How Unions Choose School Board Candidates with Michael Hartney

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Michael Hartney about his new latest report, Students or Salaries? How Unions Choose School Board Candidates.

Download the full report here.

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Michael Hartney is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, an associate professor in the department of political science at Boston College, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a research affiliate at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), and, in 2020-21, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell Hoover National Fellow.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

As Legislature Returns, Whose Priorities Will Take Priority?

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Happy New Year! After a lackluster 2023 legislative session, hope springs eternal for 2024 as the Missouri Legislature returns to do the people’s work in Jefferson City this week. Show-Me Institute analysts have shared ideas for legislative priorities in the 2024 Blueprint, and over the winter break I reiterated some discrete ways of improving governance in the state.

But even the best-laid plans can go awry, so how optimistic are legislators that items important to taxpayers will get across the finish line this year? As an article in the Missouri Independent emphasizes, it depends on who you ask:

“I mean, I think we’ll get things done,” said Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican. “Will we get everything done that we want to do? No, we never do. But I’m an optimist.”

Democrats and Republicans share many of the same goals, O’Laughlin said, and progress can be made if people are willing to sit down and talk about how to reach those goals.

The Missouri House has generally been effective in advancing good legislation in the last few years, often only to be stifled in the Senate. The real question for whether 2024 will be “successful” hinges on how the Missouri Senate, now in an election year, handles its business. Will the majority party see itself often split, with leadership joining with the minority party to pass or stop legislation as it did in 2023? Will the majority party use Previous Question motions to scuttle filibusters from all quarters to pass its priorities? Will we see a mix of the two? Or will the chamber mostly be mired in dysfunction and nothing really gets done (again)?

How the factions in the Senate align will play an enormous role in what actually gets done in 2024. With a handful of exceptions, the last few years have been littered with missed opportunities, primarily because the Senate has alternated between watering down important measures or not passing them at all. So 2024 is a Yoda moment of sorts, especially for Missouri’s outgoing senators; lawmakers have entered “do or do not, there is no try” territory if they want to build a legacy before they leave the legislature for good. Giving lip service to good legislation isn’t going to cut it this time around.

What’s ultimately done (or not) remains to be seen, and we at the Show-Me Institute will keep you posted as the session progresses. But I hope that all Missouri legislators will set aside their squabbling and make decisions that keep the good- and limited-government promises made to their constituents. If they do, 2024 could be a banner year for the state, but if they don’t, well, this year will look a lot like last year. And that would be unfortunate.

Why Don’t We Remove the Floor from Missouri’s Income Tax Triggers?

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

RSMo §143.011(4)(1) represents the essence of Missouri’s income tax reduction trigger law. Passed in 2022, the law reduces the state’s income tax over time to a floor of 4.5%, assuming certain revenue targets are met. Importantly, the section states that “[n]o more than three reductions shall be made under this subsection.” In other words, when the tax cut triggers are all met, no further cuts below 4.5% can be made.

Why stop at 4.5%? As the state’s general revenue grows, shouldn’t tax rates be adjusted accordingly so that the total size of government doesn’t also grow? By eliminating the limit of three reductions to the income tax rate from the law, Missouri can set forth a fiscally responsible glide path to eliminating the income tax entirely, using current law to facilitate this autopilot tax reform. Letting taxes drop as revenues rise is an appropriate and efficient way of achieving this end.

We have talked at length and for years about how destructive income taxes are to growth and why they should be phased out and ended in Missouri. Accelerating that stepdown is worthwhile, but not stopping that stepdown is just as important, given the current law. Policymakers should remove the floor and let the individual income tax rate continue to fall if government revenue keeps rising.

The Authority of the Missouri Auditor Should Be Expanded to Enhance Local Transparency

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

The Missouri State Auditor’s Office plays a crucial role in promoting transparency and accountability in government. Although the Auditor arguably already has many powers to advance these ends, state law could provide the state auditor with further explicit authority to ensure local spending is transparent and publicly reported.

To achieve this transparency objective seems simple. A new statement could be added to RSMo §105.145(2) that says, “the auditor may require the submission of supporting documents for such financial transactions, including but not limited to check registers or their electronic equivalent, and digital bookkeeping files.”   Such an addition wouldgive the state auditor the authority to require supporting documents for financial documents reported to the state by local governments. The auditor could then post the documents online, giving the public a complete and detailed picture of how their money is being spent.

With such a change to state law, the State Auditor would be better equipped to ensure that public funds are being used in a transparent and accountable manner. For its part the public would be able to see how money is spent rather than being forced to use the Sunshine Law to get such records—a process that, as staff at the Show-Me Institute has discovered over many years, is often made more difficult by officials apparently trying to prevent the dissemination of these records.

No more asking “pretty please” for transparency from local bureaucrats. The Auditor’s Office would be able to deliver this transparency if it had such explicit powers.

Expanding Interstate License Reciprocity Can Improve Access to Health Care

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Interstate licensing reciprocity in healthcare is an issue near and dear to my heart. Starting with the implementation of the Volunteer Health Services Act in 2013 and followed by a host of reciprocity reforms in recent years, Missouri has found itself at the forefront of licensing reform issues nationally.

But Missouri can do better, and that means updating state law to ensure that the objective of reciprocity—that is, the expansion of health care supply to patients by leveraging qualified individuals from other states—is in fact achieved.

Two areas, then, that require attention in Missouri are the six-month delay in reciprocity admission that’s permitted under RSMo §324.009(3) and the compact exception in RSMo §324.009(10) that allows licensing boards to step in front of reciprocity reforms by entering into preemptive compacts. Both the six-month delay and compact exception can be easily corrected by deleting those provisions.

These tweaks to Missouri law may seem obscure and small, but they are important, and they should be implemented as quickly as possible for the benefit both of the professionals affected and the consumers and patients that will benefit from increased access to those professionals.

Repeal Certificate of Need For the Health and Welfare of Missourians

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Certificate of need (CON) laws have been a subject of debate since their inception in the United States half a century ago. Intended to control healthcare costs and improve access to care, Missouri’s CON law requires healthcare providers to obtain government permission before opening certain facilities, expanding certain care services, or installing certain medical machines.

Yet research tends to show CON has the opposite effect of its original intention, leading to higher costs and reduced access to care for patients. This is not surprising, of course. As President Ronald Reagan once joked, often when the government comes “to help” is when the public should get concerned.

Missouri can stop “helping” in this counterproductive way by unwinding its CON law. By repealing its certificate of need law through removing sections 197.300-197.367 from the state’s statutes, Missouri could promote competition, reduce costs, and increase access to care for all Missourians.

To find out more about the CON issue in Missouri, read our 2019 paper on the subject, End Certificate of Need in Missouri.

Transparency in Municipal Government Should Be Mandatory

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Longtime readers are familiar with the wide array of transparency projects that the Show-Me Institute has undertaken over the last few years. In fact, our Show-Me Checkbook Project has helped prod two separate “checkbook” portals in state government since its introduction six years ago, but participation in those state portals is largely voluntary for local governments. Missouri should change that and require that, as a condition of being able to take money from people through force (which is what taxation is), local governments generally and cities especially should be reporting their spending to the state regularly and with specificity.

There are two key ways of doing this reporting. The first way is by embracing something along the lines of House Bill 2242 from 2019, which included mandatory municipal transparency language. The second way is by tweaking Missouri Revised Statutes §§37.1090 to 37.1098 by replacing the voluntary “may” language with mandatory “shall” statements.

Making local government transparency mandatory in Missouri would be an enormous leap forward in government accountability in the Show-Me State. Transparency can empower people, build trust in government, and ensure public resources are used in the best way possible.

The Parents’ Bill of Rights: Its Time Has Come

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

We have long said that if the government can take your money, it needs to account for it, and whether that money is taken by state government or local governments, the obligations remain the same. This is especially true when it comes to our schools and school districts. That’s why we introduced the Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights in 2021: to give parents more control over their children’s education and ensure that they have a say in the classroom. It’s also why the Legislature needs to (finally) pass it in 2024.

The Parents’ Bill of Rights focuses on five key areas: curriculum transparency, school choice, parental involvement, data privacy, and district accountability. High among those objectives is the establishment of an online portal where district curricula can be viewed by parents so that they are fully informed of the instruction happening in their schools. We discussed these issues at length before Missouri’s U.S. Civil Rights Commission Advisory Committee earlier this year.

The core of the problem, as we’ve revealed over the last few years, is that the current setup for finding out what’s going on in schools requires either a forthright district (or school) or a district that’s compliant with the letter and spirit of Missouri’s Sunshine Law. In essence, taxpayers have to ask about how their money is being spent – rather than simply receive or see it without having to beg for it. The potential result of the current law is straightforward, with districts playing games with responses or attempting to charge outrageous sums for the information.

Now it’s time for this important policy to become law. By empowering parents, improving educational outcomes, promoting school choice, enhancing transparency and accountability, and protecting student data privacy, the adoption of a Parents’ Bill of Rights could have an important impact on the state’s education system—and improve the relationship between parents and the schools they fund.

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