Some people in Warson Woods are up in arms over this proposal. It’s their city and their taxes, and they have every right to be concerned and ask tough questions. But the reaction, in my opinion, does seem out of line relative to the proposal. Warson Woods would not be taken over by some giant organization. The city would go from being served by a department of 6 total officers to being served by a combined department of about 15 officers, including all of the Warson Woods policemen. If you want to know the names of your local police (a perfectly worthy aim), you can still do that.

The proposed contract is estimated to save around $2 million over the next ten years. That is a lot of money for a city like Warson Woods. Warson Woods leaders have put together a committee to investigate the proposal from Glendale, and I hope it gets the careful consideration it deserves.

The people of this region have made it clear that most people don’t want some massive government consolidation. But nobody should reject out-of-hand smart changes to our government structure in St. Louis County. The idea that contracting with a neighboring city for police services to save tax money and improve services (more frequently having multiple officers on patrol will improve service) is somehow radical is unfortunate. It is, in fact, quite common. Warson Woods itself has contracted with Glendale for fire services for decades. The small, neighboring suburb of Oakland contracts with Kirkwood for police services. Nearby Frontenac patrols three other smaller communities adjacent to Frontenac: Westwood, Huntleigh, and Crystal Lake Park. I have honestly never heard anyone in Westwood (which is really a country club with a city attached to it, like Prussia) or Oakland say, “Things are great here, but it would be better if we just had our own police department. Those guys from Kirkwood and Frontenac just aren’t cutting it.”

I wish the committee investigating the proposal all the best. Few may want a massive overhaul of local government in St. Louis, but that doesn’t mean there should be knee-jerk opposition to smart, narrowly defined changes that save tax dollars and improve public services at the same time.

The post Synchronicity in Warson Woods and Glendale appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

However, as hard as it may be for Saint Louisans to hear, the report had a lot of truth in it, especially regarding Saint Louis’s economic situation. The statement rightfully points out (as we at the Show-Me Institute have written) that, when it comes to population and jobs, Saint Louis really has fallen behind and has yet to turn things around. Saint Louis City has lost much of its population; the city had around 750,000 residents in 1960, and today it’s close to 300,000. From 2000 to 2010, Saint Louis City lost population and Saint Louis County essentially stagnated.

Most of the population growth during that time was in the far suburbs and downtown (which received significant subsidies), and overall, population was stagnant.

The story is equally depressing when it comes to job growth. Saint Louis had anemic employment growth before the recession, and the economy has limped along since then. Despite claims of becoming a tech center, Saint Louis (and especially Saint Louis City) has seen nearly all its employment growth in education and medical services. For these and other reasons, economists (and not just those cited in the statement) forecast continued slow growth in the future for Saint Louis.

The Rams’ statement also claims that the other teams trying to move to L.A. (the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers) would leave healthier economic markets. In this, the team is not wrong. Income and GDP of both Oakland and San Diego are much greater than in Saint Louis. They have more money to spend on tickets, jerseys, and NFL cable packages:

In addition to how things stand today, one has to factor in growth. Even accounting for the deindustrialization of the late 20^th century, Saint Louis is growing much more slowly than San Diego and Oakland.

 While Saint Louis aspires toward building a tech industry, Oakland is a rapidly gentrifying part of the tech-dominated Bay Area economy, and San Diego has the one of nation’s most important bio-tech clusters.

There are many possible culprits for Saint Louis’s lackluster growth, and few easy answers. However, it’s time for Saint Louis to be honest and acknowledge that, yes, of the four markets in play, Saint Louis is the least attractive for the NFL. We also have to acknowledge that without significant public financial “support,” no existing NFL team would consider locating to Saint Louis. But the city’s economy— not Stan Kroenke—is  the real problem. It’s that problem, which affects so much more than sports, that policymakers need to address.  

The post The Unfortunate Truths Behind Rams’ Relocation Statement appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

                Those who have followed our blogs on this topic will be unsurprised to learn that Missouri’s largest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, rank well on these measures. In terms of overall smoothness, Kansas City and St. Louis rank 8th and 11th, respectively, among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas:

                The relative smoothness of Missouri’s urban highways means lower costs for drivers. According to TRIP, the average driver in St. Louis and Kansas City paid $398 and $438, respectively, in annual additional vehicle operating costs from bad roads. That is far less than the U.S. large metro median ($640 per vehicle). San Francisco’s road conditions cost drivers the most, at an average $1,044 per year.

                The latest TRIP report underscores the fact that Missouri’s major roads are in comparatively good condition, at least in urban areas. However, to maintain and improve road quality, Missouri’s highways need regular maintenance and an adequate user-funding base to back that maintenance, which they currently do not have. 

The post New Report Gives High Marks to Missouri’s Urban Highways appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Does it strike anyone as worrisome that in economic times such as these, public officials are scrambling to work out a way to funnel public money into a sports stadium housing a team that a billionaire owns and is in the process of trying to acquire another sports team? When the Dallas Cowboys built their $1.15 billion stadium, the Jones family (the owner of the Cowboys) contributed $261 million to building the stadium. In fact, less than 30 percent of the new stadium was financed with public money. The CVC’s first proposal did not indicate how the non-Rams portion (close to $60 million) of the plan would be financed, but it seems that the CVC will turn to the state of Missouri, Saint Louis County, and Saint Louis City, who put forth the original financing for the Dome’s construction. The Rams rejected this proposal. It seems disquieting to think about how much the Rams will ask from the public for the upgrades they want.

What justification do the state, Saint Louis County, and Saint Louis City have for spending public money to help a private sports franchise, beyond civic pride? I previously cited a study that the St. Louis Federal Reserve conducted showing that in most cases, building or refurbishing a sports stadium has NO impact on that city’s real per-capita personal income growth and in the case of Saint Louis, the impact was a NEGATIVE one.  Here is the exact quote:

Moreover, Baade found that of the 30 metro areas where the stadium or arena was built or refurbished in the previous 10 years, only three areas showed a significant relationship between the presence of a stadium and real per-capita personal income growth. And in all three cases — St. Louis, San Francisco/Oakland and Washington, D.C. — the relationship was negative.

Given this finding, it is hard to find a compelling reason as to why the state, Saint Louis County, and/or Saint Louis City should provide ANY public funding to the Edward Jones Dome and so far, it seems that public officials have yet to provide one.

The post Episode II: Attack Of The Dome appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For those who may be wondering what exactly “first-tier” means, the Edward Jones Dome must be in the top 25 percent of all NFL facilities regarding some established criteria, such as: Fan amenities (box suites, club seats, lounges, etc.), technical areas (scoreboards, lighting, sound, etc.), and revenue-generating facilities (shops and concession stands). Considering that stadiums qualifying as top-tier include the newly-built Cowboys Stadium (price tag: $1.2 billion, with the Dallas Cowboys football team paying $875 million) and MetLife Stadium (price tag: $1.6 billion), the Edward Jones Dome has a long way to go to qualify. In fact, according to Patrick Rishe of Webster University, the cost of upgrading the Dome to “first-tier” status would be, at a minimum, $200 million-300 million (the cost of construction for the Edward Jones Dome was $280,000,000 in 1992 dollars). That is significantly more than the estimated $124 million in the CVC’s proposal.

Thus, officials for Saint Louis City, Saint Louis County, and Missouri have a decision on whether to pay up or face the prospect of the Rams leaving Saint Louis. I would urge the city, county, and state to forgo the use of any public money for upgrades to the Dome for several reasons. The first reason is on principle; the Rams are privately-owned and yet want public money for one of their facilities. If the Rams want a first-tier stadium, they should make a first-tier investment (and put a first-rate team on the field).

Second, even if city, county, and state officials wanted to pay for the upgrades, where are they going to get the money? The state is not exactly awash in cash, and the situation in the county is not much better. Both Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and the state legislature have ruled out tax increases to help close the budget gap and I highly doubt they will go back on that in order to keep the Rams in Saint Louis. The city, county, and state could issue bonds (the state, at least, has a great credit rating), but they are still paying off ($12 million for the state and $6 million each for the city and county every year until 2021) the bonds issued to build the Edward Jones Dome. Does it make sense for the city, county, and/or state to go further into debt to keep the Rams in Saint Louis for another 10 years? Besides, when Kansas City and Jackson County helped fund renovations to Arrowhead Stadium, Jackson County struggled to keep up with the debt payments. Why put Saint Louis City and/or Saint Louis County in that kind of risky position?

Finally, even if the city, state, and/or county had the money, the use of public funds for sports stadiums does not generate much economic activity. According to a St. Louis Federal Reserve publication, the weight of economic evidence shows that the taxpayers do not get much of a return on their investment. In fact, the Federal Reserve study referred to another study:

Baade found that of the 30 metro areas where the stadium or arena was built or refurbished in the previous 10 years, only three areas showed a significant relationship between the presence of a stadium and real per-capita personal income growth. And in all three cases—St. Louis, San Francisco/Oakland and Washington, D.C.—the relationship was negative.

Considering these reasons, what justification can officials for the city, county, and/or state give for further expenditures on behalf of the Edward Jones Dome?

The post Dough for the Dome appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most people, NFL players have to pay taxes on their income. A team located where income tax rates are lower theoretically could offer contracts that are lower in nominal dollars but allow the players to receive higher take-home pay (for the purposes of this post, I am not taking into consideration deductions and tax loopholes, nor am I factoring in cost-of-living adjustments).  Which team’s players have the lowest income tax burden in the NFL? Well, there a couple of things to consider. First, what is the state and local income tax rate for where the players play their eight home games? Next, what is the state and local income tax rate for each of the team’s divisional foes (the players will travel for a road game against each of their divisional opponents)? The other games on a team’s schedule change from year to year, so the combined burden the players face will change somewhat from year to year.

So, for the 11 games (out of the 16 total) that a NFL team has on its schedule every year, is there a noticeable difference between the income tax burdens that the players on different teams face? From my calculations, there is (basic calculations —I only used the top marginal rate, so these numbers do not take into account the lower rates for the lower brackets and these numbers are slightly higher than they really would be). Take, for example, the Houston Texans. A team member who plays a game in Houston would pay no income taxes at either the state or local level. Therefore, for the eight games played in Houston, a Houston player will pay no income taxes. A Houston player will pay no income taxes for the road games in Jacksonville and Nashville, and $1,973.13 for the one game in Indianapolis. Therefore, the total income tax burden for a Houston Texans player making the median salary for these 11 games is $1,973.13. In contrast, a NFL player making the median salary would face a state and local income tax burden of close to $46,000 if he played for the Oakland Raiders (9.3 percent tax rate for eight games in Oakland and one game in San Diego plus the 4.63 percent and 7 percent rates for the games in Denver and Kansas City, respectively). Multiply that figure by 53 (the total number of players on the active roster) and the burden on a team’s players can increase substantially. If you used the mean salary ($1,900,000) instead of the median salary, the burden also increases.

Would this tax burden make much of a difference? I cannot say definitively (I am not an economist), but if one team had to pay a couple of million dollars, which counts against the cap, to just the income taxes, while another team only paid $100,000 or $200,000, I can tell you which team I would rather own.

The post Another Way To Keep Score? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“Life’s not supposed to be fair,” my father said. “Stop
measuring,” my mother said. “You’re not supposed to measure.”

But this was before a new obsession in American political
life: rising concern over the issue of fairness. Many people have
started to measure – and they are plainly envious of the good
fortune of others. To borrow the words of a Japanese proverb, they
have come to think that the nail that stands up is the nail that should
be hammered down.

That was the spirit of the Occupy movement – on Wall
Street, in Oakland, and many places in between, including four
Missouri cities. Those claiming to be the 99 percent railed
incessantly against the 1 percent. In setting out to make a public
nuisance of themselves, the pity-me protest brigades let the world
know how fed up they are with the unfairness of life.

President Barack Obama has nursed and cultivated this same
sense of grievance. In a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., he invoked
fairness no fewer than 16 times. In one staccato burst, he called for
“a tax code that makes sure everybody pays their fair share . . .
(and) rebuilding the economy based on fair play, a fair shot and a
fair share.”

How fair is that?

Let me put the question another way.

How fair is it to fritter away hundreds of millions of dollars
of taxpayers’ money on green energy companies like Solyndra
which have gone bankrupt?

How fair is it to launch a trillion dollar “stimulus” program that
actually depressed the economy – leaving unemployment higher than it
was before – and then turn around and demand a whole new stimulus
program?

How fair is it to go on the greatest federal spending spree in
modern history – quadrupling the size of the annual deficit and raising
serious concerns about the creditworthiness of the United States – and
then go about the country accusing critics of your profligacy as being
solely concerned with promoting the interests of “millionaires and
billionaires”?

How fair is it to use hard times to promote the politics of envy –
when it is your own reckless rhetoric that has done so much to unsettle the
business community and your own policies that have prevented a normal
cyclic recovery from occurring?

The president and others calling for more “fairness” through
bigger government and higher levels of spending seem to have little or no
concern at how their policies and ideas are eroding economic and political
freedoms.

• They are calling for the government’s right to claim more of
  your income to spend any way the government sees fit (e.g., on
  silly “job creation” programs that wind up going bust and
  leaving taxpayers on the hook).
• They are using “fairness” and allegations of corporate greed
  and irresponsibility in order to justify a vast expansion in
  regulation and government control over business and
  commerce.
• And everywhere – including here in Missouri – they aim to
  enlarge the public sector, even though that drains money and
  jobs out of the private sector.

No one would pretend that the ultimate goal of free-market
capitalism is equal outcomes for different people, regardless of talent,
effort, or sheer luck. That is a socialist agenda. But neither is the free
market – as our president suggests – a place where the rich prey
ceaselessly upon the poor and “everyone is on their own.” That is an
absurd caricature of free enterprise and more than 200 years of American
history.

In fact, the essence of free-market capitalism is voluntary
exchange for mutual benefit. People satisfy their own needs by competing
to satisfy the needs of others.

My parents understood that. They expected their children to
compete and enjoy the benefits of living in a country that has produced
unparalleled wealth and opportunity for its people. But they did not want
us to go about our lives with misplaced expectations of fairness – or to fall
prey to the diseases of envy and self-pity.

Andrew B. Wilson is a resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me
Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri Public Policy.

The post Freedom vs. Fairness: Will America Succumb to the Politics of Envy? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These schools are not perfect — far from it, in some cases — but, for most of these students and parents, the system works relatively well. There is a well-known correlation between academic achievement and socioeconomic status, and students from higher-income families outperform lower-income students on practically every measure. This disparity is also reflected in the achievement gap between white and minority students. Tino Sanandaji, a Ph.D. student in public policy at the University of Chicago, recently compared the scores of non-Hispanic white American students with those of non-immigrant Europeans on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, and found that the American students performed admirably. White Americans scored seventh out of 28 countries, beating students from Denmark, Sweden, and France, as well as an average of 15 European Union countries.

On the other hand, our educational system routinely fails poor and minority students — those least able to choose a different school by moving to another district. Although the racial achievement gap has narrowed somewhat in recent years, at age 17, black and Hispanic students still score about 10 percent worse on average than white students on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). There a number of proven ways we can expand choice and improve academic achievement for those students.

Missouri has already experienced some success with charter schools. According to a 2009 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, students attending charter schools in Missouri show more improvement in both mathematics and reading than similar students in traditional public schools, and this remains true when looking only at black and Hispanic students. Unfortunately, state statute limits the existence of charter schools to the cities of Saint Louis and Kansas City. If that restriction were removed, the gains of charter schools could be expanded to students in other struggling districts.

Furthermore, we could provide parents and students with more options in existing public school districts simply by restructuring how the schools are funded. Under a weighted-student-formula program (also known as “backpack funding”), students can attend any school within the district, and the schools are funded based upon the number of students they attract — with more dollars devoted to students who typically require more resources to educate (e.g., those with disabilities). Schools are then allowed more autonomy to experiment and compete for students — and for the money attached to them. In California, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland both implemented backpack funding and saw large gains in student achievement across ethnic and socioeconomic lines. San Francisco is now the top performing large urban school district in California. There is no reason, outside of political intransigence, that the Saint Louis and Kansas City school districts could not enact the same reforms.

It would be difficult to design an educational system worse for the disadvantaged than one that assigns students to schools based on the housing that their parents can afford. Although our best schools, public and private, are the product of parental choice, poor and minority students are frequently stuck in monopolistic urban school districts. School choice is not a panacea for this problem, but giving parents the power to choose is a necessary step toward ensuring a quality education for all of Missouri’s students.

John Payne is a research assistant for the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Real School Choice Options Would Help to Narrow Educational Achievement Gap appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are many good articles about charter successes out there. For now, I’d like to point to this one about charter schools in Oakland, California. The profiled schools insist on maintaining long hours, piling on math and reading homework, and imposing strict discipline in their classrooms. They’ve gotten great results with disadvantaged students, including some who are learning English for the first time. Several of the best charters around the country have taken a similar approach.

Charters’ policies may appear harsh to critics, but parents have noticed that they’re effective. In places like Kansas City and St. Louis, more and more families are voting with their feet.

The post Charters Gain Ground Right and Left appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Imagine that instead of guns, the Oakland police decided, for whatever strange reason, to buy back sneakers. The idea of a gun buyback is to reduce the supply of guns in Oakland. Do you think that a sneaker buyback program would reduce the number of people wearing sneakers in Oakland? Of course not.

All that would happen is that people would reach into the back of their closet and sell the police a bunch of old, tired, stinky sneakers.

Gun buybacks won’t reduce the number of guns in Oakland. In fact, buybacks may increase the number of guns in Oakland.

He goes on to explain that gun buyback program make buying new guns more attractive. Once people are done with the gun, they can get some of their money back. So they’ll be more eager to buy guns in the first place. It’s like college textbook buybacks. Students are more willing to buy textbooks if they can sell the books back to the bookstore at the end of the semester.

Just something to keep in mind the next time St. Louis tries it.

The post Tabarrok on Gun Buybacks appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McCormack has saved two months’ worth of calls to St. Louis County’s main dispatch center, which serves forty of the county’s municipalities, including larger areas such as Chesterfield and Eureka.

Another good example, along with the ones we discussed the other day, of shared municipal services. I found a crazy cool website dedicated to radio frequencies and 911 dispatch information. It shows that a number of county municipalities share 911 dispatch services with other cities, but we still have way too many separate systems in St. Louis County. For the record, Olivette has joined the East Central Dispatch system in Richmond Heights that I discussed the other day, so kudos to them. Most of the larger cities have their own dispatch systems (Florissant, University City), which is fine — they are big enough to afford it.

There are some typical examples of too much redundancy in the county, though. It’s nice that Glendale and Warson Woods share the dispatch system, but if Kirkwood does dispatching for Oakland, it can certainly do it for Glendale and Warson Woods, too. Same with Brentwood and Rock Hill. Why not just save money for everyone and join the East Central Dispatch system? Ladue, Frontenac, and Huntleigh?  How about some more coooperation here?

For the record, in my recent posts on St. Ann I wondered whether they were doing all they could to share services, as opposed to raising taxes. It seems that, in 911 dispatch at least, they are indeed sharing the service with a couple of other mid-sized munis, so they deserve credit for that.

As I wrote earlier, any new tax imposed to improve 911 service should mandate some consolidation of dispatch centers before the additional money is distributed. Then I will gladly vote for the cell phone tax.

The post The Riverfront Times Adds to the 911 Discussion … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.