David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss:
– The need to update Missouri’s tax and expenditure limits (the Hancock Amendment)
– The passage of SB 727, the education reform bill, by the Senate
and House
– Metrolink expansion, and more
Show Links:
Find tickets for the April 30 event in Columbia, MO here.
Read Elias’ new report here.
Read Avery’s blog on SB 727 here.
Read David’s blog on the Metrolink project here.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
They used to be two empty ships passing in the night, but now MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Illinois and St. Louis’s MetroLink system will finally connect, to the great joy of nobody but local politicians and contractors.
These two deserve each other. Let’s examine the usage projections that were used to convince taxpayers to approve funding(and various extensions).
Projected passengers for MidAmerica Airport, back in 1997 when the airport was built? Two million.
Plog Research Inc., one of the consultants for the MidAmerica project, estimates 2 million air passengers will be served by the Downstate airport.
Actual passengers in 2022? 163,000. (And trust me, they celebrated that wildly.)
Projected MetroLink ridership after the construction of the cross-county MetroLink extension? 80,000 daily boardings in Missouri alone by 2025.
Actual daily boardings in Missouri in 2023? 16,700.
Public agencies habitually overstate ridership and understate costs to justify these massive projects of all types. High-speed rail, anyone?
It is worth noting that the current five-mile MetroLink extension to the airport in Illinois cost $98 million, while the proposed MetroLink extension in St. Louis, which is also five miles long, is estimated to cost $1.1 billion. A billion-dollar difference for the same length of route. To paraphrase Everett Dirksen—himself a son of Illinois—a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.
It is great that we can finally connect two massive transportation boondoggles that don’t take anyone for a ride but taxpayers.
Two pieces of legislation are currently moving through the Missouri Legislature. One good, and one bad.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
A long-awaited breakthrough came this past Thursday in the Missouri House of Representatives, as the chamber narrowly passed Senate Bill (SB) 727, the large education bill. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk. SB 727 provides a wide array of benefits to students, parents, and teachers of the Show-Me State.
For students, this bill expands access to Missouri’s education savings account (ESA) program, provides a new pathway to creating a charter school in Columbia, and creates a new evidence-based home reading program.
SB 727 provides students increased access to schools that better suit their needs. We tell children all the time to dream big, and this will give many students additional opportunities to attend a school of their dreams—not just of their address.
Parents also receive an additional benefit from this bill. In larger communities (of more than 30,000 or in/partially in a charter county), districts now must win parental approval by vote in order to move to a four-day school week.
For teachers, increased salaries and scholarships are on the way. Minimum starting salaries will be raised from $25,000 to $40,000. Additionally, salaries for teachers with a master’s degree and ten years of experience will be raised from $33,000 to $46,000 (and then to $48,000 by 2027–2028).
For teachers in hard-to-staff subjects, districts will have the option to provide them differentiated compensation through higher placement on the teacher salary schedule. Additionally, teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools can be granted differentiated pay from the district. A scholarship program will also be created for individuals who agree to teach in hard-to-staff subject areas and schools in Missouri following their graduation. For a state that does not have a general shortage of teachers, but a shortage in specific areas, this is a step toward retaining and recruiting these high-need teachers.
While there are other policies that I hope can be implemented to strengthen SB 727, such as open enrollment for all, I will save those discussions for another day. Today, I am just glad for the progress that has been made.
Susan Pendergrass and James Shuls join Zach Lawhorn to discuss the House passage of SB 727, sending it to the governor’s desk.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but the chances Missouri’s general assembly takes action on healthcare price transparency in 2024 are getting smaller by the day.
At the end of January, I traveled to Jefferson City to deliver testimony on House Bill (HB) 1837, and at the time it seemed like the state’s legislature had finally decided to make healthcare price transparency a priority. HB 1837 is a bill that, among other things, codifies the federal government’s healthcare price transparency rules into state law, and was the first of its kind to receive a public hearing in Missouri. But since that hearing it has yet to receive any further attention from policymakers.
As my colleagues and I have written numerous times, Missouri desperately needs healthcare price transparency. And despite the federal government requiring hospitals to publish their price since 2021, fewer than 40% are complying nationally. That’s where HB 1837 comes in.
In addition to codifying the federal requirements into state law, the bill provides new protections for patients who receive health services in Missouri without being adequately informed of the prices beforehand. If patients aren’t told how much a procedure is going to cost before they receive it, there’s no way for them to plan for the expense, shop for a better deal, or even change their mind about the procedure altogether if the price is more than they can afford at the time.
HB 1837, which is modeled after legislation that became law in Colorado a few years ago, would shield patients from debt collection efforts by hospitals that aren’t complying with the required price transparency laws. Patients who find out they were overcharged would also have recourse for financial restitution (a way to get some of their money back).
With Missouri’s legislature, it’s always difficult to know why a bill stopped advancing, but one thing that was clear from the hearing on HB 1837 was that hospital lobbyists were vehemently opposed to it becoming law. The opposition claimed that complying with the transparency requirements would be too expensive. In fact, the cost is one of the primary reasons the federal government cites for not currently punishing noncompliant hospitals. But these requirements have been in place now for more than three years, which is more than enough time for hospitals to budget for this.
Given how confusing and expensive our healthcare system is, Missouri patients can’t afford to wait any longer for hospitals or the federal government to act. Healthcare price transparency would be a real win for Missourians in their battle against ever-rising healthcare costs. There’s still about a month left in the legislative session, so it’s still possible that our general assembly could push healthcare price transparency across the finish line this year, but at this point, I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath.
A few months ago, I delved into a fascinating bill being debated in Congress, the ADVANCE Nuclear Act, which had the potential to reinvigorate the nuclear energy sector in the United States. This bill would have helped streamline and modernize the cumbersome regulatory process that restricts construction of new nuclear plants (you can read the specifics of the bill here). Now, a new House version of the bill, the Atomic Advancement Act (AAA), seems to be inching closer to the president’s desk.
Nuclear momentum is building at the federal level, and with the AAA gaining serious traction in Congress, shouldn’t Missouri position itself to take advantage of possible federal changes?
In Missouri, there appears to urgency in finding coal’s replacement. Nuclear energy could be the keystone piece in this future transition. So what can Missouri do?
While I have highlighted numerous state reforms in previous blog posts and testimonies, the most pressing issue is fixing a statute passed in the 1970s, seemingly at the behest of the anti-nuclear lobby. This statute prevents utilities from raising rates in order to help pay for construction works in progress (CWIP). Nuclear power plants are both extremely capital intensive and subject to extensive holdups in the regulatory process. These two factors make nuclear developments risky investments, and this absence of a financial backstop has been, and continues to be, a roadblock for further nuclear development in Missouri.
While there are many important topics being debated in Jefferson City, legislators should not forget about the importance of nuclear regulatory reform—especially as federal reform could be near. In the Missouri Legislature, House Bills 1435 and 1804 (which address the CWIP statute) have made little progress.
As coal power is being phased out, Missourians will need an energy source that will keep the lights on and the air clean. Nuclear power can check both these boxes—but power plants do not arise out of thin air, and they will not be built in Missouri if the regulatory environment here makes them infeasible or prevents them from being cost effective. Eliminating the longstanding CWIP statute through HB 1435 and HB 1804 would help utilities shoulder the upfront cost of plant construction so that they can work with both domestic and international nuclear developers to revive our state’s nuclear industry.
We should set a solid foundation in our state while the federal government works on its end. Missouri should not miss opportunities for nuclear development because we allowed bad state policies to remain in place.
Senate Bill (SB) 727, which has been moving through the legislature in fits and starts this year, was finally passed by the House and will be going to the governor’s desk. The bill ended up being quite large. Here is some of what’s in it.
Charter schools could be coming to Boone County. If a group of teachers, parents, or citizens wants to open a charter school and has a solid application, it can now apply to a university or the state charter school board for sponsorship. The group does not need the approval of a local school board.
Eligibility for the MOScholars scholarship program for low-income students and students with disabilities has been greatly expanded. There are no longer geographic restrictions for who is eligible. The income limits for eligibility have been raised. The total amount of tax credits that can be dedicated to the program was increased from $50 million to $75 million. And the dollar amount of the scholarship was raised to bring the number in line with the Foundation Formula amounts for similar types of students.
Districts in the state’s largest communities must now put a potential switch to a four-day school week to a vote. There is also a financial incentive that will be remitted to any district that remains open five days per week.
There is also an important change to the state’s foundation formula. Previously, students were counted purely based on attendance. Now, the formula will be 50 percent based on attendance and 50 percent based on enrollment.
The minimum teacher salary was raised from $25,000 to $40,000 for all teachers and from $33,000 to $46,000 for teachers with master’s degrees.
Districts will be able to attempt to fill teaching positions in “hard-to-staff” schools by placing teachers higher on the salary schedule than they normally would be.
There are many more provisions to SB 727. It represents a defensible trade-off between increasing options for Missouri students who need them and investing in the system. I look forward to the governor signing it.
The other day I asked in a post about the missing Populous report about Kauffman Stadium. I still don’t have the full Populous study, but I do have a slide deck presentation based on the study that Populous was presenting in 2022. I am confident that this is the deck that KCUR references in its November 2023 story.
The Populous slide deck (available here) is dedicated to the problems facing Kauffman Stadium, including the infamous Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) or “concrete cancer.” The deck indicates that when this appears, it must be replaced. The report also highlights problems facing several parts of the stadium and concludes “the age of the building systems and outdated technology will force replacement of major mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems as their service life expires.”
The final slide lists the renovation cost estimate as $1.072 billion. That is more than the new ballpark cost estimate of $1.005 billion. These estimates suggest that a financially prudent decision would be to build a new park.
But wait . . .
On page 9 of the term sheet the Royals presented to Clay County on September 28, 2023, the cost of a new ballpark in North Kansas City is listed at $1.277 billion. That’s 27 percent higher than the Populous estimate of $1.005 billion. That increase may be due to inflation, which would also affect the cost of repairing the K. We don’t know the projected costs of the plan to build a stadium in the Crossroads district that voters rejected on April 2 because no one will tell us. We also don’t know the cost estimates of building in the East Village.
Unfortunately, there is so much we don’t know about these proposals. The Star reports that the city manager is now in talks with both the Chiefs and the Royals and that a public vote may not be necessary. It would be a shame if the lesson that new stadium proponents learn from the April 2 vote is that the public should be even less informed and involved in how the city spends tax dollars.
