Show-Me Institute Education Policy Analyst James Shuls, Ph.D., talks with Mark Reardon on KMOX, 1120AM. They talk about Shuls’ research on teacher tenure reform.
Meet Me In Saint Louie, Louie! Meet Me At CPAC (on Sept. 28)
I am happy to announce that on Sept. 28, I will be part of a panel discussion at CPAC St. Louis titled “How Americans Are Changing ZIP Codes for Good Tax Codes.” Among the many topics we’ll discuss: my assertion that Missouri is at the heart of a Midwestern growth corridor, a fact that offers both an opportunity and a threat to the Show-Me State’s economic future. Joining me on the panel are:
- Ted Dabrowski, vice president of Policy, Illinois Policy Institute
- Jonathan Williams, director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, American Legislative Exchange Council
- The Honorable Larry Parman, Oklahoma Secretary of State
- Travis Brown, author of How Money Walks, who will also serve as our moderator
Our talk is tentatively scheduled to begin at 11:45 a.m., following speeches from former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Suffice to say, if you want to get a good seat . . . you may want to arrive early. And if the formal schedule changes between now and then, I will update this post with the new details.
It should be a fantastic event. I would be utterly delighted to meet our readers, so if you have time that day, I’d encourage you to register and attend our event. You can sign up for the conference here.
About Those Aviation Department Funds…
We’re told time and again that aviation funds cannot be used for a city’s own financial needs. Federal law is clear on this. The Show-Me Institute has mentioned this, as have the leaders of the Kansas City mayor’s advisory group on Kansas City International Airport (MCI).
As with many of the arguments in favor of building a new $1.2 billion terminal, it’s true . . . sort of.
In July and August of 2010, the Kansas City Aviation Department gave $10.2 million to the city of Kansas City in the form of an interdepartmental loan with an interest rate of 3 percent. The initial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) indicated the loan was “for the use by Finance in connection with the historical liabilities associated with various TIF [Tax Increment Financing] projects” and would be paid back by July 1, 2013. Not surprisingly, the city later renegotiated and the debt won’t be fully paid until 2017, at the earliest.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says that such loans are legal as long as they are at the prevailing rate of interest (see page 7,720 of the Federal Register). The 3 percent the city is paying is within the prevailing rate of interest.
What is troubling is that the loan from the Aviation Department was going to cover TIF payments the city couldn’t otherwise afford to make. In other words, Kansas City is borrowing money from the airport, with interest, to cover losses it incurred in tax abatements to things such as the Power & Light District. (Gamblers Anonymous includes this activity as one of many signs of addiction.)
A $1.2 billion new terminal will upset an already out-of-balance apple cart. Consider the following:
- MCI is already relying on federal funds to cover losses;
- Federal programs aimed at subsidizing airports are drying up;
- The increased fees and ticket prices that are needed to fund an airport bond will make the airport less attractive to airlines and passengers; and
- If the airport cannot generate enough money to repay its bonds, the city will almost certainly dip into the general funds to cover the payments, just as it has done elsewhere, even when the city is not technically on the hook.
Not only is building a new terminal a bad idea on its merits, but it puts at risk a source of money the city is using to cover losses on all its other bad ideas. Worse yet, a new terminal may turn the Aviation Department from a source of funds for the city to another drain on resources.
Show-Me Institute Hosts First Freedom Celebration
We hope you will join us for the Show-Me Institute’s first Freedom Celebration at 6:30 p.m. on Fri., Sept. 27 at the Log Cabin Club in Saint Louis. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) will join us for a special reception to benefit the Show-Me Institute. The cost to attend is $250 per person.
Sen. Lee calls ObamaCare a “train wreck” and is leading the campaign to “defund” the program. He is a real champion of the kinds of policies that are needed to break through the current mess in Washington, D.C., and get America — and Missouri — growing again. Sen. Lee currently serves on the Energy and Natural Resources, Joint Economic, Armed Services, and Judiciary Committees in the U.S. Senate. Intelligent and thoughtful in his presentation, he is highly sought after by the likes of Chris Wallace and others in the media to address issues ranging from U.S. energy and defense policies to economics and our nation’s founding constitutional principles.
We invite you to attend this important event and help advance liberty in Missouri. For more information and to register online, please click here. All proceeds will benefit the Show-Me Institute, a 501(c)(3) organization.
Banner Year For Charter Schools
I’m not sure I would call myself a prophet. I’m sure many of my predictions don’t come true. For instance, I was sure A-Trak and Tommy Trash would win best cinematography at Sunday night’s VMAs for their amazing display of dominoes in their song “Tuna Melt.” However, when it comes to charter school performance, my forecast a year ago was spot on.
The coming year should be a banner year for charter schools throughout the state. With the closure of the Imagine schools and the steady improvement of existing charter schools, I expect to see significant gains in overall charter performance in 2013.
For the first time in Missouri, the performance of charter schools surpassed the performance of the nearby school districts in math and language arts. As you can see from the graphs below, charter schools continue to show steady improvement in both subjects.
This steady improvement should not come as a shock for two reasons.
1. We have known for years that Missouri charter schools are producing significantly larger learning gains than the urban districts. Just a couple months ago, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University released a report indicating that students in Missouri charter schools learn approximately three weeks more material in reading and an extra month’s worth of material in math than their counterparts in the surrounding district schools.
2. Not only are Missouri charter schools producing larger learning gains, the bad charter schools are closing. That is the beauty of charter schools — when a school doesn’t perform, it closes.
This was a banner year for charter schools in Missouri. No predictions for next year, but I certainly hope the progress will continue.
Percent of Students Scoring Proficient or Advanced: English Language Arts
Percent of Students Scoring Proficient or Advanced: Mathematics
(These graphs were completed using student achievement data at the district level from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).)
Should Springfield Require Prescriptions For Cold Medicine?
The question of whether to require a prescription for cold medicine that can be used to make meth is a difficult one. Tonight, the Springfield City Council may vote on an ordinance requiring prescriptions for many cold and allergy medicines.
Generally speaking, my own opinion on drug policy is that we should be spending much more on treatment and education and much less on incarceration and interdiction. More on point, I have never understood the desire to address the illegal use of a legal product by imposing onerous requirements on the people who use it legally.
I don’t have serious allergies, nor do I get many colds, but I know people who do. (I am sure we all know people who do.) I can’t get behind rules that are going to impose new regulations on people who simply want to treat a cold, allergies, or some other readily treatable illness. I simply cannot understand the desire to make their lives harder. And yes, forcing an unnecessary visit to the doctor’s office — even if infrequently — to get a prescription for cold or allergy medicine makes a person’s life harder. We already have a tracking system in place for purchases of medicine that can be used to make meth. Sure, it can be abused through straw purchasers, but some people can (and will) get around and abuse any system.
If someone is abusing meth, we should help him or her get treatment. If they commit a crime to support their habit, then we should send them to jail, perhaps for a long time. But just moving the sales around with some places requiring prescriptions seems fruitless. Addressing that criticism with a statewide requirement to get a prescription seems like a royal pain for the many Missourians who simply want to treat their allergies or colds.
Address the crime; don’t punish the law-abiding.
The Citadel Project Is Why Missouri Needs TIF Reform
The Wall Street Journal recently published a story about the very controversial Citadel Project in Kansas City. If anything, the article understates the problems with the project. For example, it makes no mention of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for the project, other than a reference to bond sales, which the reader will not automatically assume is a taxpayer subsidy. (It is.) Unfortunately, the article downplays the use of subsidies as a part of urban reinvestment across the country.
That aside, it does a nice job of chronicling the myriad of problems with the Citadel Project. TIF will always be a political process, and as such, political games, favors, and targets will always influence the process. It’s inevitable, and all the more reason not to have government involved in those choices in the first place.
TIF is one of the prime reasons Missouri is littered with failed projects like this. TIF allows projects that should not go forward to do so, or it causes the failure of certain shopping centers because it subsidizes their competition. Most of all, by subsidizing something (retail sales) that has absolutely no need to be subsidized, it distorts our overall economy. Missouri needs TIF reform just as badly as we need an income tax cut.
Is St. Louis the next Detroit? (Not in my view)
As first appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on August 16, 2013:
When the St. Louis Cardinals played the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, the whole nation was watching (it captured an astounding 57 percent of television viewers) and both cities — as well as both teams — were looking good. Detroit was still the unchallenged auto capital of the world, and St. Louis was home to a dozen of the nation’s biggest and best-known companies.
Since then, the two baseball teams have fared better than their cities. When they met again in the 2006 World Series, the rest of the nation yawned — 83 percent of viewers tuned out. Who cared about a baseball rivalry in two dying cities in flyover country?
From 1950 to 2010, Detroit’s population dropped from about 1.8 million to 714,000 — a 61.4 percent decline. Over the same period, St. Louis City dropped from 857,000 residents to 319,000 – a 62.7 percent decline.
Think of Detroit as a larger St. Louis — more than twice the size in area as well as population. Drive through north St. Louis and you see block after block of abandoned and boarded-up buildings; drive through Detroit and it is mile after mile of the same. It is the Empty Quarter of cityscapes — which partly explains why it takes an hour for Detroit’s police to respond to a 911 call.
Detroit leads the nation’s cities in violent crime, followed by Oakland and St. Louis. According to FBI statistics, your chances of being the victim of a violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and assault) are not a whole lot less in St. Louis City than they are in Detroit. The incidence of such crimes is only 13 percent lower in St. Louis than Detroit. I worked in Detroit from 1976 to 1982 as a reporter and anchor at WXYZ-TV. Coleman Young was the city’s first black mayor, notorious for playing the race card (though most white politicians were no better). I once asked him about his girlfriend’s exorbitant salary as the administration’s PR person. That night, the station ran his response — an expletive-filled rant accusing me of racism for even raising the question. Later, many city employees — both black and white — thanked me for spotlighting the mayor’s favoritism.
Lee Iacocca took over a struggling Chrysler in 1978 and refused to meet union demands to match GM and Ford wage rates at $18 an hour. He told the union: “At $13 an hour, you can have 20,000 workers . . . at $18, you’ve got zero.” He understood the Big Three were on thin ice.
After 13 years anchoring and reporting at KSDK in St. Louis, I returned to Detroit for a year in 1999 at WDIV TV. I was astonished at how much worse the city looked. Gone were the well-kept, middle-class neighborhoods. The drugs and violence were so bad that city cops often would ride four to a squad car.
Therein, I think, is a principal difference between Detroit and St. Louis. Things in St. Louis never reached the same pitch of hopelessness.
St. Louis experienced its biggest out-migration of people in the 1980s, when the population fell 27.2 percent. From 2000 to 2010, the city’s population was down just 8 percent.
By contrast, Detroit’s population over the last decade fell a stunning 24.9 percent.
So, no, I do not think that St. Louis City is following Detroit down the road to ruin — or to bankruptcy, either. In a recent column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dave Nicklaus pointed out that with slightly more than twice the population of St. Louis, Detroit has six times as much debt.
What’s more, St. Louis has not experienced a massive breakdown in vital services. Far from taking an hour to respond to a call , St. Louis police, on average, are at a crime scene in 10.32 minutes. And where Detroit police cleared only 11.3 percent of murders and 12.7 percent of reported rapes through arrests in 2011, St. Louis police cleared 66.4 percent and 71.8 percent of such crimes, respectively.
Though far from perfect, St. Louis City still works for most people. Many old neighborhoods are flourishing again. Let’s hope that we are on the cusp of a real turnaround in the city’s fortunes.
Rick Edlund is the communications director at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.
Blitz: Gov. Rick Perry To Visit Missouri And Run Ads Promoting Texas’ Business Climate
He’s already visited businesses in other floundering states — including Illinois, California, and New York — in an effort to get them to move to Texas. So it was inevitable that Gov. Rick Perry would eventually make a play for Missouri businesses, too. The only question was “when.” And as it turns out, the answer is … “now.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is at it again.
Next week, he’ll travel to Missouri to tout Texas’ low taxes, less regulation and high job creation rate.
Starting today, a 30-second television advertisement is running in the St. Louis, Springfield and Columbia-Jefferson City markets in Missouri. The ads feature small and immigrant business owners and women talking about what Texas offers, such as no state income tax. [Emphasis mine.]
And when it comes to job growth, he’ll have plenty to discuss.
While in Missouri, Perry plans to meet with employers, business leaders and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce to talk about things like Texas being a top job producer. Texas added 19,900 jobs in July, ranking No. 5 nationally, but it created 293,000 jobs in the last 12 months, more than any other state.
Now, you can love it or hate it, but to derisively call visits like this “poaching” is like calling the best looking guy in the room a girlfriend poacher: it’s an excuse for failure. Of course we lost, they’ll say. Texas is poaching. And there’s no mystery about what Perry’s objective is on his trip — it’s to get Missouri’s businesses.
But if we all know the score, the question is, will Missouri just let Texas take our businesses and jobs without a fight? Missouri entrepreneurs may have come here with the Show-Me State, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be leaving with it at the end of this economic dance. Is Missouri just going to sit there and take it as Texas continues to walk off with the state’s wealth?
