In the past few weeks, the newly elected Branson leadership team has dramatically altered city management in Branson. The city administrator, assistant city administrator, city attorney, finance director, and the head of planning & zoning (and several other city employees) have either resigned or been fired.

There is, not surprisingly, opposition to this in Branson. A former city official stated:

“Branson does not need this, gentlemen. You three were not elected to conduct business like this. . . . We’re not supposed to be tearing the city apart.”

According to Skains [a former alderman who just lost an election], remaining city staff are “terrified” of being fired at any moment.

I am not unsympathetic to people losing their jobs, but the reality is that if voters want real change in their cities and towns, replacing the part-time elected officials over time usually won’t get it done. Most Missouri cities are run by full-time bureaucrats who have significant power advantages over the part-time elected officials.

Leaders dealing with powerful and recalcitrant bureaucrats is a fight as old as history, but the dynamic at play in Missouri towns is heightened by the fact that the full-time employees simply have much more information at their disposal. It is hard for a part-time councilmember to stand up to a city attorney with years of experience and a law degree, no matter how right the councilmember may be.

I remember over a decade ago when the people of Ellisville were opposed to a tax-increment financing (TIF) plan and elected a new mayor who was opposed to the TIF. The new mayor did all he could, but the pro-TIF city administrator, city attorney, and other city staff answered to the pre-existing council majority that hired them, not the new mayor. They did all they could to frustrate the new mayor, up to and including impeaching him and removing him from office. (The new mayor was returned to office by a county judge who found the entire impeachment process invalid.) Eventually, after another election cycle, the anti-TIF forces won and ultimately stopped the TIF, but the fight was brutal.

But back to Branson. If the people of Branson want to see change and have voted for change, then change is what they should get. Perhaps they will get more change than they realized. In that case, Mencken’s line that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” may be proven true in Southwest Missouri. But when the citizens of a city or county want change, the interests of the voters should be the priority, not the employment status of city workers.

Change is hard, but when people see what their communities are doing—be it mask mandates, tax subsidies, or hospital privatizations—and demand accountability and new leadership, they deserve to have it.

The post To Make an Omelette in Branson, You Have to Break a Few Eggs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Mike Royko’s classic book Boss, about Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (the first one), has a great thread in it about the political use of Chicago building codes. Chicago had one of the nation’s strictest building codes, but everyone knew it was rarely enforced. However, if you did something really terrible, like rent an apartment to a black person in a white neighborhood or put a Republican political sign in your window, you quickly found out just how strict the building code was. There are similar examples of selective political enforcement for many other laws, which brings us, once again, to Ellisville, Mo.
Many Missouri cities have adopted a “city manager” form of government. As part of that form of government, cities often place strict rules prohibiting contact between elected city officials and city employees or contractors other than the city manager. (Often, the only exception to this is for official city investigations.) Having such a contact was one of the accusations against former Ellisville Mayor Adam Paul in his impeachment. Despite good intentions of preventing political interference, those rules against any contact are thoroughly ridiculous. Preventing contact between elected officials and city employees except the city manager serves to empower the city manager over the elected officials, not to mention minor little issues with freedom of speech and association.

Economists would refer to the core problem here as information asymmetry. City managers are full-time, well-compensated employees of a city, while elected city officials are, in most cases, part-time. City managers have the access to information, time to review it, and training to interpret it. That is not automatically a bad thing. It is generally why they were hired in the first place. However, in areas of potential disagreement between a city manager and other city officials, the elected officials are certainly at an information disadvantage. This can become especially true for elected officials who may be in the political minority on their legislative body. A city manager working closely with a political majority can readily shut out other officials from the debate. If those elected officials in the minority have no way to access information, such as talking to other city employees who may know the true story, how can those public officials do their jobs?

Beyond being able to represent their constituents, these restrictive contact rules are, almost by necessity, selectively enforced. They are written so broadly that elected officials can be punished, if they are a target, for the most mundane of discussions. If we really impeached every local elected official who had a minor conversation with a city employee, the people would have a lot of good things to read about on Sunday.

Ellisville, Mo., provided a recent example of this problem. The Ellisville City Council majority, city manager, and city attorney opposed the mayor on key issues. The political dispute ultimately resulted in the mayor’s impeachment for, among other (generally minor) charges, speaking with a city contractor outside of “approved” channels. By all accounts, the discussion was nothing more than an innocuous question-and-answer about what was happening to a group of residents being forced to move. Leaving aside the validity of the impeachment (which is currently subject to litigation), removing an elected official from office for having a brief conversation about his or her constituents should be deeply troubling. In normal instances, obtaining new data or counsel to improve your decision-making is, suffice it to say, a good thing.

City charter rules that limit communication only to the city manager and block all other municipal contacts by elected officials are methods of limiting information. That is rarely a good thing. These rules empower city managers and their political allies, and can be too easily turned into a political weapon. We need safeguards against political interference in daily municipal matters, but these charter rules are too blunt and selectively enforced. Cities would be better off removing those restrictions. Good government deserves open information, not restricted access and knowledge chokepoints.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Reform City Manager Rules In Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

TIFs keep surfacing because city officials often blindly focus on sales taxes. After all, that’s how cities are primarily funded. Desperate not to be one-upped by border cities and their own giveaways, cities gladly sacrifice property taxes for more sales tax dollars.

The problem is that property taxes pay for schools and many other critical services.

Disturbingly, the quest for precious sales tax dollars often encourages cities to abuse eminent domain as a part of TIF. St. Louis County residents and business owners in Rock Hill, Sunset Hills, Richmond Heights, Manchester, and elsewhere have suffered the pain of having their property taken so that taxpayers can subsidize new developments. Joanne and Arthur Bailey fought for years to be able to keep their home in Hadley Township (in Richmond Heights) against threats of eminent domain. Thankfully, the Baileys won their battle. Many others have not been so lucky.

Even when some officials understand the dangers and try to stop them, TIFs aren’t easy to defeat. County TIF commissions in Saint Louis and Saint Charles County have recently rejected TIF proposals only to see city councils override their decision. That is what happened in Ellisville, and will likely happen in Shrewsbury, because the law allows it.

It is hard to believe that a city of a few thousand can make tax decisions that harm an entire region, but that is exactly what happens. Shrewsbury has 6,600 people, but it will make tax decisions that affect the Saint Louis Community College district, which serves 1.3 million residents. Why continue to allow small cities to impose policies that hurt our larger region, with no way to stop it? It is ludicrous.

Happily, some citizens are finally starting to recognize the harm done by TIF and local government economic planning. The Ellisville City Council passed the TIF despite substantial opposition from the residents. Anti-TIF candidates in the most recent Ellisville mayoral election received more than 70 percent of the vote last year, but the TIF still went through. It remains to be seen whether the opposition in Shrewsbury will be able to mount a major attempt to defeat the latest Kenrick Plaza TIF proposal.

Major TIF changes are sorely needed at the state level. Countywide TIF commissions should have the final say, not city councils, and Missouri needs far stricter limits on what can be taken by eminent domain. Until then, the municipal TIF sprint to the bottom will continue. Next stop: your town.

The post Stokes on KWMU – TIF Hurts Communities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post McGraw Milhaven – David Stokes on KTRS appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In Frontenac’s case, it is my understanding that one business is now being prevented from going forward with a move and expansion even though the area has always been zoned commercial. I do not believe it is proper for a government to tell a commercial enterprise that it cannot develop its own property — which is entirely within a commercial area.

In Ellisville, it seems strange that they are trying to block development of a parcel when, according to their pro-TIF arguments, economic development is so important to the city. I have no idea why they are proposing this. My guess is that someone has had the temerity to try to develop the land in a manner that does not fit with the grand TIF plan. Oh, the horror!

The enemy in these cases, as usual, is municipal planning. The rights of property owners to develop their property (especially when it complies with existing zoning regulation) should far outweigh the desire for a municipal plan put together by planners and lawyers who have no idea how to grow an economy. The history of government planning is not a good one.

The post We Need A Moratorium On Municipal Development Moratoriums appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In this appearance, Stokes and the host discuss topics such as Stokes’ eldest son’s first day of kindergarten, the latest with Ellisville (where movement towards a recall election was responded to with an attempt to change the city charter), the actual results of the recent election that seemed to have been decided by one vote, and the recent editorial proposing that the Sheriff in St. Charles be appointed rather than elected.

The post McGraw Milhaven – David Stokes on KTRS appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“They,” of course, are the “Walmart 5,” the members of the city council who supported the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for Walmart despite substantial community opposition. There is a recall effort underway in Ellisville against some of the “Walmart 5” (not all are eligible for recall for technical reasons). The TIF was a terrible idea, but this recall charter change idea is so awful that it makes the TIF idea look like the invention of the wheel.

The attempt to alter the rules of the charter after citizens have instituted a recall effort is one of the most atrocious abuses of power I have seen in Missouri in the 20 years I have been following politics and government. Thankfully, even the Walmart 5 cannot find a way around the rule that voters must approve charter changes. Hopefully, this naked attempt to silence widespread opposition to the TIF will fail, either at the polls or through a successful blocking of it in the next few nights.

Tom Pendergast is not dead. He just moved to West County.

The post Shenanigans In Ellisville!!! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Two different groups want to build outlet malls (or something close to it) in Chesterfield. Both want a tax subsidy; one in the form of a Community Improvement District (CID) and one in the form of a Transportation Development District (TDD). Both allow the developer to install an additional sales tax with the shopping area. Whatever the initials, the subsidies are not necessary.

Chesterfield should act like the girl being courted instead of the wallflower. I am not one for recommending that city councils reject projects – I question whether city councils should have a right to do that in the first place. But as long as the two entities are asking for tax subsidies, and as long as the Chesterfield City Council needs to consider these projects in the first place (for zoning reasons, etc.), Chesterfield’s elected officials should refuse both of them until they agree to move forward without a CID or TDD.

The subsidies are a total joke. If there is a market for more shopping in West County, taxpayers do not need to support it. The Chesterfield City Council should hold off until one, or both, of these proposals moves forward without taxpayer assistance.

The post Tax Subsidies In Chesterfield appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I do not recall ever seeing such a brazen example of an elected body ignoring the will of the people. Combined with the terrible economic policy they are now instituting, the choice of the Ellisville City Council to enact this TIF is one of the worst decisions I have ever seen a government make.

Now more than ever, we need the state legislature to pass major TIF reform for Saint Louis County and all of Missouri. The ability of cities to override a county TIF commission must be removed. Furthermore, TIF districts should be required to make other taxing districts whole through alternate tax dollar arrangements. In other words, cities should share the sales tax dollars placed into the PILOT (Payments In Lieu Of Taxes) fund.

We still have many more TIFs to fight in Shrewsbury, Saint Ann, and Richmond Heights; and that is just Saint Louis County. Add in the Enhanced Enterprise Zone (EEZ) in Columbia, the Transportation Development District (TDD)/Community Improvement District (CID)  in Chesterfield, the incessant use of subsidies for every project in Kansas City and Saint Louis, and I can assure you we will be very busy. When it comes to pointing out the economic flaws in the terrible arguments for local development subsidies, the Show-Me Institute has only just begun to fight.

Now I am going to get some lunch. (Go to the 2:04 mark.)

The post Depressing News From Ellisville appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Tonight is the scheduled final vote on the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for a proposed development at Manchester and Clarkson Roads in Ellisville. We know why Show-Me Institute thinks this is a bad idea for Ellisville. If this TIF can be defeated, as far as I know, it would mark the first rejection of such a proposal by a point-of-sale city. Combined with Florissant’s rejection of a TIF recently, we would be making real progress toward stopping the constant use of subsidies around Saint Louis.

Stay tuned, and follow me on twitter (@DavidCStokes) for results of tonight’s vote.

The post Big Night For Ellisville appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post An Ellisville Business Owner’s View of the Walmart TIF appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post What Does the Ellisville Mayor Say About the Potential Walmart TIF? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post One Ellisville Citizen’s Take on a TIF for Walmart appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The vote last night was 5-2, with the newly victorious anti-TIF mayor and one city councilmember (who also ran for mayor opposing the TIF) voting against it.

I predict the Ellisville charter rules on referendum and recall will quickly become very important in Ellisville if the TIF passes — along with Missouri TIF-related case law involving referendums from this lawsuit.

The post What Do You Get When More Than 70 Percent Of Voters Support Anti-TIF Candidates? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A new Walmart is opening in Jefferson County. Yes, it got a TIF. The property taxes will now be frozen for all the other taxing districts. So, someone please explain to me how the school district is going to pay for educating the kids in the 180 new homes that are part of the project, when those homes will not be paying the necessary marginal taxes for the schools. Oh yeah, the school district will seek to raise taxes on everyone else . . .

Meanwhile, in more positive news, Florissant officials are set to vote next week on approving a development for a Walmart that is being built without a TIF. The Florissant City Council rejected a TIF last year, but the project is going forward because this particular plan makes economic sense. I commend Florissant officials for their discipline, and hope this serves as an example to cities throughout Missouri. This is a good opportunity to remind people that I have nothing against Walmart – just the subsidies that usually accompany it.

Finally, here is the Show-Me Institute’s latest study on the basic structure of TIF.

The post Missouri TIF Update appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It would have compounded the mistake if the Ellisville City Council had voted for it one day after a new mayor and city council were elected.  Mayor-elect Adam Paul and the new city council will be sworn in April 18.  Properly, the ball is now in their court.

The post Good Call, Ellisville appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They might not, though. In which case, Ellisville’s city charter thankfully allows for a referendum on ordinances. Here is the link (section 9 on page 24). Ellisville has about 6,700 registered voters, so if the city council passes the TIF ordinance tonight, opponents would have to file a petition within 10 days. After that filing, opponents would have a month to gather about 670 signatures to force a referendum. That referendum would allow the ordinance to either go to a vote of the people or require another vote of the city council, which would be the new city council that was elected yesterday. Because just about that number of people (667) voted for the anti-TIF, victorious mayoral candidate, I would think getting the signatures is certainly doable.

There are several other key questions here, but it could be a very interesting couple of weeks in Ellisville.

The post What Now, Ellisville? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So many people showed up that the fire marshal prevented several people from entering. I was there to testify and I had to stand outside until my name was called due to the crowd. (At which point I was allowed in, gave my testimony, and had to go back outside.) By our estimate, 10 people spoke on this issue and nine were opposed to the TIF proposal. There were several score more people who did not speak. But judging by audience reactions, a large majority of them were opposed to the TIF plan as well. The residents who spoke against the project did a terrific job. It really seems that Saint Louisans might be waking up to the TIF scam that cities, developers, and planners have been putting over on us for two decades. Not all cities, not all developers, and not all planners, of course, but a good number of each.

The Ellisville City Council has a great opportunity here to listen to their residents, practice solid economics, and reject this proposal. It would be great for their city and great for our region if they did so, and it could lead to major improvements in TIF policy throughout Saint Louis. Sometimes, it just takes one to lead . . .

The post Hope Yet On TIF, Part Two appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As David Stokes
briefly mentions in this vlog, the sales tax status of Ellisville in Saint Louis County encourages this kind of tax-incentive competition.

The post Good Deal, Bad Deal appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read David’s testimony that was presented to the Saint Louis County TIF Commission.

The post David Stokes to Appear on McGraw Show appeared first on Show-Me Institute.