Double Trouble: Kansas City Considers Extending Trolley Line To Plaza

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

It seems like only yesterday that I was calling Kansas City’s trolley plans a slow motion train wreck, yet the city appears to have already outdone itself in recent hours; not a foot of track has been laid downtown, and plans are already underway to more than double the size of the project and extend the proposed streetcar line south another 3 miles to the Country Club Plaza.

What could go wrong?

Councilman Russ Johnson has filed a resolution that would direct City Manager Troy Schulte to apply for a Federal Transit Administration grant to study extending the proposed streetcar line to the Country Club Plaza and University of Missouri-Kansas City area.

The current proposal has the line running a 2.2-mile route from River Market to Crown Center. The second leg would add a little more than three miles.

City officials apparently feel they need to go straight to ludicrous speed with this crazy train proposal, but basically all of the same objections apply to the new plan as the old. Kansas City’s streetcar plan attempts to satisfy a market demand for transit that does not exist along the proposed route and will cost at least — and now, potentially far more than — $100 million to get off the ground. In addition, despite city promises, the plan will make the city less competitive, not more competitive, with a spike in local taxes.

Is this really what Kansas City needs to be investing in right now? The Kansas City Star‘s Yael Abouhalkah recently noted that Kansas City has the second-worst debt service burden among the largest cities in the region and one of the highest tax burdens. Why would the city aggravate concerns that are already making it less competitive, and why on Earth would they double down on such a plan?

Donnybrook: Audrey Spalding Reappears on KETC

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst Audrey Spalding was once again a guest on Saint Louis local roundtable discussion show Donnybrook on March 22, 2012. Among the topics covered this time were: The unruly St. Charles County Republican caucus, the NFL "bounty scandal" and Rams' new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams role in it, Occupy St. Louis participants' recent defacing of the Compton Hill Reservoir, comment policy change on the Post-Dispatch website, developments in the Missouri republican party and the tea party's role, and whether employers should be allowed to ask for prospective employees' facebook passwords.

Click here to watch the video of the event.

A President Who Reduced the Budget? Calvin Coolidge

Posted on by Amity Shlaes

The Roaring ’20s didn’t just happen. At the Show-Me Institute’s Speaker Series on Feb. 28, author Amity Shlaes said the President known as “Silent Cal” deserves a lot of the credit for the booming economy. Shlaes, who has written the book Coolidge (due for release June 26), says Calvin Coolidge did what some might consider impossible today. He cut taxes and the federal budget.

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Watch the full video here.

Lower Taxes to Improve the Economy –Calvin Coolidge

Posted on by Amity Shlaes

At the Show-Me Institute’s Speaker Series on Feb. 28, author Amity Shlaes talked about one of America’s least remembered Presidents…Calvin Coolidge. Her book, Coolidge, will hit bookstores June 26, and Shlaes feels today’s leaders could learn something from “Silent Cal.” Shlaes says Coolidge’s tight budgets and tax cuts brought America out of recession and helped trigger the economic boom known as the Roaring ’20s.

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Watch the full video here.

Previewing Day Three Of Health Care Reform Oral Arguments

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

We have reached the last day of oral arguments for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), a.k.a., Obamacare. Two issues remain before the U.S. Supreme Court.

First, is PPACA severable — that is, if one part of the law is unconstitutional, may the rest of the law remain, or must the entire law be thrown out? Readers can find extended coverage on the severability issue here.

Second, is PPACA’s Medicaid expansion constitutionally permissible? Congress’ broadening of Medicaid’s eligibility rules affects not only the federal budget but the budgets of the states, which, along with the federal government, fund state-managed Medicaid programs. By expanding the pool of who can receive Medicaid, Congress is raising the states’ costs; the states’ contributions to the program would have to increase to pay for the greater number of beneficiaries. That is bad news for already tight state budgets. Medicaid is a “voluntary” program technically, but practically, states have come to rely heavily on the federal dollars associated with the program. Foregoing PPACA’s Medicaid expansion provisions also probably means foregoing those federal dollars.

Therein lies the issue: Do PPACA’s revisions to Medicaid, which expand the program’s eligibility requirements, constitute permissible federal pressure on the states stemming from Congress’ spending power, or does it go beyond “pressure,” constituting “compulsion” in violation of the 10th Amendment? For those following the arguments at home, listen for whether and how the justices use the word “compulsion” during the hearing. If the Court believes the changes to the law are “compulsion,” it may be inclined to say the Medicaid expansion goes too far, violating the 10th Amendment.

The Court is expected to rule on this week’s oral arguments in June or July.

The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

In January, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) launched his opening salvo in what was sure to be a contentious session between the governor and the General Assembly regarding the fiscal year 2013 budget. Last week, the Missouri House passed its version of the fiscal year 2013 budget. Both budgets reflect differing priorities and seemingly difficult choices.

If both the governor’s and legislature’s actions indicate anything, there is seemingly nothing else to cut in the budget and thus the state is faced with the Scylla of higher education cuts and the corresponding tuition increases they entail, or the Charybdis of cutting health programs, specifically a program for the blind who do not qualify for Medicaid. However, despite proposed cuts in these programs, there are still egregious examples of programs that clearly have no business being funded but still receive taxpayer dollars.

I have previously blogged about programs such as the Missouri Wine & Grape Board and Missouri ethanol subsidies. According to the House Budget, the Missouri Wine & Grape board receives an appropriation of $1,826,275 while the state will appropriate $9,850,000 to various ethanol and biodiesel programs. Before fighting about whether to cut higher education or programs for the blind, shouldn’t state officials eliminate funding for programs like the two mentioned above?

Previewing Day Two Of Health Care Reform Oral Arguments

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court continues hearing arguments regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), a.k.a., Obamacare. This time, the Court will consider the arguments related to the “main event” of the hearings: the constitutionality of the law’s individual mandate. The individual mandate requires every American, with a few exceptions, to purchase a government-approved health insurance plan, or be forced to pay a fine.

Modern jurisprudence has increasingly allowed the federal government to regulate commerce that is not of an obviously interstate nature. The issue here is that PPACA goes further and regulates the non-purchase of a good or service. Rather than simply regulating the manner in which the health insurance market will operate, PPACA requires that everyone in the country buy something, or be fined. Under this paradigm, market participation would no longer be required for regulation under the Commerce Clause; instead, and in a very real way, the feds would subject you to a purchase requirement merely for being a living, breathing American.

That is a problem. Having a health insurance plan makes sense, but compelling Americans to buy a health insurance plan through heavy-handed federal coercion is awful policy and arguably unconstitutional. Reading into the U.S. Constitution a federal right to demand purchases from its citizens would eviscerate many of the limits on government power enshrined in that document.

If the federal government can require individuals to purchase health insurance, what can’t the federal government require us to purchase? Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has filed a brief with the court, contends that if PPACA passes constitutional muster, then Congress could pass “a broccoli mandate, a car-purchase mandate, really any other mandate that you’d want.” Where is the line against such coercion drawn if not by the plain meaning of the Constitution?

Proponents of PPACA have dismissed the suggestion that the federal government would impose a “broccoli mandate,” arguing that the federal government would never try to expand a mandate to purchase goods and services into such areas. But Americans should not have to entrust their freedoms to the word of politicians and bureaucrats, well-meaning or not.

There is no “just trust us” clause in the Constitution. The Constitution is the check that keeps capricious leaders from doing capricious things, and should remain so.

The Main Street Trolley: A Slow Motion Train Wreck

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

If City Hall has its way, Kansas City will have a $100 million streetcar on Main Street in the not-too-distant future, but fiscal discipline and good sense should bring the project to a full stop.

Earlier this month, the Kansas City Council unanimously approved legislation that would establish a special trolley zone following a proposed streetcar route along Main. New sales and property taxes in the new district would fund the majority of the trolley project. People living in the district will likely vote on those proposed taxes, but residents will not necessarily be the ones bearing the brunt of that tax burden, at least not directly.

Rather, businesses and property owners, many of whom who do not live in the area where their businesses are located, would pay the price. Crown Center Redevelopment President Bill Lucas, whose property sits at the southern-most edge of the proposed line, cautioned that if built as planned, the streetcar’s tax proposal would raise hotel taxes in the district to the second-highest rate in the country. The Kansas City Star’s Yael Abouhalkah noted just last week that Kansas City’s tax burden and debt servicing obligations are among the worst in the region. Is a Main Street train worth digging those holes deeper?

Moreover, if hotel taxes spike, as Lucas suggests, it would be an ironic, albeit not altogether unexpected, twist for a political class captivated by serial centralized development plans. Early last year, city officials pushed the idea of building a new convention center hotel to help link the languishing Bartle Hall to the languishing Power & Light District, thereby driving up consumer traffic for the trio. At the time, I called the proposal Kansas City’s “Hotel California” – an unnecessary fiscal boondoggle that, if built, taxpayers would not soon escape. Why would the city pursue a trolley project funded with a tax that could make the city’s hotel project even less competitive, not to mention hurt the hotels that already serve the downtown area?

But even if the trolley project is taken only on its own merits, the prospects and track record for a streetcar in Kansas City are decidedly poor. Last month, we found out that another city-subsidized entertainment-oriented transit line – the KC Strip – which serves many of the same areas that the trolley would serve, fell behind on its loan payments due to lack of ridership.

Appropriately, the Strip’s buses are painted like trolleys.

A $100 million plan that local businesses do not want to pay for? A $100 million plan that would spike hotel taxes and could undermine a proposed city-backed hotel building project meant to link an underused city-owned convention center to an underused city-subsidized entertainment complex? A $100 million plan that in large part replicates a cheaper transit option, that the city subsidizes, which is already failing?

What could possibly go wrong?

When the people who presumably stand to benefit from the trolley do not want to pay for it, no one should be paying for it. Not only is the city out of sync with the people who would be paying the proposed taxes; it is out of sync with even its own projects and development objectives.

The trolley is just the latest big idea in a long line of irresponsible municipal projects that city officials have proposed, and it may end up being the last straw for a go-go city-directed development culture that has hemorrhaged taxpayer money for years. Stop the train. We want to get off.


Patrick Ishmael is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

Previewing Day One Of Health Care Reform Oral Arguments

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Beginning on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA,) also known as “ObamaCare.” In all, six hours over three days have been allotted for the parties to make their cases for and against the law. A marathon hearing schedule like this is not unprecedented, but it is not typical, either.

Each day will focus on a different aspect of the law being challenged. The order of oral arguments, according to the Washington Post, is as follows:

  • Monday: The Anti-Injunction Act (AIA)

  • Tuesday: The individual mandate

  • Wednesday: Severability, Medicaid expansion

The first session will deal with whether the penalty for not obtaining health insurance is a tax. Under the Anti-Injunction Act, the government typically must levy a tax before it can be challenged. If the Court finds that the PPACA penalty is in fact a tax, the earliest anyone could challenge it would be after it is imposed, which would be 2015 — the year after the mandate goes into effect. Such a ruling might frustrate PPACA supporters and opponents alike, as the law would remain in limbo for several more years, or until Congress changes the law.

Both the government and the states now agree that the penalty is not a tax, and although it is not especially likely that the Court will conclude that the AIA would prevent the Court from reviewing the law at this time, it still could happen. Moreover, the AIA issue, despite its questionable merits, does have a certain appeal. If the Court wants to avoid a highly-charged election-year ruling, this issue would provide a handy escape hatch for the Court.

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