The recent spate of dramatic hikes in assessed value in Jackson County, in which Kansas City sits, is the reason for the renewed legislative interest. In addition to an excess of 14,000 formal appeals filed against Jackson County assessments by property owners, the county has drawn separate lawsuits from the ACLU and Legal Aid of Western Missouri.

As a result of this, there have been several bills introduced in the Missouri legislature that place caps on increases to a property’s assessed value. Several joint resolutions were introduced that would amend the Missouri Constitution along similar lines. One initiative petition would eliminate the ability of the state and localities to collect property taxes altogether.

Writers at the Show-Me Institute have written about problems with property tax assessments for years, going back at least a decade. There are many reasons for the situation at hand, including a determination by the State Tax Commission that assessments in Jackson County were too low. Another may be that taxing jurisdictions are struggling to provide services because economic development policies such as tax-increment financing and property tax abatements divert funds away from taxing jurisdictions and toward wealthy and well-connected developers. Kansas City area library systems have sought to increase their levies in recent years to address this. The Kansas City Public School district is uniquely exempt from having to reduce its levy when assessments go up—it will see an increase in revenue due to the new assessments.

Regardless of the cause for the increased assessments, cities and counties are likely to strongly object to any effort to curtail their ability to collect property taxes. They will talk about how doing so will harm their ability to fund basic services such as public safety and schools. Unfortunately, their practice of diverting tax dollars to private interests undercuts that claim. Local leaders must be dedicated to collecting public funds for public purposes or not collecting them at all—lest they face a Prop 13 of their own.

The post Prop 13 Comes to Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With respect to a uniform system of public education, Judge Eric Johnson argued “The Legislature can provide for a uniform system of common schools, free from religious instruction and open to general attendance by all Nevada children, and still adopt other suitable means of encouraging education.” Pretty airtight logic there.

With respect to the state’s Blaine Amendment, as my friend Jason Bedrick points out over at the Cato Institute’s blog, the court argued that the state’s Blaine Amendment “was not intended to preclude any expenditure that has an incidental benefit to religion, where such is made for a primary secular purpose.” It built upon this reasoning by arguing that the ESA “was enacted for the valid secular purpose of providing financial assistance to parents to take advantage of educational options available to Nevada children.” The fact that some religious organizations might benefit is “ancillary and indirect.” Game. Set. Match.

This ruling matters for those of us hoping to see an ESA program created in Missouri. Missouri has an extremely restrictive Blaine Amendment that libertarian legal scholars have feared would preclude any kind of private school choice program that is not funded through tax credited donations.  If the standard jurisprudence on these programs concludes (correctly, I’d argue, for what its worth) that ESAs are created primarily for the secular purpose of educating children and that religious organizations only benefit second-hand, it might change the state of play here.

All told, last week was a great one for school choice, and I hope that the Judge’s decision will be supported if and when his ruling is appealed.

The post Education Savings Accounts Found Constitutional in Nevada appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Saint Louis City’s system violates due process because  tickets sent to alleged violators do not contain information about a court hearing date or the right to contest. That means, attorney Bevis Schock (a Show-Me Institute board member) told KMOX, that “. . . there’s no way the defendant, the person receiving the notice, understands that there’s a right to a hearing.”

Hopefully this ruling will help bring about the elimination of red light cameras in Missouri. In our state, red light cameras have not been shown to increase safety. But they are popular, perhaps because they can help a city raise a great deal of revenue from traffic tickets.

This latest ruling throws the continued operation of red light cameras in Saint Louis City into question. One Saint Louis attorney has said that he would advise family members to not pay red light camera tickets because the penalty for the ticket appears to be just threatening letters from a company in Texas.

In related news, at the most recent Columbia City Council meeting, city officials reported that the installation of red light cameras had resulted in more than a four-fold increase in tickets. The city has issued more than 3,500 tickets since the cameras were installed in September 2009, compared to an average of about 330 tickets before the cameras were installed.

And earlier this year, Kansas City found that red light cameras in its city had not increased safety, as promised. In fact, the study found that both accidents and fatal accidents had increased at a majority of intersections where red light cameras are installed.

For more information about the policy questions regarding red light cameras, watch Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst David Stokes’ recent vlog on the Saint Louis red light camera issue, or check out our “Policing By Camera” panel discussion with Lembke, Saint Louis Alderman Antonio French, and Redditt Hudson of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The post Another Judge Rules Saint Louis’ Red Light Camera System Unconstitutional appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Franklin County has and continues to violate the state’s Constitution by allocating hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars annually to fund counseling and antibullying programs in area private schools.

That’s according to Tony Rothert, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri.

The Blaine Amendment of the Missouri Constitution prohibits the use of public funds to support or sustain any school controlled by any religious creed, church, or sectarian denomination. The Missouri Supreme Court previously struck down statutes requiring that bus services and textbooks be provided to private school students. 

Annie Schulte, executive director of the Franklin County Children and Families Community Resource Board (FCCRB), raised a number of arguments detailing why the program does not violate the Missouri Constitution; unfortunately, none of them are very persuasive. The use of public funds to support a sectarian school is unconstitutional, whether the funds are paid directly to the school or indirectly support the school. The Franklin County program is also not analogous to Title I. Title I grants bypass the state and local agencies and go directly to independent contractors. Because no state or local agency ever controls the funds, they are not “public funds.” The FCCRB, on the other hand, is a local agency and does control the funds. 

The fact that the Franklin County program seemingly is unconstitutional is an illustration of how the Blaine Amendment currently stands as an obstacle to the freedom of school choice for students in failing districts, such as Saint Louis and Kansas City. As University of Missouri-Columbia Professor Michael Podgursky argued, the rigidity of the Blaine Amendment is keeping students stuck in unaccredited schools following the Missouri Supreme Court’s Turner decision. While the Supreme Court of the United States held that a voucher program for students to attend a private sectarian school does not violate the federal constitution, it is clear that a similar program would be struck down in Missouri. If the state cannot provide private school students with books, buses, and (probably) counseling services, a voucher program stands no chance of passing constitutional muster.

It is unfortunate that students at private sectarian schools likely cannot receive counseling services from the Franklin County program, but students who are stuck in unaccredited, failing schools is a much bigger issue. Given accredited public schools’ unwillingness to accept students from failing districts, these students may remain stuck until the Blaine Amendment is repealed.

The post Is Franklin County Violating The State’s Blaine Amendment? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This panel discussion is our attempt to explore the issues of liberty at stake, as well as provide the opportunity for anyone who is interested to meet the panelists and to ask questions.

The discussion will begin at 6:00 p.m. TODAY at the Show-Me Institute’s office at 4512 W. Pine Blvd in the Central West End of Saint Louis.

The event is free, and snacks will be provided. However, because Liberty on Tour is traveling across the country, we suggest a $5 to $10 donation to help pay for the group’s travel costs.

Our star-studded panel includes:

• Adam Mueller and Pete Eyre of Liberty on Tour, a project to tour 13 cities in 13 weeks to talk about the principles of voluntaryism. Adam is also a founder of Cop Block, an organization devoted to watchdogging police officers who break the law. Pete Eyre currently works for the Future of Freedom Foundation, which advocates for individual liberty, free markets, private property rights, and limited government. Both Adam and Pete were part of the Motorhome Diaries project.
• Redditt Hudson, of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. Redditt is a former Saint Louis police officer, and part of his work at the ACLU is to lead workshops that educate people about their rights under the law, including practical advice about how to interact with the police.
• John Payne, a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute, will be moderating the discussion. John has argued for greater transparency and recording of SWAT raids in Missouri, and follows issues of civil asset forfeiture closely.

If you have the time, please drop by, and don’t hesitate to bring questions! The panelists will speak briefly about their perspectives on recording the police, and then we will open up the discussion for questions from the general public. After about an hour of discussion, we will move the group to Sasha’s on Shaw for dinner and drinks.

If you can’t make it, you can send questions you’d like asked to info@showmeinstitute.org, tweet them to @showmeinstitute, or post questions on the event’s Facebook wall. Finally, we will film the discussion and post it online for those who cannot attend.

The post Tonight: Panel Discussion on Recording the Police and Your Rights appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These arrests raise interesting questions of privacy expectations, free speech, differing state laws, and, as Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko has noted, your right to petition the government. This panel discussion is our attempt to explore the issues of liberty at stake, as well as provide the opportunity for anyone who is interested to meet the panelists and to ask questions.

The discussion will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, August 20, at the Show-Me Institute’s office at 4512 W. Pine Blvd in the Central West End of Saint Louis. Please RSVP either by email to info@showmeinstitute.org, by phone to (314) 454-0647, or by commenting on this blog entry.

The event is free and snacks will be provided. However, because Liberty on Tour is traveling across the country, we suggest a $5 to $10 donation to help pay for the group’s travel costs.

Our star-studded panel includes:

• Adam Mueller and Pete Eyre of Liberty on Tour, a project to tour 13 cities in 13 weeks to talk about the principles of voluntaryism. Adam is also a founder of Cop Block, an organization devoted to watchdogging police officers who break the law. Pete Eyre currently works for the Future of Freedom Foundation, which advocates for individual liberty, free markets, private property rights, and limited government. Both Adam and Pete were part of the Motorhome Diaries project.
• Redditt Hudson, of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. Redditt is a former Saint Louis police officer, and part of his work at the ACLU is to lead workshops that educate people about their rights under the law, including practical advice about how to interact with the police.
• John Payne, a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute, will be moderating the discussion. John has argued for greater transparency and recording of SWAT raids in Missouri, and follows issues of civil asset forfeiture closely.

If you have the time, please drop by, and don’t hesitate to bring questions! The panelists will speak briefly about their perspectives on recording the police, and then we will open up the discussion for questions from the general public. After about an hour of discussion, we will move the group to Sasha’s on Shaw for dinner and drinks.

If you can’t make it, you can send questions you’d like asked to info@showmeinstitute.org, tweet them to @showmeinstitute, or post questions on the event’s Facebook wall. Finally, we will film the discussion and post it online for those who cannot attend.

The post Recording the Police and Your Rights: A Panel Discussion With Liberty on Tour and the ACLU appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sax understands that single-gender classrooms may not be for everyone, but he believes people should have a choice. He also questions why schools segregate classrooms based on age but not gender.

It’s assumed that students will attend class with others of the same age because it’s gone on for so long. We’re used to it, and almost nobody protests age segregation in schools. But when a few single-sex charters open, or when districts allow single-sex classes, the idea threatens established educational policy and prompts knee-jerk condemnation. For example, the ACLU says it opposes single-sex public schooling “because it deprives both girls and boys of the benefits of co-education,” a statement that means nothing unless you specify what those benefits are and explain why students have a right to them. One could just as well criticize coed classrooms for depriving students of the benefits of single-sex education.

Sax brings up the analogy in order to argue for single-sex education, but it can also be used to justify teaching students of different ages in class together. Grouping students by sex isn’t for everyone; neither is grouping students by age. Like the parents who would choose coed classrooms even when a single-sex option is available, there are parents who would prefer multi-age classrooms if they had a choice.

It would be great if more public schools offered multi-age education. An easy way to do this is by opening charter schools; parents who want multi-age classes could enroll their children in charters with this specialty. Or traditional public schools could start multi-age tracks, the same way that Parkway’s Carmen Trails Elementary offers elective single-sex classes.

The post Single-Sex Classrooms and Single-Age Classrooms appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A home on the 2300 block of Mullanphy. Photo by Audrey Spalding.

SAINT LOUIS — A chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit today claiming that a city ordinance banning people from putting pamphlets on car windshields violates the constitutional right to free speech. You can read the organization’s press release here.

The arrest of Gustavo Rendon that spurred this lawsuit happened after Rendon placed fliers advertising a petition drive on car windshields. His fliers promoted a referendum on a recently approved 1,500-acre development of the city’s north side.

Details of Rendon’s arrest records are unclear, mostly because of heavy redactions. According to Donald Re, counselor at the city’s police department, those redactions were made because the charges against Rendon were dropped.

The ordinance, 11.18.180, reads: “No person shall throw or deposit any commercial or noncommercial handbill in or upon any vehicle without the owner’s consent. Provided, however, that it shall not be unlawful in any public place for a person to hand out or distribute without charge to the receiver thereof a noncommercial handbill to any occupant of a vehicle who is willing to accept it.”

From the lawsuit: “Most recently Plaintiffs have been alarmed by their perception that the City of St. Louis is acting together with a particular developer to the detriment of residents who do not have an effective voice in St. Louis City government.” You can read the entire lawsuit here.

The post ACLU Files Free-Speech Lawsuit Against City 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.

Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central‘s immensely popular faux-conservative talk-show host and sometime presidential candidate, coined the term "truthiness" to describe things that people "know" intuitively without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. The idea would be funnier if not for the real-world consequences of allowing prevailing opinions to overwhelm evidence to the contrary.

On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents chose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school. Professor David Webber took the vote as an occasion to argue that states should abandon education reforms that would provide immediate solutions for parents through the use of public funds that would help them send their children to the schools best suited to address their families’ needs. His rationale? A perceived lack of public support for "vouchers" — a term that studies show people
disfavor, even when they support the underlying idea of school choice.

Webber’s arguments, however, are the same "truthiness" that the National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU have trotted out prior to the adoption of each of the 19 K-12 school choice programs that remain active throughout the nation. As those programs have progressed, it has become increasingly clear that the doom-and-gloom predictions made by school choice opponents are utterly divorced from reality. Fourteen states (including Utah and the District of Columbia) currently maintain at least one school choice program, each of which is steadily growing and proving its value to the communities supporting them. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed
to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Consider Milwaukee, home of the nation’s first modern parental choice program. During the past 18 years, multiple studies of that program have shown performance improvements in Milwaukee public schools. Low-income parents have been so pleased with their newfound educational freedom that the program had to be expanded to accommodate the overwhelming demand for scholarships. Schools have sprouted in disadvantaged neighborhoods to serve parents who otherwise would have seen their children bused to public schools that were not meeting their needs. Graduation rates at scholarship schools are nearly double the graduation rates at traditional public schools. And contrary to preliminary concerns about the expense of non-public education and the threat of bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. The city is saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice. Milwaukee’s experience proves that choice can and does work to improve the lives of families.

Webber’s objection to school choice is especially perplexing, because he agrees that "parents should be able to select a particular local school that fits their transportation and teaching needs [… and] parents should have wider choices of education services." Indeed, many studies of the nation’s choice programs confirm that education improves when parents and children have the freedom to choose their schools. Alas, Webber insists — without citing any facts or studies to support his position — that choice should be limited to public schools. These things happen when "truthiness" takes hold.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to families participating in the programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., and you will hear parents tell amazing stories about the improvement in student achievement levels, and voice their markedly increased satisfaction with their children’s schools. Equipped with the evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, we can move beyond "truthiness" and develop a plan to offer Missouri’s families the kind of educational freedom that has already helped so many students realize their potential.

The post Truthiness and School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents choose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school.

The defeat of Utah’s universal choice program was, in essence, a triumph of misinformation. The most commonly voiced concern about the program was that it would destroy public schools, abandoning thousands of poor and minority kids to educational oblivion and forcing the public to subsidize private-school educations for wealthy white families. The National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU sounded that alarm again and again in millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements preceding the election, and that message ended up resonating with Utah’s voters.

Unfortunately, the message was patently false. You see, those organizations have trotted out the same stale arguments for nearly 20 years, ever since Milwaukee began considering what would become the first modern school choice program. Choice opponents repeated them ad nauseam prior to the adoption of each of the 19 programs that remain active throughout the nation. In practice, however, not one of their doom-and-gloom predictions has come to pass.

Multiple studies of school choice programs have shown no decline in the academic performance of impacted public schools, and a recent study published by the anti-choice Economic Policy Institute even acknowledges that Milwaukee public schools’ performance improved when that city’s program expanded to accommodate parents’ overwhelming demand for scholarships. And, contrary to all the concerns raised about bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. By saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), the city is actually saving a great deal of money while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice.

It is tragic that choice opponents’ misinformation successfully persuaded Utahns to deny thousands of low-income children their first chance to attend the best schools available. A $3,000 scholarship might not have allowed every low-income family to afford a private school education (the average private school in Utah costs between $3,500 and $4,000 a year), but it would have at least put that opportunity in reach for parents desperate to help their children achieve a better, more prosperous life, and it would have done so without harming public schools. The vote against this scholarship program ensures that those children will continue to have only two choices: remain in the public schools that are failing them, or drop out altogether.

Fortunately, choice programs nationwide are steadily growing and proving that educational freedom helps children succeed. Despite the vote, Utah remains one of 14 states (including the District of Columbia) with an active school choice program. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to people who live in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and other places where school choice has been active for years. Rather than the dire consequences predicted by choice opponents, observers will find improved levels of overall student achievement and markedly increased satisfaction for hundreds of thousands of parents. Equipped with evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, hopefully we will not succumb to the fears that have cost so many children their best chance for a high-quality education.

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.

The post Learn From Others’ Experience With School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.