Of Missouri’s four largest cities—Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and Columbia—Springfield will soon be the only one without charter schools. Charter schools are already thriving in Kansas City, and St. Louis and thanks to recent legislation Columbia will have its first charter schools up and running as early as 2026.

Springfield is missing out.

Charter schools are public schools that are exempt from some of the rules and regulations that apply to traditional public schools. In most Missouri counties, including Greene County, charter schools are not allowed to operate unless they are sponsored by the local school board—a requirement that effectively bans them. Senate Bill 727, signed into law in 2024, changed this requirement in Boone County, where Columbia is located. We need similar legislation in Greene County.

Why? There are several reasons—including that charter schools are popular with families—but the most important reason is that charter schools are more effective than traditional public schools. Academic studies consistently show students who attend charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools on state exams and are more likely to attend college. In some cases, the performance differences are substantial. A recent national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that charter schools deliver additional academic growth equivalent to 6 extra days of instruction in math each year, and 16 extra days in reading, compared to traditional public schools. This same study shows that Missouri has some of the most effective charter schools in the country.

Charter school impacts are largest in areas where the local neighborhood schools are underperforming. Does Springfield have any low-performing neighborhood schools? Unfortunately, it sure does. At Westport Elementary School in 2024, only 24 percent of 5th-graders scored proficient or higher on the state English Language Arts test, and in math the number was just 14 percent. At Parkview High School, only 16 percent of students who took the Algebra I end-of-course exam scored proficient or above.

Now imagine your child is zoned for one of these schools and unless you move—perhaps not in your budget—this is where he or she will be required to attend. Charter schools give families in this situation new hope. Many charter operators intentionally open schools in neighborhoods where the traditional public schools are the worst—their mission is to provide educational opportunities in these communities that are not otherwise available. In many cities, the top charter schools have long waitlists.

If we want more Springfield children to have access to highly effective schools, permitting charter schools to operate in Greene County is one of the simplest ways to do it.

How can we make this happen? Following Boone County’s playbook, we need a champion for charter schools in the state legislature who will prioritize this issue in the upcoming legislative session. For Boone County, that champion was Caleb Rowden, a longtime charter advocate. Education legislation in Jefferson City is increasingly “omnibus” style, which means multiple different education policies are bundled into one bill. Rowden made sure that permitting charter schools to operate in Boone County, without the requirement that they be sponsored by the local school board, was part of the 2024 omnibus bill.

Will someone step up in a similar manner for Greene County? I sure hope so.

Charter schools are public schools, their students are public school students, and their teachers are public school teachers. They cannot charge tuition, they’re secular, and they’re open to all students (they must admit students by lottery if the number of applicants is greater than the number of available spots). We know charter schools work and that they’re popular with families.

Every year that passes without charter schools operating in Greene County is a missed opportunity for Springfield’s children.

The post Springfield Needs Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Several years ago, my colleagues and I were debating what the worst possible tax policy change could be. We settled on “exempting lottery winnings from income taxes.” While it may not be quite that bad, the ongoing effort to exempt senior citizens from property tax increases around the state are a similarly misguided attempt at tax reform that will have harmful effects on the counties where it becomes law. This includes Greene County, which passed the plan in 2023, and may include Stone (the county question) and Webster (Proposition 1) counties, each of which has the proposal on the November ballot.

State legislation passed in 2023 and amended in 2024 authorized any county to freeze the real property taxes of the primary homes for senior citizens who meet certain qualifications. Their property taxes would stay at the same amount they were when they become eligible for the plan, which for most people would be when they turn 62. The purpose of the bill is to help senior citizens stay in their homes as they age, but there are several major problems with this proposal.

This proposal is harmful simply because it reduces the property tax base. A major tenet of good tax policy is that the base should be as broad as possible so that the necessary rate can be as low as possible. Unless local governments cut services in response to the enactment of a tax freeze for seniors, it will almost certainly lead to higher tax rates on those property owners not eligible for the freeze. A senior tax freeze is every bit as much of a tax increase on non–senior citizens as it is tax relief for some senior citizens.

People who live in homes of similar value with similar public services should pay similar property taxes. The young couple who has lived in their Marshfield home for a year should not pay higher property taxes than their neighbor just because their neighbor has lived there for two decades.

Passage of this bill would also lead to the problematic situation in which people vote on property tax increases that they themselves will not personally pay. In Stone County, the Village of Indian Point has a sizable property tax increase also on the November ballot. Indian Point seniors can vote for the proposition knowing that they may not have to pay the increased taxes if the tax freeze also passes. That’s not good government. The single best aspect of property taxation is that it imposes the costs of local services on the people who use those services, unlike sales or local income taxes that are exported in part to visitors, commuters, and others. Instituting a system in which people vote on property taxes they won’t pay breaks that beneficial connection.

For a cautionary tale about the dangers of property tax subsidies and alterations, consider California’s infamous Proposition 13, which was passed in 1978. Prop 13 limited the increases in property assessments and taxes for homeowners. The measure has certainly had its intended effect of keeping property taxes low for longtime California homeowners. However, it has also reduced mobility, dramatically increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities between similar properties. This is not what the people of Southwest Missouri need.

According to data from the Federal Reserve, people aged 65 to 74 have the highest net worth of any age group. So why, if we were to pick any age group for tax exemption, would we pick the wealthiest among us? (People over 75 have less wealth than those 65–74 or 55–64, but they have a higher net worth than any age grouping under 55.) We shouldn’t be handing out property tax exemptions to anyone, whether those exemptions take the form of corporate subsidies, developer abatements, or senior citizen tax freezes.

While passage of these propositions in Stone and Webster counties would benefit some senior citizens, it would alter the property tax and assessment system in a myriad of harmful and biased ways. Property taxes work best when the assessments are accurate, the base is wide, and the rates are low. Senior property tax freezes do not move Stone County or Webster County in that direction.

The post Senior Citizen Property Tax Freezes in Stone and Webster Counties Are Not Sound Public Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Counties are creating their own special rules for the tax freezes, and the fact is they simply have no authority to do that. They may be able to do whatever they want with the property tax revenues for the counties themselves (or the independent City of St. Louis), but these changes affect other entities such as school districts and municipalities.

Not all of the changes counties have included in their bills are necessarily bad (in that they may have made a bad idea slightly less bad) but a county can’t change the authority the state gave it to collect and distribute tax money for other taxing districts, like schools.

Jackson County passed an ordinance limiting the tax freeze to those with homes valued at less than $550,000. Camden County passed a senior tax freeze, and county officials stated that  improvements to the home that resulted in more than a 50% increase in assessment will trigger a reassessment and, presumably, a tax increase. It speaks to how poorly Senate Bill (SB) 190 (the bill in the Missouri Legislature authorizing the senior tax freeze) was drafted that it does not address what happens if senior citizens make substantial improvements to their home after they receive the tax freeze. Common sense would lead one to believe that the valuation and taxes are changed in that case, but maybe not?

The City of St. Louis has proposed a bill (but it has not passed yet) that makes significant changes to the eligibility rule, including raising the age to receive the tax freeze to 65. Those changes aren’t even bad ones (mostly), but they are not allowed by the state law. This article states that Greene County passed an ordinance limiting the tax freeze to those actually receiving social security, not just those eligible for it, but I don’t see that in the ordinance so I am not sure that is correct.

As an aside, now that St. Louis County had commendably rejected the freeze but Camden County (Lake of the Ozarks area) has passed it, I am intrigued by the question of how many St. Louis County residents with second homes at the lake will change their primary address to Camden County. (You can only get the tax freeze on your primary residence, not multiple homes.) Remember, residence is mostly a matter of intent. If you “intend” for your residence at the lake to be your primary house—and you at least do the bare minimum and register to vote there—it is just about as easy as that.

These various bills from counties are going to invite legal challenges, and I, for one, look forward to that happening.

The post The Taxman Confuseth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most special taxing districts in Missouri, the Buc-ee’s CID will use public funds for private infrastructure. The new sales tax rate at Buc-ee’s will only benefit the company itself—the tax dollars collected at the gas station will mostly go toward constructing the building, access road, and parking lot. From its first day of operation, corporate welfare will support the business one Springfield resident referred to as “a beaver Walmart.”

Most residents of Springfield will have no say in this matter. The city drew the boundaries of the CID in such a way that all voters are excluded—only the city council got to vote on this. Show-Me Institute Director of Municipal Policy David Stokes called this “tax gerrymandering” in his testimony on this issue. In addition, four out of the five members of the Buc-ee’s CID board are listed as “Owner Representatives,” leaving only one seat for a citizen to provide a public perspective. Even once the CID is in effect, most of Buc-ee’s customers will likely have no idea about the extra hit to their wallets, since the CID Act doesn’t require any posting of added sales taxes.

Years of writing and research from Institute analysts on CIDs prove that proposals such as these are nothing new. Private developers use the public’s money to subsidize corporate interests with almost no public input. This process with special taxing districts has played out countless times before, both in Greene County and around our great state. You can see for yourself just how widespread CIDs are in Missouri by following the link to this interactive map from the Missouri Department of Revenue. Hopefully Springfield, and cities across the state, will soon learn that this isn’t a mistake worth repeating.

The post More of the Same in Springfield’s New Buc-ee’s CID appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In government, nothing succeeds like failure. How else to explain Springfield’s attempt to imitate St. Louis and Kansas City with the creation of a city land bank despite the clear evidence of failure of the existing lands banks in both of those cities.

Land banks are local agencies empowered to acquire vacant, derelict, or tax-delinquent properties with the goal of returning them to productive use in the private sector. Land banks are authorized to be more proactive in acquiring property than traditional county land trusts. The goal of land banks may be laudable. Their record of performance is much less so.

Missouri created the nation’s first land bank in St. Louis in 1971 to help get control of vacant properties and return them to private use. Since that time, the St. Louis land bank has proven better at acquiring properties than at returning them to the private sector. In a struggling city like St. Louis, that isn’t surprising. More troubling is that the reluctance to get rid of the properties it owns has been no accident. Research by Show-Me Institute staff and others has documented the alarming frequency with which legitimate offers for property in the land bank have been rejected. Most commonly, the land bank has been rejecting offers in order to hold the land for future—often more politically connected—development. That development has seldom come to fruition, so thousands of land bank parcels have sat unused for decades.

In 2012, Kansas City followed St. Louis with its own land bank. At the time, the Show-Me Institute published research documenting the failures of the St. Louis land bank as a warning to Kansas City. Disregarding the history and evidence, the state approved a Kansas City land bank, which was started up that year.

Fast forward to 2022, and the Kansas City Star has recently published a major investigative article on problems at the Kansas City land bank. Needless to say, the Kansas City land bank has not lived up to its promises. Its executive director was removed in 2018 after accusations of political favoritism and other problems. The family of the Jackson County Executive received a special deal on certain properties, which raised plenty of eyebrows. As in St. Louis, the Kansas City land bank has been plagued by conflicts of interest and poor management.

The final Missouri city to institute a land bank in Missouri is St. Joseph, in 2019. Thus far the land bank has proceeded laboriously. After two years, it owns just five properties. It may be too early to make a final judgment, but based on its slow start and the lack of success in other cities I’d say the prognosis for the St. Joseph land bank is poor.

Land banks have fundamental problems. Ideally, they would work quickly and efficiently to place properties they own back into private hands. But that very speed is what can make them subject to abuse by those with political connections. In order to guard against such problems, they can become a typical bureaucracy—slow and difficult to deal with. But in that case, few in the private sector will want to work with them. So, the choices are to operate quickly and accept some level of malfeasance, or to operate bureaucratically and drive away your own potential customers. Finally, land bank employees have little incentive to do their jobs so well that they find themselves out of one.

Supporters may claim that Springfield would operate its land bank more effectively than St. Louis, Kansas City or St. Joseph. I don’t dispute the sincerity of the promises—just the likelihood that they’ll be kept.

Springfield needs a new city land bank about as much as it needs the return of bushwackers and bald-knobbers. The city would be better off not creating a land bank and letting Greene County dispose of tax-delinquent properties in its longstanding manner. If Springfield does create a land bank, I fully expect to read a News-Leader investigative report of its failures in the next few years.

The post Springfield Does Not Need a Land Bank appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is important to learn from one’s mistakes, and when it comes to special taxing districts in the Springfield area, there are plenty of mistakes to learn from. Special taxing districts (SDs) are tax districts established to support one specific function or program, such as a school district. In recent years, however, most new SDs have been nothing more than vehicles for corporate welfare, and their use in Springfield has been anything but an example of good government.

Springfield is now considering a gift basket of new tax subsidies for the Sports Town youth sports complex. This included the recent city council approval of a new community improvement district (CID) to use tax dollars to subsidize the private development. First, the city gerrymandered a map to make sure the new CID didn’t include any voters to get around the voting requirements. Next, city leaders decided to give the developers $2 million in upfront subsidies even though the city’s own guidelines recommend against doing exactly that. The upfront subsidy by the city means that all Springfield taxpayers are paying for this project, not just the ones who may use the facility.

Remaining on this expensive list is a request by the developers for $4 million more subsidies from federal stimulus funds. Shockingly, the developers have decided that their project qualifies for federal funding. Maybe it’s for the sewers, or for tourism, or perhaps this project will help fight the COVID pandemic. Youth sports may be infrastructure now. Whatever the feeble excuse is, the lure of “free” federal money is strong. If a private development such as SGF Sports (the company behind Sports Town) cannot succeed without multiple subsidy programs, it’s not the job of taxpayers to ensure it goes forward.

With such a large subsidy upfront, Springfield is basically trying to be a real estate developer. The city should have learned from Greene County that government real estate speculation is a bad idea. That county previously subsidized the private Jamestown development by creating a neighborhood improvement district (NID) to pay off bonds the county issued in support of the proposal. It assumed the future taxes from the NID would suffice to pay off the bonds. It assumed wrong. When the Jamestown project failed, Greene County taxpayers were on the hook for the unpaid debt. Springfield should have learned from this costly mistake.

This SGF Sports CID would be the 17th CID in Greene County, most of them in Springfield, along with at least four more transportation development districts (TDDs). Despite the public-sounding names, many CIDs and TDDs consist of just a few parcels of property with sales taxes imposed on the public for the private benefit of one property owner. These tax dollars are often used for essentially private purposes, such as retail parking lots or landscaping.

How have these other SDs worked out in Springfield? Not very well. Missouri state auditor Nicole Galloway specifically cited Springfield’s HyVee store CID for improperly collecting almost a quarter million dollars of tax money. Galloway also identified Springfield’s College Station TDD downtown for multiple abuses, including failures to notify shoppers of the tax. Based on research on SDs generally in Missouri, the other SDs are likely functioning as corporate welfare schemes here in the Queen City of the Ozarks.

Springfield is a vibrant, growing community that does not need to rely on tax subsidies to boost its economy. If Springfield wants to help all businesses succeed rather than just a select few, it should work with Greene County to lower its commercial property tax surcharge rate, which is high compared to those of other Missouri communities. The CID for Sports Town was not necessary, and $4 million more from federal funds would be an even worse decision. The evidence is clear that these subsidy programs produce more financial mismanagement than economic growth. Springfield should learn from its history and stop repeating the same mistakes.

The post Springfield Should Reject Subsidies for Sports Town appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to the new estimates, the city of St. Louis is getting close to dropping below 300,000 residents. The city’s 2019 population estimate is 300,576, down by over 2,800 from 2018. This isn’t a new occurrence, but rather a continuing trend—the city’s population has fallen by nearly 6% since 2010, shown in the graph below.  St. Louis County also lost population, dropping by 1,014 from 2018 to 2019.

Other areas of Missouri are not experiencing this same trend. Right outside of the St. Louis area, St. Charles passed the 400,000 mark, adding 3,242 people in 2019. Many other areas also experienced growth, including Clay, Greene, and Jackson counties.

Though we can’t know for certain why people are moving out of St. Louis, Show-Me Institute researchers have written on population trends before, and much of what has been said still holds true. Policies that promote success and freedom for people and businesses can attract residents while those that place onerous burdens can deter.

Things like an earnings tax on residents and workers, high sales taxes, and stringent business regulations can create an unwelcoming environment. Additionally, poor school performance, high crime rates, and failed public projects can make St. Louis an unattractive option.  If we want to reverse the trend, policymakers will need to address these issues. The sooner, the better.

The post Census Estimates Show St. Louis Population Falling . . . Again appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

After all, if government can spend your money, it should be able to account for it.

It’s appropriate for government at all levels to regularly provide expenditure information to the public, and to do so in a format that is easily searchable and accessible. Consistent with this objective, and as we have already done with the state’s spending, we are sharing a “portal” for Greene County, Missouri, using information provided to us by the County, free of charge. We hope this serves as a reasonable example for political subdivisions of what 21st-century governmental transparency can look like.

The post Greene County, Missouri, Spending 2013 to 2017 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Springfield Policy Lunch: Legislative Update appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

April also means school board elections. It would be nice to think that this annual rite of spring would renew and refresh our public schools in the same way that nature restocks our streams and repaints our forest, but this isn’t the case. To proponents of school reform, April really is the cruelest month.

Rather than healthy change and renewal, school board elections will come and go with minimal disturbance to the education establishment in school districts across the state. The system, as it is now, invites apathy and increased union control, perpetuating long-standing problems.

For starters, voter turnout in school board elections is extremely low. In Greene County, for example, only 12 percent of eligible voters made it to the polls in 2013, despite multiple school districts holding elections.

Additionally, parents and taxpayers know very little about the candidates.

While a candidate’s occupation, age, and education may be available—information regarding a candidate’s stance on key education issues is harder to acquire.

With so few people paying attention and so little information disseminated, special interest groups—such as teachers’ unions—can have a disproportionate impact on these elections. While it’s unclear how large a role special interest groups have played in Missouri public school board elections, the danger is that unions are taking bites out of both sides of the apple—campaigning for candidates, then negotiating with union-friendly board members during closed sessions.

Historically, Missouri opted for a system aimed at keeping partisan politics out of school board elections, choosing a month to hold elections in which voters would not be burdened by having to make other electoral choices.

Fifty years ago, this way of thinking may have made some sense, but it makes no sense today. It is time for a complete overhaul of a badly antiquated system.

Here are three suggested reforms.

First, Missouri should move school board elections to coincide with other local, state, and national elections. Scheduling elections in November would assure far greater voter participation. In comparison to April, turnout in the 2012 general election in Greene County was 64 percent.

Second, Missouri should close the loophole in our Sunshine Law that allows school board members to negotiate with teachers’ unions in closed sessions. Taxpayers have a right to know what demands unions are making.

Third, public officials should push for the dissemination of more information during school board elections. Candidates should be encouraged to state their positions on important issues.

Missouri’s system of local public school control is precious, but to ensure that the interests of taxpayers and students are protected, it requires not just reform, but rebirth.

Brittany Wagner is a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Spring into Action on School Board Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NIDs) are just one of many types of special taxing districts sprouting like weeds in Missouri (and expensive weeds at that). Like Transportation Development Districts (TDDs), Community Improvement Districts (CIDs), and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, NIDs serve as a method for governments to increase taxes without any accountability while getting involved in areas often best left to the private sector or community groups. Greene County officials decided in 2004 that it was the job of county government to play the role of real estate investor via a NID, and taxpayers in the county are now feeling the pain of that decision.

Greene County backed $22 million in bonds for the Jamestown housing and office development in Rogersville, Mo., and another similar development in 2004. Greene County officials believed that the increased taxes from the NIDs created for the developments would cover the cost of the $22 million in bond payments that the county guaranteed. Why did county officials think it was appropriate to use tax dollars to guarantee the private Jamestown real estate development? You will have to ask them that, but what is not in question is the colossal failure of the deal. Unfortunately, the Jamestown development failed, and county taxpayers are on the hook for the remaining $14 million in bond payments without any new tax dollars coming from the development. (The other development also failed, but the foreclosure process worked better in that instance and county taxpayers are not responsible for the bonds. Not yet, at least.) This year, Greene County does not have enough money in its bond reserve fund to cover the current $1.1 million bond payment due. Either general tax dollars will have to make up the shortfall or taxes will have to be increased if Greene County cannot find its way out of the fiscal impasse.

The main criticism is not Monday morning quarterbacking that Greene County made a poor choice of which project to back. Some projects succeed, some fail, and risk is inevitable with development. No, the main criticism is that Greene County thought it was appropriate to get involved at all. More unsettlingly, Greene County is far from alone in its decision to be a real estate speculator. Local governments’ decision to play a role they should not play has sparked controversy around the state.

In Lake Lotawana, outside Kansas City, a CID defaulted on bonds and the CID officials were accused of ethical violations. A TIF in Ellisville, a suburb of Saint Louis, ripped the community apart and led to lawsuits, impeachments, and recall efforts. A TDD in Neosho, near Joplin, has sparked a contentious lawsuit between the TDD board and its former attorney, who is also the Neosho city attorney. These particular controversies may be the extremes, but they are not the exceptions. The fact is that most of these subsidies and special districts fail in the goals of economic development because local governments simply are not equipped to make private sector business decisions. Why they continue to do so is the real question.

Greene County officials’ current plan is to take control of all the parcels in the Jamestown development at an upcoming tax auction, and then to sell the property for enough money to cover the bond payments. I hope they succeed. But what I really hope for is that Greene County officials, as well as officials from cities and counties around the state, will learn from this example and cease getting government involved in business proposals best left to the private sector.

County officials do not have a right to put other people’s tax dollars on the line just because they think a certain proposal will succeed. That is not the role of local government, and it is about time elected officials throughout Missouri acknowledged that.

David Stokes is the director of local government policy at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Nix The NIDs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Show-Me Now! Greene County’s Bad Bet appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a letter to the editor of the Sedalia Democrat, John S. Johnston, president of the Missouri Bar, offers voters a tool to make an informed decision regarding the selection and retention of nonpartisan judges. The Missouri Bar website features a section called “Judging the Judges,” which presents the findings of Judicial Performance Evaluation Committees — nonpartisan committees made up of both lawyers and non-lawyers. According to Johnston:

The committees have a completely non-partisan agenda: to provide voters with the unbiased information they need to cast an informed ballot.

The committees have published their evaluations along with surveys of lawyers’ ratings, jurors’ ratings and samples of appellate judge’s written opinions.

You can investigate your local judges by checking out “Judging the Judges” and clicking on the area where you live.

In addition to selecting specific judges, citizens also have the power to vote to retain or kick out judges after they have served for one year, thanks to the Missouri Plan, adopted in 1940. The Springfield News-Leader also explains how, since 2008, residents of Greene County try to keep politics out of judicial processes, by voting each term whether to retain or get rid of each judge, based on a system of merits.

Online tools like “Judging the Judges” are great, because they educate voters about judicial candidates, and also because they present new ways for the populace to become involved in the process, helping put power back into the hands of the voters.

The post Judge Not, Lest Ye … Oh, Just Go Ahead appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Springfield chapter of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, filed a lawsuit arguing (among other things) that the Missouri Constitution should be read to require employee groups to choose only one exclusive bargaining agent, selected by the majority. The SNEA (which claims to have more than half of the district’s teachers on its membership rolls) wanted to prevent teachers from even voting on the possibility of multiple representation, and instead to have a winner-takes-all election in which it would likely be chosen to represent even those teachers who did not want their services.

Fortunately, Judge Cordonnier recognized that the Missouri Constitution requires nothing of the kind. In a very well-reasoned decision, he pointed out that the section of the Missouri Constitution that protects employees’ rights to bargain collectively specifies that they must be permitted to have “representatives” of their own choosing. As the judge noted, that word “is unambiguous, plural, and must be read to include the possibility of more than one representative.” In other words, nothing in the language of the Constitution supported the SNEA’s argument that employees must choose a single exclusive bargaining representative. The court further pointed out that the Missouri Supreme Court has previously held that “employees who choose not to be represented by the majority union continue to have a constitutional right to present their issues to [their] employer,” and they may do so as a group, with an “informally elected representative.”

I am thrilled that the judge made these points. What the SNEA misconstrued about the constitutional right to bargain collectively is that the right itself belongs to individual employees. The SNEA’s reasoning suggested that no individual had a particular right to a representative of their own choosing; to the contrary, the union argued that if a majority of any ill-defined group of employees wanted a particular representative, then all other employees in that group must be bound by the majority’s preference. Judge Cordonnier’s option saw through that argument, however, and he reaffirmed what the Missouri Supreme Court has previously stated — that employees must be free to choose their own bargaining agents, and neither the government nor a union can deny them that right.

Anyone interested in these issues needs to know that they’ll be hearing more about this in the future. The head of the SNEA would not commit to an appeal of this case to the Missouri Supreme Court, but it is a very safe bet that they’ll ask the high court to reverse Judge Cordonnier’s ruling. Additionally, at about the same time that the SNEA launched this lawsuit, another local chapter sued the Bayless School District in the St. Louis area, making almost precisely the same arguments. Even if the SNEA does not pursue its case further, the union will be pushing for success in the Bayless lawsuit.

The post Collective Bargaining Under the Missouri Constitution appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The last major ballot issue about which we have something to say is the question of whether to adopt the Missouri Plan for judicial selection in Greene County. We released a major study about the statewide impact of such plans earlier this year. It concluded that states using judicial selection panels, in one form or another, rather than elections, have a high correlation with good overall environments for business. Yours truly framed that argument in relation to Greene County (that’s the Springfield area, in case you didn’t know) in an article where I argue that the Missouri Plan could benefit the area’s residents.

So, voters both statewide and in our big cities, please review our work before you go into the ballot box to make your own well-researched decisions. Especially because an informed vote has absolutely no marginal utility whatsoever over an uninformed vote — which is depressing, but I’ll leave that particular issue to our editor. …

The post Two More November Ballot Issues appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me Institute study of judicial selection is topical in Springfield for several reasons.  First — and this is really more of a statewide issue — there is another vacancy on the Missouri Supreme Court, so our system shall again be put into action and to the test. Also, some community leaders in Springfield are beginning a process to consider whether Greene County should join the five other local circuits in the state that use the non-partisan court plan at the local level. While the study itself focused on the Supreme Court, I believe its findings — that our current system of judicial selection is good for our economy — apply just as well to the local courts. And, clearly, from what television tells me, the legal community in Springfield could use some improvement. 

The post Springfield and the Courts, a Love Story appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The SCHIP program provided health coverage for 6 million kids in 2006. Under the new bill, an additional 5 million children will be eligible for coverage, for a total of 11 million kids. 121,000 children in Missouri lack health insurance today, ironically in part because Rep. Blunt’s son, Gov. Matt Blunt, has stuck to family tradition and cut 1,903 in Greene County from Medicaid since 2005. A disturbing trend, which begs the question: What does the Blunt family have against children?

It’s a mistake to focus on insurance when what really matters is how many children receive medical care. Some parents who could afford insurance choose to pay for their children’s health care out-of-pocket instead. And for those who can’t afford insurance, there are ways to provide medical services directly, such as public clinics or vouchers for preventative care.

Worrying about providing health insurance for all kids is like worrying about providing car insurance for all kids. Some parents can afford cars and car insurance, and they drive their kids to school. Other kids take the bus.

We want all kids to have health care, but not everyone needs to go through insurance. And we certainly don’t need everyone to go through one government insurance program.

The post What Should We Do About Uninsured Kids? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.