Despite these objections, Saint Louis regional officials allowed the project to move forward. The trolley, they promised, would lead to development. Trolley planners also assured residents that the money needed would come from a transportation development district (TDD) around the line, along with federal grants. As we pointed out in a previous post, trolley planners originally stated that cost overruns would not be the responsibility of city or county taxpayers.

However, as of late 2014, the Loop Trolley faced cost overruns. Initial construction bids came back $11 million over the project’s $43 million budget. The project was put out to bid once more, and Loop Trolley planners announced the project was within the budget and everything was fine. But actually, the second round of bids still came back $8 million over budget.

Instead of looking to the Trolley’s TDD to cover cost overruns, trolley planners sought regional tax dollars. This included money from Great Rivers Greenway (a sales tax–funded body designed to build recreational trails) and an additional $5.4 million federal grant (which required a local match).

None of these efforts was known to the public until November, 2015, well after the construction of the trolley was underway. The overruns only became public because the Saint Louis County Council had to approve the $3 million needed to match the aforementioned federal grant. That money will come from County’s mass transit fund, which means that more than $8 million is being diverted from transit projects in the County. That $3 million easily could have matched other, similarly sized federal grants for transit projects of the county’s choosing. Now it will be spent on the trolley.

Summing it up, trolley planners sold their project to Saint Louis residents with a budget that would not work and promises they could not keep. When that became apparent, those planners said nothing, quietly committed local residents to pay for overruns, and then started putting rails in the streets. Presented with this fait accompli, the County Council approved what amounts to an $8 million bailout. In essence, the Council rewarded the tactics of trolley planners.

The post The Loop Trolley Bailout: A Retrospective appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City leaders may aspire to be Portland or Denver, but their legislative actions make us more akin to third world dictatorships. Declaring emergencies to circumvent important legislative requirements is unacceptable. That it does so often and has for years is no salve.

On May 2, Kansas City’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard testimony on ordinance 130335, which would pay an engineering firm several million dollars for streetcar planning. It also declared an emergency. What is the emergency? When asked, Chairman Russ Johnson said, “If you look on the agenda you will see that numerous ordinances have an emergency clause on there. It is fairly routine to place an emergency clause on capital projects because it makes the ordinance become effective immediately rather than [after] a 10-day waiting period. The term emergency is in the Charter. Maybe that was the wrong term, maybe it should be some other type of term but the Charter authors use the term emergency.”

In other words, Johnson claims the word has no real meaning, it is just a term the city can slap on an ordinance to get past important legislative restrictions.

Johnson is partially correct. At least four other items on the agenda that day declared emergencies, and the city has been operating this way for years. It is also wrong.

Section 503 of the City Charter defines emergency ordinances: “An ordinance recognizing an emergency is an ordinance which in whole or in part falls within any of the following categories and is recognized in the ordinance as an emergency.” The categories are elections, expenses of government, appropriation of money, public improvements, inter-fund borrowing, and fixing interest rates. As a result, the city recognizes an emergency whenever it wants to dispense with the regular requirements of governing, such as multiple hearings, 10-day waiting periods, or a voter’s right to referenda.

The Charter has those requirements to protect voters and to serve as a check on legislative abuse. It allows for emergency legislation when there is, well, an actual emergency. The courts have upheld this view, saying that merely recognizing an emergency is not sufficient to dispense with the rules.

In Hatfield v. Meers, 402 S.W.2d 35 (Mo. App. K.C. 1966), the court ruled, “[T]he affixing of an emergency clause to a statute or ordinance does not, of itself, make it an emergency measure within the meaning of the law.” The court went further and offered an actual definition. “The word ’emergency’ has been defined as follows: ‘an unforeseen combination of circumstances which calls for immediate action’”

What about an engineering firm’s work on the streetcar project is unforeseen or needs immediate action? Nothing.

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled similarly. In Padberg v. Ruse, 404 S.W.2d 161 (Mo. Banc 1966), the court rejected the notion that a Saint Louis County effort was an emergency just because the County Council said so. “There is nothing in the subject matter of either ordinance which even suggests an emergency. One transfers some employees to the Merit System. The other changes an office from elective to an appointed status. It is hard to imagine anything less emergency in nature.” Likewise, in Kansas City, nothing about these ordinances is an emergency. They were adopted incorrectly and the courts should strike them down.

Kansas City government has abused this provision so often and for so long that City Council members do not even recognize the abuse. Johnson says the term is merely a poor choice of words — as if those words have no bearing on his job. This is unacceptable and, frankly, embarrassing. Sloppy legislative work like this risks the important work the City Council has done on many issues. Anyone who petitions the court is likely to be granted an injunction against most everything passed in this manner, as they should.

Declaring an emergency because the City Council is impatient — or because it fears public input — is an affront to democracy and a return to Kansas City’s darker past.

Patrick Tuohey is the western Missouri field manager at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Kansas City’s Eternal Emergency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How narrow of a private interest? Last Wednesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data showing that of all construction labor, only 13.2 percent is unionized, a drop from 14 percent last year, and a near-record low. Put another way, Saint Louis County rewrote its “responsible bidder” definitions to protect the one-eighth of the national construction industry that is unionized, leaving the vast super-majority of labor —which is non-union — basically in the lurch for county contracts. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Dave Nicklaus reported, union rolls in the state dropped by 51,000 members over the last year, putting overall Missouri union enrollment at “8.9 percent [of the workforce], down from 10.9 percent in 2011.” That fits the national trend lines.

Saint Louis County is trying to direct more money to fewer people, and the special interest nature of the change in the law is accentuated by last week’s construction employment data. Saint Louis County officials should reconsider their decision.

The post An Impromptu Follow-Up To ‘Responsible Bidder’ Blog Series appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The list of final recommendations on page 14 is the key part of the report (aside from page 226, obviously). It is interesting that the County Council acted against the recommendations of the commission, and placed this use tax on the November, 2008, ballot instead of waiting for April 2009. No further comments — it’s just interesting.

As of right now, it appears that county voters will get to vote on three tax/bond issues this Novermber. As it stands right now, I am in favor of the bond issue, against the use tax, and undecided (leaning in favor) on the Metro tax increase. I live near MetroLink and use it, so a very careful cost-benefit analysis of the service probably benefits me. I have to doubt it would work out that way for most people.

Briefly back to the commission report: Every member of the volunteer commission deserves thanks for dedicating their time to it. Especially Skip Mange, the chairman, who took time away from his grandkids to once again serve the people of the county.

The post Saint Louis County Blue Ribbon Commission Issues Its Report appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My advice to the good folks in Affton (and anywhere else where a developer is looking to assemble property) is to immediately read the Eminent Domain Survival Guide offered by the Institute for Justice. It offers invaluable information for those who find themselves in a situation where the government might take away their property. Second, I urge you to contact Anthony Martin, Missouri’s Property Rights Ombudsman. His job is to help Missourians understand the way that eminent domain is pursued in this state. And, finally, contact us at the Show-Me Institute so we can help tell your story and, hopefully, help save your home or business.

The post Textbook appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• First and foremost, Skip Mange is in charge of it. Skip is truly one of my favorite people. He was a great county councilman and a dedicated public servant. His engineering background will come out here. He is going to have to see a genuine need, hard facts, and a legitimate purpose before he supports any new taxes. (That is just my belief; he didn’t tell me that.) Skip certainly struck a note of temperance with his quote in the article:

Skip Mange, a Republican and former County Council member, is chairman of the commission. He said that supporters of the tax proposals "need to know which are not viable. They should not anticipate that all of them are politically available."

• The fact is that St. Louis County does have a great deal of room under its bonding authority at present. My initial opinion here is that if something has to be done (and the Family Court Building really does suck), then issuing bonds and extending — but not increasing — the property tax to pay off the bonds is the best way to do it.
• Finally, and very importantly, thanks to the Hancock Amendment no tax increase of any size will go forward without a vote of the people of St. Louis County. As the article states, several of these proposals have already been voted down. I am confident that the voters will make a good decision again regarding whatever this commission decides to support, if anything.

The post St. Louis County’s New Tax Commission Is Welcome Gift to Bloggers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But it’s worse than Mr. Hauke seems to think. The plan has been developed with an overt hostility toward the role of the free market. The July 31 report of the Solid Waste Management Task Force included this statement: "Allowing the conditions generated by the free market system currently in place in municipal trash services adversely affects the quality of life for all the citizens of the region."

The county’s solution to this "problem" is to impose a system of monopolistic supply, with responsibility taken away not only from individual residents, but removed from local control altogether. Problems of cost and accountability seem inevitable.

Under the present system, households and neighborhoods arrange private contracts for services. Prices are kept down and service standards are high because of active competition. The company I hire provides excellent service because the managers know that if I am dissatisfied, I can call the company that picks up my neighbor’s trash.

There are, of course, externalities from having multiple trash services visiting the neighborhood. That is a legitimate issue to be addressed. Some subdivisions coordinate through neighborhood associations. To the extent that the economic problem of "coordination failure" prevents mutually beneficial arrangements from being made among neighbors, a proper policy solution should seek to provide a framework for facilitating such arrangements, retaining local control and accountability. (An example can be found in the provisions of Missouri law for forming fire prevention districts.)

But the county’s plan takes a centralized approach. A monopoly provider will be chosen for each of eight districts, to be selected by the County Council. The county will take no responsibility for service, requiring only that providers maintain a customer service department. There is no plan for a "single-payer" system: Residents will be responsible for direct payment to the trash company that is selected by the government on their behalf.

This situation is fundamentally different than when a local municipality provides trash service. In the case of a municipality, customers/voters can hold their local elected officials collectively responsible for cost and service. Under the county’s plan, the only political recourse lies with a single councilmember — one of seven. The potential for political corruption is evident.

County officials have asserted that this centralized system will provide lower costs to residents. Certainly, there are economies of scale that have the potential to lower costs for the service provider. But whether or not these savings are passed along to consumers also depends on the degree of monopoly pricing power that emerges. Officials concede that some trash collection companies may be driven out of business by this plan. That can only enhance the monopoly position of surviving competitors for county contracts over time.

The imposition of centrally controlled trash districts for outlying unincorporated areas of the county represents an intrusion on individual freedom of choice, a disruption of the efficiency of free markets, and the imposition of a centrally controlled system that is unjustified by the presumed policy problem. It is also likely to result in the typical problems of unintended consequences that follow from the imposition of collectivist solutions to public policy issues.

The post County Trash Consolidation Intrudes on Individual Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a related event, Saint Louis County Residents For Property Tax Relief Now (or StLCRFPTRN, for short) intends to appear at tomorrow night’s County Council meeting to again demand a reduction in the county property tax rate. Although not legally required to roll back its tax rate, because it is so far below the authorized cap, St. Louis County lowered its rate under similar circumstances in 2005 and should do so again. I commend the activists within StLCRFPTRN for their dedication — although they should strongly consider shortening their name, along with demanding a rollback.

Both meetings should be interesting, if you are into this sort of thing — which I, for better or worse, am.

The post Two Major Meetings On Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Overall, the report was pretty fair. It made it clear that:

According to state law, it’s not the Akins’ job to inform the county. It’s the appraiser’s job to inspect the area physically.

No property owner in Missouri is responsible for informing the assessor if they believe their property is assessed to low. And with the high (and probably accurate) assessments on the three acres of residential property Akin owns, I am sure the congressman has long felt he paid his fair share of taxes. I just checked what they are paying each year in property taxes, and it is indeed very high, even with the benefits of two acres being agricultural. I am not going to post their personal tax info here, public info though it may be, but it is easy enough for anyone to do at the St. Louis County website if you don’t believe me.

This may be an interesting story, but the congressman has done absolutely nothing wrong. It may have been a scandal if the congressman or his family had appealed the valuation to get the designation changed to agricultural and claimed non-existing agricultural uses, but by all accounts that never happened. You might be surprised to know that there is no hard and fast rule as to what constitutes agricultural versus residential property on larger estates of more than one acre. The first acre, where the home is, will always be residential, but beyond that it is really up to the assessors.

This is not the first time I have heard complaints from people who live on smaller lots next to multi-acre estates about the agricultural designation and resulting tax benefits. I can’t recall the address, but when I worked for Kurt Odenwald on the County Council I remember getting calls about some 40-acre plot in far west county that had about 39 acres agricultural and 1 acre residential, with a very modest house. The neighbors, in their new McMansions on one-acre lots, were paying more in taxes for one acre than this person was for 40. There was nothing the assessor’s office could do about it, as the owner of the 40 acres kept a few horses on the land; agricultural seemed to be the correct designation.

Far from benefiting from his power as a congressman, Akin will almost certainly suffer for it as, because of his position, he may have to bow to public pressure and allow the assessor’s office to change the designation next year to residential without a fight. He would be well within his rights to fight to keep the agricultual designation, and something as simple as letting a pony roam the two acres, or planting a few tomato plants on them, would likely guarantee his success in that dispute. The St. Louis County assessor has over 300,000 properties it must assess every two years. There are going to be mistakes, oversights and confusion with so many lots. This one falls into the last category, sort of on the line between the two property classifications. However, just because the ball fell onto the right side of the line for Akin does not mean he did anything at all wrong or should be forced to give up his appeal rights because of media or political pressure.

The post I Rise in Defense of the Congressman … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The seat belt issues is moot for those of us in St. Louis County, as the County Council has already passed an ordinance mandating use of seat belts by everyone and giving authority for Police to pull you over and cite you for not wearing one.  I commend some legislators in the state house for resisting giving police the authority to pull you over for not wearing a seat belt.  I also commend those legislators who are moving forward with repealing the helmet law, although again local ordinances would still enforce that imposition here in St. Louis County.

Part of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes and poor choices.  I think not wearing a seat belt is a poor choice, but I don’t want to force that view on others.  Supporters often pose these safety laws as economically necessary, because taxpayers pay for the medical expenses of those hurt without wearing helmets or seat belts.  As the very same people who argue that are often the ones who support more socialism in medicine and higher taxes in general, I applaud their impressive synergy in advancing their goal of more state control of every aspect of our lives, while I abhore those beliefs. 

People should be as free to do what they wish as long as they do not harm someone else.  That sounds easy enough, and most people would agree with that statement in simple form, but the catch is in how you determine ‘harming’ someone else.  Are you harming someone if their taxes go to pay to fix their mistakes?  Why not change the laws regarding others paying for your medical care if you get hurt without wearing a seat belt?  I would prefer that to imposing another mandate on everyone.  The list of issues that these questions apply to is a long one, and will likely be the subject of another post in the near future.         

The post How free are we? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What does every city with a recent eminent domain controversy in Saint Louis County have in common? They are all “point-of-sale” cities, which keep the majority of sales taxes they collect under the County’s complicated sales tax distribution formula. Legislation has been introduced in Jefferson City that would exacerbate the problem. It would change the way sales taxes are distributed in Saint Louis County and revert back to the system that existed prior to 1994, which would have even greater potential for eminent-domain abuse. Abandoning the so-called “Westfall Plan” would be a mistake with serious repercussions for economic development.

In the early 1990s, Buzz Westfall and the County Council addressed the inequities in the collection and dispersion of sales taxes within Saint Louis County. At the time, cities with significant retail had their own sales taxes and kept all of the money. After difficult negotiations, a compromise was reached and Saint Louis County now has a countywide sales tax and a shared tax pool with point-of-sale, (or “A”) and “pool” (or “B”) cities. A cities keep the majority of their sales taxes but are required to share a portion with the pool. The rest of the county turns over all the sales taxes they collect to the pool, which is then redistributed to the B cities, which includes unincorporated Saint Louis County, based on population. Not surprisingly, A cities tend to be places with significant retail while the B cities have limited retail or large populations. The proposed legislation would end this system in 2008, allowing A cities to again keep all of the sales tax money they collect.

The current system acknowledges the fact that most shoppers going to the Galleria don’t live in Richmond Heights. It also benefits the business environment in our area by rewarding non-retail economic development. If Webster Groves attracts a new corporate headquarters, that would clearly generate significant new sales taxes for the area based on the new jobs and employees brought to the region. Why should a neighboring A city with significant shopping, such as Brentwood, keep all of the sales taxes generated within Brentwood by the new employees of that Webster Groves company? Eliminating the pool contributions of A cities would further press all cities to search for ways to increase sales taxes and grow retail development at the expense of other modes of the economy, such as finance and manufacturing, which generate the salaries used to go shopping in the first place.

That pressure to increase the retail economy, as opposed to other types of development, is one of the main reasons behind the eminent domain abuses we have seen in recent years in Saint Louis County. It is not a coincidence that all of the controversial eminent domain actions in Saint Louis County have occurred in A cities such as Sunset Hills, Manchester, Rock Hill and Clayton. Residential areas such as the one at issue in Sunset Hills have more tax value to B cities, where a city’s population is a significant factor in the amount received from the pool.

The argument in favor of allowing A cities to keep all of the sales tax would be stronger if those cities were responsible for all the infrastructure that supported the development. However, the primary shopping areas are, for obvious reasons, located along major roadways. Those roadways are usually state or county roads that taxpayers throughout Saint LouisCounty pay to maintain, not just the municipalities they run through. There are other examples, such as fire department mutual aid agreements, that demonstrate the interconnected nature of local government in Saint Louis County and argue for keeping the current sales tax pool distribution system.

In the interest of property owners, the contributions of A cities to the sales tax pool should be maintained. All types of industry and commerce benefit our community, not just retail sales outlets. If anything, the pool should be expanded further so that all cities would benefit from development throughout the county, not just within their own borders. The current system helps to relieve the pressure on local governments to constantly generate more sales tax dollars by any means necessary and preserve the property rights so central to the rights of free people.

David Stokes is a writer living in University City.

The post Don’t Drain the Sales Tax Pool appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Airport has been the hotbed of taxi controversies in our area.  Back in the 90’s, the airport cab regulation was so stringent that no new drivers had an opportunity to work there.  It was closed system that worked great if you had the goldmine, aka a license.  Not surprisingly, a new company sued and won.   After that, around 2000, anyone was allowed to become an airport cab, altough that just allows you to work from the airport to hotels, etc., and not the reverse, insane as that sounds.  Soon enough, there were so many new drivers at the airport that the older ones began coming to County Council meetings and demanding new regulations.  I would have preferred time and the free market be allowed to sort it out, but soon enough the State created this unified commission and the County and City went with that. 

I don’t mean to say that cabs should have no regulations.  I understand having cabs inspected and making sure cabbies have valid driver’s licenses.  I am less sure about dress codes and I can’t believe the rules still forbid airport cabs from picking up people downtown and taking them to the airport after they have just dropped somone off at the same hotel.  I wish the drivers with Allen Cab all the best.  I would feel more confident in their future if they had the free market to count on and not some regulatory commission.

The post Free the Taxicabs! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.