A Win for Consumers

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Fans of free markets are doing the wave. Starting today, it’s legal in Missouri to sell tickets at prices above their face value. The Kansas City Star has the story:

The development comes courtesy of a new state law that says no county or city regulation can prohibit “the sale or resale of an admission ticket to any legal event at any price.”

According to Wagner, “There are a million reasons why people in Missouri benefit from having legalized ticket brokering.”

You can sell an out-of-print book or a rare antique for more than the original price. As a matter of fact, prices are allowed to change for just about every other item sold in our economy. Tickets shouldn’t be any different.

The article notes that people have always engaged in "ticket scalping," but that the law was rarely enforced because police have better priorities:

Violation was punishable by up to a $500 fine and/or six months in jail, but police spokesman Capt. Rich Lockhart said police only went after “a few” violators over the years.

“For us, the focus on game day is about getting people in and out of the complex in a safe manner,” he said. 

Cops, Taxes, and Trash in St. Louis County

Posted on by David Stokes

While the Jackson County Council is doling out taxpayer money to selected assistants, last night the St. Louis County Council held its annual public meeting on the budget. The best news out of the meeting, which was covered here in the Post-Dispatch (link via Combest), is that the council will not approve the tax increase sought by County Executive Dooley. Because the council chose not to roll back tax rates in response to reassessment, this was the least they could do for us. Honestly, though, Chairman O’Mara and the rest of the council deserve credit for killing this tax increase before it got going.

The main reason for the tax increase, cited by this article and prior ones, was to hire 25 more county police officers. Now, I know conventional wisdom would disagree with me, but I don’t think St. Louis County needs any more officers. Let’s be honest, here — St. Louis County is a very low-crime area for the most part, and the areas within it that have more crime are generally patrolled by municipal police departments (Wellston, Jennings, and Kinloch, for example), rather than the county. So those new officers would not go where they are most needed. I know there are unincorporated areas of the county that have issues with crime, such as Castlepoint and sections of Lemay, but the county police are able to properly patrol those areas with existing resources.

I certainly agree that the residents of areas in near-north county would be better served by the county police, rather than their own, small departments. The same goes for tiny municipalities throughout the county. (Hello, St. George, I am looking at you as I drive the speed limit through your little village.) But under the present system, if the county were to take over the policing in those towns, the towns would pay the county to do so, and hence there would be no need for a countywide tax increase. I am all for changing the system to give more authority to the county police in these tiny municipalities, but let’s change the system first, and then we can talk about a tax increase.

On the related note of a pay increase for existing county officers, I am in full agreement that the officers in the county’s primary police department deserve a fair pay increase. Their request seems reasonable. But after the substantial increase in tax money from reassessment alone, the county does not need to raise taxes further to give its employees a raise.

Finally, I want to commend a proposal by Councilmember Fraser regarding the trash hauling that was on the agenda for last night’s regular meeting:

Fraser would limit haulers to contracts in two trash districts rather than seven as the administration has proposed. The change would help small trash haulers stay in business, she said.

This is a great idea, and one that addresses the primary concern I have had about this proposal from the beginning. I am still torn on the overall plan, but this proposal, if adopted, makes it much better.

School Choice Is Working, After All

Posted on by Dave Roland

During the past few weeks, commentators across the country have reported that a conservative policy group issued a study finding that school choice is failing in Milwaukee. In this case, the old adage is correct: You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.

The report in question, which was published by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, actually didn’t say anything at all, either positive or negative, about Milwaukee’s private school choice program. It only attempted to answer two questions about the city’s policy of open enrollment among its public schools: First, which factors do parents consider when deciding to send their children to one of the city’s public schools? Second, how involved are those parents in their children’s educations?

Even though there was an obvious way to answer these questions — conducting a survey of the parents — the author arrived at his conclusions with a roundabout method. He first collected public statistics about the race, ethnicity, living arrangements (one-parent or two-parent households), employment status, and educational attainment of Milwaukee’s public school parents, then matched those statistics to the findings of a national survey about demographic trends for parent and family involvement in education.

Given the number of single-parent, minority, under-educated, or disadvantaged families in Milwaukee, the author concluded that few of these parents were likely to choose a public school based on its academic reputation, or to actively participate in their children’s educations, and so the open-enrollment policy was unlikely to improve educational outcomes in Milwaukee’s public schools.  The author reached this conclusion because he assumed that national demographic trends would hold true for Milwaukee parents, despite the city’s unique 18-year history with school choice. Because most disadvantaged parents nationwide have no experience with educational freedom, there is ample reason to believe that the Milwaukee parents’ educational decisions and academic involvement may deviate significantly from national norms.

As I have described, the Wisconsin report does not address the impact of private school choice on academic achievement. Contrary to some concerns voiced in the wake of the report, rigorous scholarly assessments during the past decade have repeatedly confirmed that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has improved educational outcomes for both students receiving scholarships and those remaining in the city’s public schools.

While the report’s questionable methodology casts doubt on its usefulness, it is also important to note that the author seems to miss a fundamental point about the value of school choice. He assumes that educational freedom is only important if parents’ choices are motivated primarily by academic concerns. In fact, many parents — across all demographic categories — would prefer schools providing safety, community, discipline, and values-based education over an academic powerhouse that lacks those other attributes. The power of choice is that families are given the opportunity to make decisions based on their own values, rather than the things that are important to academics or convenient for bureaucrats.

Dave Roland has litigated school choice issues in state and federal courts and has offered expert testimony on school choice programs before several state legislatures. He is an education policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

Double Trouble

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Class Notes blog reports that Rep. Ed Robb is sponsoring a bill that would allow parents to decide whether twins should be assigned to separate classrooms. The post continues:

Columbia Public Schools has an unwritten policy that twins/multiples be separated to develop their own identities. But Assistant Superintendent Jack Jensen and several building principals tell me that the unwritten rule is adjustable when parents have a reason why the siblings should be together.

Whether or not twins should be together depends on the children involved. Giving parents this choice is a great idea — after all, they know their kids best. Furthermore, I’m confused by the rationale for the CPS policy on twins. Does this mean that kids automatically have the same identity as everyone else in their classroom?

I do see how identical twins could be a headache from a school’s point of view, though. When I was in ninth grade, two identical twins who were not assigned to the same classrooms switched their schedules. So one day Twin A attended Twin B’s classes, and vice versa. The teachers didn’t notice. But those are the kinds of issues that are better dealt with on a case-by-case basis, not by a blanket prohibition on keeping twins together.

An Education Blog Is Born

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

There’s another new Missouri education blog out there, this one courtesy of the Columbia Missourian. In its first few posts, it covers art and language education at both public and private schools, and reprints an article about the Show-Me Institute’s education conference. One feature of the blog that looks particularly promising is that it allows citizens to contribute their own education-related stories and photos. I hope this blog’s openness to publishing content from a variety of sources will prevent it from going the way of the MSBA‘s one-time blog.

Check it out: http://schoolhousetalk.blogspot.com/

What Is the Worst Way to Dispose of Extra Budget Money in Jackson County?

Posted on by David Stokes

The Kansas City Star has an article on the age-old question of what to do with leftover budget money.  I guess it’s not an age-old question; it really began with the evolution of democracy around 1776. Before that, the answer was always, "Give it to the King." But anyway, there is some leftover money in the budgets of the Jackson County Council and Election Board, and considering all the things they could do with the money, they have — shockingly — chosen the absolute worst: Give it to the hacks.

This is really atrocious. Let’s check out the things that could be done with extra money: 1) Return it to the county treasury for next year; 2) quickly pass legislation transferring it to a pressing need; 3) lower taxes; 4) use the public’s money to benefit your cronies. The Jackson County Council chose number four:

Tarwater and other legislators said they were giving bonuses because they had money left in their budgets and their aides were doing good jobs. Tarwater will give $4,000 by year’s end to his aide.

I used to be an aide at the Saint Louis County Council, so I had basically the same job. Never in a million years would the council have just given leftover money to the aides as a bonus. (For the record, the position of council aide in St. Louis — and I am sure this is true in Jackson Co., too — is a very good job for a number of reasons.)

The Jackson County Election Board is doing the same awful thing:

Tammy Brown, chairwoman of the Jackson County Election Board, said she would have enough money left in her 2007 budget to grant $78,000 in bonuses by year’s end to the 34 board employees. Rizzo, chairman of the legislature’s budget committee, said election employees do an exceptional job and he would support the bonuses.

2007 was not an election year, so I really doubt the people at the election board worked all that hard — certainly no harder than they are supposed to work as part of their job.

I have written before that Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders is becoming one of my favorite elected officials. While the council budget is outside of his control, at least we get this in the article:

The Sanders administration will not support fund transfers for pay bonuses, said Shelley Temple-Kneuvean, deputy chief administrative officer.

I should also say, good for the three councilmember who are not participating in the bonus scheme. Which is exactly what it is: a scheme to reward loyal supporters with public money. Just horrible.

“Statistics Are Elusive Things”

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

Most journalists aren’t number people. If they were, they’d be much less likely to wind up in a profession dominated by words. We’re trying to ameliorate the situation, at least a little, by cosponsoring CARR training sessions here in Missouri with the Heritage Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Missouri Broadcasters Association. These sessions help to give journalists some basic grounding in computer-aided statistical reporting.

A recent article in The Washington Missourian about property tax assessments (I found the link via John Combest’s always useful page) highlights the need for journalists to check, doublecheck, and triplecheck their numbers — and always get another pair of math-savvy eyes to inspect their work:

Kim and Steve Obenauer were shocked last week when they found out their real estate tax bill has increased by nearly 87 percent this year. […]

The tax bill for the lot with the mobile home was $79.08 in 2006. This year’s tax bill for the property is $605.41.

Wait a second, I thought — wouldn’t that be an increase of more like 600 to 700 percent? I called up Windows’ trusty calculator, and found that, indeed, moving up from $79.08 to $605.41 constitutes an increase of 665.57 percent. Why such a large discrepancy between the actual figure and the reported figure, I wondered? I figured it was probably just a typo, and moved on. Then I found this sentence:

One woman’s tax bill increased 61 percent, from $390.63 in 2006 to $1,009.10 this year, Emmons said.

But that would be an increase of well over 100 percent! Sure enough, a quick trip to the calculator revealed an increase of 158.33 percent. That’s when I realized what the Missourian piece was doing wrong — it was taking a backward look at the numbers, as though the new tax figures were starting points.

Take the first set of numbers, $79.08 and $605.41. If a homeowner were assesed $605.41 one year and $79.08 the next, that would constitute a decrease of 86.94 percent — or, rounded up, 87 percent. The problem is, that same figure doesn’t apply in reverse. Percentage changes are relative, depending on which number is the starting point, so even though $79.08 is only 13.06 percent of $605.41, calculating the reverse shows that $605.41 is 765.57 percent of $79.08 — or, after subtracting the original 100 percent, an increase of 665.57 percent more than the original $79.08.

The same is true of the second set of numbers. Moving from $1,009.10 one year to $390.63 the next would be a decrease of 61.29 percent, but the reverse, moving up from $390.63 to $1,009.10, is an increase of 158.33 percent. In other words, if you take the difference between the lower figure and the higher — that difference being $618.47 — you can fit $390.63 into it 1.5833 times, which is where we get the 158.33-percent-increase figure. If you take that same difference and try to fit $1,009.10 into it, you’ll find that it fits 0.6128 times, which is where we get the 61.28-percent-decrease figure.

I don’t write this as an unfriendly challenge to anybody at the Missourian. Rather, I simply hope it illustrates that, as Judge J. Smith Henly wrote, "Statistics are elusive things at best," and nudges Missouri journalists toward using a little more care when working with figures.

Mommy Missouri

Posted on by Justin Hauke

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, spoke this month before the Missouri House of Representatives’ Interim Committee on Poverty about how Missouri can expand medical coverage to poor residents by embracing freedom and deregulating an insurance industry dominated by special interests.

Mr. Cannon argues that expanding current medical social programs, such as Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), is attractive because for every dollar Missouri spends on coverage, the state receives $1.50 from the federal government. But expanding government health care is ultimately unsuccessful, as these programs subsidize health care costs for thousands of non-needy individuals (such as senior citizens with substantial retirement assets), drive up the cost of private medical insurance, and do nothing to address systematic quality programs among low-income recipients.

Worse, however, Mr. Cannon argues that the expansion of government anti-poverty programs snares low-income families in a “low-wage” trap — particularly in heavily subsidized health care states like Missouri. Like most states, Missouri offers various forms of assistance to families with low incomes, and these benefits decrease as wages increase. This means that within certain income ranges, a rising wage will actually decrease annual income, as recipients receive fewer government benefits while they pay higher taxes. Mr. Cannon presents some striking examples of the “low-wage” trap for Missourians:

Consider the case of a single mother of two who lives in Missouri and works full-time:

  • If she earns $8 per hour and receives a $2-per-hour raise, her annual income would go down by more than $5,000.
  • Her hourly wage could double to $16 per hour, and she would still be more than $2,000
    worse off. Just to break even, her hourly wage would have to rise above $18 per hour.
  • In other words, if she earns $17,000 and could somehow increase her earnings to
    $37,000, she would lose all of that $20,000 to taxes and forgone government benefits.
    (Economists would say she faces a marginal effective tax rate of 100 percent.)

This “wage-trap” is inexcusable. Many low-income individuals may not have the means to advance fast enough up the economic ladder to compensate them for their loss of benefits, forcing them to stagnate in poverty.

A better solution would be for Missouri to reduce the monopolistic protectionist polices that are designed to protect the state’s insurance providers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that state regulations increase the cost of private health insurance by as much as 15 percent. Allowing Missourians to choose their levels insurance coverage (rather than being subject to levels of coverage that are mandated as "appropriate" by officials — such as coverage for chiropractors, and even hairpieces, of all things), and allowing residents to choose coverage from out-of-state insurers, would dramatically decrease the cost of private health care in the state.

Instead, Missouri legislators have consistently bowed down to insurance industry special interests, which continue to bankroll their campaigns.

Real freedom entails freedom of choice, and the responsibility of living with those choices. All I ask is that legislators treat individuals as adults, rather than having the arrogance to treat certain groups (like the poor) as children, always insisting that "We know what’s best."

I like to believe that most people want the same.

Incentives, Recycling, and Trash

Posted on by David Stokes

The Kansas City area is addressing the way it handles waste, just as St. Louis County has been doing. Here is an excellent commentary on the changes in St. Louis County, written recently by a member of our board of scholars, Michael Pakko. I agree with much of Michael’s argument, although I think the fact that the St. Louis County plan would clearly improve the quality of the local roads in unincorporated areas — which are paid for by everyone in St. Louis County, rather than just the unincorporated residents — is a strong argument in favor of the plan, and deserves careful consideration. But I digress.

The Kansas City area is considering many options — some good, some bad. I like this one a lot:

Even before the solid waste plan is done, the city is arranging to have Missouri Organic Recycling, a Kansas City firm, start taking food waste from the City Market by the end of the year. Food scraps will go to the firm’s composting facility south of Liberty and then will be sold to large landscapers and homeowners.

I also like the idea of paying according to the amount of trash you generate. I don’t see why an elderly person living alone should pay as much for trash collection as a family of six. From the article:

Johnson County [Kan.] residents may begin to see a pay-as-you-throw trash rate that provides an incentive to recycle.

However, some bureaucrats still don’t understand basic rules of incentives (emphasis added):

“There’s an unfortunate attitude from some residents that they shouldn’t have to pay for recycling,” said Betsy Betros, Johnson County’s director of pollution control. “But everybody doing their part will really make a difference.”

If you want people to recycle, which most of us do, then just charge for trash by the pound — but make recycled trash free, or at least heavily subsized (as the article indicates it may be). Don’t couch your argument for higher taxes or fees in some sort of "Let’s all pull together" garbage (pun intended).

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