In 1939 the power to appoint members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners was given to the governor in order to combat rampant local corruption. Kansas City is the only major city in United States whose local elected political leadership does not control the police. In speaking with several former members of the Board of Police Commissioners—appointed by different governors and serving at different times with different mayors—I learned that governors are not all powerful nor are mayors powerless.

First, the observation that the Kansas City police department lacks local control is misleading. Members of the commission, including a seat reserved for the sitting mayor, are all local figures who must be residents of Kansas City. The tradition for appointing commissioners is to choose people who already have distinguished themselves in the community—thus reducing the chance that people use their position as a political platform. And while the appointments are made by the governor with Senate approval, none of the former commissioners with whom I spoke ever felt as if they were serving a gubernatorial agenda. Some reported hearing from the governor’s office about every 12 to 18 months, and then just to be kept abreast of lawsuits. Despite the power of appointment, Republican and Democrat governors alike do not exercise significant authority over the KC police in practice.

While the police board provides local control, they do not represent local political control. In other cities, police chiefs must be wary of municipal politics and palace intrigue that can only distract them from their main concern: public safety. In Kansas City, police chiefs are a step removed from politics because they do not owe their position directly to elected officials.

None of this is to say that the mayor does not have a significant amount of power. Commissioners all indicated that there was deference given to the various mayors who served on the commission—even though their level of participation varied. For example, Mayor Funkhouser was engaged in police processes. Mayor Berkeley was attentive but passive. Mayor Barnes’ attendance was sporadic and picked up toward the end of her tenure.

Though Kansas City has a city manager form of government, the mayor has one power that researchers have found is among the most consequential any mayor can have: the veto. While a mayoral veto can be overridden by the vote of 9 councilmembers, it presents him with a great deal of influence over legislation—including the budget of each city department. What greater power over local policing could there be than the budget?

If a mayor wanted the police department to hire more social workers, hire more uniformed officers and/or provide more and different training, decrease the number of officers with take-home cruisers, or increase foot patrols and community policing, he has a great amount of leverage to do so. The power of the purse makes the mayor a more consequential figure than any single governor, any single police board commissioner, any single police chief. No Missourian has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor—should he wish to use it.

The current extraordinary challenge to public safety requires an extraordinary response from city leaders. The tools are in place—but will we have the leadership?

The post Who Runs the KCPD? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Transportation scholar Randal O’Toole regales us with the fix that California’s overlords have put themselves in. Merely assuming that dense city living decreases commuting, California’s legislators cooked up a law requiring local governments to increase population density.

But it turns out “transportation models reveal that increased densities actually increase congestion, as measured by ‘level of service,’ which,” O’Toole informs us, “measures traffic as a percent of a roadway’s capacity and which in turn can be used to estimate the hours of delay people suffer.”

This should be no surprise to Kansas Citians, who are familiar with official calls for increased urban density and the streetcar system that they believe will bring it. An effort to raise private money for the streetcar (so far, $3,775 of their $10 million goal) says that streetcars:

. . . provide high-quality transit service that promotes compact, walkable, higher-density development.

A firm hired to help build the streetcar system offers as a potential benefit, “Increase[d] population and economic density to the urban core.” Streetcar booster and former Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser claimed that a rail system “produces density, which is key to efficient land and resource use.”

We know from previous studies that rail transit does not remove cars from the road. And we know that it is not the rail lines themselves that drive economic development but rather the additional tax incentives that governments hand out along rail lines. We know that the people of Kansas City have voted down streetcars every time a legitimate election has been held. And judging by the effort to raise private funds yielding only three-ten-thousandths of 1 percent of their goal, Kansas Citians still don’t support it.

But just as in Kansas City, California politicians continue undaunted. O’Toole writes:

The gist of the new standards of “regulation”? “[T]hey ignore the impact on people’s time and lives: if densification reduces per capita vehicle miles traveled by 1 percent, planners will regard it as a victory even if the other 99 percent of travel is slowed by millions of hours per year.”

If you doubt that city leaders care more about spending taxpayer money than respecting taxpayer time and convenience, consider the plans to build a $1.2 billion airport terminal.

The post Streetcars Will Waste Your Money And Your Time appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Tax hikes are troubling under most circumstances anyway, but they are particularly troubling in the context of development cultures where tax incentives are running amok. As the Kansas City Star‘s Dave Helling astutely notes today, the proposed tax hike would not only apply to both struggling and prosperous Kansas City neighborhoods, but the tax revenue would not be wholly plowed back into improving public services. Rather, millions would go to supporting city Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects that, in many instances, probably should not have received TIF anyway.

“The first TIF proposal that reaches my desk had darn well better be from the east side,” [former Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhauser] thundered, promising to focus the subsidy on the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Of course, the first TIF proposal to reach Funkhouser’s desk wasn’t really from the east side. He signed it anyway. […]

Never mind. His idea was sound. [ . . . ]

Boosters of Question 1 promise to eliminate several city levies in exchange for a half-cent sales tax hike. They don’t say it, but passing Question 1 would also unquestionably increase the city’s overall tax burden, by about $24 million a year, money that would come in part from the city’s poorest residents.

That might be a good deal if all that extra $24 million went for better streets or cleaner parks. Alas, about $4 million would go to — you guessed it — reimbursements for TIF projects, possibly including that new hotel near the Plaza.

For those unfamiliar with TIF, it allows incremental increases in taxes from a development to be dedicated to certain costs of that development. Originally intended to help struggling communities attract investment, TIF has grown to be used as a standard tax incentive regardless of the economic status of a development’s surrounding area.

Stokes and other Show-Me scholars have long suggested that TIF is overdue for a reform. This latest tax proposal serves to reaffirm that proposition. Raising taxes is typically a suspect proposition, but raising taxes and transferring some of that money to city projects in tony areas through tax incentives meant to help struggling communities is especially disappointing. Kansas City already has some of the highest tax rates in the Midwest, and along with the ballot proposition that would raise taxes, officials are considering raising taxes further for a vanity trolley car downtown.

Does this sound like a sustainable trajectory? Given the tax hike and transfer, does this even sound like a just trajectory, a trajectory that treats Kansas Citians and their hard-earned money appropriately?

The post Rising Taxes And Tax Giveaways In Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Mayor Mark Funkhouser courageously proposed merely looking at the possibility of contracting out city services. Much of this proposal followed up on work he did as Kansas City’s auditor. Not surprisingly, city unions went ballistic, because it’s well known that taxpayers now work to support government employees, not the other way around.

I hope that Kansas City reconsiders this rejection — and that St. Louis embraces the potential — of contracting or privatizing city services while they still can do it from a position of strength. Eventually, they may be forced to do it because of economic realities, and then they won’t be in a position to get the best agreement for taxpayers.

The post Giant Disappointment for Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Kansas City Star is hosting an op-ed I wrote about the benefits of this approach. If you live or work in Kansas City, I encourage you to check it out. You can also see our version of the op-ed, along with other related writings on the issue.

The post Kansas City Considers Private Involvement in Infrastructure Management appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The $2.5 billion settlement to improve the Kansas City sewer system has put the city well past the question of whether something needs to be done with its infrastructure assets. Right now, private companies are willing to pay for the right to manage the city’s property, and long-term savings result when the private sector operates public services more efficiently. Partnering with the private sector — either in the form of up-front payments for asset management, or cost savings from greater operational efficiencies — could help Kansas City meet its financial obligations, both now and in the future.

In 1984, Oklahoma City contracted out the management of its wastewater treatment facilities to a private utility company, Veolia Water. At the time of the contract, Oklahoma City spent $14 million per year on its system. Seventeen years later, in 2001, Veolia operated an improved system for only $11 million per year. These numbers have not been adjusted for inflation, making the savings even more impressive. Veolia still operates the Oklahoma City wastewater system today, after further contract renewals.

I provide this example not to encourage you to buy stock in Veolia or move to Oklahoma City, but to showcase the potential effectiveness of partnering with the private sector in public infrastructure operations, management, and delivery. A city council committee has approved a resolution for Kansas City officials to study the possibilities offered to residents and taxpayers from private sector competition for public infrastructure programs. The full council is scheduled to consider the proposal soon.

This resolution is limited in its reach. The proposal simply calls for the city to study the expected effects of contracting out the management of certain assets. There is no plan or intention to sell off and fully privatize city assets. Instead, the study could consider a range of options, such as private companies that pay the city for the right to operate city parking garages, or a private engineering firm contracting to operate water or wastewater facilities. One local example of the benefits of these ideas involves recent successful changes to the Kansas City animal shelter, although that particular effort moved further toward full privatization than this proposal does.

Successful examples of the private provision of public services can be found throughout Missouri. They include instances of outsourcing, contracting, and private ownership. Private companies successfully operate the nation’s only private, commercial airport in Branson; manage the pharmacy services of Saint Louis County’s Department of Health; provide electricity, gas, and water throughout Missouri; and manage trash collection in communities throughout the state. Around the country, private companies efficiently operate public highways, libraries, jails, and much more.

Not every example would be appropriate for Kansas City, but a study could help determine where private partnerships would benefit the city. Mayor Mark Funkhouser deserves credit for bringing these issues to the forefront, and the people of Kansas City will benefit if they get the serious study they deserve.

David Stokes is a policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

The post Private Sector Can Help Kansas City Manage Its Public Infrastructure, Likely for Less appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I want to be very clear from the beginning that Kansas City is NOT considering full-scale privatization of its infrastructure, as I recommended the city of St. Louis do with its water division. Kansas City leaders will study the potential for contracting with private partners to manage facilities, including wastewater treatment, parking, and more. Today’s Kansas City Star has a very good story about yesterday’s committee meeting (which I attended). Mayor Mark Funkhouser and the members of the committee deserve a great deal of credit for their willingness to consider these possibilities for the taxpayers and residents of Kansas City.

This type of operations and management (O&M) outsourcing can have great benefits for the city and its people. Oklahoma City has had great success after outsourcing its wastewater treatment plants in 1984. Anyone who thinks that this type of original thinking always fails or hurts taxpayers simply needs to look at the success in Oklahoma City for the other view. Like anything, these types of efforts can be executed either well or poorly. Although privatization failures exist, Oklahoma City represents only one example of success out of many. I look forward to sharing them with you as this discussion moves forward.

The post Kansas City to Take a Hard Look at How It Provides Services appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

[City Councilwoman Jan] Marcason said she had to explain to him that the terms MBE and WBE meant “minority business enterprise” and “ women’s business enterprise” and that the city set goals for each in awarding public contracts.

I guess he would have been a terrible bureaucrat during the New Deal. It is also apparently being held against Stretch that he understands the economic laws of labor and prices, and is, incomprehensibly, not 100-percent committed to having the government determine the price of labor:

Marcason said she also was unsure of Stretch’s commitment to contractors paying “prevailing wages,” which means the standard pay and benefits to laborers in the largest city of a county.

Oh, the horror! The last thing the TIF Commission should possibly have is one person looking out for taxpayer value. God forbid that government funds don’t get properly spent placating every interest group in town.

The business community is also unhappy that someone might not plan on going along with the tax incentive gravy train:

Some in the business community say the Stretch and Lindsay nominations continue a pattern of replacing experienced board members on development agencies wholesale with newcomers who at best are unfamiliar with incentive programs and at worst, hostile.

Stretch may or may not have known what MBE and WBE meant, but I wonder whether those opposed to his appointment have any idea what “regulatory capture” means. Commissions like this desperately need independent voices like his.

The post Well, We Can’t Let Just Anyone on the KC TIF Commission, Now Can We? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The other lesson is that giving these ideas careful consideration is hardly dangerous for the public, given that Chicago has received a $126 million penalty payment from the private investors because they walked away from the agreed-upon deal. So, what KC really needs to do is move forward with this idea while protecting its flank, like Chicago did.

You can get hard details on the credit issues and penalty payments here. The Kansas City Business Journal also has some old reports that indicate how long this idea has been around, and how Mayor Mark Funkhouser supported it (or, at least, supported its consideration) while serving as city auditor.

The post New Airport Possibility for St. Louis and Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The real point I want to share is how commonly this issue is debated. New York City debated it, and I believe moved forward with it in 1995. Boston is considering doing the same right now. Each of these articles, about New York and Boston, cites St. Louis — which merged its ambulance service into the fire department in 1997. This turned out to be very successful, from everything I can tell. This same issue has been similarly debated in St. Charles County.

Not surprisingly, these disputes often involve a union element, with representatives of both firemen and EMTs trying to preserve their respective turf. This is where strong leadership is needed, to overcome the natural bureaucratic opposition to such changes. I wish Kansas City’s Mayor Mark Funkhouser good luck in that regard — although I should be clear that I have no idea whether the current head of MAST should stay or go.

The post Ambulances Are a Very Big Deal appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Issue: Light rail would be dangerous for riders because it attracts criminals and would lead to a wave of crime.

Fact or myth: Big myth.

Earlier this year, consultants for Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser raised a “concern over crime” on light rail. Then Randal O’Toole, working for Missouri’s libertarian-leaning Show-Me Institute, called light rail dangerous and said it “has by far the worst crime record in the transit industry.”

As proof, O’Toole and other light rail opponents cited some fights and stabbings on the Portland, Ore., MAX system, including one story that quoted a police sergeant saying “the MAX has been a living nightmare for us.”

Yet those critics can’t name another city where crime has been a problem on light rail besides one section of Portland’s system.

Overall, light rail’s crime threat is inflated because few crimes occur on mass transit systems.

After another Star piece made a similar argument earlier this year, I first responded by pointing out that comparing the statistics only makes sense if you do so in comparable terms:

Just looking at the robbery statistics for 2005, there were 535 incidents reported on buses and 377 on light rail. When considered in terms of robberies per passenger mile, it’s as though there were nearly 4,840 robberies on light rail in comparison to those 535 on buses. (Or, alternatively, it’s like there were about 42 robberies on buses in comparison to those 377 on light rail.) I could show similar comparisons for almost any of those measurements of transit crime.

In other words, the rates of violent crime, in general, only seem lower for light rail because there are far fewer miles of light rail track than there are miles of bus routes. But if both are considered in comparable terms, light rail is far riskier.

Focusing on homicides doesn’t get you much in the way of meaningful statistics, true, but as we’ve seen recently in St. Louis, the relatively unrestricted access to MetroLink trains and stations makes it a more attractive target for those looking to cause trouble. From the Riverfront Times:

In recent weeks dozens of those same teens have been implicated in violent attacks that have hospitalized people working and living near the light rail stations in the Loop and the nearby DeBaliviere neighborhood. On July 26 a group of at least twenty teens assailed a family as they left the platform at the Forest Park-DeBaliviere station. That same night another group, according to police, attacked a person at the Delmar station.

MetroLink officials contend that the same group of teens was involved in both attacks. Moreover, the transit agency vigorously denies that the commuter train has anything to do with the assaults in the Loop or the spike in shoplifting and juvenile misconduct at the Galleria.

“What we do for the Galleria is take them their employees and shoppers,” stresses Metro spokeswoman Dianne Williams. “With the Loop incidents, we and our passengers were the victims. These kids aren’t traveling there by Metro. They’re coming by car or walking. They’re not coming by Metro.”

Police testimony, however, tells a different story. The two seventeen-year-olds implicated in the group assault of the family were apprehended on the MetroLink platform. The teens told police they were on their way to their homes in Jennings and St. Louis City after spending the night hanging out near Loop restaurants and bars.

Several teenagers who gather at the Galleria and in University City connect MetroLink with the rowdy behavior. “We used to hang out in the Galleria, but when MetroLink opened it got too crazy there,” notes Johnnie Fields, a senior at Gateway High School who met with friends on the sidewalk of Delmar Boulevard on a recent weekend.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that light rail is causing crime — rather, crime that might have occurred elsewhere migrates to areas with rail stations because they can make easy targets. Or, in other words, the potential costs involved in committing crime are lower than they might be somewhere else. As the economist David Friedman points out in his work on the economics of crime:

Economists approach the analysis of crime with one simple assumption—that criminals are rational. A mugger is a mugger for the same reason I am an economist—because it is the most attractive alternative available to him. The decision to commit a crime, like any other economic decision, can be analyzed as a choice among alternative combinations of costs and benefits.

Light rail stations generally have easier access and less oversight than buses; you don’t have to pay the driver. Fare inspectors and a stronger police presence can help combat that problem for rail, but that can amount to a cost that isn’t generally tallied by rail supporters.

At any rate, as I argued in a later blog entry, Randal O’Toole’s study for the Show-Me Institute didn’t focus on crime:

Crime on light rail systems is touched on only briefly in the full Show-Me Institute light rail study. Out of approximately 150 paragraphs of text (not including endnotes, pull quotes, etc.), I count seven that mention crime at all — one paragraph in the executive summary, five paragraphs on page 5, and one paragraph on page 23. In fact, the one mention of crime in the executive summary comes toward the end of a litany of reasons why light rail isn’t a worthwhile investment. In that list, O’Toole mentions crime 9th out of a list of 11 reasons — and even then, only after first mentioning safety statistics. Clearly, while light rail’s crime level in relation to buses is worth mentioning, it’s not one of the study’s primary arguments.

The real arguments against light rail are much more concrete and practical in nature. I’ll list them again here, because they deserve repeated exposure:

• Light rail is expensive, typically experiencing high cost overruns;
• Light rail has a much lower ridership capacity than freeway lanes;
• Light rail costs much more to operate than buses;
• Light rail requires years of advance planning, with no guarantee that transit needs or preferences will remain static during that time;
• Few regions have actually seen increases in per-capita ridership after constructing light-rail lines;
• Most regions see the share of riders using transit for travel actually decline after constructing light-rail lines;
• Light-rail lines that operate in city streets significantly increase traffic congestion;
• Light rail is particularly ineffective in municipalities without high concentrations of downtown jobs — like Kansas City;
• Light rail is usually less energy efficient per passenger mile than passenger cars;
• Light rail does not stimulate urban development without huge additional government subsidies.

I haven’t seen any of the anti–light rail ads that have been produced as part of the new campaign in Kansas City, but I hope they include some of these compelling reasons to reject rail as an urban transit solution.

The post Anti-Light Rail Campaign in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Create a private investment funding source, with the help of financiers and foundations, to assist small businesses with loans or in other ways.
• Provide college or vocational opportunities for needy high school students.
• Create work force training centers in distressed areas.
• Improve transportation and child care offerings to assist people in getting to work.
• Provide specific incentives to employers who hire people living in distressed communities.

Kansas City could follow a simple recipe for growth: low taxes, lax regulations, and strong property rights. Implementing this isn’t necessarily easy, however. To start, the city could repeal the earnings tax, because it provides strong incentives for productive people and businesses to locate elsewhere. A sales tax or a tax on the value of land could raise the same amount of revenue without having as much of a negative effect on growth. A general rule of thumb would be to avoid TIFs, tax abatements, tax credits, and other special tax exemptions. Consumers and businesses will take notice and move in … perhaps with the help of our handy tax estimator.

The post Developing the Core appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Needless to say, people are outraged, as if there is some inherent right to concert tickets. Not surprisingly, some politicians are pandering to the parents:

“Rep. John Burnett, a Kansas City Democrat and an opponent of the law, had said legalizing scalping would permit price gouging. He tried to limit resale prices to no more than 20 percent of face value, but his amendment was defeated.”

Price gouging is when you raise the price of lumber fivefold the day after a hurricane. In a legal sense, it does not have, and should not have, anything to do with the price of tickets to a concert. Rep. Burnett is not alone (emphasis added).

“We’re getting calls about angry constituents,” Mayor Mark Funkhouser told Tinnen. “We want the level of unhappiness to go down and the level of happiness to go up, however you get it done.”

The honorable mayor seems to be confusing “promoting the general welfare” and “the pursuit of happiness” with the casual meaning of happiness as it relates to pre-teens. The role of government, at any level, is not to increase happiness for people. It is to perform basic functions that allow people to pursue their own happiness. And while governments do it all the time, they should still avoid interfering with the free market as much as possible. And the few exceptions to that should be in cases of war or natural disasters, not pop concerts.

The post Hannah Montana Tests New Scalping Laws: Some Parents Intimidated by Their 9-Year Olds appeared first on Show-Me Institute.