2925 Union Blvd. Photo by Thomas Duda.

A week ago, the Saint Louis Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), an agency that owns more than 9,000 city parcels, considered another offer to purchase 2925 Union. This time, however, the area alderman showed up to tell the commission what decisions he thought it should make.

Saint Louis aldermen have an incredible amount of influence over the sale (or not) of vacant city property. Aldermen are frequently asked to provide a “letter of support” when an individual tries to purchase LRA property. But if aldermen oppose the sale of a property, they do not have to do so in any sort of verifiable, public way. In some cases, the absence of an alderman’s letter of support is all that is needed.

LRA commissioners take the absence of such a letter very seriously. City officials have been careful to say that the lack of such a letter doesn’t necessarily kill a sale, but an alderman’s input seems significant in practice.

As former Commissioner Howard Hayes said to a would-be buyer at the LRA’s May 2010 meeting: “We put a lot of weight on that judgment.”

Of course, the LRA doesn’t have to consider the input of an area alderman. The agency’s authority was established under state law, and the LRA law does not suggest that the agency consider the input of any political officials. Saint Louis government has implemented this practice by choice.

At the March 2011 meeting, Ward 1 Alderman Quincy Troupe spoke at length about offers to purchase vacant city property in his ward. Troupe, who spoke before anyone else at that day’s LRA meeting, recommended that the agency take certain actions on offers to purchase property in his ward.

In the case of 2925 Union, Troupe recommended that the agency sell. And, later in the meeting, the commission voted to offer a sale.

This blog post isn’t intended to protest the sale of 2925 Union. I am happy that it sold, especially if it will result in new development for the city. However, I question allowing aldermen to comment on, if not affect, the sale of LRA property. Nothing magical happens when aldermen are elected that enables them to foretell whether a proposed development project will be successful. If the LRA allows aldermen to have significant input on offers to purchase property, then the agency is awarding a great deal of power to the aldermen out of courtesy.

I wonder, what does it take to get the support of the alderman? A visionary redevelopment plan? Friendship? Money? The aldermen may all have pure motives, but the LRA’s approval process seems to leave the door wide open for under-the-table deals.

Furthermore, some agencies similar to the LRA do not invite comment from elected officials on offers to purchase property. The Genesee County Land Bank in Flint, Mich., does not request approval of an offer by city councilmen. When I spoke to Genesee County Land Bank Executive Director Doug Weiland, he wondered if such a practice could get “political.”

It certainly seems like it could.

The post Is It Redevelopment? Or Is It Politics? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What strikes me about the theories is that, in each case, the ultimate perpetrator is the state. And for some reason that seems acceptable to most Russians: practically no one here has questioned the right of the state to resort to extra-legal violence to maintain power, even against journalists.

What amazed me about Kashin’s story was the possibility that he had been beaten for writing something that in America seems unimportant to the point of boring: A proposed highway that city residents oppose but local authorities want. Show-Me Daily authors frequently blog about transportation boondoggles because there’s so much material. We get excited if commenters even bother to respond, and when we go home at night, we don’t bother to check under our cars for stray wires.

Chess champion Garry Kasparov, at a recent Show-Me Institute lecture, spoke about how he has spoken out strongly against government tyranny in Russia in recent years. Stories like his and Kashin’s make me thankful that, despite all of the waste and favoritism in Missouri, at least I, my coworkers, and anyone else can write about it.

But I shouldn’t get too warm and fuzzy about how great it is that bloggers and policy analysts aren’t beaten for criticizing Missouri government. There have been recent cases when the politically powerful have worked either to quash the rights of those who aren’t so well connected to government power, or simply used the system to their own benefit.

• In late November 2009, Gustavo Rendon, an anti–eminent domain activist, was arrested for distributing flyers critical of a development project heavily subsidized by the government. Perhaps it is a coincidence that he happened to be distributing those flyers outside the church of Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, a staunch supporter of the project.
• In February 2010, the Columbia Police Department’s SWAT officers kicked down Jonathon Whitworth’s door, held him, his wife, and seven-year-old son at gunpoint, and shot two of his dogs, killing one, and leaving the other, a corgi, wounded. This was all on the suspicion (unfounded) that Whitworth “was dealing a significant amount of marijuana.” Fortunately, the incident has prompted an investigation and review of the police department’s practices.
• Because Missouri still severely limits where a child can go to school, students at failing school districts are being prohibited from transferring to better districts. As discussed in the documentary Waiting for “Superman,” some schools have student dropout rates of greater than 50 percent. It is atrocious that a lack of educational choice (charter schools, voucher programs) can limit students to these “dropout factories.”
• In September, the state auditor reported that the Department of Economic Development (DED), which awards hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits each year, was inflating estimates of the economic investment that would come about if tax credits were awarded. In one case, the DED reported a number 10 times too high.
• Occupational licensing, whereby the government limits who can do what for a living, generally allows a small group of people who stand to benefit greatly (those already in a particular industry) to limit future competition. This year, HVAC contractors were hit with increased licensing requirements.

I hope that 2011 will be a better year for Missouri government. I hope legislators will come to know that it really isn’t their job to tell people what to wear, do, say, or how to work. And if they don’t learn, I and the super-awesome champions of government restraint that are my coworkers will continue to point that out.

The post More Freedom, Please! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With vacancy pervasive throughout our community, St. Louisans may often logically conclude that said emptiness is the direct consequence of the stark reality that persons simply do not want to live here in the same numbers that they once did. In fact, it would be difficult to argue that losing nearly two-thirds of the city’s peak population would have a negligible impact on the appearance of the city’s landscape.

But does so much property necessarily remain vacant from a lack of market demand for single-family homes, larger yards, and new business locations, or could vacancy be the product of market distortion by a governmental agency?

At the urging of a colleague, I attended my first ever hearing of the St. Louis Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) on Wednesday morning, looking for an answer.

Within moments of its commencement, the meeting shattered every expectation that I had for a body with the following statutory mandate (emphasis and link added):

The land reutilization authority is hereby created to foster the public purpose of returning land which is in a nonrevenue generating nontax producing status, to effective utilization in order to provide housing, new industry, and jobs for the citizens of any city operating under the provisions of sections 92.700 to 92.920 and new tax revenues for said city.

Instead of operating in a manner consistent with its above-enumerated legislative intent, the LRA appeared to operate according to a morass of opaque cultural practices that stand divorced from any legislative language. Indeed, the insistence by the assembled commissioners that prospective buyers of tax-foreclosed properties have the express written support of the alderman representing the ward that is home to the vacant property struck me as patently absurd. (After all, the word “alderman” does not appear in Chapter 92 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri.) Five people attempted to purchase property from the LRA this month without a letter of support from their alderman. Of those five, four offers were rejected, because the LRA purportedly treats a lack of aldermanic support as a reason to reject a prospective buyer’s offer.

After witnessing Wednesday’s proceedings and perusing the many purchase offers on the LRA agenda, I can say with great certainty that much of the vacancy subject to the LRA’s jurisdiction in St. Louis city is not a consequence of a lack of private demand for property; rather, much of it derives from government legitimation and infringements on the free market.

The post Vacancy, Legitimated appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I have written about how owner-occupied homes appear to be slated for open space, as are some area businesses.

When I asked Ford-Griffin about the fate of Fehlig Brothers Box & Lumber, a 137-year-old area business that, according to NorthSide’s plans, will become open space, she said that much detail can’t be read into the company’s plans.

“That is a concept,” she said. “That is not a document where you take it and say this is what’s going on this block and this is what’s going on that block,” she said.

You can read the updated report, with Ford-Griffin’s comments, here.

The post April Ford-Griffin on Proposed “Open Space” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Although we haven’t yet discussed it on the blog, I hope that all of our readers are aware that the St. Louis Police arrested Gustavo Rendon, husband of the president of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance. Why? Because he was distributing fliers that opposed the NorthSide redevelopment project recently approved by the city. Even worse, he just happened to be doing so outside the church of Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, a staunch supporter of the project. So, two police officers arrived, threatened to put his kids in foster care if he didn’t stop distributing the fliers, then arrested him.

The charge? Affixing advertisements to private property.

Fortunately, the city attorneys quickly realized that the ordinance under which they arrested him didn’t, you know, prohibit what he was doing. And even if it had prohibited distributing fliers that communicated purely political ideas, the ordinance probably would have been unconstitutional anyway. So, today they announced that they were dropping the charges.

The bigger problem, which I hope to address with Mr. Brennan, is that Mr. Rendon’s arrest is suggestive of a much larger problem: powerful people trying to stop citizens from having their say on important public issues. In this case, it was police officers arresting someone for communicating opposition to a redevelopment project. In Jim Roos’ case, a city agency is trying to destroy a sign calling for an end to eminent domain abuse. In the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District, officials tried to fine and ban from future meetings certain taxpayers who protested the district’s insane spending. And, of course, the Missouri Municipal League is using taxpayer money for a lawsuit with the primary goal of keeping off the ballot a constitutional amendment that would go a long way toward ending eminent domain abuse in the state — because they know it will pass if citizens are allowed to vote!

So, like I said, tune in tomorrow morning as Charlie Brennan and I discuss these issues. Who knows, there might even be some interesting surprises involved. And, if you can’t listen to tomorrow’s show, keep an eye on the Policy Pulse website, where Audrey Spalding is continuing to do excellent work reporting on abuses of taxpayer money and government authority.

The post Listen In on Thursday Morning appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The lawyer for a recently approved redevelopment of 1,500 acres in the city of Saint Louis’ north side says that the development company, NorthSide Regeneration LLC, will likely need eminent domain to acquire about 20 properties in the redevelopment area. The project, put forward by developer Paul McKee, has been contentious in the past because of the perceived threat of eminent domain, and because it calls for nearly $400 million in tax increment financing (TIF) from the city.

Paul Puricelli, who works for the law firm Stoney, Leyton, & Gershman, is representing NorthSide as a defendant in a lawsuit that alleges, among other things, that the city’s TIF Commission and Board of Aldermen didn’t fully investigate the financial backing of the proposed NorthSide project before recommending and approving it.

Puricelli made an hour-long presentation at the Missouri Bar Association’s Committee on Eminent Domain on Nov. 20. Members of the committee include prominent eminent domain attorneys with private practices, and attorneys who work for state agencies that often use eminent domain, such as the Missouri Department of Transporation (MoDOT).

Dave Roland, a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, recorded the proceedings of the Nov. 20 committee meeting, from which all of the following quotes and statements are taken.

During the presentation, Puricelli stated that there are about 20 properties, which are not owner-occupied residences, that NorthSide needs but hasn’t been able to acquire, and that the company is hoping to utilize the power of eminent domain to obtain them.

“We have publicly stated that we anticipate that there will be 20 or fewer parcels subject to eminent domain for the redevelopment,” Puricelli said during the meeting. “Before you get too worried, Bob [an eminent domain attorney], there’s also going to be some infrastructure work by the city, also the possibility of eminent domain there.”

“For our purposes, we narrowed it down to 20 or fewer parcels,” he continued. “But eminent domain is viewed certainly by us as a critical component to getting those last 20 parcels acquired.”

McKee has stated in the past that he does not wish to use eminent domain, and a statement posted on NorthSide’s website states: “[Eminent domain] is lengthy, requires many hours of legal time, is a drain on government resources, and is not the method by which McEagle seeks to acquire any piece of ground within the redevelopment area.”

McKee, when reached by phone, refused to comment on Puricelli’s statements.

Currently, NorthSide does not have the power of eminent domain. However, the redevelopment agreement between the city and the company states that eminent domain can be used either for a public use, for things like roads, or “if the Developer has pursued and exhausted efforts to voluntarily acquire property the Board of Aldermen deems necessary to implement one or more portions of the Redevelopment Plan and deems critical to the Redevelopment Plan’s success.”

A number of attorneys for the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) attended the Nov. 20 meeting, and acknowledged the agency’s almost certain role in the redevelopment’s road projects. “The 800 pound gorilla in this thing is MoDOT,” said one of the department’s attorneys.

Puricelli, who said he has been on both sides of the eminent domain issue, said that critics often focus on eminent domain during development, but that its use is necessary for such projects, and is not the devil it’s made out to be. Alderman Freeman Bosly, Sr., has also publicly voiced a similar sentiment.

When read several of the statements that Puricelli made to the committee, north side activist Romona Taylor Williams said she hadn’t heard any statements regarding the 20 or so properties to which Puricelli had referred during the meeting.

“I’ve not heard anything to that affect,” she said. “The only thing that the alderpersons have been saying to the community is that there is no eminent domain. And we know that’s not true.”

Aldermen April Ford-Griffin and Marlene Davis did not return immediate calls for comment. Both have made presentations at many community meetings with McKee about the project and have clearly stated that eminent domain would not be used.

“We need to do a better job of educating people, the Board of Aldermen, and the public about eminent domain, and what it is and what it isn’t,” Puricelli said. “For these types of projects to move forward, we still have the possibility — the hope of getting this right. But it is not a guarantee. And it will be a serious, serious problem if we don’t get it. For other redevelopment projects, it could be a stake in the heart.”

“These are parcels we couldn’t acquire under the radar,” Puricelli said later during the meeting when asked why McEagle hadn’t been able to purchase them. “Properties we need to make this thing ultimately work.”

When reached by phone for comment on his statements at the meeting, Puricelli said that 20 properties was the maximum number of properties that had ever been discussed as potentially being subject to eminent domain. “The hope is to acquire all of these properties voluntarily,” he said.

“I suspect that accommodations would have to be made,” Puricelli said when asked what NorthSide would do if the Board of Aldermen refused to grant the power of eminent domain for the remaining properties. “They would have to develop without that power.”

Bob Denlow, a prominent eminent domain and condemnation attorney in Saint Louis who represents property owners and serves as chairman of the Missouri Bar Association’s Committee on Eminent Domain, said the area was largely vacant.

“For those of you who have never driven through this area — it looks like a series of football fields — it is vacant, vacant, vacant land,” he said during the meeting. “Some of the controversy is that McKee has accelerated the decline by having bought properties and leaving them vacant. That has been an accusation. But for those people who are really familiar with the area, it’s just grass field.”

Williams, the activist who has been critical of the NorthSide Regeneration redevelopment process, strongly disagreed when asked to comment on Denlow’s characterization.

“You have a massive area that no one is giving any attention to at all,” she said. “For instance, the homes that are in the 19th ward. These are stable communities, but no one puts any attention on the 19th ward.”

“Or,” she continued, “what about this church, Shining Light, that has been in this community since 1938 and now their property is slated for open space?”

To see a Google map of the redevelopment area buildings and boundary lines, click here.

The post NorthSide Lawyer Says Eminent Domain Needed for Up to 20 Properties appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The board considered a number of bills today, and we heard the reading of a number of bills which would declare properties around town “blighted.” A couple of bills designated federal grant money for Lambert Airport, and a few dealt with approving financing for the Kiel Opera House.

At one point, when the proceedings had moved along rapidly for quite some time, Alderman Joe Vaccaro of the 23rd ward stood to move for approval of a rezoning bill he’d sponsored. For the first time in the meeting, roll was called for votes, and nearly every member in turn voted “no.” Every previous bill had passed without hesitation, and Stokes and I really wondered what was up. As soon as the votes were tallied, a revote was called and this time it passed unanimously. Suddenly, David understood and explained to me: This is a relatively new alderman, and they were playing a prank on him. We both found it pretty funny.

Much less funny was Resolution #50, calling on the Post-Dispatch to “reject the predatory practice of job outsourcing and keep St. Louis area jobs in St. Louis.” There was some discussion of the matter. Alderman Stephen Conway of the 8th ward in particular took the opportunity to admonish the hypocrisy of those who shout down outsourcing while driving foreign-made cars, and a third alderman who spoke on the matter agreed with these anti-outsourcing views.

During this discussion, the viewpoint I hold was completely unrepresented, although it is also largely the stance held by the economic profession as a whole. Outsourcing is only bad in the short term for the specific people laid off. But it also means that customers continue to get the things they were getting before (often for cheaper prices), and a mobile labor force allows both new and existing businesses to find potential employees more easily.

If you read only one critique of protectionism, let it be this.

There was also some heated discussion about a resolution “to convene hearings of the Public Safety Committee for the purpose of reviewing the conditions of the City jails in relation to the report of the ACLU-EM […]” At least one member of the Board of Aldermen has a personal distaste for the ACLU, and it showed — but ultimately the resolution passed.

Much of the time I spent there, I was struck with how civil and efficient the whole process appeared, and reminded of a blog post by Clovis Ouangraoua discussing how remarkable a peaceful government is. For any St. Louisan interested in seeing the process of local government in action, I honestly recommend visiting your Board of Aldermen for a meeting. The biggest praise I can give is that the whole affair was very efficient in terms of time, an attribute I chalk up largely to the guidance of Board President Lewis Reed, who wasted no time while officiating the proceedings.

The post The Heart of Government appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I prefer to see an election take place between elected officials’ salary increases, rather than for them to just go and do it — or, in the case of Kansas City, accept one that was scheduled. There is nothing wrong with elected officials getting raises, I just like to see voters get a chance to take those items into consideration when they vote. Other than that timing issue, I do not think Kansas City officials are overpaid.

We have a strange and related item going on in Saint Louis city. The president of the Board of Aldermen and the comptroller have both added a budget item for security to their offices. In short, they both want a deputy sheriff to essentially be a bodyguard for them. In their defense, the positions would be "as needed" and not full-time — which is especially appropriate for the president of the board, as that is not a full-time position itself.  Even with the realization that the bodyguards would not be full time, only the highest-profile public officials really need bodyguards. The county executive of Saint Louis County does not have any security, so I certainly don’t think the comptroller and president of the Board of Aldermen need it.

The best item in the entire article, though, is at the end when State Rep. Tom Villa, formerly president of the Board of Aldermen, commits a classic Kinsley Gaffe. Here’s a quote from Villa, who had security when he was board president:

Tom Villa, the last Board of Aldermen president to have a deputy sheriff assigned to him, said he used the position as an extra staffer, "running errands, delivering papers and, in some cases, serving as a driver."

Just classic. You provide a bodyguard for security so an elected official can have someone else to run errands. Beautiful.

The post Bodyguards and Pay Raises for City Officials appeared first on Show-Me Institute.