Property Assessments and Taxes in the News

Posted on by David Stokes

As people in Saint Louis County continue to appeal their assessments, the city of Blue Springs on the other side of the state is considering a proposal to raise its property tax rate in response to declining assesments. This is the perfect time for us to release a major policy study and an op-ed on property taxation, with a closely related case study and video coming online in a few days.

I admire the people throughout Missouri who fight for their rights to a fair assessment. That doesn’t mean the counties are always wrong, although given the problems in Jackson County you might assume they are. I also admire the people who stand up in cities like Blue Springs and argue for government cuts instead of property tax increases. I’ll readily admit the fact that the proposed increase is small, but if taxpayers and voters acquiesce to every tax increase just because they are small, they will see a lot of small tax increases.

So the NCBE’s “Mystery Meat” Study Won’t Be Published Until… After the Special Session?

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

We reported yesterday on the National Center for Beef Excellence’s Beef Study That Wasn’t, and last night KMOV reporter Andre Hepkins, who’s been covering the NCBE “meat feasibility” story since last week, sent along this latest development concerning the Beef Center’s elusive meat report:

The legislative special session — assuming it is called — will probably take place in September, which means independent researchers won’t get to see, let alone test, the fundamental assumptions in this “feasibility study” until long after a $360 million vote is taken on the issue.

Truly absurd. Taxpayers deserve better than this from their community and political leaders. Much, much better than this.

What’s Wrong with Aerotropolis: Kingmaker Provision

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

In this video, Show-Me Institute policy analyst Audrey Spalding tells of a little-mentioned portion of the proposed Aerotropolis legislation. This provision would grant new authority to the mayor of Saint Louis and the Saint Louis County Executive, allowing them to dictate who could receive Aerotropolis tax credits — which amount to over $300 million dollars of potential development subsidy.

 

 

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Hey National Center for Beef Excellence, Where’s the Beef?

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Last week KMOV reported that a “non-profit agency” commissioned by the Midwest China Hub Commission had conducted a study about export opportunities from a proposed “Aerotropolis,” and determined that “shipping meat from Lambert [Airport] to China is feasible…” (emphasis mine).

The Midwest China Hub Commission hired the National Center for Beef Excellence to examine how much beef and pork could be exported to China via Lambert. The NCBE says a China hub at Lambert could send up to 11 million pounds of meat to China.

The news report in its entirety:

We’ve discussed again and again how beef is ineligible for export to China. The NCBE’s use of the word “meat” is nondescript enough to suggest beef can be exported without admitting that it can’t, and when “beef” is evoked specifically in KMOV’s discussion here, it’s always in the context that it “could” mean “big bucks” for the state, presumably in the same way that someone “could” make a lot of money distilling bathtub alcohol if it were legal to sell it. That’s a crafty way for the NCBE to announce its findings without spilling the beans about beef, but it doesn’t really add anything to the conversation on Aerotropolis.

Then there’s the question of the study itself: Namely, where is it? We asked the China Hub Commission about getting a copy of the NCBE report, and in about a day we’d received in the mail a stack of various, unpaginated NCBE documents that related to the China Hub, but did not include anything that looked like a study or that supported the substance of the news reports about it — namely, that 11 million pounds of meat could be exported to China after lawmakers passed the Aerotropolis legislation.

So far, no one else we’ve asked has been able to find the report, including those who covered it. Where, precisely, is this study? If nobody has a finalized copy or even a draft copy of what was reported, why… was anything reported? Or better yet, how was it reported?

There were some very revealing details that we did find in that pile of China Hub documents, however. More on that shortly.

So, Does This Mean Taxpayers Will Own Half of Stifel Nicolaus’ New Building?

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

For Saint Louisans, it’s a Good News/Bad News/Worse News sort of situation. The Good News? One of the region’s big employers, Stifel Nicolaus, is expanding its operations downtown and buying its building. So far, the situation sounds very good indeed. The Bad News? It means that Stifel won’t be moving into Ballpark Village, a development headache that’s plagued the downtown area for years.

The Worse News? It looks like taxpayers could end up paying almost as much for Stifel’s new business plan as Stifel is.

In this case, according to the application, Stifel is seeking $2.8 million in Build Missouri Bonds, a state program designed to defray the cost of expansions. That request will go before the Missouri Development Finance Board next week.

The company also plans to apply for $2.6 million in Missouri Quality Jobs tax credits, which reimburse companies that create jobs paying above-average wages.

Stifel predicts the average new employee will earn $65,000 a year.

From the city of St. Louis, it plans to request a $15 million allocation of federal New Markets Tax Credits, which translates into $3 million in equity for the project. Stifel also will seek property and earnings tax breaks worth $5 million over 10 years, and up to $500,000 a year in breaks on other local taxes — though Stifel agreed to make payments to St. Louis Public Schools.

Much of that aid, including all the state incentives, are dependent on Stifel actually creating the jobs it is promising. All of it, after expenses are counted for, will amount to $17.1 million in public financing for the $35 million project. The rest will come out of Stifel’s pocket.  (Emphasis mine).

“The rest will come out of Stifel’s pocket.” Thankfully.

The Post-Dispatch’s Bill McClellan highlights the contradiction at play here.

Of all the businesses that ought to understand the business of business, it’s Stifel. It’s a brokerage and investment banking firm. The people who run Stifel profess a belief in capitalism.

Except, of course, when it comes to their own affairs. Risk and reward? Nonsense! No investment without incentives.

Well, fine. I can understand the sentiment. If you can get public money, why not get it? What I can’t understand is the way the public always goes along with this stuff.

Just two days ago, David wrote a blog post about how some young entrepreneurs are looking for government assistance to get their businesses off the ground. Unfortunately, it seems they learned the wrong lessons from their predecessors.

Young Entrepreneurs Demand Government Assistance

Posted on by David Stokes

This is a depressing sign of the new reality. A group of young entrepreneurs is requesting government assistance. This new organization, which consists of young people who are probably pretty awesome in many ways, is looking to the federal government for assistance:

The Young Entrepreneur Council is proposing a Youth Entrepreneurship Act that would address the barriers that he [Scott Gerber, founder of the YEC] says young entrepreneurs face. One element would be a program to forgive student loans and debt for young entrepreneurs, which he says would address a major hindrance to recent graduates who want to set up their own shop.

“Now more than ever, with young unemployment being so high, we have to be educating people that youth entrepreneurship is a viable career path and not some renegade choice,” Gerber said.

You know what would really be a renegade choice? Not requesting special legislation from the government.

In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work for the government and when I had a small business in the 1990s it had a few government agencies as clients. I make no claim to moral purity here, but just wanted to note how depressing it is that a group of young innovators and risk-takers (of all people) would adopt the nasty habit of seeking government handouts as their standard practice of doing business.

Maybe They Should Try Drive-By Assessments in Jackson County

Posted on by David Stokes

Last week, the Kansas City Star ran an excellent story on radically higher property assessments in Kansas City. The key point is Jackson County went decades without properly assessing these people’s homes. Yes, the property owners benefited from lower assessments over that time, but now they are paying the price with dramatic increases in assessed valuations. While I understand the need to update assessed values, I hope someone in the Jackson County assessor’s office has been held responsible for letting these neighborhoods go so long without proper assessments.

In Saint Louis County, the assessor physically inspects every property over a six-year cycle. I was amazed to read that Jackson County let certain neighborhoods go so long without physical inspections. From the article:

[Jackson County Assessor Curtis] Koons, who came to Jackson County from Cass County in September 2007, said the last inspection of county residential properties was at least 14 years ago, and the last thorough physical inspection, where every house was measured, dated back at least 25 years.

I thought Jackson County was in violation of state law, but apparently it is not. Saint Louis County cites state law in support of its six-year inspection cycle, but apparently that law applies only to Saint Louis County. More precisely, it appears the six-year rule is part of the county’s assessment maintenance plan as approved by the state tax commission (I have requested a clarification, and will update this post with a comment when I receive an answer).

State law or not, allowing so many properties to go so long without an exterior physical inspection is crazy. You can accomplish a lot with a physical inspection just by viewing the home from the sidewalk and offering an interior inspection if the homeowner wants one — which they almost never do.

Jackson County’s plan to update its assessed values will eventually work out. By that I mean that in a few years when the entire county’s assessment schedule has been updated, tax rates can be equalized (i.e., lowered) to adjust for the higher assessments. But for now, the homeowners in this first round will see much higher assessments without corresponding decreases in rates, and the tax bills they receive in October will be killers.

Title reference here.

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