Why Exactly Do Food Truck Workers Need a Passport Photo?

Posted on by David Stokes

One of the staunchest opponents of limited government is often the government itself, in the form of the bureaucracy. Complicated codes and rules may be bad for society, but they are great for government workers. The City of St. Louis just held a hearing on food truck regulations, and members of the board of aldermen seemed genuinely surprised to hear how overly burdensome the rules are for food trucks in the city.

For example, why do all food truck employees have to wear an ID badge with a passport-quality photo on it? Restaurant employees don’t have to do that. That regulation seems insane, and at least some members of the board of aldermen appear to agree. As a Riverfront Times (RIP) reporter described it:

Committee members were shocked. When it was time for questions, Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer began with this: “My first question is, are you — and then there’s an expletive — kidding me.”

Show-Me Institute analysts have been writing about food regulation issues for years. In fact, we may have done more videos on food trucks than any other topic. It’s a great topic for us because it perfectly encapsulates how entrenched interests (in this case, restaurants) and their allies in government have worked together to stop a popular new way of doing business.

But back to the city. I think one of the reasons why the aldermen were so surprised by the level of red tape food trucks deal with is that they didn’t intend for it to be this difficult. But when you read the current legislation, one thing jumps out at you. The current ordinance governing food trucks gives the street director, the parks director, and the license collector authority to institute further rules they deem necessary. Here is one example from the ordinance (section 5.M):

The Director of Streets shall formulate any additional rules and regulations necessary for the proper administration of this chapter. Rules and regulations shall be maintained in the office of the Director of Streets and shall be available for public inspection during ordinary business hours.

This isn’t a hypothetical issue. The question of how legislators grant authority to regulators to set law is the subject of a major supreme court case right now. President Eisenhower stated that engineers went far beyond his original intentions with the Interstate Highway System by including intra-city highways without his knowledge, as just one example of this problem.

It may sometimes be necessary for elected officials to trust regulators to set rules under wide authority. However, there is serious risk to this approach. The idea that regulators are setting these rules fairly outside of their own system of pressure, bias or favoritism is hard to believe.

I hope the city will address the overregulation of food trucks with this excellent, newly proposed bill. After, all, it’s probably time for us to make another video . . .

Think Twice before Supporting a New Tax

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of the following commentary appeared in the Platte County Landmark.

Everyone wants to help kids thrive, right? Who could be against a new tax in Platte County to help kids get more mental health services? Well, we are. Politicizing charity and mandating it through law is a dangerous path to take. Platte County citizens would be well served to think twice before going down this road.

There is an ongoing petition drive in Platte County to create the Platte County Children’s Services Fund. If approved by voters, the plan would institute a new sales tax to fund mental health services for children in Platte County. It would create a new board in charge of overseeing the collection and distribution of the funds as grants to eligible children’s charities.

Charity should not be politized, yet that is exactly what this proposal will do in Platte County. Several years ago, the children’s service fund in St. Louis County became a flashpoint in the county executive’s race. The fund was slow to distribute money and had grown to a balance of $78 million. That large balance became a point of contention in the campaign, made worse when questionable activities with the funds led to the firing of the children’s service fund director and an FBI investigation. Even without that level of controversy, charities will still be forced to play politics. Board members of various Platte County charities that might receive funds will have to start taking that into consideration when they decide whom to support in various county political races. One can’t risk backing the wrong horse and putting the charity’s funding in jeopardy. It’s machine politics at its most insidious.

Any future Platte County Children’s Service Fund would be a special taxing district, and the last thing Platte County needs is another obscure taxing entity with little accountability and even less oversight. The children’s service fund in Lafayette County, on the eastern edge of the Kansas City region, provides a useful case study for those problems. The fund had operated for years with almost no oversight. Those operating it routinely engaged in improper activities, including funding charities that were affiliated with board members, funding charitable activities that were not eligible for funds in the first place, and funding a private business that wasn’t a nonprofit. After a whistleblower brought this to light, the state auditor investigated and referred the fund to authorities for possible Medicaid fraud. If you think the future Platte County children’s fund will be immune from these incidents, you should disabuse yourself of that notion.

If Platte County voters pass the new tax and create a children’s service fund, will some kids benefit? Of course some will. But citizens need to consider all the possible effects of this endeavor. Creating a new taxing agency with no oversight, entangling philanthropy with politics, and making charities dependent on government largesse is not a recipe for making life better in Platte County. Let’s allow these charities do what they were intended to do—help kids—without the heavy hand of government involvement.

Government Infrastructure Costs Are Out of Control

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

 

We have all seen the television ad where the man walks into the sandwich shop and orders bread but nothing inside of it because that’s all he can afford. “Everything is so expensive these days,” he says.

That may well be how many Americans are feeling, but I only wish that were true for our government. The price tags for government’s infrastructure “improvements” are becoming astronomical, and at some point we have to recognize that this isn’t an unfortunate fact of life. The high cost is a choice, not a requirement.

Let’s start with the high-speed rail disaster in California, which was originally approved in 2008 for an estimated cost of $33 billion; the current estimate is $135—for a system that won’t have anything completed until the 2030s at the earliest. Actually connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised, is many more years away. All this for a system that hasn’t laid any track 15 years after it was approved.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Spain, they built an entire 2,500-mile system of high-speed rail for $62 billion. That’s obviously a lot of money, but it got them an entire, advanced rail system for less than half of what California will spend for two routes at best.

Unlike high-speed rail, elevators have been around for a long time. There is nothing fancy about an elevator. Yet in New York City, a project to replace 70 elevators at transit stations cost taxpayers $5.5 billion, or about $80 million per elevator. Elevators for subways may indeed be more expensive than in office buildings, but in Germany they have managed to hold the cost to less than $10 million per elevator per transit station. Something is deeply wrong with how we fund government infrastructure in America.

Closer to home, St. Louis County is considering several options for its governmental complex in Clayton. The most expensive and most comprehensive plan—which includes replacing the main county administration building with an entirely new building among other projects—is estimated by the county to cost around $600 million. If that sounds preposterous, it should. The key part of that proposal—the new administration and public safety building in downtown Clayton, is estimated to cost $250 million for a 190,000-square-foot building. (This doesn’t even include the cost of demolishing the existing buildings.)

Currently, a 21-story residential tower has been approved by the city for downtown Clayton. It would have 299 units, some retail space, and over 300,000 total square feet. What is the total estimated cost of that project? $106 million. This residential tower would be significantly larger than the new county building, yet it would cost approximately $150 million less. Based on cost per square foot, the proposed county building is almost four times as expensive.

In Robert Caro’s book The Powerbroker, about Robert Moses, the autocratic boss of New York city and state infrastructure projects for four decades in the mid-20th century, Caro spent an entire chapter detailing the way Moses employed various interest groups to get his projects going, no matter the cost. Moses had support from a wide cross-section of interest groups because he made sure that they all made money from his projects. Construction companies, contractors, labor unions, consultants, banks, law firms, the list goes on. If any politicians started opposing his projects, there was an orchestrated campaign of pressure from all these groups to get it approved. The people who benefitted from these enormous expenditures benefited greatly and quickly. The taxpayers or commuters who paid more than they should have did so in small increments over time via higher taxes, tolls, or other fees, but they didn’t feel the higher costs all at once. So the taxpayer shakedown has continued on to the present day.

In simpler terms, the developer of the high-rise in Clayton is spending its own money to build it, where St. Louis County officials are not. The county is spending taxpayer money, obviously, and when you do that in Missouri’s largest and richest county you can get away with spending a lot of it. Taxpayers aren’t going to revolt over an extra $50 a year in taxes spread out over 365 days of sales tax on purchases or mixed in at the end of the year with a dozen other property taxes on their bill. This is why you end up with a proposal for a new county building that costs four times more (per square foot) than a new, private building nearby.

Addressing this overall problem is going to be extremely difficult. Every option for change involves cutting off someone else’s golden goose. For now, let’s just hope St. Louis County government doesn’t put the New York Transit Authority in charge of the new elevators. Then it’s going to really get expensive.

Protections from EV Charging Station Mandates—for Some

Posted on by Avery Frank

At the end of the most recent legislative session, the Missouri legislature sent House Bill (HB) 2062 to the governor. While this bill has numerous issues, it does have a silver lining—increased protections against electric vehicle (EV) charging mandates.

Certain municipalities, such as the City of St. Louis, have mandated that if certain residential and commercial businesses engage in new constructions or major renovations, they must install, maintain, and operate EV charging stations on their own dime.

HB 2062 would provide statewide exemptions for churches and nonprofits from EV charging station mandates. But what about everyone else?

As I have written before, these types of mandates are an unnecessary government intrusion into the free market. All businesses should be protected from EV mandates—not just churches and nonprofits.

At the local level, the City of St. Louis has also included some exemptions from its mandate. Businesses that the city council has determined a visitor wouldn’t typically stay long enough at to warrant charging their vehicle are exempt from the mandate. Currently public-level charging is exceptionally slow (which is part of the reason why installing them is wasteful), but what happens when charging improves and people use charging stations during shorter stops? Will many of these businesses no longer be exempt?

A stronger version of a state law with more than just narrow exemptions would render these concerns at the municipal level moot. While it’s nice to see protections from these mandates offered to some, shouldn’t those protections be extended to all businesses in our state?

One Education Policy That Could Use Some Momentum for Next Year

Posted on by Avery Frank

For the fourth consecutive year, open enrollment (allowing students to enroll in any public school in the state, regardless of where they live) has died in the Senate after passing through the House. This is a policy that Missouri needs. My colleague, Susan Pendergrass, outlines here what an ideal open enrollment policy would look like.

But why has it been so difficult to pass open enrollment?

Apparently many legislators (particularly those in rural areas) are fearful that students would leave their school districts given the opportunity. It’s true that there are students who would change their schools. Some students will transfer out, and some students will transfer in. A mass exodus, however, is unlikely.

Parents often have sentimental attachments to the place they grew up in—they want their children to be able to experience all the same things they did. Strong attachments can help strengthen the community that supports the district. But these sentiments aren’t shared by everyone. Maybe someone is being bullied or struggling because the class size isn’t right for them. Or maybe families would prefer a five-day school week instead of four. Wouldn’t school districts improve if everyone who was there wanted to be there?

A professional advocate for “Rural School Advocates of Iowa” argued that open enrollment had bolstered rural districts in the state, as many students prefer smaller class sizes and sports programs that give them a better chance to get playing time. Perhaps additional studies on the effect of open enrollment on consolidation rates and enrollment trends could be useful in further addressing this concern.

There have also been reservations about the actual process of districts accepting students. Will districts only accept the best students from other districts? The best version of an open enrollment policy includes mandatory open enrollment. That means districts are not allowed to pick and choose students.

But what about special education students? If districts are required to accept all students, what if a district does not have special education staff on hand—will it be forced to make room?

There are already special education students in Missouri who live in districts without adequate resources to teach them. With open enrollment, I believe parents with special needs students would be more likely to choose a district with an adequate special education program.

As I was researching viewpoints on this issue, I came across an interesting story. A superintendent from a district in Minnesota was lamenting the lengths the district had to go to in order to retain students. The district created a new program that helps students with their post-graduation careers and allows them to earn certificates when they graduate.

Isn’t this what competition is supposed to do? Competition forced this district to create a new program that helps students with their careers after graduation. The desire to attract students to districts breeds innovation. Open enrollment can improve schools and increase options for students and families. Next year, I hope it finds the momentum it needs.

New AEI Report Challenges Gloomy Views of Worker Pay

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Years ago I delivered testimony on the minimum wage to the Kansas City Council. After my remarks, a councilwoman asked about a chart showing worker productivity rising while wages remained stagnant. A video of that testimony and my written response to her question is available here.

I think of that again because a new report by the American Enterprise Institute’s Scott Winship, “Understanding Trends in Worker Pay over the Past 50 Years,” addresses the fallacy of that chart and the broader claim that productivity and wages have not grown apace. Contrary to claims from some on both the political left and right, who argue that pay has stagnated despite economic growth, Winship presents evidence that overall compensation has grown in line with productivity when correctly measured.

The analysis begins by correcting misconceptions about wage stagnation. Winship shows that median worker pay, though not rising as dramatically as some top earners, has increased significantly when considering total compensation rather than just hourly wages.

Winship also addresses the discrepancy in pay growth between different groups. He notes that women’s pay has increased more rapidly than men’s over the past several decades.

Winship suggests that instead of accepting a gloomy narrative of failing capitalism or deteriorating worker conditions, policymakers should focus on boosting productivity and enhancing skills among middle- and working-class Americans.

The report paints a more optimistic picture of American workers’ pay trends relative to productivity over the past fifty years. While there are opportunities to enact policies that could improve workers’ economic mobility, they must be built on the solid understanding of wages that Winship advances.

Let’s Just Get Rid of Personal Responsibility for Everyone

Posted on by David Stokes

It is hard to overstate how seriously the City of St. Louis appears to be leaning into just giving other people’s money away. I’m sure I’ll be mocked for stating that it appears the goal of city leaders is to remove the last vestiges of personal responsibility for lower-income city residents and put everyone on the dole, but a quick review of recent policy decisions at city hall leads me to that conclusion.

Let’s recap. In 2015, the city passed its ridiculous source-of-income rule that requires landlords in the city to accept housing vouchers. Keep in mind that most housing vouchers involve the Section 8 program, where participation is voluntary. But in the city, and in four other towns in Missouri, you are required to participate.

The other actions are all more recent. In recent months, city leaders have:

The only silver lining to all of this is that the current city leadership is so poor at municipal administration that these programs are only going to “help” a small number of people. It’s almost as if the political message behind them is more important than the programs themselves. (In these cases, that is a good thing.)

This expansion of the local welfare state is the last thing St. Louis needs to turn itself around.

So Predictable

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

For almost a year there have been dire discussions of a coming “fiscal cliff” in public education spending. What is this doomsday fiscal cliff you might ask, and why is it going to happen? Simply stated, it is the expiration of federal stimulus funds that were sent to states during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic emergency has ended and, therefore, at some point, so will the emergency spending. Or, as described by the chairman of the Missouri Board of Education in a recent article, “you have a lot of federal authority deleted.” Huh? So, naturally, the drumbeat has begun for big asks of lawmakers to appropriate state funds that will make up the difference.

Let’s look at this with a clear head. The chart below shows Missouri state and federal revenue for public education, adjusted for inflation, from before the pandemic through the recently approved budget for the 2024–25 school year. In 2017–18, there were just under 920,000 students in pre-K through 12th grade in Missouri and the state legislature appropriated a total of $5.8 million (2023 dollars) from the general revenue fund and other state funds. The federal government kicked in another $1.3 million, largely for the Title I program for low-income students, the IDEA program for students with disabilities, and the school lunch program. Last year, even after the recovery from the pandemic enrollment drops, we had about 25,000 fewer students—a trend that is expected to continue. Yet, the legislature’s appropriation was about $500 million more than seven years ago.

The cliff is in that green hump at the top of the graph. Like a hike in the mountains, if you do a lot of climbing, you’re going to have to descend at some point to get back to your car.

So, is it obvious that we need a special session to get a “mother of all supplemental budgets” for education? Only if you believe that spending can only ever go up. Missouri, like many states, has a persistent trend of declining enrollment. Is it reasonable to think that we can only ever consider level or increased spending on public education?

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