School Districts Promote Recycling

Posted on by Dave Roland

As I recently noted, Kansas City’s new interim superintendent is Dr. John Martin, who served as the deputy superintendent for the St. Louis Public Schools as the district went through the process of losing its accreditation. Today, the Post-Dispatch reports that the Jennings School District will pay $230,000 to buy out the contract of Superintendent Kay Royster, whom Jennings hired after she served as the "chief academic officer" for Riverview Gardens School District as it slid toward its loss of accreditation. Before her ill-fated term at Riverview Gardens, Royster served as the superintendent for Peoria, Ill. — where the district eventually bought out her contract because of "mismanagement" claims. And before Peoria, Royster was bought out of her superintendent’s contract in Kalamazoo, Mich.

The unsettling message here is that some school districts are handing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to administrators whose recent history casts significant doubt on their ability to effectively improve the performance of their new districts. In the case of Kay Royster, the Jennings School District had to have known about her past issues when they hired her, yet now the district must pay a ridiculous sum of your money just to get rid of her. Missourians — parents, students, and taxpayers alike — deserve and ought to demand better.

Election Week: Will Your Vote Count?

Posted on by Nicholas Loyal

It’s Super Tuesday, so I hope that sometime before, after, or while you’re actually reading this (hooray for iPhones) you’ve voted in your party’s presidential preference primary (assuming, of course, that you live in one of the two dozen states that is undertaking such a contest today). However, in keeping with the theme of the week, a question looms over this contest: Will your vote count?

(A quick note: The following discussion will require a bit of knowledge about how the primary process works. For more information, go here or here.)

A feature by Slate recently highlighted the notions of how an incredibly tight primary race could, in effect, render votes of participants in the California Democratic Primary meaningless. This can be attributed to the fact that, under the Democrats’ proportional method of selecting delegates, a tight race (such as that currently in place) will result in the candidates splitting delegates in a district with an even number and a winning candidate only gaining a one-delegate advantage in odd-numbered districts. Since this selection plan affects the nation as a whole, what would happen if we were to apply a similar analysis to Missouri?

(Second Note: The Republican primary will not be discussed at length because GOP rules have established winner-take-all primaries. Votes from all parts of Missouri will help any given candidate reach the necessary plurality of the vote.)

According to the Missouri Democratic Party’s Delegate Selection Plan, an even number of delegates fall in the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th congressional districts while an odd number are at stake in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 9th (see map). Based on this analysis, 42 of Missouri’s 47 district-based delegates will be evenly split between the two democratic front runners, leaving only five district contests with any kind of influence.

The problem, though, is that these five districts exclude large portions of Missouri’s population. The 3rd district includes portions of the St. Louis metropolitan area, while the 5th essentially encompasses all of Kansas City. The even nature of the 7th and 8th also means that democratic voters in Springfield and Cape Girardeau will, barring a landslide, see their votes split between the candidates. In essence, the competition in these districts ended before it began.

Some might see this as a discouraging revelation to bring out on Super Tuesday. I feel the opposite. If you live in one of the questionable districts, and you’re planning on voting in the Democratic primary, get out there. Use Missouri’s
open primary system to your advantage to help encourage turnout. Get over that hump. After all, Missouri still has 25 delegates that are allocated according to the statewide vote — and that might be the only district that really matters.

Same-Day Registration – “Who are those people?”

Posted on by Justin Hauke

Following Nick’s lead, I would like to add my own soapbox commentary on election-day voting rights.

Over the past week, I’ve had several conversations with people about my opposition to same-day voter registration. Proponents argue that same-day registration — that is, allowing unregistered (but legally eligible) voters to register to vote at the polls on election day — promotes democratic integrity, ensuring that every voice is heard. And a more sinister (in my opinion) argument is that same-day registration is necessary to protect minorities from being politically disenfranchised (which somehow implies that “minorities” aren’t able to register otherwise).

While I certainly support voting rights legislation (I’m looking at you, poll taxes), same-day registration is an open invitation for fraud and populist (read: “mob”) vote chasing. In my opinion, same-day registration encourages politicians (or dubious PACs) to round up everyone they can off the street and bus them to the polls. Anecdotal evidence of "vote-trading" schemes abounds, and there is little evidence to suggest that same-day registration does anything to help “enfranchise” minorities (whatever that means), or that voter ID legislation “disenfranchises” them either (whatever that means, too).

Protecting voting rights means protecting the integrity of people’s votes. Do we really want some voters to vote two or three times each?

Property Taxes Revisited

Posted on by Justin Hauke

The Webster-Kirkwood Times has some commentary on Senate Bill 711, which would eliminate the property tax loophole that allows taxing jurisdictions to raise tax revenues through reassessment, rather than through rate increases.

Dave has some commentary on how this issue will affect 2008 property reassessments, in light of recent housing events.

The one comment I have on the legislation is, why is the Senior Citizen Property Tax credit being increased from $750 to $1,100? If the purpose of the tax bill is to protect taxpayers by forcing jurisdictions to roll back tax rates to counter reassessment increases, then how do you maintain revenue-neutral tax policy when you’ve just created a huge revenue shortfall through an expanded tax credit? In the interest of fairness, shouldn’t cities be allowed to “roll up” property tax rates to counter reassessment decreases?

Election Week: Rise of the Youth

Posted on by Nicholas Loyal

In honor of Tuesday’s presidential primaries here in Missouri, I’ll be running a bit of a series this week related to the trials and tribulations of Missouri’s electoral system. However, before we get into that (and while I still have hope for the process of democracy) I thought I’d lead off with something that ripped away my case of the Mondays.

The front page of the Post-Dispatch today featured a story on how Missouri is allowing high school juniors and seniors as young as 16 years old to act as election officials in the coming elections. Suddenly, polling places at local high schools that used to only be manned by retirees will now be joined by students not old enough to vote themselves. The reason for this change is as much about democracy as it is about technology (emphasis added):

The program is more than just a feel-good civics lesson. The county is
equipping each of the teens with $290 hand-held computers — Palm Pilots
? that are designed to eliminate snags in the voting process.

"I have to say, we recruited these kids for our own selfish benefit,"
said Dick Bauer, an assistant director at the St. Louis County Election
Board. "We really need their help."

Not only will this action bring more young people (that famously apathetic group thats seems to grow closer and closer to the door of relevance) into the realm of electoral politics, the young people themselves will give back tenfold with their technological prowess. One often overlooked fact in the criticism of electronic voting machines (and other new voting advances) is that the traditionally elderly election officials who must operate and maintain the machinery are woefully inept at working the technology. Some may cry foul at the thought of a 17-year-old with a Palm Pilot checking their registration. I, however, say bravo! If not for efficiency’s sake, than at least for this:

The Palm Pilots used in St. Louis County will have information on every registered voter in the county.

They are designed to save poll workers the time and trouble of paging
through paper volumes to verify registrations in cases involving voters
who have moved to a new address without notifying officials, or people
who have not voted in many years.

As I’ll discuss later in the series, one of the major problems plaguing Missouri elections is the difficulties voters have in switching polling places, or being placed on inactive voter lists. It sounds like, with this new technology, these are problems that can be overcome.

Good work, Board of Elections.

Saved by the Midwife

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

MIdwives make an appearance in the Kansas City Star:

What if hospitals are overwhelmed by casualties, disease or infection? Many first responders are not prepared to deal with the special needs of pregnant women and infants. Where will women give birth during the next disaster?

The answer, according to this op-ed, is midwives, who are used to helping with births outside of hospitals — so a natural disaster would be no big deal to them.

I’m having trouble imagining a natural disaster that is so huge that women can’t get to hospitals, and that at the same time allows for easy communication with and transportation of midwives.

But even during the good times, women should be able to choose midwives without breaking the law. The op-ed notes that some religious groups do not use hospitals. For them, the choice is between an experienced midwife with some medical knowledge, and doing it themselves. Rural women who live far from hospitals might prefer to have a midwife close-by. And while there are risks involved in giving birth with a midwife rather than with an MD, there are also risks of exposure to infection and disease whenever you go to the hospital.

In short, legalizing midwifery is a good idea right now. We don’t need to wait for disaster to strike.

A Very Good Idea About Trash in St. Louis County …

Posted on by David Stokes

We have discussed the St. Louis County trash collection proposal numerous times on this blog, and I have officially run out of clever ways to introduce "trash" in the post’s title. Nonetheless, St. Louis County has apparently decided to delay the introduction of the controversial trash collection plan by several months, except in one trash district. Here is the article in the Post-Dispatch. Officials have chosen to implement the plan in the smallest district (kind of northwest county) with the least amount of opposition, and this will give them time to see how the plan works, and make changes if necessary.

While others at SMI have been strongly opposed to the plan, I have wavered back and forth on it. There are no doubt good arguments on both sides. The primary argument in favor of the proposed trash districts is that there will almost certainly be reduced wear and tear if only one trash truck drives up and down the streets each week, rather than several. We all pay for the neighborhood streets in unincorporated areas, whether or not we live in a municipality, and I want my tax dollars used wisely. On the other hand, I have a strong aversion to the government forcing people to do something one way when it has been working just fine to have people arranging their own trash collection. The new law’s opt-out provisions did a good job of addressing that concern, though, in my opinion.

Anyway, I think the starter district idea is a good one. Perhaps if the new plan works well, everyone’s concerns will be alleviated. And if it doesn’t, officials can scrap the whole thing before it goes countywide. The most likely answer is that it will work well — but that won’t matter to the opponents, because their objections are bigger than that, to their credit. Will South Pointe (sorry, unable to find a link to this, because it predated widespread use of the Internet by a few years) rise again because of trash districts, trash transfer stations, and more? We will have to wait and see on that …

Will Decreased Home Values Lead to Lower Taxes?

Posted on by David Stokes

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article today on how the decline in home values may or may not result in a decrease in assessments and taxes. It seems almost certain that the 2009 reassessment SHOULD see a decline in assessed valuations throughout Missouri. The same thing that is hitting homeowners hard now could help them next year. That is, the fact that assessed valuation is dated from January 1 of the assessment year, so people’s homes are currently set at their (supposed) value as of Jan. 1, 2007, before much of the real estate market had seen the dramatic decline of the past year. The good side of that, though, is that the next reassessment will be based on Jan. 1, 2009, less than a year away, and likely well before any recovery in the real estate market. So even if home values rebound next year, most people should still see a decline in their assessments. Now, we’ll see if assessors across Missouri actually lower the values like they should …

As the article points out, however, declining assessment may not lead to declining taxes, though, as local taxing districts could then raise rates to keep the levels the same. Isn’t it funny how increasing assessment led to higher taxes but declining assessments probably won’t lead to lower taxes? I don’t know about you, but I am just stunned at that possibility. Local government officials failing to lower taxes? Impossible, thought I.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens next year. At the very least, if local bodies raise taxes to make up for declining assessments that will at least be a front-door move, as opposed to the back-door tax increases that assessments usually lead to. Then voters can more accurately hold officials responsible for the taxing levels, which is a good thing.

Another blog recently posted that you should not call for lowering taxes without clearly stating what services you would like to see cut. His or her point was that local government services are important and that if people were forced to choose what to cut, they would be more likely to support higher tax rates. I, not surprisingly, disagree immensely with that idea, but the request for actual examples in these discussions seems fair enough. So, here goes nothing:

  • For school districts, start by cutting the total number of people in administrative positions, and then cut their salaries and benefits packages. It is a little-known fact that most superintendents in Missouri are able to hide their total compensation packages from the public. In all honesty, though, education policy is not my area — so keep that in mind as you read this. (The following statements are in my area, or (well-faked) expertise.)
  • For larger cities, significantly decrease or eliminate most of the urban planning department. Urban planning in a bureaucratic system, as practiced in a let’s-all-design-something-together-for-the-people-type way is usually a failure. How many dusty plans sit on shelves in St. Louis City Hall? Individual entrepreneurs and the free market should dictate what gets built here and developed there, not planners with advanced degrees who have no experience in business. Please note that this is not an attack on zoning, or on planning departments like St. Louis County that focus on re-zoning issues rather than grandiose plans. Nor is it an attack on urban design advocates who operate out of the government sphere. Now that I have appropriately caveated myself, I’ll move on.
  • For smaller cities, radical increases in shared services with other cities and whatever county they are in. We have way too many duplicated services in the county. Clayton, Richmond Heights, and Maplewood have led the way in showing how cities can share services; much more of that needs to be done. St. Louis County also does an excellent job of providing certain services within municipalities that contract for them. Smaller cities should consolidate services as much as possible to save on tax money, which often improves the service at the same time.

Well, that’s it for now. I think I at least answered the challenge to be specific in my diatribes.

“The Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” Parental Choice Version

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The debate with Sol Stern over education reform has taken a poetical turn. Andrew Coulson parodies the Pirates of Penzance to make the point that effective choice systems exist in other parts of the world (such as India and Kenya):

They are private, parent-funded, and they outperform the public schools,
After application of the best econometric tools.

He also mentions that education markets for after-school tutoring are thriving in the U.S.:

Just think of “Kumon” here at home or of the “Sylvan” chain.
They thrive and make a profit ’cause the ed. monopoly’s inane.

You can watch the original scene from the operetta here.

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