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.

Stopping by Show-Me on a Snowy Morning

Posted on by Nicholas Loyal

All apologies to Robert Frost for the title, but the rest of the Show-Me Institute staff is in the process of digging their cars out from the snow and there isn’t anybody here to police my desecration of an American icon (not like that’s been a problem lately).

Events like this, though, bring to mind a number of legitimate concerns about Missouri roadways under severe weather conditions. While our good friend David Stokes has heaped praise on the folks of MoDOT as of late, I can’t help but wonder whether the response to this most recent storm is an indication that the department might be spread a bit too thin. I understand that nearly every major roadway in St. Louis County is undergoing construction, that MODOT is doing everything it can to ease congestion with warnings for motorists to stay home, and using highway plow groups the Post-Dispatch described as "gang plow strike teams," and that every complaint I have might be better directed at St. Louis County, but still — aren’t all of the excuses moot if nobody can get to work?

Maybe I’m just bitter that it took me 10 minutes to scrape off my windshield.

Changing the Rules for Initiative Petitions

Posted on by David Stokes

I respectfully, yet strongly, disagree with my colleague Dave Roland’s post yesterday on changes to the initiative petition/constitutional amendment rules in Missouri. We are a republic, not a direct democracy. We elect people to make laws and decisions. If they are not doing a good job, then we should elect different people. These petition-gathering amendment drives have led to some terrible legislation, in my opinion, such as the recent minimum-wage increase. They have also led to some excellent legislation, such as the Hancock Amendment. However, as more people and organizations become willing to pay people to gather signatures for pet causes, I believe it is reasonable to increase the amount of signatures required.

I disagree with some of the suggested changes, particularly the requirement that petition gatherers must be residents of Missouri. That is just silly. I support the increase in signatures required and the restriction on paying people by the signature, which is just an open invitation to fraud.

Light Rail Study Didn’t Focus on Crime

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

The Kansas City Star‘s Prime Buzz blog yesterday had a couple of posts criticizing our recent light rail study‘s use of crime statistics. While the statistics used by Randal O’Toole, the study’s author, are correct — as O’Toole points out at the end of the second part of the blog entry, the correct comparison is between types of transit — it’s misleading to suggest that O’Toole’s study has "characterized crime as one of the major reasons why Kansas City should not pursue light rail."

Crime on light rail systems is touched on only briefly in the full Show-Me Institute light rail study. Out of approximately 150 paragraphs of text (not including endnotes, pull quotes, etc.), I count seven that mention crime at all — one paragraph in the executive summary, five paragraphs on page 5, and one paragraph on page 23. In fact, the one mention of crime in the executive summary comes toward the end of a litany of reasons why light rail isn’t a worthwhile investment. In that list, O’Toole mentions crime 9th out of a list of 11 reasons — and even then, only after first mentioning safety statistics. Clearly, while light rail’s crime level in relation to buses is worth mentioning, it’s not one of the study’s primary arguments.

It’s true, I focused on the crime statistics myself during my response to the original Star piece covering the Show-Me Institute study, but that’s because O’Toole’s brief mention of light rail crime was the only aspect of the study that Mr. Spivak actually critiqued. If Mr. Spivak had criticized any of O’Toole’s economic or efficiency arguments, I would have responded to those instead.

Make no mistake, the study’s points about the high costs and low efficiency of light rail in relation to other forms of transit are O’Toole’s primary arguments — points which remain unchallenged by the Star. The only real "ado" about light rail crime was spurred by the selective coverage of Mr. Spivak’s original article.

Apart from O’Toole’s brief mentions of crime in the study, these are his primary arguments:

  • Light rail is expensive, typically experiencing high cost overruns;
  • Light rail has a much lower ridership capacity than freeway lanes;
  • Light rail costs much more to operate than buses;
  • Light rail requires years of advance planning, with no guarantee that transit needs or preferences will remain static during that time;
  • Few regions have actually seen increases in per-capita ridership after constructing light-rail lines;
  • Most regions see the share of riders using transit for travel actually decline after constructing light-rail lines;
  • Light-rail lines that operate in city streets significantly increase traffic congestion;
  • Light rail is particularly ineffective in municipalities without high concentrations of downtown jobs — like Kansas City;
  • Light rail is usually less energy efficient per passenger mile than passenger cars;
  • Light rail does not stimulate urban development without huge additional government subsidies.

The crime statistics O’Toole used are correct, but still only a small part of this analysis.

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