Kansas City and St. Louis interests have been nervous about Jefferson City for years, of course. Rural Republican lawmakers have long looked askance at big-city projects and have turned back city efforts to raise the minimum wage or tighten gun control laws.

In January, Kansas City Mayor Sly James testified before the Missouri Senate Ways and Means Committee that the legislature should “leave us alone.” Conversely, Kansas City Councilwoman Jolie Justus, a former state senator, strikes a more diplomatic and productive tone when she told The Star, “I want to make sure we start off on a good foot with Gov.-elect Greitens, because I want to go down and explain to him … that frankly we’re the economic engines of the state, for the most part.”

Kansas City and St. Louis are the economic engines of Missouri; but recently those engines have been failing the state badly. Kansas City and St. Louis are more likely serving as obstacles to economic success, not engines. Consider the following:

• Missouri is falling behind; our economic growth rate is 48^th in the nation, and has lagged the national average for some time.
• Missouri is shedding population, and Kansas City and St. Louis are the biggest contributors to the decline. Recall that Missouri recently lost a seat in Congress in the last Census.
• High taxes in Kansas City, notably the earnings tax, are an incentive for people to leave.
•  Kansas City has given away so much taxpayer money to developers that they cannot provide for basic city services without borrowing money and raising taxes, despite an already high tax burden.
• Both Kansas City and St. Louis are saddled with immense debt due to years of poor financial management.
• Those two cities also are weighing down job growth from startups; a key sign of economic health (or lack thereof).

If Kansas City and St. Louis are the economic engines of Missouri, they are either stuck in neutral or reverse. No state legislature should stand by idly while so much economic opportunity is wasted. Reformers in Jefferson City would do a great deal to improve things if they reined in cities’ abilities to levy taxes, reformed economic development incentives, and greatly increased transparency at every level. Cities can be a great economic engines, but not without occasional tune-ups.

The post Retooling Missouri’s Economic Engines appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But even that couldn’t get through the legislature. Like a college sophomore starting an essay the night before it’s due, the legislature produced tax credit legislation at the latest possible moment with the smallest margin for error available. In school, you don’t get a passing grade for “I started late and my computer crashed!” or “My dog ate my homework!” You don’t get an “A” for “effort.” You get an “F” for “failure.”

Missouri’s heavy use of tax credits encourages government to pick winners and losers in our economy, leading to rampant abuse, distorted economic priorities, and tightening budgetary realities. It’s maddening that practically nothing has gotten done on tax credits that have sapped the state’s coffers in recent years — and whose consequences led to more than $400 million in economic development tax credit issuances in fiscal year 2012 alone. Let’s be blunt here: the legislative dysfunction on the tax credit issue is an unmitigated state disgrace. This year I was hopeful that the legislature had finally gotten past its dark tax credit days, whose depths were deeply plumbed with 2011’s Aerotropolis boondoggle.

But apparently not. As someone who takes notes on the floor debates in the state House and Senate, I cannot tell you how many times I heard a legislator say “I don’t agree with tax credits, but . . .,” and then go on to explain why their pet tax credit needed to be extended or created. (This is especially common in the House.) Bona fide tax credit reform supporters and opponents can disagree civilly, but I have little tolerance or patience for policymakers who are all hat and no cattle on this issue — happy to carve out special tax credits for their special groups as they blithely gore other credits. That’s the worst kind of hypocrisy. Sen. Jolie Justus, a tax credit supporter, was right on Friday to criticize such behavior from the floor of the Senate, and I’ve independently noted the same sort of behavior Justus observed.

The legislative intransigence on tax credits is stomach churning. Coupled with the governor’s leadership void on basically every issue, the legislature’s inaction on tax credit reform is a shameful low note of the session. Taxpayers deserve better than this shabby treatment.

The post Taxpayers Deserve Better Than This Shabby Treatment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The process is already extremely difficult. To change state law, groups must get tens of thousands of the legal voters in two thirds of the state’s congressional districts to sign a petition. Missouri has more than 4 million registered voters, so any group trying to get an initiative on the ballot must collect more than 100,000 signatures.

And it’s expensive. Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving and advancing the ability of U.S. citizens to petition state government directly, estimates that the minimum cost for signature collection in Missouri is more than $2 per signature, and can be significantly higher. This means that a group of people trying to change government for the better would likely need at least $300,000 even to attempt to bring a state law change before Missouri voters for their consideration.

In fact, most groups that have attempted to change state law with the current initiative petition process have failed. In recent years, Missouri Citizens for Property Rights, a group attempting to strengthen safeguards against the abuse of eminent domain, managed to gather more than 160,000 signatures from registered Missouri voters but still fell short of the already hefty requirements imposed.

Justus’ proposal will make it at least 50 percent harder (and that much more expensive) for Missourians to bring an issue to statewide voters. She proposes requiring that groups collect signatures from registered voters in all congressional districts. That would mean groups would have to collect, at minimum, signatures from an additional 45,000 registered Missouri voters. That’s at least another $100,000 in expenses. Why would Justus want to restrict this process further, so that only the most wealthy individuals and groups can participate?

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, Justus hopes that the proposed law will make it more difficult and costly for people and organizations to “buy laws and constitutional amendments.” She is certainly right — her proposal will make it more difficult. But her logic is flawed. Justus’ proposal will make it more difficult for any group to impact state government directly, not only those she suspects of trying to “buy” laws.

One of the greatest strengths of American government is that there are a number of checks and balances at the federal, state, and local levels that limit the ability of any one branch of government to abuse its power. The initiative petition process is one of those checks on power, and restricting it further will serve only to erode Missourians’ ability to limit legislators by initiating good — but politically difficult — policy change.

Audrey Spalding is a policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Citizen Initiative Process a Crucial Check on Political Power appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Justus’ proposal will make it at least 50 percent harder (and that much more expensive) for Missourians to bring an issue to statewide voters. She proposes requiring that groups collect signatures from registered voters in all congressional districts. That would mean groups would have to collect, at minimum, signatures from an additional 45,000 registered Missouri voters. That’s at least another $100,000 in expenses. Why would Justus want to restrict this process further, so that only the most wealthy individuals and groups can participate?

Be sure to read the whole thing! And thanks to Brandon Holmes at Citizens in Charge for alerting us to this story.

The post Protecting the Initiative Process appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Senator Kevin Engler of Farmington used German to ask the senate to adopt a constitutional amendment requiring all official government actions to be done in English….

But senators Jolie Justus of Kansas City and John Smith of St. Louis have run out the clock on Engler’s bill.  They say they wonder why the legislature has to deal with what they think is a trivial issue while important legislation has gotten lost.

Speaking to the senate in German was a cute way to make a point, but it just proved why we don’t need this amendment. That must have been the first time anyone spoke to the senate in German for quite a while. It’s not a problem we encounter on a regular basis.

People usually don’t conduct legislative debates in German for the same reason I don’t write blog posts in Aramaic: they want to be understood by and convincing to English-speakers. I’m guessing Sen. Engler will use English the next time he brings a bill to the floor.

The post Update on the Amendment We Don’t Need appeared first on Show-Me Institute.