Well, We Can’t Let Just Anyone on the KC TIF Commission, Now Can We?

Posted on by David Stokes

I am definitely with Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser on this one. The Star has the story here. The dispute over whether an artist and entrepreneur in Kansas City is “qualified” to sit on the city’s “prestigious” (said sarcastically) tax increment financing (TIF) commission is absurd. Apparently, the fact that the artist currently known as Stretch didn’t know every government acronym off the top of his head is some sort of disqualification:

[City Councilwoman Jan] Marcason said she had to explain to him that the terms MBE and WBE meant “minority business enterprise” and “ women’s business enterprise” and that the city set goals for each in awarding public contracts.

I guess he would have been a terrible bureaucrat during the New Deal. It is also apparently being held against Stretch that he understands the economic laws of labor and prices, and is, incomprehensibly, not 100-percent committed to having the government determine the price of labor:

Marcason said she also was unsure of Stretch’s commitment to contractors paying “prevailing wages,” which means the standard pay and benefits to laborers in the largest city of a county.

Oh, the horror! The last thing the TIF Commission should possibly have is one person looking out for taxpayer value. God forbid that government funds don’t get properly spent placating every interest group in town.

The business community is also unhappy that someone might not plan on going along with the tax incentive gravy train:

Some in the business community say the Stretch and Lindsay nominations continue a pattern of replacing experienced board members on development agencies wholesale with newcomers who at best are unfamiliar with incentive programs and at worst, hostile.

Stretch may or may not have known what MBE and WBE meant, but I wonder whether those opposed to his appointment have any idea what “regulatory capture” means. Commissions like this desperately need independent voices like his.

“Temporary Political Stunts”

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

That’s the Tax Foundation’s assessment of sales tax holidays. While I haven’t read the entire study yet, this sentence in the summary confirms my intuition about the holidays’ effects:

Sales tax holidays do not promote economic growth or significantly increase consumer purchases; the evidence shows that they simply shift the timing of purchases.

The study also delves into the issue of politicians arbitrarily applying holidays to some products but not others. I didn’t know that Virginia has a sales tax holiday for duct tape that excludes masking tape. It almost makes our back-to-school sales tax holiday seem reasonable by comparison — at least Missouri doesn’t favor pencils at the expense of erasable pens.

Two Plus Two Equals Four … And Now, a Word From Our Sponsors

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This article in the L.A. Times reports on California school districts that are turning to the private sector to make up for state funding cuts. I can’t believe it never occurred to people at Beverly Hills High School until now that they could market clothing with the school’s name and crest. Were they too busy surfing to think of that?

Other districts are considering more run-of-the-mill fundraising plans, like selling the naming rights to stadiums and summer camps.

Critics object that schools have a captive audience of children who will be influenced by the advertising. They’re right that students are a captive audience — most can’t choose where they go to school. That isn’t only a problem when schools sell advertising, though — traditional public schools have a captive audience for everything they do. Be it showing a presidential address, teaching an unconventional algorithm in math class, or selecting novels for discussion, administrative decisions are imposed on students who can’t walk away if the school makes the wrong call.

Schools that put brand names on classrooms should give students the option to leave. Then again, all schools should give students the option to leave.

Are Women Better Legislators Than Men?

Posted on by Christine Harbin

Studies like this do nothing to raise the level of political dialogue in this country. Today, Politico published an article about a study that claims to show that female members of Congress are more effective than their male counterparts.

As their criteria for success, the authors evaluated members of Congress on their individual abilities: (1) to introduce more bills; (2) to attract more co-sponsors; and, (3) to secure more pork spending for their home districts.

The authors identify self-doubt and voter bias as obstacles to women seeking office. The decision to run for office is like overcoming an eating disorder, apparently — all a woman needs is some self-esteem. Additionally, the authors seem to disregard the possibility that some women will always vote for a woman, relegating this matter of concern to a footnote:

There is some evidence that female candidates for the U.S. House actually have an advantage in gaining support from female voters […]

The authors state their belief that what makes a legislator outstanding is her success in garnering increased pork barrel spending for her home district:

[W]e believe that district-level federal spending is the single most informative indicator of a legislator’s performance in office […]

They do not acknowledge that a person could hold different criteria for success. Many people, such as myself, would consider reducing pork barrel spending to be an indicator of a successful legislator.

Furthermore, by using bill introductions as a measure of success, this study is confusing productivity with effectiveness. A lawmaker may keep her staff busy writing and filing bills, but what does she accomplish if she doesn’t get anything passed? The study was unable to conclude that women are more successful in enacting legislation, despite the fact that they introduce three times the number of bills and amendments that men do. Perhaps it could be argued that women are less effective legislators than men.

A New School for the Service Dog

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The latest development in the service dog story is that the district will pay half the tuition for the boy to attend a private school with his dog. It will not, however, provide transportation for the dog. (Is the dog supposed to run alongside the bus?) The parents have agreed to drive both the boy and his dog themselves.

As often happens when I read about this case, I find myself thinking how much better the situation would be under a tuition tax credit policy. Tuition tax credits would give all children this opportunity — not just children whose parents who have the means to fight their school district in the courts. And this boy could have started school on time, without the stress of a legal dispute. Taxpayers would be better off too. If tax dollars are going to pay tuition for students with autism in the end anyway, why not offer the option up front, before getting drawn into a costly lawsuit?

Atrocious Article About Occupational Licensure From the Chicago Tribune

Posted on by David Stokes

One of my favorite newspapers is the Chicago Tribune, but this past weekend they it published a god-awful story about the harm caused by unlicensed movers in Chicago. And the article — in theory it was a news story rather than an opinion piece — really does mean to use the term “harm,” because the reporter just assumes from the get-go that licensing is a good thing for everyone involved and does not even consider potential counterarguments. The reporter uses the severely loaded term “fly-by-night” three times to describe unlicensed movers, and not just when quoting others.

I discussed this article with two of my best friends while returning from a golf vacation in Michigan yesterday. Although both of them, as lawyers, work in a heavily licensed profession, each thought the example provided in the article amounted to government control run amok. (As an aside, each also agrees that their own profession is overly regulated, but neither went so far as to support totally ending licensure for attorneys. Even I don’t go that far for that particular profession, so we all basically agreed. Given that licensing leads to higher costs, which can then lead to a shortage, I will change my opinion if you can find me one person in the entire country who thinks the modern United States does not have enough lawyers.)

But back to the article. There are so many terrible quotes that I have to settle on just one or two. How about:

Going with an unlicensed mover leaves consumers little or no recourse if the outfit overcharges, items go missing or there’s damage, Bonnema said.

How about the entire civil court system at your disposal for each of these examples? Has the reporter ever heard of small claims court? The sentence should have read “leaves consumers less recourse,” because there is no licensing board to complain to, but there are still plenty of options for the market to work itself out. One such market-correcting force is discussed at the end of the article, but in a negative — not positive — manner. While discussing somebody who had a bad experience with an unlicensed mover, the article reports:

A customer posted a complaint about him on Craigslist after chairs were damaged during a move.

Traditionally, service-oriented businesses increase market share through the word of mouth of trusted people. You might be more inclined to select a plumber because of your neighbor’s recommendation. Now, websites like Craigslist, which often have extensive review sections, are playing more of that role in the market. This is something to be celebrated, not feared. (Note: I wussed out on linking to the “Craigslist” section that would have been the funniest.)

Nowhere does the article discuss the positive aspects of consumers having more choices at lower prices for this particular service. Nor does it offer any criticism of this (emphasis added):

The Illinois Commerce Commission employs 10 police officers in the northern region, four more than last year, said Craig Baner, commander of operations. The officers flood high-traffic moving areas during the busy months and target unlicensed movers.

Doesn’t anyone else think that perhaps the resources of 10 police officers could be put to better use in Chicago than in tracking down unlicensed movers? Am I on crazy pills, here? Ten cops for moving-specific licensing issues!

I could go on and on, but I’ll end here after directing you to some of the more scholarly work we’ve released about the harmful effects of occupational licensure in Missouri and across the country.

Great Series About Municipal Wi-Fi Access

Posted on by David Stokes

Jen Roland brought my attention to a terrific series of articles at Technology Liberation Front, about the many problems associated with municipal Internet provision and, in a larger sense, the problems that result from attempting to treat the Internet like a utility. I highly recommend the entire series.

This relates nicely to the situation AT&T had when they offered wi-fi in downtown St. Louis, in cooperation with the city. Now, AT&T owned the service, and the city did not, and access was always designed to be sold, not given away, so it is a different situation. Despite the problems involved with the wi-fi installation, the city (from my limited understanding of how it works) deserves credit for allowing a private company to provide the service, rather than trying to build the system themselves.

Collective Bargaining Under the Missouri Constitution

Posted on by Dave Roland

As the Springfield News-Leader reports, Judge Michael Cordonnier of the Greene County Circuit Court handed down a very important decision yesterday. Several months ago, the Springfield School District announced a new collective bargaining policy in which teachers would get to choose: (1) whether they wanted to have official bargaining representation provided by just one teachers’ union, multiple teachers’ unions, or no teachers’ unions at all; and, (2) which union(s), if any, would be chosen as representatives.

The Springfield chapter of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, filed a lawsuit arguing (among other things) that the Missouri Constitution should be read to require employee groups to choose only one exclusive bargaining agent, selected by the majority. The SNEA (which claims to have more than half of the district’s teachers on its membership rolls) wanted to prevent teachers from even voting on the possibility of multiple representation, and instead to have a winner-takes-all election in which it would likely be chosen to represent even those teachers who did not want their services.

Fortunately, Judge Cordonnier recognized that the Missouri Constitution requires nothing of the kind. In a very well-reasoned decision, he pointed out that the section of the Missouri Constitution that protects employees’ rights to bargain collectively specifies that they must be permitted to have “representatives” of their own choosing. As the judge noted, that word “is unambiguous, plural, and must be read to include the possibility of more than one representative.” In other words, nothing in the language of the Constitution supported the SNEA’s argument that employees must choose a single exclusive bargaining representative. The court further pointed out that the Missouri Supreme Court has previously held that “employees who choose not to be represented by the majority union continue to have a constitutional right to present their issues to [their] employer,” and they may do so as a group, with an “informally elected representative.”

I am thrilled that the judge made these points. What the SNEA misconstrued about the constitutional right to bargain collectively is that the right itself belongs to individual employees. The SNEA’s reasoning suggested that no individual had a particular right to a representative of their own choosing; to the contrary, the union argued that if a majority of any ill-defined group of employees wanted a particular representative, then all other employees in that group must be bound by the majority’s preference. Judge Cordonnier’s option saw through that argument, however, and he reaffirmed what the Missouri Supreme Court has previously stated — that employees must be free to choose their own bargaining agents, and neither the government nor a union can deny them that right.

Anyone interested in these issues needs to know that they’ll be hearing more about this in the future. The head of the SNEA would not commit to an appeal of this case to the Missouri Supreme Court, but it is a very safe bet that they’ll ask the high court to reverse Judge Cordonnier’s ruling. Additionally, at about the same time that the SNEA launched this lawsuit, another local chapter sued the Bayless School District in the St. Louis area, making almost precisely the same arguments. Even if the SNEA does not pursue its case further, the union will be pushing for success in the Bayless lawsuit.

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