Governmental Things One Should Be Able to Do Online

Posted on by David Stokes

Over at the Freakonomics blog, they’re discussing a website focused on getting the U.S. Census to be made available online, thereby saving millions of dollars — maybe more. This post won’t devolve into a census discussion, but I will say that I absolutely hate those ads that constantly talk about filling out the form so that your community can get its fair share of funds for all the wonderful things government does. I reject that it is the role of government to do many of those things, and the constant talk of “fair share” makes me physically ill.

But let’s move on. We are talking a lot around here about ways to cut the state’s budget. Although this idea is more closely related to Missouri’s county governments, personal property tax declarations could very easily be done online. As far as I can tell, only Jackson County allows you to do the entire process online. That saves every taxpayer the postage cost of two letters, and it should be emulated by every other county. St. Louis County offers some helpful things online, but I think they should go the full mile here and try to phase out the requirement for physical mailings of property tax declarations for as many people as possible. Cutting costs here might also save the state at least a little money, given that the state reimburses counties for portions of their assessment expenses.

Please let me know if you are aware of other counties that have gone completely online with this process.

Continuing the Fight for Fewer State Reps

Posted on by David Stokes

Today’s Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal has an op-ed about the size of Missouri’s House of Representatives. In short, the House is too big and we could do just fine with fewer elected state reps. It is a very good editorial and sounds many of the same arguments I’ve made in my writings on this subject. I recommend the piece highly — thanks to Combest for catching it. The key argument:

The annual savings on pay and per diem of $39,751 per House member, multiplied by 95, tops $3.75 million per year.

That money adds up. Decreasing the number of people who have a say in how we live our lives would be another benefit of reducing the size of the House.

Public Programs Should Substantiate Claims About Child Development

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Last week, I blogged about some advice a Parents as Teachers participant received from a program representative. She says she was told that she “needed” to read to her unborn child every day, and that it was important to read the exact same book each time. I criticized this advice as lacking a scientific basis; in addition, it’s liable to provoke anxiety or unrealistic expectations in parents.

This incident brings to mind a program that was introduced in Georgia back in 1998. The state distributed free classical music tapes and CDs to the parents of newborns, in hopes that listening to the music would stimulate babies’ cognitive development.

In both cases, public programs inappropriately extrapolated from scientific research to prescribe parenting behaviors. Babies can enjoy music — and psychologists have debated the existence of a “Mozart effect” — but that does not mean all babies need to listen to CDs for healthy development. Likewise, research shows that fetuses can detect sounds and that young brains learn from repetition, but that does not imply that reading one book every day will be beneficial. It’s worth noting that despite the research on repetition, repetitive exposure to Baby Einstein language videos has been shown not to help babies’ linguistic abilities. The manner of repetition makes a difference. It’s not sufficient for Parents as Teachers to point to studies about repetition in general; the program would have to show that this specific repetitive activity has a positive effect.

It’s been brought up in our comments section that Parents as Teachers might endorse other ways of interacting with fetuses. This could be true. Similarly, if pressed, Georgia’s governor might have been forced to admit that country music has as much chance of promoting development as classical music. But what matters is the advice that was actually conveyed by the program. When participants honestly come away from a class under the impression that they need to do one particular thing — and I have no reason to believe the blogger I linked to was trying to misrepresent Parents as Teachers or make it look bad — we should evaluate whether that activity is as important as the program claimed. If Parents as Teachers never intended to promote one activity over others, then the program needs to do a better job of communicating with parents so they don’t form erroneous conclusions.

What Can We Do Without?

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

As you may already know, Missouri is running a large budget deficit, despite several rounds of budget cuts recently made by Gov. Jay Nixon. According to the Post-Dispatch, Missouri may have to cut an additional $500 million from its budget.

Some Show-Me Institute staff members are considering a set of suggestions for additional cuts that the state could make without hurting its core programs. Hopefully, we can find line items within the state budget that can be cut without negatively impacting other areas of state spending. But this is a time-sensitive issue, and researchers combing through the state budget might not see an area of spending that others know through experience to be ineffective.

So, if you happen to know offhand of certain programs that could easily be cut, let us know. The comment section is open. Or, if you’d like to take a closer look at state spending, you can use our Show-Me: The Books tool, which lets you create graphs, tables, and charts of state spending, with data that’s updated every week. You can see the most current version of the state budget here.

Spending on Health

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

These two counties in Wisconsin, like Oklahoma City, want their residents to be more healthy and physically fit. Unlike Oklahoma City, they are using public funds to pursue their goals. The money comes in the form of a $2.3 million stimulus grant, and the counties will spend it over the course of two years.

I wonder how the counties will use the grant to change residents’ behavior. They have ample public funding, but many of the behaviors they want to alter fall squarely in the private sector. For example, one of the stated goals is reducing the time people spend watching television. Do the counties plan to purchase a set of TV-B-Gone devices and manually turn off televisions? Presumably not, but how else can they get people to change?

Here are a few more things the counties want to accomplish:

Rauter said further efforts will be directed toward providing nutritional information for school lunches and restaurants, and making healthy choices more affordable in grocery stores. The program will promote community gardens, including implementing a Farm-to-School program, encouraging breast-feeding-friendly work sites and promoting overall good nutrition and physical activity.

Again, I’m curious how the counties will go about this. Changing workers’ attitudes toward breastfeeding is going to be harder than writing a check. And to make healthy groceries more affordable, the counties would have to either start their own grocery stores, or go into private grocery stores and tell them what products to carry and how much to charge.

If Missouri has to choose between the two approaches, I would prefer a campaign like Oklahoma City’s that’s financed by voluntary donations. But my first choice would be no campaign at all.

Problems With Ethanol Subsidies and Mandates

Posted on by Caitlin Hartsell

The St. Joseph News-Press ran an article this past week about the biodiesel industry’s fight for a tax credit extension. Show-Me Institute research analyst Christine Harbin wrote about the negative consequences of corn ethanol subsidies on our blog recently, and provided good analysis about why such subsidies hurt taxpayers. The St. Joe’s article is filled with quotes from people within the industry that exemplify why the tax credits are counterproductive:

“Any further delays will cause additional harm to the industry,” said Michael Frohlich, director of communications for the National Biodiesel Board. “(The expiration has) really been devastating. What you’ve seen is a complete drop in demand.”

Frolich essentially concedes here that the subsidy drives demand, implying that ethanol cannot, on its own, be a profitable endeavor. But the industry leaders interviewed in the article go on to argue that these subsidies will make the industry competitive in the future:

“(The tax credit) is crucial in order for (the biodiesel industry) to keep running,” said Brooks Hurst, a state director for the Missouri Soybean Association. “As we’re starting out, it’s critical to make us cost competitive with petroleum diesel.”

Soybean oil is a feedstock for the production of biodiesel.

If the tax credit were eliminated altogether, the industry would likely “cease production,” Mr. Hurst added.

“The biodiesel industry is an infant industry,” he said. “We’re trying to build demand.”

The nascent or infant industry argument is one used throughout history to protect emerging industries. It suggests that new industries need to be protected temporarily in order to gain the economies of scale that their competitors already enjoy. This is later expanded by Frolich, however, who says:

“Obviously, the long-term goal is for a multi-year (tax credit) extension.”

Ethanol needs the subsidy in order to be profitable, but subsidy proponents argue for more than just economic viability. Some claim that ethanol is better for the environment than standard gasoline, and suggest that it should be subsidized for that reason alone; however, there is a substantial body of research showing that this is not the case. A 2005 study in BioScience debunked that notion by looking at the effects of ethanol use in both Brazil and the United States, concluding that it did not bring net environmental gains. From the study’s conclusion (emphasis added):

The use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither a sustainable nor an environmentally friendly option, considering ecological footprint values, and both net energy and CO2 offset considerations seemed relatively unimportant compared to the ecological footprint. As revealed by the ecological footprint approach, the direct and indirect environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this alternative resource on a large scale.
[…]
In the US case, the use of ethanol would require enormous areas of corn agriculture, and the accompanying environmental impacts outweigh its benefits. Ethanol cannot alleviate the United States’ dependence on petroleum.

Other studies have replicated these results, such as another piece from 2005, printed in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. The authors reached a similar conclusion about E10, the ethanol mixture used for Missouri gasoline:

The study indicates that E10 is of debatable air pollution merit (and may in fact increase the production of photochemical smog); offers little advantage in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency or environmental sustainability; and will significantly increase both the risk and severity of soil and groundwater contamination.

A 2004 study published in Natural Resources Research concluded that ethanol creation uses more energy than the ethanol itself provides:

Specifically about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes. Increasing subsidized ethanol production will take more feed from livestock production, and is estimated to currently cost consumers an additional $1 billion per year. Ethanol production increases environmental degradation. Corn production causes more total soil erosion than any other crop. Also, corn production uses more insecticides, herbicides, and nitrogen fertilizers than any other crop. All these factors degrade the agricultural and natural environment and contribute to water pollution and air pollution.

Missouri is at a disadvantage because the state’s ethanol mandate requires at least 10 percent ethanol in the gasoline sold here. Show-Me Institute policy analysts David Stokes and Justin Hauke published a case study analyzing the effects of the mandate, concluding that it cost the taxpayers much more than it saved — the opposite of the cost-savings argument originally made in favor of the mandate. Requiring ethanol to be used in the state’s gasoline also discourages research toward better and more efficient forms of biofuel by propping up the corn ethanol industry.

The data shows that the ethanol mandate is expensive and does not help the environment. Ethanol may even harm the environment, by discouraging more efficient and environmentally solutions. That being the case, what justification is left to protect the ethanol industry with mandates and subsidies?

Hard Choices, Not False Choices

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Tour of Missouri website encourages Missourians to lobby for restored funding. Here are some of the reasons it gives:

Contact your local representatives and let them know how important this event is to you and for what reasons, whether it is because of the economic impact it has on the local communities and state as a whole, the educational aspect of providing an interesting curriculum to the schools, that it promotes healthy lifestyles for children and adults alike (Bike sales increased the week of the event in 2009), the Tourism exposure as the eyes of the world focus on Missouri for a week each year, or the increased sense of community as all of the host cities unite to put together a special welcome to the visitors from nearly 100 countries and all 50 states. Or maybe you can just tell them you want it because it is a heck of a lot of fun!

The Tour of Missouri, like other potential recipients of state funds, does a lot of constructive things. But that’s not enough reason for the state to continue subsidizing it when revenue decreases.

In order to show that Tour of Missouri deserves a subsidy, supporters would have to demonstrate that a dollar spent on the Tour gives Missourians more benefit than that same dollar would if spent on anything else. There are other programs out there that claim to accomplish some of the same things as the Tour. For example, it’s been suggested that archery is a good basis for interesting curricula. Film tax credits are said to boost the economy, local food initiatives to engender healthy habits, and Census promotional events to build community.

This state representative gets the idea:

“You wouldn’t want to cut something that was proven to have brought money back,” he said, adding that the money has to come from somewhere. By way of example, he said you could ask educators if they would cut $1 million from Parents as Teachers or Career Ladders programs to fund the race.

Some people have told me that comparing programs like that is a “false choice.” They say that we don’t have to choose between Parents and Teachers and a bicycle race, because we can have both. They imply that it’s unfair to bring up education funding when you’re discussing a subsidy for an unrelated program — as if no program could appear deserving when held up against the schools.

If by “false choice” people mean that we shouldn’t fund one program we like best to the exclusion of all others, then they’re right. We don’t want to fund public schools and nothing else; government funding is not winner-take-all. However, at the margin — when we’re deciding where to spend that last dollar of state funds, or where to make the next cut to balance the budget — we do need to compare programs. We need to make sure that we’re cutting funds from the program that is least necessary, not the program that is most productive.

People who still think these decisions at the margin are “false choices” are making a mistake. They’re assuming that their favorite program doesn’t need to be as productive as others when, in fact, it does. Resources are scarce. Tax dollars can’t go toward funding just any program that does a nice job. Deciding to increase funding for one program but not another would be a false choice only if there were some way to give every program the full funding increase its supporters want. There isn’t — so, as the state representative pointed out, a dollar spent on one program is a dollar that could have been spent on something else.

It’s also a mistake to think that schools would gobble up all the money if only the most deserving programs were funded. Suppose we decided to spend tax dollars where they’re most needed, and we started funneling dollar after dollar into education. Pretty soon, the state would be in dire need of other services that schools can’t provide. In that situation, a dollar spent on one of several other programs would be more productive than a dollar spent on schools.

Besides comparing programs as I’ve discussed, legislators also have to consider whether the last dollar spent on a state program would have been put to better use if left in the private sector. If the answer is “Yes,” it should be returned to the taxpayers.

Choosing between funding a program that’s “a heck of a lot of fun” and funding a program that’s boring but productive may be a difficult choice, but it isn’t a false choice.

“Where a Student Lives”

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I’m grateful to Audrey Spalding for directing me to this op-ed in the New York Times. The author argues in favor of adopting a national curriculum, or at the very least national education standards. She then produces an inspirational quote from Daniel Webster and concludes with these words:

These great principles cannot be upheld if the quality of our public schooling continues to depend more on where a student lives than on a national commitment to excellence.

Advocates for standards rely on this reasoning time and again: In the current public school system, they observe, students can receive an excellent education if they live in a wealthy neighborhood or a terrible education if they live in a poor neighborhood. This is obviously inequitable. Therefore, they think that the federal government should intervene and ensure that every school follow the same standards.

There’s a problem with that argument. If the government could iron out variations in educational quality by imposing standards, we would already have a more equitable education system. States maintain education standards, yet there’s a wide range of school districts within each state; some districts exceed the state standards, and others fall short. School boards ostensibly choose one curriculum for all of a district’s students, but every district has some schools that are known to be better than others. Even within a single school building, you’ll find teachers who are helping their students excel and others who really ought to look for a new line of work.

Advocates for national standards are implicitly saying that the federal government is different. Where lower levels of government have failed, they expect a national policy to be more effective. This is wishful thinking. If levels of government that are closer to the classrooms can’t bring a few schools up to a standard, a directive from far-off Washington won’t be able to transform all the schools in the nation.

This City Is Going on a Diet

Posted on by Charis Fischer

Here’s an example of an admirable effort to improve public health without spending a dime of government money: On Jan. 1, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett challenged the citizens of his city to lose 1 million pounds. As part of this initiative, residents can sign up on the mayor’s interactive website, “This City Is Going on a Diet,” which has recipes, exercise tips, and a place for people to track their weight loss, among other helpful tools.

This program caught my eye because the mayor was featured on Fitness magazine’s “Champions of Health & Fitness 2010” list. As of January, 40,436 residents have lost a collective 519,460 pounds (the mayor himself lost 38 pounds). Restaurants have responded by creating low-cal offerings that they list as “the mayor’s special” on menus (no government mandates required). The best part is that the interactive website was entirely funded by contributors from the private sector. No taxes or bans on unhealthy foods were imposed, and no taxpayer money was spent. As I noted in my last post, the low level of government spending on public health in Missouri doesn’t necessarily have to result in hampering efforts to encourage our citizens to be healthier. Creative, fully voluntary ideas like this one should be encouraged and copied.

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