Strings (or, With State Dollars Come Bureaucracies)

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

This is a continuation of my prior post about the history of school finance in the United States.

The adage holds: Nothing is free. When states began to pay school districts to educate children, the money came with regulations — and those regulations drove the system of attendance reports, standardized testing, and school administrators that we have today.

After school districts began taxing their communities to pay for schools, states started to step in, according to Elwood Cubberly in his book Public Education in the United States. And the moment a district began to depend on state money, it had to cope with the threat of the state taking that support away.

What began as a small effort by states to funnel land — as well as revenues from liquor and marriage licenses — to schools has expanded enormously. The state pays out more than $3 billion per year to Missouri school districts alone, according to numbers from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Continue reading “Strings (or, With State Dollars Come Bureaucracies)”

Yet Another Example of Terrific City Planning

Posted on by David Stokes

The Kansas City Star has a story on the failures of the planning process in Kansas City’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. I encourage you to read it carefully. Now, I have never, to my knowledge, been to Beacon Hill. But this entire story is a perfect example of the failures that come when the government steps in to plan things that should be left to the free market and individual choice.

The historically revitalized neighborhoods in Saint Louis, such as Soulard and Lafayette Square, did not come about because of a government plan. They happened because free people made choices and put time, money, and effort into their neighborhoods. The government did not “plan” for Lafayette Square becoming what it has become, and it certainly did not mandate its development with legal contracts, etc. (I am certain that there are similar neighborhoods in Kansas City that have been revitalized in the same way as Soulard.) I will admit that the government does provide historic tax credits that encourage much of the revitalization, and they should continue to do that in historic parts of Missouri.

But the city should not get to “choose” who is allowed to buy property. From the Star article:

He and two other buyers were chosen to purchase and fix up the homes.

Even if the city had owned the homes by then, they should have taken the best offer. Somebody who wants to “mothball and flip it” might be doing just as much for the economy as someone who gets a lot of government tax money to subsidize revitalization. The Kansas City planners have no way of knowing what the best long-term plan is, and they have apparently not been making cost-effective decisions (emphasis added):

Beacon Hill so far is known mostly for exorbitant spending of federal dollars on two bungalows in the 2500 block of Tracy Avenue.

Government should stick to governing, rather than trying to predict the future and take risks with public money. That should be left to the private sector.

How Much Say Do They Have?

Posted on by Cynthia Juedemann

School board members negotiate how much school district employees earn. They’re the ones who determine salary raises for teachers, and they’re the ones who choose a district’s superintendent and how much he makes.

So, who chooses the school board members?

Voters. But some of them have more on the line than others. A school district is one of the few places where employees have some say in choosing the people who will ultimately affect the size of their paychecks.

Continue reading “How Much Say Do They Have?”

Wowee

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

After 38 ½ years of service, Barbara Trzeszkowski reported for her last day of work on Monday at the Keansburg Board of Education. If her contract with the district withstands a number of legal and governmental challenges, the superintendent will ease into retirement with a $740,876 severance package that the state’s top education official compared to the “golden parachute” awarded to retiring Fortune 500 executives.

That’s the first paragraph (emphasis added, in all of this post’s quotations) from a New York Times article about superintendent pay in New York. After hearing more about Trzeszkowski’s contract, according to the article, New York politicians were outraged at the taxpayer expense involved in such an enormous retirement package.

Trzeszkowski’s benefit package is plump, to say the least:

In the next few weeks, Ms. Trzeszkowski, 60, was scheduled to receive $14,449 for unused vacation days, the first third of the $170,137 she had amassed in unused sick days, and the first 20 percent of $556,290 in severance pay. This was in addition to the $103,889 annual pension she was to collect from the district for the rest of her life.

To put this into perspective, many Missouri contracts I’ve seen have caps on the number of unused vacation or sick days for which a superintendent can collect pay. But some don’t. Several Missouri superintendents earn more than the $170,137 Trzeszkowski collects. However, the factor sending her benefits sky-high is the 38 and a half years she spent with her district, about 10 of which were as superintendent, the others as a teacher.

What can I say? The numbers speak for themselves. She is set to receive a great deal of money for the rest of her life in exchange for working for a single school district for more than 38 years.

Is it a fair trade? After all, Trzeszkowski certainly was loyal to her district. Was it her job to draw attention to the size of her benefit package? Well, at the very least, her school district’s board of education should have known better when negotiating her contract. At least one of them didn’t, according to the article:

Although he seconded the motion to approve Ms. Trzeszkowski’s five-year contract in February 2004, James Cocuzza, a former board member who is now a borough councilman in Keansburg, said he did not remember it.

“For 15 years, I always fought for zero increases in taxes,” he said. “I don’t see myself giving away three quarters of a million dollars.”

While Mr. Cocuzza said he regrets not paying more attention, he added that he was probably not alone in allowing such contracts to slip through.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We’re not professionals. That’s what we have the attorneys and negotiators for. But wait until the state checks out all the other districts and sees the contracts that got through. I bet they all got nice packages.”

Channel 5 Warns Against Hot Slides

Posted on by David Stokes

Somehow, I messed up my prior post, so the following portion did not get added.

The disaster movie references were leading up to the fact that, last night on the 10 p.m. news, Channel 5 hit a new low in nanny-state obsessing. Leisa Zigman (who lives right by me, although she’s moving) had a story about the “silent danger” of hot plastic slides in St. Louis playgrounds. Needless to day, the station went just hyperplectic (might not be an actual word) [Editor’s note: “hyperplectic” sounds so nicely intemperate that I’m resisting the urge to change it to “apoplectic” — EDD] about the danger of hot slides. A two-year-old recently suffered second-degree burns from a plastic slide in Corondolet Park. And, of course, according to the story, it is the government’s responsibility to protect people from this danger.

I loved how the representative of the city of St. Louis basically told them the city was not going to do anything. Cities around the county have spent many millions replacing metal playground equipment with plastic pieces during the past decade. It is still not good enough for some people. I swear, some nanny state control freaks won’t be happy until we all have to put on our safety helmets before we get out of bed in the morning. Hey, parents: When it’s 95 degrees out, touch the frickin’ slide before you put your kids on it! This is St. Louis in the summer — it gets hot. And the city should not pay the medical expenses of the family. It is not the city’s fault or responsibility.

Another Round of Incentives for Centene

Posted on by Matt Simpson

Clayton, apparently, isn’t following my advice. According to the Post-Dispatch, the municipality is currently looking at an incentive plan for Centene Plaza. Yes, that Centene. Something tells me that tax incentives would be completely unnecessary in a town growing as quickly as Clayton. Robert Wislow, chairman and CEO of U.S. Equities of Chicago, the developer of Centene Plaza, confirms my suspicions:

Asked about the private financing, Wislow said, “We don’t think that we will have a problem with a project as well pre-leased and well-located as this.”

So, why are the tax incentives necessary again?

Developing the Core

Posted on by Matt Simpson

Kansas City’s mayor, Mark Funkhouser, is likely to appoint a new task force to help develop the urban core, the Kansas City Star reports. A number of ideas have already been tossed around, including:

  • Create a private investment funding source, with the help of financiers and foundations, to assist small businesses with loans or in other ways.
  • Provide college or vocational opportunities for needy high school students.
  • Create work force training centers in distressed areas.
  • Improve transportation and child care offerings to assist people in getting to work.
  • Provide specific incentives to employers who hire people living in distressed communities.

Kansas City could follow a simple recipe for growth: low taxes, lax regulations, and strong property rights. Implementing this isn’t necessarily easy, however. To start, the city could repeal the earnings tax, because it provides strong incentives for productive people and businesses to locate elsewhere. A sales tax or a tax on the value of land could raise the same amount of revenue without having as much of a negative effect on growth. A general rule of thumb would be to avoid TIFs, tax abatements, tax credits, and other special tax exemptions. Consumers and businesses will take notice and move in … perhaps with the help of our handy tax estimator.

A New Nanny State Low

Posted on by David Stokes

As our regular readers (hi, Frank and Mary!) know, I detest the way in which our lives and laws are constantly being regulated, in matters both large and small, for our own safety. We have been discussing how this situation came into being, where we are just so happy to let the government take care of us and our children. I run the risk of sending this post into book-length territory, so let me make this quick. Who do I blame for this?

I blame the following people and groups (this is fun): Hollywood, trial lawyers, consumer reporters, and parents too willing to let other entities take responsibility for their own children (and, yes, I have a child, and, no, it’s not your job to take care of him, unless his nanny is reading this, in which case it is indeed your job to watch him between 8:30 and 6:00). I honestly bet that you could trace a line from the consumer movement to our overwrought safety obsession with the disaster movies of the 1970s. This point hit home for me a few years ago, when I was watching The Towering Inferno. Check out these lines:

Chief O’Hallorhan: You know we were pretty lucky tonight, body count’s less then 200. You know, one of these days, you’re gonna kill ten-thousand in one of these firetraps, and I’m gonna keep eating smoke and carrying out bodies until someone asks us… how to build them.
Doug Roberts: Ok, I’m asking.
Chief O’Hallorhan: You know where to reach me.

Or:

Doug Roberts: I thought we were building something where people could work and live and be SAFE! If you had to cut costs, why didn’t you cut floors instead of corners?
James Duncan: Now listen. Any decisions that were made for the use of alternate building materials were made because I as a builder have a right to make those decisions. If I remained within the building code and god-dammit I did!
Doug Roberts: [Chuckling] Building code? Jesus. Building code. Come on, Dunc, I mean now that’s a standard cop-out for when you’re in trouble. See, I was crawling around up there. I mean duct holes weren’t fire-stopped! Corridors without fire doors in them, sprinklers that won’t work, and electrical system that’s good for what? I mean it’s good for starting fires! Phew, where was I when all this was going on? Because I’m just as guilty as you and that god-damned son-in-law of yours! What do they call it when you kill people?

Foundation(s)

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

Resolved, that next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.
Resolved, that the public funds should be appropriated (to a reasonable extent) to the purpose of education upon a regular system that shall insure the opportunity to every individual of obtaining a competent education before he shall have arrived at the age of maturity.

So voted New York City’s party of Mechanics and Workingmen in 1829.

There wasn’t always public education in the United States. And the state didn’t always pay. Our current system, in which property owners pay for public education regardless of whether they have children in school, came about after decades of debate. My most recent posts have touched on school district tax levies and state funding. Before going further, I wanted to reach back to where this all began. How did we arrive at this system of partial federal and state funding combined with local property tax levies?

There is a fantastic reference, Public Education in the United States, that discusses education’s history from the founding of the colonies until the book’s publication in 1919. The book itself is out of print, but a used bookstore should be able to track it down for you cheaply. Or, even better, the entire book is free to read online.

Its history of public finance for schools is something I want to summarize, in part. Our current system of public education, which seems like such a basic right now, was an argument that spanned decades in the mid-1800s. Author Ellwood Cubberly wrote: “Excepting the battle for the abolition of slavery, perhaps no question has ever been before the American people for settlement which caused so much feeling or aroused such bitter antagonisms.”

Continue reading “Foundation(s)”

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