Civics 101

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

If the legislature writes the laws, who enforces them? The executive branch? No — according to state senators Tim Green and Chris Koster, it should be you and me:

Last session, bills were put forth to require law enforcement agencies to ask the citizenship status of anyone they arrest. Another bill would have placed a number regulations into the books, including a ban on renting to illegal immigrations. Neither bill passed this session.

That’s from the Columbia Daily Tribune Politics Blog, which also reprints an essay by Rod Jetton about illegal immigration.

I see two problems with these laws. First, they would waste the time of law enforcement officers, who should use their discretion about when these inquiries would be appropriate. Second, they waste the time of the rest of us, who would have to put every transaction or business decision on hold while we determine the immigration status of all people involved.

I’m all for enforcing laws — if the executive branch can do the job.

You Can Tax My Cell Phone When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Landline …

Posted on by David Stokes

Actually, I really don’t mind the idea of a tax to improve 911 service throughout Missouri, but I do mind that people from areas that have 911 service are going to be taxed to give it to people who don’t. From the article in today’s Post and another on Missourinet (both of which I cribbed from Mr. Combest):

The other problem, according to Bruns, is the disparity of 9-1-1 access in metropolitan and rural areas of the state. He notes that 21 rural counties don’t have 9-1-1 systems.

Call me crazy (get it, call me???), but why don’t the residents of those 21 counties tax themselves to pay for 911 service? We’re not just talking cell phone locators in those 21 counties, we’re talking having no 911 service at all. But please, feel free to tax those of us in the other 93 counties (plus one independent city not within a county) to pay for their service. I realize, of course, that people travel, and when traveling around Missouri you would want responsive 911 service wherever you are at the time, not just back where you are from.

Half of Missouri’s counties lack the ability to track cell phone callers’ locations at all. Only 20 statewide can pinpoint a caller’s location, while some can find a general area.

Now that is something people throughout the state could, and perhaps should, pay for. Everyone would benefit from having better tracking of their cell phones for emergency purposes. (Except when the black helicopter UN troops use it to track us while riding up the North American Union Superhighway to enslave us all, but that is a different issue entirely.)

There is a very important part at the close of the Post-Dispatch article:

James also said 911 centers need to ensure wise use of new money they get, noting that in some areas, there’s a city and a county center within a few blocks of each other that could consolidate efforts.

Amen to that. There is no need for small cities or counties to have their own 911 service. Before the Legislature proposes any new taxes to fund improved 911 service, I hope they mandate a minimum population size for having your own center, or else you have to pay for it all yourself. Here in St. Louis County, some smaller cities have done some good things in consolidated 911 serice, which I wrote about here and here. This is from the Richmond Heights Police Department website:

In 2003 our dispatchers joined a dispatching consortium, housed in the Richmond Heights Public Safety building. The consortium, now called ECDC (East Central Dispatch Center), dispatches calls for Richmond Heights, Webster Groves, Maplewood, Clayton and Shrewsbury. Through this relationship with surrounding agencies, we believe that this will increase the level of service the we provide to our communities. The ECDC is supervised by director Paul Anderson.

This is absolutely what we need more of in Missouri and St. Louis County. These five cities deserve great credit for starting this, and other nearby municipalities, like Brentwood and Rock Hill, need to jump in.  Then we can talk about raising taxes if it’s still necessary.

Familiar Story of Financial Woes for St. Ann

Posted on by David Stokes

Northwest Plaza is struggling, and it is taking St. Ann down with it. The Post-Dispatch has an all-too-familiar story of a municipality struggling because the local mall is having problems. Similiar stories have taken place in Crestwood and Jennings. To its credit, St. Ann appears to have made the necessary cuts in services and staff, along with passing a sales tax increase last year, but now the mall wants to increase sales taxes again to help pay for renovations there:

St. Ann’s Board of Aldermen is expected to vote in September on Somera’s request for $96 million in redevelopment assistance — including a 1 percent tax on sales at the shopping center.

After the renovations are made, the city is predicting an increase in sales tax collections. First comment — there is no guarantee of that. Second comment — even if it does happen, it will just take tax money from some other city (Hazelwood and St. Louis Mills, perhaps), leading to the same problem, different location. As Charlie Brennan often says on KMOX, we are all just eating the same pie, and the retail pie in St. Louis is not growing. All that changes is where we bite.

So, what should St. Ann do? As I said, they have done some good things in regards to making tough choices, so I want to give them credit where it’s due. One thing I highly recommend, although this is not financial, is to stop electing the Chief of Police. That is just silly. Next, the county matrix shows that St. Ann does contract with St. Louis County Public Works to perform a number of functions, but they can certainly contract for more. Finally, follow the lead of Clayton, Maplewood, and Richmond Heights, and give serious consideration to sharing municipal services with Overland, Woodson Terrace, Edmundson, and other neighboring cities. Perhaps this is already being done, but it does not appear to be. Finally, give serious consideration to leaving “A” sales tax status, joining the pool, and rejecting Northwest Plaza’s insistence on public money. I know that would lead to dramatic cuts in city services at the start, but the long-run stabilization might be well worth it. If more cities did this, we could stop the cannibalization of sales tax money within our area.

Parents Need More Choices Than Charters Alone

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

St. Louis Post-Dispatch readers are debating parental choice in education in a series of interesting letters to the editor. Here’s an excerpt from one:

The desegregation program offers city public school students choices that will continue for a few more years. Charter schools are another way to increase options within the public sector that are open to all students.

This letter criticizes voucher programs because, the authors claim, private schools limit their enrollments to a select few. Evidence to the contrary appears in this L.A. Times article. Even in places like Los Angeles, with many charter and magnet schools, parents have to fight bureaucracy and long wait lists to find schools for their kids.

If, in addition, parents were given vouchers (or tax-credit-funded scholarships) that they could take to private schools, new schools would open to meet the demand. Parents who can afford to pay tuition have no trouble enrolling their kids in private schools. Vouchers would give everyone that opportunity.

A Failed Effort to Redirect Medications

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Southeast Missourian reports on another government health care program that doesn’t work:

A few years ago, as prescription drug costs continued to soar and lawmakers heard concerns from voters, the Missouri Legislature created a new program to help redirect extra, unused prescription drugs to the needy. […]

Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes — the very groups the law was aimed at, who were thought to have a supply of drugs they hate to just throw out — say it’s not working as intended, and hardly anyone is participating.

It turns out that all these private businesses and organizations don’t just have prescription drugs sitting around unused. They don’t need help from the state to avoid stockpiling unneeded medications or to allocate supplies efficiently. When people have trouble paying for medicine, that’s a problem caused by their poverty rather than by broken health care markets.

Some people quoted in the article think that Missouri should allow medicines that were under a patient’s control — such as a bottle of antibiotics someone took home from the pharmacy — to be donated. To me, that sounds prohibitively risky. A better idea would be to issue vouchers that people can spend on new, unopened medicine.

“Nothing Worthwhile Is Easy, Honey, You Know That …”

Posted on by David Stokes

Governor Blunt has sent a detailed list of questions for the three potential Supreme Court nominees. And while 111 questions seems pretty detailed, it should be a detailed process to become a member of the Supreme Court, as in the quote I used above for the title, said by Clark Griswold to Ellen after she proposed flying to Wally World instead of driving.

The Federalist Society has released a study on this very topic — the recent history of the Missouri Supreme Court, which I am pleased to share with you. It was written by lawyers for lawyers, so consider yourself warned, all you civilians (including me) out there. It will certainly add some intellectual depth to the ongoing dicussions of how Missouri appoints judges. I commend the governor and his staff for the thorough work they are putting into this effort. I have written before about how I like the judicial commission plan we have here in Missouri, but I completely agree with Bill McClellan’s assertions that the commission itself may have done more damage to the plan than any opponent could ever have hoped to do.

Why I Celebrate the Sales Tax Holiday Too

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

It’s back-to-school time (although I won’t be leaving for grad school until the 22nd) so once again Dave and I are arguing about the sales tax holiday. I realize that my arguments against the holiday aren’t particularly intuitive. The best way my macroeconomics teacher was able to explain it was to write a bunch of cross-price elasticities on the board. And I’m as happy as most people to go to OfficeMax and start hoarding spiral notebooks this Sunday. OK, maybe a little more happy than most people.

I’m even happy that I can’t convince Dave. I firmly believe that the best thing for the economy is a tax that’s consistent every day of the year. I can look up the multivariable calculus to prove it. Dave still won’t be convinced, because our economy is so strong that these small distortions and inefficiencies don’t make much difference. It doesn’t hurt me or the economy in any noticeable way when I buy my notebooks on Sunday instead of Monday. However, more holidays and exceptions would probably have a larger marginal effect. So, I’m happy to allow this particular holiday, to remind me of our economy’s resilience — but don’t enact another one!

A Blog Post About Midwives and Nothing Else

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on the continuing legal challenge to the midwife law:

Physicians’ groups argued Thursday that a new law loosening regulations on midwives is unconstitutional because it goes beyond the bill’s title, which dealt with health insurance.

But an assistant attorney general said that the bill’s purpose was to improve access to health care, and midwives’ services would help meet that goal.

Of course, bill titles should be as specific and informative as possible. And no one argues that using obscure technical terms to add provisions to bills is the ideal way to enact legislation. But now that the bill has already become law, arguing about the bill’s title is silly. We should instead consider whether the law contributes to economic freedom and gives Missouri residents more health care options — which I think it does. 

The Inherent Fallacy of Central Planning, Local-Style

Posted on by David Stokes

The Post-Dispatch has published two major stories in the past few days regarding planned developments by local communities and developers. This is an issue in which I have neither training nor expertise, but do have tremendous interest and some personal experience, so here goes nothing. Between you and me, I was hoping Urban Review would have tackled this so I could just link to them, but, alas, no luck yet.

The first Post-Dispatch article is about the efforts of local suburbs to create downtown areas for their communities. The second is specific to the Olive Boulevard area of University City and Olivette, with which I am pretty familiar.

As for the first article, it was excellent reading once I got past my initial, "Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?" response. There is some absurdity in suburban towns that "just decide" (say that like Chris Penn in Reservoir Dogs) to suddenly create an urban environment, with all its inherent hipness, in the middle of suburbia. It’s like Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs sat down and just worked out a compromise over coffee. Tell me what is missing in this statement:

Planners tout Manchester Road in Maplewood, downtown Kirkwood and Washington Avenue in St. Louis as premier examples of vibrant business and residential districts created by refurbishing existing buildings.

What is missing is the acknowledgement that the planners didn’t have anything to do with the success of Washington Avenue, downtown Maplewood, or Kirkwood. I was there on Wash Ave., man — to do my best 1967 Haight-Ashbury impression. Entrepreneurs made Washington Avenue what it is, along with some dedicated urban trailblazers. City government had nothing to do with it, although they almost screwed the whole thing up with a neverending street improvement project. I admit I like the zipper motif in the road, for which we can thank the city, but that’s it.

Downtown Maplewood is the same thing — restaurateurs built that up while the city was tearing down houses for Wal-Mart just to the north. (Side note: It’s a brilliant idea to take advantage of the fact that the city goes 100 yards west of Skinker to put up bars with 3 a.m. licenses on the city line, in what feels like the county. See Delmar Bar and Grill, Cheshire, and Cusumano’s on Manchester as successful examples.)

As for Kirkwood, the downtown area there was popular long before the new loft developments were planned. The hobby shops, diners, neighborhood bars, and markets gave the place a great feel without the new urban hipness everyone apparently wants now, according to this article. If Dardenne Prairie, Manchester, and Chesterfield want to just build downtowns out of thin air, I wish them luck (not really) but feel they are going to have the same results as Wildwood:

In Wildwood’s town center, leaders say some businesses have thrived, though some residents have been disappointed at the pace of the residential development.

"It’s been slower than most people expected," said Joe Vujnich, the city’s park’s and planning director.

Really? So people who want to move to Wildwood aren’t looking for loft living above the new P.F. Chang’s? Really? This surprises you, Mr. Developer and Ms. City Planner?

The University City / St. Louis Loop is one of the greatest areas in our community. I met my wife there and play darts there every week (excluding this summer, because of the birth of my son). Joe Edwards gets all the press, and he deserves every bit of it, but other business owners deserve credit, too, for making the area what it is. Business owners like Joe made the Loop what it is. To its credit, University City government has always responded well to the needs of the business community, and it could serve as a great example to other cities for how to let businesses lead, and how to work with them.

I say all this because if U. City thinks it is going to be able to work with a developer to turn Olive near I-170 into anything resembling the Loop, or any other successful mixed-use area, it ain’t gonna happen.  These things take time, not a horrible new Italian restaurant chain in a city filled with great Italian restaurants. Bob’s Seafood, Nobu’s and Beyer’s Lumber have been in University City for years. As Jane Jacobs argued, those are the types of small businesses that make vibrant areas, not things to be pushed out for some awful, artificial development. I hope U. City and Olivette avoid tax incentives that would give new chains advantages over older, established businesses. If new chains want to move in, fine, but they should do so without the type of government aid that distorts the free market and often fails anyway.

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