St. Louis Should Privatize Its Water System

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

You have probably heard about all of the large water main breaks throughout the St. Louis region over the past month, leading to boil-water orders, traffic mayhem, and extensive repairs.

Wait, they haven’t been throughout the St. Louis region? They’ve all been in the City of St. Louis? Yes, indeed they have been, but what difference is there?

The difference is twofold. First, the city’s water system is simply older, and in fairness an older system is going to have more problems than a newer one. But the other problem is that the city water division is owned by city government, whereas in most of our region—including all of St. Louis County (with the partial exception of Kirkwood)—the water is provided by a private company (in most cases Missouri-American Water). While water line breaks can and do happen to every water utility, the recent, dramatic trend in the City of St. Louis is not being experienced elsewhere.

The fundamental problem with government utilities is that politics inevitably interferes with the management of the utility. It can do so in ways that may seem beneficial, like holding water rates artificially low because politicians don’t like increasing rates on their own voters. Did you know that the city’s water division has never installed meters in many homes to help allocate billing and prices? That technology is almost a century old, yet it has never been adopted citywide.

In a 2002 study on water utility privatization, the National Research Council stated (emphasis added throughout):

Some studies show that the public is willing to pay for reliability and for high water quality. . . . Yet water managers and city councils often lack the political will to practice cost-based ratemaking. They may want to protect residential customers (who are also voters) from higher rates and use water pricing and availability policies to promote economic development even though there is scant evidence to support the usefulness of this strategy.

Compare those findings with these recent quotes by city officials, as reported by the Post-Dispatch:

The city’s water chief told aldermen Monday he needs two 20% rate increases in the next fiscal year—one in July and one in January—to shore up a division struggling to manage rising costs and aging infrastructure.

The increases . . . would be the largest in nearly three decades.

The system is supposed to pay for itself by charging ratepayers enough to cover the cost of operations and upkeep. When it can’t, the mayor and the board are supposed to step in and adjust rates.

But they don’t like to do it. The last time they obliged was in the late 2000s, another time when staff was telling them they had no choice.

While the proposed water rate hike is absolutely necessary, and the related proposal in the current bill to reduce political influence by automating future price hikes would be beneficial, I have zero faith that future politicians wouldn’t respond to pressure to reduce rates by backtracking as soon as possible. The city’s leaders have a history of ignoring recommendations to deal with the water infrastructure until every decade or so it becomes impossible to ignore it further.

Other communities in our region have privatized their water and sewer systems in recent years. Eureka recently completed the sale of both to Missouri-American Water for $28 million. Florissant and Webster Groves both privatized their water systems 20 years ago, also to Missouri-American. Other utilities are also potential bidders. Voters in Olympia Village in Jefferson County approved the sale of its sewer system to Liberty Utilities in 2021.

I hope city residents reconsider the benefits of cheap, public water the next time they have to boil it before drinking or get home late due to a massive traffic jam. Politics has gotten the St. Louis water division into this mess, and politics isn’t going to get it out. It is time to privatize the entire system as part of an open, transparent process that will hopefully lead to the city’s vital water system being operated by a private, regulated utility. Customers of private water utilities don’t have to think very much about their water supply, and that’s the way it should be.

Second Time’s the Charm?

Posted on by Elias Tsapelas

Drivers, it’s time to start preparing your receipts. On July 1st, Missouri taxpayers will again be eligible to claim gas tax refunds for the prior year. This will mark the second time that Missourians have had the opportunity to get some of their gas money back, and I am hopeful that more taxpayers will take advantage of the program this year.

As I’ve written in the past, I’m not a fan of the refund scheme. The bill that created the refund raised the state’s gas tax by 2.5 cents per year for five years, but avoided a public vote by offering a path for Missourians to get back what they paid in new taxes at the end of the state’s fiscal year. The catch is that you need to keep all your gas receipts for the year and file a claim with the state’s department of revenue between July 1st and September 30th to be eligible for a refund.

If the refund were too easy to claim, the gas tax hike approved by legislators in 2021 would never raise much money for state roads. But our elected officials were willing to bet that taxpayers wouldn’t want to go through all the hassle to get a meager refund, and based on the refunds claimed last year, they were correct. Very few taxpayers claimed refunds last year, but it was also the least lucrative year for claiming a refund (only 2.5 cents per gallon was eligible for refund).

This year, the refund has doubled up to 5 cents per gallon, which means that drivers that fill up a 12-gallon tank every week for a year would receive around $30 back. While the total is still not a lot, it’s more than before, and the department of revenue now has an online portal available for filing claims, which is supposed to make the process a bit easier.

Of course, I would have rather Missouri’s legislature make the process easier—something like what was proposed in the bill I discussed here—or gotten rid of the tax hike altogether. But with prices up all across our economy, every little bit helps. Personally, I did not file for a refund last year, but I wish I had. This year, I did a better job of keeping track of my receipts and will be submitting my claim once the window opens. I hope many other Missourians join me in doing the same.

20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program (Part 2)

Posted on by Avery Frank

Twenty districts in Missouri are seeking a federal waiver in order to be exempt from the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). In partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Success-Ready Student Network (SRSN), these districts are participating in the SRSN Demonstration Project to implement a new type of standardized test and “seek to create a reimagined assessment and accreditation system.” I’ve discussed the details of the new standardized testing and my opinion on seeking a federal waiver in a previous post. In this post, I will dive deeper into some of the underlying issues.

There are legitimate issues with using the MAP to evaluate individual student performance. The current test delivers lagged results—students take the test in the spring, but schools do not get the results until the fall. Additionally, the MAP does not shed enough light on what particular concepts a student is struggling with. My colleague, James Shuls, previously wrote about this and provided an image of a sample test result. As one can see, there is not a lot of specific information for educators to work with to target learning weaknesses in different students.

One of the goals of the new standardized test is to better inform educators on what topics students are struggling with. But what is the point of quizzes, homework, tests, presentations, essays, and in-class discussions? Are our districts not paying adequate attention to their students as they progress through their classes? Having a continuous testing structure throughout the year could be a useful tool, but a district’s understanding of its student body should not be contingent on it.

A standardized test should be built to compare your school district to others around the state to ensure your teachers are actually teaching the material and not handing out free A’s. If students flunk an algebra section of a standardized test even when a vast majority of them receive high marks in the classroom, it would raise questions about the rigor of the course. Standardized tests can also be useful for comparing teaching strategies. If a similar district nearby receives high scores on its algebra standardized test, struggling districts can mimic its practices.

Unfortunately, DESE has made it harder to compare and contrast district achievement over time with repeated changes to our standardized tests and accountability system.

It is also fair to wonder about the timing here. As mentioned before, one of the goals of the project is to create a reimagined assessment and accreditation system. The first results from the new Missouri School Improvement Program 6 (MSIP 6) were released a few months ago—and they were not pretty. Do officials believe the system they designed is so bad that they want to change it as soon as possible? Or are they concerned that far too many districts were provisionally accredited?

The biggest takeaway from this story is how many problems there are in education policy in Missouri. The status quo needs to be changed in numerous ways. It remains to be seen if these 20 districts will find success with this trial program (I hope they do), but the problems in our state go much deeper than deciding which standardized test to use.

Tensions Simmer as Jackson County Property Taxes Explode

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

How much of their taxes will the Royals not have to pay? Until recently, that question was the hottest tax policy debate in Jackson County as the baseball team considers their options for a new stadium and the county considers a tax incentive package for them. But for local leaders, the Royals’ tax question may be the least of their public relations headaches.

A property tax assessment completed by Tyler Technologies has caused frustration and concern among several Jackson County residents. The county estimated an average increase of 30%; however, some residents report their assessment increased their property value by 80% or more. (emphasis added)

“The problem was their process,” said real estate agent Stacey Johnson-Cosby. “They picked a company that had problems and other areas that had to be rolled back. And why did we spend $17 million of our taxpayer dollars to put this fiasco on?”

Johnson-Cosby organized workshops to educate residents of the appeals process. She reported 1000 people attended the first scheduled workshop and hundreds were in attendance at both the second and third sessions.

“People are desperate. They’re scared. They’re fearful of being forced from their homes,” Johnson-Cosby said.

What can be done? In the long term, the Missouri Legislature could pass a law to cap the extent to which property taxes can rise in a reassessment cycle. A Jackson County legislator is also suggesting the county set aside the current reassessments and place a 15% cap on increases; whether that will happen is unclear.

But what isn’t unclear is that the situation is boiling over. Earlier this week, County Executive Frank White sent a pointed letter to Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who had been critical of the county’s property tax problems, which of course affect hundreds of thousands of Kansas Citians. Along with telling Lucas that he doesn’t understand the law surrounding property taxes, White also called Lucas out for living in what the executive described as a “white neighborhood” that would disproportionately benefit from limits to property tax increases.

White’s letter is worth calling out here for a few reasons.

  1. White says the county can’t do what Lucas is demanding, including halting reassessments entirely;
  2. White is saying Lucas is being self-serving for his own taxes, aggressively asserting that his home is the benefit of a sort of privilege; and,
  3. These are the same two guys in charge of Jackson County and Kansas City’s push to keep the Royals in the jurisdiction.

 

That this conversation is happening as the debate on the Royals’ tax incentive package reaches its final stage is, perhaps, karma. Government has no business giving away tax revenues to professional sports teams, especially while it’s lifting taxpayers by the ankles and shaking the change out of their pockets. Kansas City and Jackson County need to get back to basics.

Still Waiting on Price Transparency

Posted on by Elias Tsapelas

Why is it so hard to figure out how much health care services are going to cost? It has been two years since the federal rule requiring that hospitals disclose their prices in a consumer-friendly format went into effect. Last year, it was reported that fewer than one in four hospitals were complying. Today, are consumers any better off?

Last month at a congressional hearing, Rep. Jason Smith stated that hospital compliance was still incredibly low, and only four out of 6,000 hospitals nationally have been fined. The American Hospital Association (AHA) claims compliance is much higher—around 70%—and the lack of fines is because many hospitals are working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to become compliant as prescribed in the rule.

A little less than a year ago, my colleague checked nearly every hospital in the state for compliance, which was not an easy task. Compliance was at less than 30% statewide, and calling many of those websites “consumer-friendly” was a bit of a stretch. Now, taking the AHA’s claims about improvement with a grain of salt, I wanted to check some of Missouri’s hospital websites for myself.

The good news is that the interface on many of the websites appears to be better. I could more easily search for a few basic health care services, but I would still say the process was more difficult than it should be. Additionally, one of the most important benefits of price transparency is the ability to “shop” around; doing that is quite difficult because it requires navigating to each hospital’s website separately and trying to find the same procedure price bundles to compare.

If this is what compliance looks like, Missouri’s got a long way to go. Fortunately, some states across the country have already made a concerted effort to be compliant, as well as increasing costs for hospitals that remain noncompliant with federal transparency rules. States such as Florida and Maine have created their own online tools that make comparing prices and services between hospitals much easier. Some states, such as Colorado, take the push for price transparency a step further and prohibit health providers that refuse to disclose their prices from using the state court system to collect medical debt.

This past legislative session, there was some hope that Missouri would join the ranks of Colorado with a similar bill restricting providers that aren’t transparent from collecting medical debt, but the bill that was filed never received a hearing. As far as I know, there hasn’t been any movement on creating a state-sponsored price comparison tool.

Price transparency is not some cure-all that will fix everything that’s wrong with America’s health care system. But making it easier for patients to see what they’ll have to pay before they’re told to pay it would represent a significant step forward, and other states are making progress on this front while Missouri lags behind. Although there has been some progress since last year, there’s still plenty of room for improvement on the health care price transparency front in our state.

20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program

Posted on by Avery Frank

At the most recent state board of education meeting, 20 school districts requested a federal waiver to be exempt from the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). Per the federal “Every State Succeeds Act,” all state education agencies must implement a statewide assessment in mathematics and English/language arts (ELA) every year for grades 3–8 and once between grades 9–12. The federal government reviews and approves which tests can be used, and therefore, waiver requests for exemption must go to the federal government.

This waiver is being requested in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in order to conduct a formal study (called the Demonstration Project) to determine if a new testing system should replace the existing MAP. If the exemption is granted, these districts would use their own test but would not administer the MAP. If the waiver is denied, these twenty districts would use their own test and also administer the MAP.

The MAP test is traditionally given to 3rd through 8th-grade students in Missouri at the end of the school year to evaluate their understanding in mathematics, English/language arts, and science. MAP testing also includes End of Course (EOC) tests for high school students who have completed four chosen subjects—Algebra I (or II if you took Algebra I in middle school), Government, Biology, and English II.

The Demonstration Project will use an adaptive testing system, which will test students and provide timely results three times per year. An adaptive test essentially learns who a test-taker is. As students miss questions, the prompts become easier, and vice versa. Through this process, a computer algorithm can learn a student’s skill set, provide a detailed report to the teacher, remember it, and use that student’s proficiency as a baseline for the next standardized test. In practice, a student will sit down at a computer for 90 minutes to take one 45-minute adaptive test on ELA and one 45-minute adaptive test on mathematics three times per year. Since this system is online and designed for quick feedback, a detailed breakdown of how each student performed will be provided to teachers and parents in order to help students improve throughout the year. The new state assessment will shift from a “lagging” indicator to a “leading indicator.” This system will require 280 less minutes of testing time and will cost $21.60 more per student annually.

Below are the 20 districts that are seeking exemption from the MAP:

  • Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

These 20 districts roughly represent the demographics of Missouri, with huge districts, rural districts, and a charter school (although low-income students are underrepresented).

The study was created because of doubts about the effectiveness of the MAP; as the Demonstration Project proposal states, “The MAP was never intended as a progress monitoring tool at the student level.” Since the MAP is administered at the end of the year, districts do not receive test results until fall of the following year. Districts claim that makes it very difficult to make adjustments and corrections within the school year if a student is struggling in a certain subject. They also claim that adaptive standardized testing throughout the year would allow teachers and administrators to make adjustments to help students before the next school year. (There are reasons to take these complaints from districts with a grain of salt, which I will get into in my next blog post.)

It will be interesting to see if this trial is successful. The desire to try something different than MAP (which traces its origins back to 1993) raises plenty of questions in itself, and I will discuss those issues also in my next post.

St. Louis Water, MAP Test Opt-out, and Medical Bills

Posted on by Avery Frank

David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss changes to St. Louis water rates, a new standardized test coming to Missouri schools, the challenges of increasing transparency in hospital pricing, and more.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on Stitcher 

Listen on SoundCloud

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Kansas City’s Courtship of the Royals Is Getting Awkward

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Since their founding over 50 years ago, the Kansas City Royals have played their home games in Kansas City proper, but last month, the team announced they were considering a new stadium site north of the river and outside Kansas City’s city limits.

Kansas City Mayor Quentin Lucas declared that “Kansas City will not now engage in an intrastate regional race to the bottom that ultimately does little more than fleecing our taxpayers”—which is the right policy position to take! Meanwhile, Jackson County executive and former Royal Frank White echoed similar sentiments, suggesting county taxpayers deserved “loyalty” from the Royals.

In relationship terms, the snap response by Kansas City civic leaders had the tone of a bad breakup and a badly spurned partner. But that tone shifted in recent weeks, after the Royals’ management team confirmed that a second site was also under consideration just east of Kansas City’s downtown, within KC’s city limits.

For a moment, it seemed like a longshot attempt at making up was afoot. Yet, the Royals haven’t said much more to the public about the potential Kansas City plan . . . and apparently they haven’t said much to city leadership about it, either:

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Friday the Kansas City Royals need to flesh out details for a downtown ballpark.

Lucas said to KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney on Friday that no one is hearing enough details about the Royals’ downtown plans.

“Here are the things that need to be shared with the citizens of Kansas City — and in my view — today,” Lucas said. “Why the need for a move? What’s the plan for, perhaps, wherever they’re going? And what’s the funding idea?”

Lucas said the longer those questions are unanswered, the more challenging it becomes for the plans to be successful.

The fact that Mayor Lucas suggests that the Royals should stay in Kauffman Stadium is itself somewhat jarring if you know what direction the team was heading in the last few years and what the mayor himself was supporting. From a story in November:

Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas predicts a new Royals stadium will be in and near downtown Kansas City. (emphasis mine)

Lucas spoke with reporters minutes after Royals owner John Sherman announced plans to move the team from Kauffman Stadium.

“The Royals will be somewhere, I’m predicting, between the river,” Lucas said. “North of 31st Street, but let’s be even clearer, probably north of the train tracks that are about at 22nd Street. And then probably somewhere between the state line and of course, I would say Woodland (Avenue).”

Take from that what you will. The Royals should pay for their own stadium wherever they go, and if they stay in the Truman Sports Complex, they should pay their way there, too. But for the last year, the Royals staying put has not been what the city has been preparing for. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But while city leaders have every right to ask what a professional sports team is going to want from the public, the public has every right to ask its elected officials what taxpayer resources they’re willing to give away. And that definitely applies here, where city and county representations in private to the team have, to date, not been made public.

Here are some questions Kansas City’s (and Jackson County’s) leaders need to answer about their plans for the stadium:

  • How much could subsidizing a new stadium for the Royals cost taxpayers?
  • Are the city and county committed to massive new spending on both the Kansas City Royals and the Kansas City Chiefs, or are there fiscal limitations that city and county leaders won’t violate?
  • What are those limitations?
  • What city services will be affected by these tax expenditure choices?
  • And why should Kansas City and Jackson County taxpayers continue to be on the hook for an amenity that the entire region enjoys?

To reiterate, no public money should go to a project like this, but if money is being spent on private sports teams, Kansas City and Jackson County taxpayers deserve respect and transparency. Taxpayer money spent on sports stadiums is a waste, and it also takes away from other vital public services such as policing

Maybe Kansas City and the Royals will kiss and make up, or maybe the team and the city are in an uncanny valley before an inevitable break up. But whether it’s a make up or a break up, billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake.

Update: Royals owner John Sherman told media today: “No one is waiting on us. We are the urging party.”

The Science of Reading in Missouri

Posted on by Avery Frank

Around the nation, students are struggling to read, and Missouri students are no different. In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 30.29% and 28.48% of Missouri 4th graders and 8th graders were proficient or advanced in reading, respectively—slightly below the nationwide averages of 32% and 29%. If we want to improve these scores, further implementing the science of reading (phonics) could help, but many Missouri universities are not adequately instructing their teachers to use scientifically based reading methods according to the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

Why should we care about phonics instruction? Because it works.

There are typically two views when discussing early reading instruction: emphasis on phonics instruction involving daily lessons, and a “balanced literacy” approach which puts an emphasis on understanding meaning (three-cueing method) with occasional phonics sprinkled in. Numerous studies from independent researchers, the National Literacy Institute, and the Congressional-sponsored National Reading Panel have indicated that systematic and explicit phonics instruction is more effective in helping students learn to read than non-systematic (balanced literacy) or no phonics instruction. These results can be seen in schools that implement it, such as in Richmond or in our own backyard at KIPP Victory Academy—whose recent, explicit emphasis on phonics helped it obtain the highest English/language arts growth rate in the entire state from 2018–2021.

So why aren’t all schools using this method? Many teachers believe this approach is incredibly boring and drives the love of reading out of children. Additionally, it is hard for teachers to learn and teach; Missouri’s new phonics training program (LETRS) in Missouri takes 160 hours to complete. Finally, universities are simply not instructing future teachers to use this method effectively, or even hardly at all.

The NCTQ conducted a survey to evaluate which universities are implementing scientifically based reading instruction into their curriculum for future teachers—and the results are concerning. Per the survey, only 25 percent of higher education institutions nationally adequately address all five core components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) of reading instruction. Missouri is no better, as nearly half of our participating* universities received an F on the NCQT’s report.

*Central Methodist University (F), Hannibal-LaGrange University (F), Lincoln University (B), Lindenwood University (B), Lindenwood University Graduate (D), Missouri Southern State University (F), Missouri Western State University (D), Northwest Missouri State University (F), Southeast Missouri State (F), University of Central Missouri (F), University of Missouri-Kansas City (A), University of Missouri-St. Louis (C), University of Missouri-St. Louis Graduate (C); all other Missouri universities declined to participate

Many universities in Missouri seem to be shying away from a strategy that can help teachers become better reading instructors. The LETRS program was a good start, but that law is primarily about identifying and addressing problems in early childhood reading, along with some additional professional development opportunities for existing teachers. We need Missouri universities to get on board and give teachers all the tools they need to effectively teach kids how to read right from the start.

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