Missouri’s education savings account program, MOScholars, which facilitates school choice in Missouri with student scholarships, got a decisive win in court this week. This is not a surprising outcome, but it’s worthy of celebration regardless.

The lawsuit against MOScholars was brought primarily by the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA)—i.e., the teacher’s union—against the State of Missouri. The MNEA argued that the $50 million state appropriation to support student scholarships with MOScholars, passed during the 2025 legislative session, violates the state constitution.

The court dismissed the case, offering several reasons. Most importantly, it ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing. The plaintiffs claimed harm to public schools, but MOScholars funding comes from general state revenue—not funds allocated to public schools—and the court found that any alleged harm was speculative. The court also noted that the plaintiffs made several other procedural missteps.

The ruling went on to note that even on its merits, the plaintiffs’ case would lose. The legislature has broad authority to appropriate funds, the court said, and nothing in Missouri law prohibits funding a program like MOScholars. In short, the program is legally valid.

Again, this outcome is not surprising, but it’s still nice. The lawsuit was a desperate move by the MNEA to keep a stranglehold on all public education dollars. It failed, as it should have. Onward!

The post MOScholars Wins in Court appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This new credit, called the Entertainment Industry Jobs Tax Credit, is just as bad—or perhaps even worse—as the film tax credit, which is truly horrible (as I explained here). The credit, based on a similar program in Pennsylvania, would reimburse a “qualified rehearsal facility” for rehearsal and touring expenses. If this sounds a bit vague, that might be intentional. As has been discussed previously (both here and here), this program is aimed entirely at one company in Chesterfield that has already received significant state and county subsidies.

Missouri already devotes more than $600 million per year to economic development tax credit programs that mostly don’t work, and this new entertainment tax credit is no better. Right now, despite efforts to bring the program to other states, Pennsylvania is the only place in the country that thinks the program is worthwhile. Unfortunately, even Pennsylvania’s own audit shows that the program is a bad investment.

According to a report from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office, the credit “provides substantial benefit to the only Pennsylvania qualified rehearsal facility.” And “the net return on investment (ROI) is 15 to 35 cents of state tax revenue for each tax credit dollar.” In other words, state taxpayers are losing 65 to 85 cents off each dollar to benefit a single private company.

This program is yet another example of Missouri’s legislature taking the wrong approach to getting the state’s economy back on track. If the legislature wants more concerts or live entertainment in the state, it should start by figuring out why there aren’t more already. And if the answer is the state’s taxes are too high, then lawmakers should consider lowering the tax burden for everyone as opposed to creating a specific carve-out for one private business.

A new tax credit isn’t going to make one Missouri city into the next Nashville. With so few days remaining in this year’s legislative session, and with so much left to do, it’s time for our lawmakers to stop fiddling around.

The post Not the Time for Entertainment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

You read that right. The student was allowed to attend the virtual school program, so long as she completed the coursework while she sat in a district school building.

For obvious reasons, requiring in-person attendance in a school building for a student to attend a virtual school is a slight inconvenience.

The family took the district to court. And, like all things in 2020, the case was impacted by COVID. The district sent all students home in the spring and changed the requirement to only 5 hours each week of in-person attendance the following fall. Partially as a result, the court ruled in favor of the school district.

Those in favor of allowing parents to choose the best educational option for their child were dismayed by the Independence School District’s actions. Should a school district be able to circumvent the very intent of the virtual education law by requiring attendance?

In response, legislators included changes to the virtual education law in HB 1552 of 2022 which were intended to make it easier for a student to enroll in a full-time virtual program. Previously, a district had to approve a student’s application to enroll in a virtual program. The changes to the law were supposed to remove the home district’s oversight of this process. These changes, however, appear to have been circumvented by new rules put out by DESE.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli explains this in a recent letter to the Commissioner of Education:

While there were many important improvements in that bill, the primary reform was a full rewrite of the enrollment procedures for full time virtual schools, removing the resident district “gatekeeper” role that had been written into the previous law. The enrollment process for virtual schools (as opposed to supplemental courses) was completely revised so that the parent and the virtual school itself were placed in the lead and decision-making roles, while preserving an input role for the district of residence, if so desired.

The intent of the law, as Rep. Christofanelli explains, was to allow students to enroll in a full-time virtual program without the approval of the district. DESE’s rules leave the district in a position to approve or deny the student and parent’s wishes for a virtual education.

Christofanelli went on to say that “the end result” of DESE’s rules “is an enrollment process for full-time schools that works in the exact reverse order of what the Legislature intended and specifically wrote into law.” He concludes his letter with this: “Please let me know as soon as possible if DESE intends to revise this guidance to bring it into conformity with the new law, or if other steps will be necessary to see that the new law is given the effect of both its intent and clear language.”

It is not clear whether DESE will change their rules regarding the virtual education program or whether the legislature will once again have to take action to address this issue.

The post DESE’s Rulemaking Circumvents Intent of Virtual School Law appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Tuesday, May 24, Senator Andrew Koenig and Representative Donna Baringer joined us to discuss the 2022 legislative session.

The post Watch: 2022 Legislative Wrap Up appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Parents deserve to see what their kids are learning, and taxpayers deserve to know what they’re paying for. If that’s going to happen, however, at a minimum state law needs to be updated to empower these stakeholders to assert those rights.

It will take champions of reform in the Missouri legislature to carry such bills forward, but fortunately there are already several good proposals circulating at the Capitol, including an especially strong one that I testified on this morning. House Joint Resolution (HJR) 110, introduced by Rep. Phil Christofanelli, would put key language from the MPBR directly into the Missouri Constitution—including curriculum transparency, performance transparency, and a host of other items. As a Constitutional item, Missouri voters would also have their final say on the proposal at the ballot box later this year, and I’m optimistic it would succeed with the public. Accordingly, I felt it was important to testify to the House Elementary and Secondary Education committee (which heard the bill) to share my research.

If passed by the legislature and the public, the Constitutional amendment would be an enormous leap forward for both educational reform and transparency. I hope the entire Legislature and eventually the public will have an opportunity to weigh in on this important proposal.

The post Will a Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights Be Added to the State Constitution? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When regulations such as this one were originally waived, I (and many others) hoped these waivers would become permanent. If these regulations weren’t necessary during the pandemic, are they necessary during normal times? What is the harm in allowing restaurants to serve packaged, tamper-proof to-go cocktails? It doesn’t seem any different than buying a canned cocktail or the ingredients for a cocktail at a liquor store.

Luckily, the legislature is siding with restaurants and customers. If signed, this bill would allow restaurants more freedom to do business and please customers as they see fit.

The post A Win for Restaurants and Cocktail Enthusiasts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When Missourians voted on Medicaid expansion this past August, they were told the initiative would save the state billions of dollars. I wrote repeatedly at the time about how wrong those estimates would prove to be; expansion was then approved by a narrow margin.

With Medicaid expansion set to go into effect in a few months and Missouri’s Legislature now putting together next year’s budget, the true price tag for Medicaid expansion has finally come into focus. The state’s most recent estimates suggest that the first year will require more than $1.5 billion in new spending, which includes a significant portion of federal funding and a state share of approximately $100 million. Where will the legislature find these funds? Instead of searching for the money elsewhere in the budget, the House Budget Committee is questioning whether they need to fund expansion at all.

Of course, Missouri voters did approve the petition to expand Medicaid eligibility, but the issue is whether the constitutional amendment requires the legislature to come up with the funds. Our state’s constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, gives the legislature the “power of the purse”—the responsibility of authorizing all state spending. The constitution also provides that amendments cannot impose a new cost without outlining how that cost would be paid for. Unfortunately, the Medicaid expansion amendment, which will have an enormous cost, included no such funding mechanism.

The House Budget Committee’s stance is that without such a mechanism, the legislature is under no obligation to include funding for Medicaid expansion in next year’s budget. The committee’s move is just the first step of many if the legislature wants to avoid appropriating the funds necessary for expansion. But if the eventual budget does not include funding for expansion, the issue would probably be challenged in court.

While discussions on this topic are just beginning and will likely continue for the remainder of this legislative session, it’s important to recognize what’s happening here. There are legitimate constitutional questions being asked here, and despite what you may hear, this is about more than simply the politics of Medicaid expansion.

The post Medicaid Expansion Brings Missouri to a Constitutional Crossroads appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I have to say I am disturbed. During last night’s debate, the conversation seemed to make it clear that some senators have more common cause with local political officials than they do with the people who elected them. The role of the legislature isn’t to simply defend bad local decisions. The role of the legislature is to defend constituents—the people who elected them in the first place—against bad local decisions.

Keep in mind it wasn’t long ago that the state stopped local officials from banning plastic bags. The state was also okay with stopping local officials from hiking their minimum wages locally, for fear of the business-destroying effects the higher wage requirement might have.

But straight up banning entire categories of legal businesses from operating for indeterminate periods of time?

The state senate is A-OK with that.

How excruciatingly unserious.

State elected officials are elected by the public, not by local bureaucrats, and it’s the interests of those regular Missourians that the legislature is duty-bound to prioritize. State officials need to realize now, not later, that they are elected to be a check on local officials. Their job is not to rubber stamp business-destroying decisions simply because a local official did it. Their job is to fight those decisions and protect their constituents from them.

The post Who Will Speak For the Family Businesses They Shut Down? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page has proposed an $848.5 million county budget for 2021 that includes $4.3 million in pay raises for county employees, a big funding boost for the police department and no job reductions or cuts to services.

The plan called for pulling back spending just 2% from this year’s budget despite a projected 9.5% shortfall in revenue this year from the coronavirus and an abundance of uncertainty about the county’s ability to recover.

But wait—how is the county going to account for the 9.5 percent shortfall in revenue mentioned in the article? Tax increases, of course:

Page told the council in a four-page letter on Friday that the county needed to “identify additional revenues” to sustain existing programs, including increasing the property tax rate either by a council vote or a ballot initiative.

The county could also see a $10 million annual boost in sales taxes, he wrote, if the state Legislature were to pass legislation allowing the state and its municipalities to begin collecting taxes on sales in the state from out-of-state vendors.

Why raise taxes on citizens already struggling in the midst of an economic calamity instead of looking carefully for cuts? In the Post-Dispatch story, a county official is quoted saying that cuts “generated a whole bunch of bad outcomes. So, ultimately, none of those were accepted.”

It’s possible that some service cuts aren’t feasible and really would harm citizens. But the idea that there’s simply nothing in the budget that can be cut doesn’t pass the smell test. We already know one area where the county misuses gobs of taxpayer money: economic development policy.

One does not need to strain to find examples of the county wasting money in this fashion.

Just a few years ago, in a plan to revitalize part of North County, St. Louis County negotiated a lease for the former Northwest Plaza mall that could cost the county up to $77 million. Serious questions were raised about the negotiation process, which led to ethics hearings. A member of the county council has since called the lease “obscenely long and overpriced,” and the county is now enmeshed in litigation while trying to break the lease.

The county also contributed millions to the farcical, doomed-from-the-start Loop Trolley project, which last December financially imploded after barely a year of operation. And the county regularly subsidizes smaller projects that don’t make headlines. Last year, the county and the City of Hazelwood together spent millions in a scheme to redevelop the decaying St. Louis Outlet Mall. Late last year, St. Louis County doled out more than $4 million to HVAC company Johnstone Supply to help it build a new headquarters in Earth City.

Institute analysts have spent years documenting the problems with these projects, which often lack accountability and oversight, allow government to pick winners and losers, and shift risk from private investors to taxpayers. But most importantly: They simply don’t work, frequently failing to deliver promised benefits.

While those mistakes have already been made and the money already spent, the county is taking the wrong approach here. Why should taxpayers entrust a government that has been a poor steward of their dollars with more money? St. Louis County should work harder and more transparently to find opportunities for budget savings before asking its citizens to pony up additional taxes.

The post St. Louis County Should Find Budget Cuts Before Hiking Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We have been debating the issue of school choice in Missouri for more than 20 years now and it doesn’t look like our lawmakers are any closer to reaching a consensus. Meanwhile, a revolution has taken place in Florida. Ron Matus has documented this change in his terrific piece, “Miami’s Choice Tsunami,” appearing in the winter edition of Education Next.

Matus explains:

Today, 45 percent of Florida students in K-12 attend something other than their assigned schools. Charter schools are part of the mix. So are private schools that can be accessed with choice scholarships. So is an ever-growing array of district options.

This wave didn’t just happen.

In 1996, the Florida Legislature passed a law allowing creation of charter schools. The first opened that fall in Miami’s Liberty City community. Two decades later, Florida had 295,814 students in 655 charter schools—and one of the largest charter sectors in America.

In 1997, the Legislature created the Florida Virtual School to ramp up online learning. It started with 77 students and five courses. Today, it serves more than 200,000 students a year.

In 1999, the Legislature created the McKay Scholarship, a state-funded private school voucher for students with disabilities. In 2018-19, it served 30,695 students in 1,525 private schools.

In 2001, the Legislature created the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students. As of June 2019, it was serving 104,091 students in 1,825 private schools. In students and funding, it is the largest private school choice program in the U.S.

The results in Florida speak for themselves. The state is seeing incredible gains in student achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” As the Orlando Sentinel reported, “Something very good is happening in Florida.” Indeed, it is.

In Miami, the focus of Education Next article, the beloved superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, embraced school choice. Matus writes, “Instead of resisting the inevitable forces of choice and customization that are re-shaping public education, Carvalho and Miami-Dade chose to harness them . . . They realized it was too powerful to avoid—and too brimming with opportunity not to embrace.”

It is time for Missourians to stop debating the merits of school choice. Choice is good. Options are good. Competition is good. While we fail to act, innovation is happening elsewhere. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to expand educational opportunities in Missouri.

The post Stop Debating School Choice. Give Us Options Now! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The reason? It would break one of the first promises the governor made when he came into office. To quote the governor from just nine months ago (emphasis mine):

As a member of the Commission, I am committed to considering current federal tax credit applications, but until substantial reforms are enacted, state tax credits will not be issued.

The legislative session ends at 6 p.m., and the governor’s plans for the LIHTC should be clear shortly thereafter. If the legislature passes a bad bill and he signs it, it will have been a farce of a reform, but the onus of that failure will be shared with the legislature. Alternatively, if the governor does restart the program without legislative action, that’s a very, very different scenario.

The program is shuttered. If the program isn’t significantly reformed, it should remain shuttered. At one point, the governor would have found that uncontroversial, but here we are.

The post The Governor Threatens to Break a Promise appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In September, the reconstituted board announced that it was conducting a search to find a new commissioner. Like many, we hoped that the state would hire someone with a fresh vision and a vigorous approach to reform who would be determined to improve the performance of schools in Missouri.

The need for new leadership is undeniable.

When Dr. Vandeven was named commissioner of education back in 2014, the state’s education system had an ambitious goal: to have Missouri’s students performing among the best in the nation— “Top 10 by 2020.” Needless to say, that goal was never achieved. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” Missouri ranked 31st in 8th grade math in 2007 among the 50 states. Fast forward to 2017, and our ranking in the same subject and grade was 32nd.

During this same time, Missouri has had a revolving door of state standardized tests for students. According to a study published in Education Next¸ Missouri was the only state in the nation to actually lower proficiency standards between 2009 and 2017. Every other state is demanding more from their schools, while we’re asking for less. Why are we okay with that?

Not surprisingly, the Top 10 by 2020 goal has been quietly dropped. We have lost (at least) a decade in improving student outcomes, and we have no North Star.

During Dr. Vandeven’s tenure, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) began the process of revising the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP), the system used to accredit school districts. Today, out of 527 public school districts, not a single one is unaccredited and just six are provisionally accredited. DESE technically only accredits districts, not individual schools. Yet when the St. Louis Public School District became fully accredited, every school was given an enormous banner to hang outside with the school name and “Fully Accredited!” on it. What’s a parent to think?

There are far too many schools in Missouri with rates of proficiency in the single digits. DESE touts a high school graduation rate of nearly 90 percent, and then reports that fewer than 43 percent of graduates are college- or career-ready. Doesn’t every student deserve to have at least one high-quality option for their education?

It would be churlish to place the entire blame for this state of affairs on Dr. Vandeven, or any single official. Education is a complex process, educational bureaucracies are notoriously hard to change, and education in Missouri has been troubled for a long time.

But for precisely those reasons, we need to face the truth: Doing the same thing but expecting different results won’t work. During Dr. Vandeven’s tenure as commissioner, DESE made no real effort to provide parents useful information about how well our schools and districts were serving students. And DESE has stood firmly against any form of school choice for parents outside of Kansas City or St. Louis, regardless of how well (or poorly) students are being served by their assigned public school.

It is clearly time for a fresh look and a new approach at DESE. And yet last Wednesday, the board announced that the search for a commissioner was over, and that the new commissioner of education would be . . . the former commissioner of education, Dr. Vandeven.

We’ll have more to say about education in Missouri—a lot more—as state government prepares for the Legislature to reconvene in January. But for now, this much is clear:

If the members of the board, and the Governor who appointed them, had been trying to send the signal that they were satisfied with the status quo in Missouri; that they were throwing in the towel on real reform in the public schools and real options for Missouri families; that they were more interested in not making waves with the educational establishment than in making the lives of our children brighter—they made exactly the right choice.

The post One Step Forward, Two Steps Back appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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In order to responsibly achieve these results, Missouri should eliminate or alter some tax breaks that are outdated, unfair, or unnecessary, and close loopholes in the tax code. This tax plan boldly cuts taxes for nearly every Missouri taxpayer and dramatically improves Missouri’s tax environment for businesses. It is also revenue-neutral according to an analysis from the Department of Revenue. By eliminating these breaks and closing these loopholes, Missouri families and businesses will see a tax cut and Missouri’s budget will not be unduly burdened. The alterations to tax breaks and loopholes are laid out in detail in this document.

Translation? Rather than continuing a raft of carve-outs for special interests and activities—carve-outs whose burdens, of course, fall on the shoulders of other taxpayers—this plan appears to be a reorientation of tax policy away from income taxes and toward a broad sales tax base. The immediate beneficiaries should be individuals (especially the poor, whose income taxes would effectively be zeroed out under the plan) and corporations, whose income tax rate would be cut by about a third. 

I could write at length comparing this  plan to the two tax cut plans already afoot in the state Senate. Perhaps the biggest difference is that this plan appears to omit an increase in the gas tax for infrastructure improvements. But it seems in all three cases, the policy principle sitting in the sidecar of each tax cut plan is that of revenue neutrality. As I discussed with Marc Cox earlier this month, while the details of the Governor’s plan were unknown at that time, it was reasonably easy to speculate about its principal parts, given the explicit neutrality targets and what had already been filed in the Legislature.

That isn’t to say that tax cuts must always be revenue-neutral, since reorganizing tax revenues for a government that has grown too large obviously doesn’t address its largeness. Yet, one can divide the questions of pro-growth tax policy and government size into different legislative pieces rather than addressing both issues all at one time and, potentially, confusing the issues in the process. These proposals address the pro-growth policy questions first and leave the question of government size for a later date, and in my opinion, that’s a responsible approach that adheres to both good and limited government principles. 

The post Governor Releases Tax Plan, Rightly Aiming For Revenue Neutrality appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

To help cab companies compete with Uber and other ride-hailing firms, the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission voted Wednesday to slash license fees and reduce inspection requirements.

The new rules, which take effect Thursday, also cut minimum liability insurance requirements for the cab firms.

Fingerprint background checks still will be required for new cab drivers but they’ll be able to get them from lower-cost private vendors instead of at the commission office.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article linked above goes into greater depth on what is changing in Saint Louis, so hit the link to get the full rundown. Show-Me has discussed the issue at length for a number of years now, and more recently my colleague Graham Renz in particular has repeatedly raised flags about the behavior of Missouri’s taxi cartels and their impact on consumers. After the Legislature defanged taxi commissions statewide, this week’s regulatory changes were more or less a foregone conclusion.

On behalf of Graham, I have the privilege of saying that today’s events are no surprise. When you let the market work, innovators will innovate, or else be left behind, and it seems clear that the Commission has recognized and responded to that reality this week.

Whether in transportation or energy or some other sector of the economy, monopolies and oligopolies often work to the detriment of the average person and to the advantage of entrenched interests. Let the market—let competition, let innovation—work, and the result tends to be far superior to letting the status quo ossify, with the backing of government bureaucracy.

These reforms were long overdue, but they are here. Congratulations, St. Louis.

The post No Surprise: Fresh Competition from Rideshare Companies Leads to Taxi Reforms in St. Louis appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For years, educators and some lawmakers in the state have railed against the legislature for failing to fully fund the foundation formula for K-12 public schools. Last year, one lawmaker said her colleagues “refuse” to fund the formula. While lawmakers could choose to fully fund the formula, they aren’t simply deciding to withhold money without reason. Those dollars have to come from somewhere, which means less funding for other programs.

Indeed, this year lawmakers have passed a budget that increases aid for the foundation formula by $45 million, to a total of $3.4 billion. For the first time since the new formula was enacted in 2006, lawmakers will fully fund the formula.

Did they find that elusive money tree? No, of course not. They simply took the money from somewhere else (and they wisely reinstated a cap to growth of the foundation formula target amount)

One place hit hard by this reallocation of funds was higher education. As a result, higher education administrators are making cuts and laying off staff. (Full disclosure: I am a professor at UMSL which has been negatively impacted by the budget cuts).

State lawmakers have done exactly what you and I do when the budget is tight: shift funds from one thing to another. This will always happen as different administrations prioritize one thing over another. The only way to reduce the need to shift money around is to increase the amount of money available by growing the economy. To do this, policymakers should refer to the Show-Me Institute’s 20 for 2020 policy proposals. We’re far more likely to find new revenue for schools through sensible policy reform than by looking for it on trees.

The post Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees, But We Can Grow the Economy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post 2017 Legislative Recap appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The accomplishments of the session still leave Missouri far from where it needs to be. And certainly we would offer our 2017 Blueprint as a baseline for the sorts of reforms our state needs going forward. That menu of reforms includes the elimination of the state’s Certificate of Need laws; expansion of school choice through education savings accounts, charter schools, and course access; and substantive transportation and labor reforms to make sure that the state can compete for jobs and capital, whether already in the state or currently outside of it. Alongside the policy, we need procedural reforms in the state Senate where an historic number of bills languished and died; indeed, a filibuster on the last day of session nearly killed the state’s minimum wage reforms.

Still, there is ample room for optimism. The governor’s Committee on Simple, Fair and Low Taxes seems well-positioned to make 2018 the year of serious tax reform. Those reforms should include advancement of an earned income tax credit, the reform of state and local tax incentives, and the reduction of taxes on individuals and businesses in the state. Moreover, the passage of some priorities this year obviously clears space for the passage of other priorities in education, labor, and other areas that didn’t make it to home plate as the 2017 session closed.

The key, as some Kansas City Royals fans might put it, is to “keep the line moving.” The legislature doesn’t have to hit a home run every time it steps up to the policy plate; it just has to keep hitting singles with increasing frequency. And as baseball fans would tell you, if you do those small things right, chances are good that big things will eventually come.

While we would all have loved to see a towering moonshot of a legislative session, the Legislature ultimately hit enough singles to merit a cheer from free marketeers. Missourians had a good inning; we’re looking forward to seeing bigger and better things happen in the next one.

The post Keep the Line Moving: Looking Beyond the 2017 Session appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As McGraw Milhaven, tongue in cheek, asked our own Brenda Talent earlier this week, “Is electricity different in South County [Saint Louis] than it is in North County?” Of course not, and it’s good to see the Legislature take action to pursue a state licensing policy that reflects that truth.

The post Session Notes: Electrician Licensing Reform Passes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

HB 130’s passage means that Missouri will be an easier place to earn an extra income and get around. Rather than navigate a patchwork of rules and regulations—or none at all—TNC drivers and riders across the state will now all follow the same, reasonable rules. In some cities, like Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia, bureaucrats and special interests have attempted to regulate TNCs out of existence, killing jobs, slowing economic progress, and reducing consumer choice. HB 130 eliminates unnecessary barriers to market entry, thereby expanding economic opportunity (especially for the disadvantaged) and efficient transportation choices.

I commend the Legislature and Governor for advancing liberty and economic freedom by making HB 130 law. (The law’s swift progression has even prompted ossified and cartelized taxi firms to call for deregulation.) We’re hopeful this is just one of many free-market transportation reforms to become law over the next few years. 

The post HB 130 a Win for Transportation and Economic Freedoms appeared first on Show-Me Institute.