Hy-Vee Wants to Give the Heave-Ho to a CID
The grocery chain Hy-Vee is suing the city of Lee’s Summit over the creation of a Community Improvement District (CID)....
More of the Same in Springfield’s New Buc-ee’s CID
The Springfield City Council just repeated an all-too-common Missouri mistake. The council passed a bill creating a new community improvement...
If Businesses Are Going to Be Our Tax Collectors, We Should Compensate Them for That
Every few years, a new state audit or some report by a progressive group comes out criticizing Missouri for allowing...
Five New Year’s Resolutions for Missouri Lawmakers
A version of this commentary appeared in the Columbia Tribune. Missouri is considered one of the most “conservative” of the 50...
Kansas City’s Dubious COVID Orders Prompt Lawsuit
The decisions reached by policymakers should be based on the facts and grounded in a rational approach to achieving their...
There Oughta Be A Law: If Walmart is Essential, Small Retailers Are Too
As the coronavirus pandemic accelerated this spring, governments across the country clamped down dramatically on businesses and associations of all...
Eighty-Three Special Taxing Districts Opted Out of Tax-Free Weekend
During the season of back-to-school chaos that thousands of Missouri families face each year, the state in recent years has...
Health Care Desperately Needs Competition-Retail Medicine Provides It
If you need a flu shot, you could make an appointment with your physician, wait at a potentially inconvenient location,...
Do Charter Schools Take Districts’ Money? Only If You Think Children, and the Funding That Comes With Them, Are District Property
*See footnote How would you respond if you stumbled across a headline that asked, “How much do farmers markets cost...
One More Lap around the Ice Rink
As our readers might remember, the Chesterfield Hockey Association (CHA) wants to raise $7 million from the Chesterfield Valley Transportation...
Beware the Perils of Corporate Welfare: An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos
Amazon is amazing. Just amazing. In just 20 years as a public company, it has experienced a thousand-fold growth in...
The Costs of Subsidies
We’ve written for years about the costs of development subsidies. Both how they hollow out the tax base and rob...
Conversations on an Ice Facility in Chesterfield
Recently, I delivered public comments at a Chesterfield City Council meeting concerning a proposal to extend and redirect a special...
Questions for the Chesterfield Valley TDD
The unconstrained growth and abuse of special taxing districts in Missouri marches (or better, skates) on. This evening, the Chesterfield...
Holy Smokes! Andy Puzder, a Free-Market Advocate, to Run the Labor Department?
One of the first tenets of free-market thinking is that nobody owes anybody else a job – much less a...
TIF in a Flood Plain–A Recipe for Trouble
High noon approaches as the Saint Louis region awaits Stan Kroenke’s development proposal for Maryland Heights. For those unfamiliar with...
Killing the Golden Goose: How Walmart’s Left-Wing Critics Destroy Job Creation
Under three different CEOs, Wal-Mart has done all kinds of somersaults to appease left-wing critics. In 2005, Lee Scott set...
Employers Need Help-and They’ll Pay Too
There’s been a lot said about this new minimum wage proposal in Saint Louis. However, there is an interesting topic that gets...
An Imminent Eminent Domain Case
When most Saint Louisans think about eminent domain abuses, they tend to conjure up thoughts of Maplewood razing neighborhoods in order to build...
Super Bowls and the Super Rich: A Tale of Two Cities
As first appearing in The American Spectator: In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy and human freedom, the richest citizens...
