91.7, 79.3, and 58.6, respectively. This should be no surprise. Administrators, teachers, and parents at the school are best able to identify and address the specific needs of their students.

Here in Kansas City, better school management means moving the power of the purse away from the top-down centralized control at 12th and McGee streets and out to the principals at Paseo, Lincoln Prep, and elsewhere. Ouchi offers this warning to parents:

Control goes with the money. If your superintendent smiles, invites your group into his office, and tells you that he agrees with you and that he’s going to roll out a new school-based decision-making program that includes parent involvement—smile sweetly and ask him who will control the school’s budget. Don’t let him off the hook. Don’t let him think that you can be so easily fooled.

Remember, the author was chief of staff to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. He has academic credentials, but he has weathered political fights as well. And the Kansas City district appears to be doing exactly what he describes: They smile, invite people to discuss the district, but surrender none of the control that is necessary for success.

Missouri’s Medicaid Program Striking Out Intended Beneficiaries

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

In baseball, getting a hit three out of 10 at-bats could make you an All-Star, and maybe even a Hall of Famer if you do it consistently enough. But while batting .300 is pretty good for the National Pastime, in most other contexts succeeding only three out of 10 times won’t get you accolades.

That point was hit out of the ballpark over the past few days.

Last week mid-Missouri’s ABC 17 reported on the story of a pregnant woman who had been trying to sign up for Medicaid benefits, only to have her paperwork lost and her calls unreturned by the Department of Social Services (DSS). When the issue came up at a House hearing, the DSS admitted it had to do better, but it also admitted something astonishing (emphasis mine).

The Department says thirty percent of its callers are having their needs met, which Campbell acknowledges is too low. She says staff are being reassigned to taking calls and other changes are being made to improve that percentage, but [State Rep. Sue] Allen says the situation remains frustrating.

“In a company, in a private business, people would be gone,” observes Allen.

Missouri’s Medicaid program is deeply broken, and yet some of our politicians think now is the time to expand it with Obamacare. It isn’t. In baseball and business, step one would be to fix what is wrong and then build upon successes, not to double-down on a bad system and bad players. That’s what Missouri should be doing: fixing Medicaid, not making an already bad situation worse—especially for the patients the program was supposed to help.

Missouri’s Medicaid system is institutionally well below the Mendoza line. It’s time to rethink the program.

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