Tolling I-70: A Semi-Solution to MoDOT’s Funding Problems

Posted on by Joseph Miller

With the defeat of Amendment 7, officials are looking for ways to fund Missouri’s highway system. MoDOT needs adequate funding, not only to maintain existing highways, but also to fund future multibillion-dollar projects, principal among these is the reconstruction of I-70. One possible solution is to introduce tolls on I-70, which would allow those who benefit from the highway to pay for its improvement.

Those who directly benefit from I-70 are drivers, especially from companies that own commercial vehicles (interstate trucks). According to MoDOT, at least 25 percent of the traffic on I-70 is attributable to commercial vehicles (more than two axles). These vehicles also make up much of I-70’s cross-state traffic, with 70 percent of commercial vehicles passing straight through Missouri. If the state would toll I-70, both passenger and commercial vehicles would pay to use the interstate based on their size and distance traveled. In other states, commercial vehicles typically pay four to five times more than passenger vehicles. They pay extra to compensate for the extra damage they cause to the roadway. In fact, toll roads in other states generate much, if not most, of their revenue from commercial vehicles.

 

Toll Road System commercial vehicles as   a % of total vehicles % miles on road from commercial vehicles % of toll revenue from commercial vehicles
Ohio Turnpike 21.00% 33.10% 55.69%
New York Thruway 11.02% 15.59% 47.10%
Pennsylvania Turnpike 12.88% 20.30% 42.62%
Oklahoma Turnpike 8.72% 18.18% 38.86%
Kansas Turnpike 11.60% 17.80% 36.88%
Illinois Tollway 11.71% – 34.01%
North Texas Tollway System 1.87% – 22.39%
Florida Turnpike System 3.95% 5.06% 19.12%

 

If Missourians decide to rebuild I-70 using toll revenue, it is likely that much, or even most, of that revenue would come from commercial vehicles. That’s a fair solution, because commercial trucking entities cause the most wear on highways and benefit the most from good roads. In fact, a well-maintained highway saves trucking companies money, because it reduces delays and vehicle damage. The failure of Amendment 7 doesn’t mean that Missourians want bad roads; it means they want good roads paid for in a sensible way. A sound tolling solution would allow drivers and interstate truckers alike to invest in the highway from which they so benefit.

Normandy Transfers: Taking It to the Courts

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Earlier this week, I sat down with attorney Joshua Schindler. Schindler represents several Normandy students who would like to transfer to accredited school districts. Last year, roughly 2,200 students transferred from two unaccredited school districts in North Saint Louis. Due to a change in Normandy’s accreditation status, four districts chose not to allow Normandy students to return.

Francis Howell, Pattonville, Ferguson-Florissant, and Ritenour transfer students were devastated. They had to return to a school district in which 16.8 is the average ACT score (the state average is 21.6).  In a recent Washington Post article, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux wrote:

Carmen Clemons has two teenage sons who were in advanced-placement classes. One wants to be an engineer, the other a firefighter. She describes them as “nerdy, nice kids.”

This year, they were told they had to go to Normandy High. The school didn’t have the same advanced classes they had been taking. And on Day 5 of the academic year, they told their mother they had been “jumped,” or beaten up.

“No one broke the fight up,” Clemons said. “I was never notified. I had to go running in today to talk to the principal. We’ve worked so hard to raise respectful kids. My boys are such good students, but my son came home terrified when another student said, ‘If I see those shoes on your feet, I’m gonna take them.’ ”

Now she’s calling private schools, begging for scholarships. And she and her husband, who barely make enough to pay the bills, are thinking about selling their three-bedroom house.

After Judge Michael Burton’s decision to allow the Normandy students named in the lawsuit to return to their receiving districts, Pattonville, Ferguson-Florissant, and Ritenour chose to accept all students that had reapplied for the 2014-15 school year—Francis Howell interpreted the ruling to mean only one student may return.

Since Francis Howell’s decision to reject all but one transfer student, Schindler has begun laying the groundwork for a class-action lawsuit. Watch this video to learn more about the history of the Missouri transfer law, as well as the current legal situation surrounding the law.

Vindication for New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program

Posted on by James V. Shuls

In February, the Show-Me Institute released “Live Free and Learn: A Case Study of New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program,” written by Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute. Bedrick also discussed this school choice program at an event we hosted at Lindenwood University (see video above [starts at 4:00]). At the time, he noted that the scholarship program was being challenged in the New Hampshire courts. Yesterday, the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a big win for the families benefiting from the program.

Blogging about the ruling, Bedrick writes:

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s flawed and unprecedented decision, which had forbidden scholarship recipients from using the funds at religiously affiliated private schools. The lower court held that the scholarship funds constituted ‘money raised by taxation’ and therefore violated the state’s historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, which states:

“[No] money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination. (New Hampshire Constitution, Part II, Article 83)

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court did not address the merits of the lower court’s decision because it held the petitioners were unable to demonstrate that ‘their personal rights have been impaired or prejudiced.’ Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the petitioners’ standing in ACSTO v. Winn, held that the tax-credit funds did not constitute public money because they had not ‘come into the tax collector’s hands.'”

Like New Hampshire, Missouri has a Blaine Amendment that prohibits public dollars going to religious institutions. That is why this ruling is important for private school choice supporters in Missouri to take note of this case. Because the funding in a tax credit scholarship program does not enter into the public treasury, the funds should not be considered public dollars. For this reason, a tax credit scholarship program may have the best chance of passing constitutional muster in the Show-Me State.

Will Regulations Keep Uber Out of Columbia?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently reported that Uber is considering expanding its service to Columbia, Missouri. While Uber’s entrance could provide improved for-hire vehicle service, Columbia’s outdated taxi regulations might keep the company out, to the detriment of city residents.

Uber, a transportation network company (TNC), is disrupting over-regulated taxi markets across the country, including Missouri. By using an app to connect passengers with drivers operating personal vehicles, Uber and TNCs like it have the potential to vastly increase the quantity and quality of affordable taxi service. Unfortunately, these business models run afoul of municipal taxicab regulations and entrenched cab industry opposition. Saint Louis and Kansas City have invoked Byzantine, competition-restraining regulations to restrain TNCs like Uber and Lyft.

ubertaxi

Columbia’s for-hire vehicle regulations are not as onerous as those in Saint Louis or Kansas City. However, they might be just burdensome enough to make Uber’s entry difficult, if not impossible (especially if city officials are opposed to Uber). The city’s regulations are written to deal with taxis, limousines, and buses, not TNCs.

Based on the plain language of these ordinances, it is unclear which sections of Columbia’s city code would govern Uber. If Columbia officials classify Uber as a taxi service, the company would be required to have a phone dispatching service, taxi meters, vehicle color schemes, and a taxi light on top of every car. This would make Uber’s business model, which uses dynamic pricing (without meters) and utilizes its drivers’ private vehicles, noncompliant with existing regulations.

Likewise, Uber’s business model also would be impossible under Columbia’s limousine regulations, which require a limousine to charge a fixed fare from the airport or an hourly rate (with a charge of no less than one hour) for intra-city service.

Uber could fall into a nebulous “vehicle for-hire” regulatory category, which might allow the company to avoid the regulations listed above. However, Columbia does not appear to offer any type of business license for general livery service, so that needs clarification.

Columbia officials should consider altering their regulations, as other states have, so TNCs like Uber can provide service to city residents. Better yet, Columbia could reduce regulations so that those (be they Uber, Lyft, or other drivers) who pass background checks, pass vehicle inspections, and purchase proper insurance can offer Columbia residents a ride.

Will California Teacher Tenure Lawsuit Affect Missouri?

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Earlier this month, The View’s Whoopi Goldberg spoke out against teacher tenure, “Teachers who do not do a good job in teaching have no right to tenure.” The recently released 2014 EdNext poll shows that 50 percent of the public agrees with Goldberg and thinks that teachers should not be granted tenure. This is up 3 percentage points from last year.

Public sentiment against teacher tenure may have risen due to the highly publicized Vergara v. California case, in which Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled California teacher tenure laws violate the state’s constitution in regards to equality of education.

Tenure laws vary across states. A teacher is tenured in Missouri after teaching in the same district for five years. Tenure laws encourage a system in which school districts undergoing layoffs must keep low-quality, tenured teachers and fire high-quality, non-tenured teachers. This is an ineffective system, as research shows teacher performance has a strong correlation with student achievement.

In a 2013 StudentsFirst poll, Missourians overwhelmingly favored tenure reform—74 percent of those surveyed reported that they would favor a system in which teachers had to demonstrate performance in order to earn or keep tenure. Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow James Shuls found that even Missouri superintendents are in favor of teacher tenure reform.

If Missouri wants to be among the top 10 performing states by 2020, tenure reform should be a priority. Teacher tenure may protect good teachers, but it also protects bad teachers. To ensure every child receives a quality education, student welfare must take precedent over the interests of low-performing school employees. This is what the Vergara lawsuit taught the nation.

Of Super Bowls and Economics

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Following the passage of a resolution in the state legislature, the Missouri Department of Economic Development has convened a Super Bowl Task Force to consider what Kansas City needs to do to attract the annual event. According to The Kansas City Star,

“‘I can think of no better place to host the Super Bowl than Kansas City, the best football town in America,’ [State Senator Paul] LeVota said in a statement. ‘We’ve got incredible fans and a city more than capable of handling such a huge event.’

“Not only would the fans love it, but the economic impact would be enormous, he said.”

Ah, there is that elusive term, “economic impact.” It is thrown about to justify all sorts of government spending, but it is little examined by media and little understood by the taxpayers whose money will be used. We recently reviewed similar claims about Kansas City’s effort to attract the GOP convention. In that piece, we cited a Daily Beast story about the recent Super Bowl in New Jersey:

“So, there’s no economically sound way to predict a Super Bowl’s impact before the event and those that try have been proven wrong again and again. But don’t expect that to stop the cheering from the few with the most to gain. When asked for a more detailed analysis of Super Bowl XLVIII, the host committee demurred, but assured in a statement, ‘Super Bowl XLVIII is expected to be an economic boom [sic] for the region.'”

A 2006 study conducted by the College of the Holy Cross, “Mega-Events: The effect of the world’s biggest sporting events on local, regional, and national economies,” analyzes past Super Bowl impacts. The report concludes with a sobering warning to those who would embark on such expenses:

“The most important piece of advice that a local government can take regarding mega-events, however, is simply to view with caution any economic impact estimates provided by entities with an incentive to provide inflated benefit figures. While most sports boosters claim that mega-events provide host cities with large economic returns, these same boosters present these figures as justification for receiving substantial public subsidies for hosting the games. The vast majority of independent academic studies of mega-events show the benefits to be a fraction of those claimed by event organizers.”

Hosting a Super Bowl in Kansas City would be a great opportunity to show off our city to the rest of the world. Afterall, the term “Super Bowl” was coined by Chiefs owner and American Football League founder Lamar Hunt. But regional boosters need not wear blinders. At what cost does such an event cease to be worthwhile, especially when so many basic services in Kansas City already seem to be falling by the wayside? If we’re going to bring people to the City of Fountains, let’s at least make sure we can afford to operate the fountains.

Transferring from Normandy: An interview with lawyer Joshua Schindler

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Show-Me Institute Education Policy Research Assistant Brittany Wagner interviewed lawyer Joshua Schindler about his work advocating for transfer students. Missouri's transfer law allows students in unaccredited public school districts to transfer to nearby accredited schools; however, a number of districts have refused to accept transfer students, even students that they had accepted last year.

Schindler has represented several of these students in court. Earlier this month, Judge Michael Burton ordered several school districts to accept transfer students from the unaccredited Normandy school district. Because of the number of students involved and the favorable court decision, Schindler is now pursuing a class action suit on behalf of these transfer students.

 

Public Transportation in Columbia, Missouri: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Officials in Columbia, Missouri, are celebrating the successful launch of “CoMo Connect,” the city’s rebranded bus system. The heightened service is part of Columbia’s recent push to improve its public transportation system through a significant increase in spending. While that investment has yielded positive results for the level of service the bus system provides and the overall ridership, increasing transit costs may become a burden for local taxpayers.

The Good: Setting aside the overall merits of the increased transit spending, Columbia’s bus system has better service and many more riders than it had a decade ago. From 2006 to 2012, Columbia made more than $10 million in capital improvements to its bus system. These improvements have come in funding spurts, one between 2006 and 2007 and another from 2010 until today. Columbia has spent the money on new buses, better facilities, and increased service. As a result, the number of buses plying Columbia’s streets has almost tripled and vehicle revenue hours have more than doubled since 2006. Technology has improved as well. Today, it is easier to track your bus in Columbia than in Saint Louis.

The Bad: While ridership has almost tripled since 2006, most of that increase followed the first $4 million in capital improvements made from 2006 to 2007. Significant spending in 2010, 2011, and 2012 actually has been followed by decreased ridership. Officials have blamed an increase in fares for the drop-off, but at $1.50, Columbia’s fares are cheaper than many cities and still highly subsidized; annual fare revenue only accounts for 10 percent of the system’s operating costs. Furthermore, improved service has steadily pushed up operating costs, from $2.7 million in 2006 to more than $6 million in 2013.

CTC

The Ugly:  More taxes might be on the way for city residents. Although officials claim CoMo Connect is resulting in record ridership, they fail to mention that they temporarily have made the bus free. At the same time, the bus system’s goal of holding down growth in its operating budget is increasingly unlikely, and city officials are looking at ways to increase funding. Columbia currently funds transit with a local sales tax, student housing contracts, bus fares, and downtown parking fees. Columbia might have to further increase these taxes and fees to fund transit, despite the fact that less than 1 percent of Columbians use the bus to get to work.

Columbians would do well to consider what they hope their bus service can achieve and how much those achievements are worth. Otherwise, the decisions will be made by those who have made transit usage an end in and of itself.

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