While the Missouri Legislature continues to debate A–F school report cards, the Show-Me Institute recently released our annual report card update on MOSchoolRankings.org.

Our rankings are built on a model that incorporates 10 academic indicators of student success. All data are sourced from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and all English/language arts (ELA) and math scores are based on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). Each component is weighted equally, and a full explanation of the methodology is available online.

Table 1 shows all 24 public school districts and charter schools that received an “A” in the 2024–2025 school year.

Suburban and rural districts dominate the top rankings, with numerous districts from St. Louis County (Ladue, Brentwood, Clayton). Many of the rural school districts are exceptionally small: Skyline has 81 students and Thornfield has 48. The largest school district on the list is Nixa Public Schools (near Springfield) with 6,518 students.

The suburban districts have relatively low rates of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL)—a common proxy for school poverty rate. Fewer than 10 percent of Ladue and Clayton students were eligible for FRPL, with Brentwood at 18 percent, Nixa at 26 percent, Festus at 28 percent, and Ozark at 35 percent. However, some rural “A” districts have a sizeable number of lower-income students.

Mansfield R-IV, which had 60 percent of its 622 students qualify for FRPL, performed above average in almost every single category (except in ELA growth). Richwoods R-VII, a small rural district about an hour from St. Louis, had 100 percent of its 125 students qualify for FRPL and had particularly impressive scores in math. These examples demonstrate that low-income schools can achieve academic success.

There is a lot more to delve into for academic performance. Table 1 is just one snapshot of what is available on MOSchoolRankings.org. Accountability tools like these can help highlight success stories, identify areas for improvement, and provide a clearer picture of how schools across Missouri are performing.

The post Looking at Missouri’s “A” Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Show-Me Institute Director of Municipal Policy David Stokes about his new paper in the Free-Market Guide to Missouri Municipalities series on planning and zoning. They discuss how fragmentation among local governments can limit overly strict zoning, how zoning rules affect housing affordability, and why “last house syndrome” poses risks for Missouri’s future growth. From accessory dwelling units and minimum parking requirements to the debate over multifamily housing, Stokes explains how smart reforms can protect property rights and keep housing costs down.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Planning and Zoning in Missouri
02:35 The Impact of Fragmentation on Zoning
05:24 Housing Affordability and Zoning Regulations
08:22 The Role of Municipalities in Housing Development
11:18 Challenges of NIMBYism and YIMBYism
14:21 Accessory Dwelling Units and Short-Term Rentals
17:00 Planning and Infrastructure in Missouri
19:57 Future Papers and Conclusion

Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Thank you, David Stokes, so much for being on the podcast this morning. You have a new paper out with the Show Me Institute. Well, it’s actually part three of an existing series on your free market guide to Missouri municipalities. And this one is on planning and zoning. So thanks for joining us to answer some questions about it. Great. I do have one question that I was just saying before we started recording. I’ve seen this paper a few times.

David Stokes (00:19)
Delighted to be here.

Susan Pendergrass (00:26)
And one thing that I noticed up front is that I complain about the number of school districts in St. Louis County and how fragmented it is. And other folks have also said similar things, too many small municipalities. But it seems to be the case that when we’re talking about things like planning and zoning and permitting and regulations, that can be a good thing. Is that right?

David Stokes (00:46)
Absolutely. Because it’s harder to enact comprehensive planning, zoning, major things like urban growth boundaries—the extreme things like an urban growth boundary that we don’t have in Missouri. But it’s harder to enact that the more governments you have to get in line to agree to it in the first place. So it’s definitely—I don’t want to say it’s a causation. I don’t think the data is there to—

Susan Pendergrass (00:47)
What?

David Stokes (01:14)
But it’s definitely a—I would say it’s a truism—that there’s a strong connection between the metropolitan areas that have less strict zoning around the country. And over the past decade, we’ve really changed a lot in American local public policy to realize the harms of overly strict zoning. Until the past decade or so, it was just sort of assumed that strict zoning was a good thing. So now that we recognize the harms of it, we see that the places like St. Louis—and to a lesser extent, Kansas City—that have more fragmentation. St. Louis by any measure nationally has extreme fragmentation, meaning a whole lot of local governments, be they cities or school districts or fire districts or streetlight districts. I mean, we can really get into the obscure ones here in Missouri, but the more you have of that, the less strict zoning you’re going to have. And then that results in lower housing prices.

Susan Pendergrass (02:00)
You—

David Stokes (02:10)
What is the good that comes from that in the end? I think there’s lots of goods that come from it and some harms too. But the real good—the point of this paper, and the good for somebody who doesn’t care about public policy or libertarian thoughts or anything and just wants to be able to buy a nice house at an affordable price—is: the less strict zoning you have, the more fragmentation you have, the more you see that in lower housing costs.

Susan Pendergrass (02:35)
Yeah, and if you were starting a business too and one municipality, let’s say Clayton, has really high restrictions on what you can build, where you can build a health office and be—I don’t know if they do or don’t—but then you could just simply go next door to the next place and pick a different place that has fewer restrictions.

David Stokes (02:52)
You can, and that does happen. One of the ways they’ve solved that dilemma in St. Louis County especially is they do a lot more code enforcement and permitting at the county level than at the municipal level. Because nobody wants to have to get—if I’m going to be a plumber—nobody wants to have a plumbing license in 88 different cities. So they do that at the county level. You get your county license and it’s good throughout all of St. Louis County. Now, there are good aspects of that—mostly that you have to get one license instead of 88, which is an obvious good—but it’s also subject to abuse as well. It’s sort of the counterargument to the benefits of fragmentation in that it’s easier for special interest groups, like in this case, say the plumbers union, to capture licensing in St. Louis County if they only have to dominate one board as opposed to 88 boards. So there are two different ways to go—there’s the good and then the part of it that might not be quite as good.

Susan Pendergrass (03:59)
Yeah, so you make the point in this paper that while St. Louis does not necessarily have a housing affordability issue—or maybe even Missouri—it’s still worthwhile for folks who are working at the municipal level, like if you’re working as a newly elected Board of Aldermen or newly elected county board official, to educate yourself on what is and isn’t possible to make sure that you avoid what you just described as the pitfalls of over-regulating.

David Stokes (04:28)
Absolutely. A lot of this paper is about—in the not very scientific term—sort of low-hanging fruit. Just because zoning in Missouri may be less strict than in other states… there’s actually, I discovered in researching this paper—I’d always understood and known that zoning in Missouri and in St. Louis and Kansas City was less strict than in many other parts of the country—but then I discovered that there is actually an index out of the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania that ranks metropolitan areas by zoning strictness. And St. Louis is the least strict for zoning of any metropolitan area in the country in this ranking. And Kansas City is sort of in the middle. But then you see that Kansas City on the Missouri side is closer to St. Louis, and it’s the Kansas side that is more strict and puts them in the middle. So we really do have not-strict zoning.

Susan Pendergrass (05:05)
That’s hilarious.

David Stokes (05:24)
And that’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean that cities shouldn’t make some of these reforms that are coming nationwide that would still benefit Missouri, such as abolishing minimum parking requirements, allowing smaller lot sizes, allowing people to build accessory dwelling units on their own property. It’s a great reform focus—from the Show Me Institute’s perspective—because these are changes that can be made that enhance people’s own property rights and what they can do with their own property, while at the same time giving people more choice. And in the long run, if you do more of these, you’ll help keep housing prices down even more for people. And in a good way—you’re not doing this through mandates or rules; you’re just saying we’re going to allow people to build even more. And I’m not against every limit on every property thing ever. There are some that are reasonable—particularly in Missouri we have floodplain limits on where you build that are very reasonable in many cases—but there’s still a lot of good stuff we can do.

Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
Yeah, I saw recently last week that in the upcoming election cycle, housing affordability is a top issue for folks. This is really bubbling up the list of priorities because it’s gotten so expensive and, you know, I keep reading about why people can’t afford to move, and they can’t afford to sell their home, or they can’t afford to buy a home. And certainly some markets—like you mentioned in the paper, like Portland—and you mentioned this briefly: Portland’s got a brown zone and a green zone, and you can’t build in the green zone. You have to stay in the brown zone, and it makes it very prohibitively expensive to build new housing stock in Portland, and the prices have gone up dramatically. We do not yet have that problem in St. Louis, but I know that it’s on a lot of people’s minds and certainly, statewide, we still have some concerns about having enough affordable housing for everybody. I do think it’s important to make sure that we don’t let regulation creep happen so that we find ourselves raising our prices artificially.

David Stokes (07:36)
And you see this in disputes in our exurban areas now in, say, St. Charles and Jefferson County—surrounding counties of St. Louis—and on the Kansas City side as well. Last year, for example, in St. Charles County, a big new subdivision was rejected in a wooded part of the county—I think it was near Weldon Spring. They’re also allowing some, but—

Susan Pendergrass (07:56)
Was it Weldon Spring, or what was that?

David Stokes (08:02)
And that’s the dilemma that people face: as places like St. Charles and Jefferson County grow and get more full, there’s going to be inevitable pressure from the people there now to stop new building. It’s called last-house syndrome: “Great, my new home here is great. Now don’t build any more because I got the house and it’s perfect.” You see that everywhere, and you understand the concerns. I try not to completely ignore the concerns of the folks, because they’re not always wrong—of course, we’ll go back to the floodplain issue—but you’ll have people worry. It’s the people there now: concerns about traffic and overbuilding and destruction of wooded areas and too dense and all those things. But you want people to realize that other people probably said the same thing before they built your house, and it was a good thing that people in most instances really said no to that, and it allowed that construction to continue. And I really want people to realize that.

Susan Pendergrass (08:34)
Yeah. That’s right. ⁓

David Stokes (09:00)
If we go—it’s not about any one subdivision, because look, there probably are certain instances in certain places where the new zoning is too dense, whatever it may be—it’s not that every rejection is always completely wrong. But if you start in Missouri making a pattern of this in the outer areas of Kansas City and St. Louis, where you start turning down a lot of these new subdivisions to preserve whatever it is that people moved out there for 20 years ago, then housing prices are going to increase in Missouri. They will increase substantially, and it won’t take that long if you really do stop the building. So that’s one of the takeaways from this paper: to the largest extent possible, we need to keep allowing the building of these new homes or apartments. And obviously a big part of the paper is that apartments should be generally allowed in more places too. That’s how we’re going to continue to have low housing costs, and that’s the benefit of it. It’s not about one subdivision in one space, but if it becomes a trend, it’s really going to be a problem—the trend being protecting it.

Susan Pendergrass (10:15)
Yeah, and the multifamily for sure. What are your findings around that? People don’t seem to want to have to look at apartment buildings. Is that right?

David Stokes (10:25)
They don’t—there’s just some natural rejection against it. And it’s frustrating to see. In some spots—I remember in the City of St. Louis; this is one where, when you lived in St. Louis, you lived near there—at the corner of Skinker and Delmar there was a proposal for a large apartment building right there, and it got a lot of opposition, and it has not moved forward. It was stopped. I hope it comes back because it’s a perfect lot for an apartment building. It’s just an empty lot—it was a chicken restaurant for many, many years and a popular one—but it’s been vacant forever. And it’s right near public transit. So it’s the perfect idea where you should be able to build there, and you shouldn’t have generous or extensive—

Susan Pendergrass (10:59)
An abandoned empty lot, right?

David Stokes (11:18)
—parking requirements for those buildings, because one of the projects—

Susan Pendergrass (11:21)
That’s what people were kind of freaking out about though, was the parking. Like, where are all these cars going to go? And there was one across the street and they had only put in like one parking space for every two units or something, and they figured that people would use public transport. Anyway, I remember the pushback on that. And it’s this NIMBYism–YIMBYism thing, right? It’s so hard to push people to YIMBYism—yes in my backyard—because of things they don’t… I don’t… These same people often talk a lot about housing affordability, so I don’t mean to overgeneralize, but there are some of the very same people who are so concerned about it who don’t want to look at apartment buildings.

David Stokes (11:50)
Right, don’t want to—and you understand. That’s a very liberal area that we’re talking about. If you were to define the politics of that area, you’re right: many of the residents of those communities in both the city and in University City right there would, in theory, in the big picture, probably agree, but then, “Oh, we don’t want this development here.” And it was a perfect place for a new apartment. Again, of all the St. Louis area, it’s one of the best areas served by public transit—

Susan Pendergrass (12:06)
Yes.

David Stokes (12:31)
—with buses and MetroLink and the WashU shuttles, because so many people who would be in those apartments would be WashU students. They’ve got that extensive shuttle system. But it was rejected, and I hope it comes back. And that’s just one of many, many examples of it.

Susan Pendergrass (12:31)
Yeah, yeah. What about the—what part of zoning and planning is this push in the City of St. Louis, anyway, to try to get people to move downtown? Is that something that’s coded in? I feel like they’re trying to get people to go downtown.

David Stokes (13:03)
They are. And thankfully, I don’t think zoning is preventing that. Of all the reasons people may or may not be choosing to move downtown—fear of crime and businesses leaving downtown, the jobs—as somebody who lived downtown in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to move down there when many of the jobs have left—fear—it’s a harder thing to convince. But I don’t think there’s— I don’t think it’s difficult or has ever been difficult for the loft developers of the ’90s to get permission to take an empty commercial building and turn it into lofts. There might have been a lot of issues they had to deal with, but zoning—I don’t believe—was one of them. Thankfully that’s a very good thing. But it’s one of the fun parts about this paper, right? We’re talking in the other papers and in the ones to come about the best ways to do public safety and public works and a lot of things. In most of these instances we all agree somebody has to do this service, and it’s just a question of: does the city provide it themselves? Do they contract with a neighboring municipality to do it—such as a small city contracting with a neighboring city to do police service? Should you let the private sector do it in a regulated manner, like utilities? But we can all agree it has to be done. Whereas I started this paper saying: despite the fact that it may be incredibly common, cities don’t actually need planning or zoning—life can exist without it. And that’s where the current HOA options come into play. And the history of HOAs in St. Louis, in the private place model, is such an interesting part of that. So there’s a little bit of the historic discussion of all of this in the paper too.

Susan Pendergrass (14:53)
So where do Missouri municipalities for the most part right now stand on things like—two questions I’m going to ask you—accessory dwelling units and short-term rentals or Airbnbs? Where do they stand on ADUs?

David Stokes (15:06)
Well, slowly but surely, we’re starting to permit ADUs. We haven’t had any sort of statewide, to my knowledge, overarching legislation. And that’s where the fact that we have low housing costs in Missouri matters. I don’t think we’re going to see the California situation that had to go statewide because none of the municipalities would agree to it. I don’t think we’ll see that here because there’s not the tremendous high-cost-of-housing crisis to push that. But slowly but surely, cities are starting to allow more ADUs, and that’s a very good thing. When you get out into rural areas—and in some places that don’t even have zoning in the first place—you can do any ADU you want to, or the zoning is so loose that of course you can build an apartment above your garage if you’d like to. Why are you even asking? But the cities have the rules against it.

Susan Pendergrass (15:52)
That’s where I live.

David Stokes (16:03)
Slowly but surely moving in the right direction there. And then it’s going in the opposite way with short-term rentals. Slowly but surely most cities are instituting short-term rental limitations. I’m not automatically opposed to that in every case. I get it: if you have a neighborhood and all of a sudden there’s a house where big parties are being thrown every weekend because they’re renting it out to different groups of people to throw parties, you’re going to hate that, and that’s going to impact the quality of your life. So I’ve been saying for a few years now that the short-term rental regulations I support would generally be things that don’t go to a blanket prohibition. I think that’s too far—and most cities aren’t doing that—but rather really focus on punishment of the property owner for repeated rule-breaking. One party is maybe one party, but if there’s a trend where you own the property and the people you’re renting to are consistently out of control, then the fines should be increased. I wouldn’t be opposed to them getting fairly steep up to a point too—that if it happens too often, you would lose your business license to operate that short-term rental. Because I do think that if you’re doing it a lot—if you’re routinely renting it out—you should be treated a little more like a hotel. We don’t want to give short-term rentals an advantage over the hotel-motel industry. You want that playing field to be as level as possible, especially for people who are renting their houses or condos or whatever out a lot. So then pull that license if it’s an abuse that’s happening consistently. But let’s try to—

Susan Pendergrass (17:55)
Well, I had that on my street.

David Stokes (17:56)
—go to a method through crackdown on rule-breaking, not blanket prohibitions.

Susan Pendergrass (18:00)
Yeah, we had that on my street in St. Louis, and it was a street of, I don’t know, three- or four-bedroom houses, and they somehow had eight bedrooms and a pool, which was very rare in my neighborhood. So they mostly just rented it out to college students and got called all the time—the police got brought in all the time for noise complaints. And there wasn’t really a good mechanism in place at the time to prevent it from happening. So I agree that there should be some limitations around them, but not to make it so strict that people can’t use it as intended. I mean, I stay in Airbnbs all the time. I like having them, but—

David Stokes (18:36)
Now, that police dilemma—that’s something in St. Louis and probably Kansas City, a few big cities, where the cops just have better things to do than break up parties. I mean, they’ve got violent crimes to address. That’s an issue: how are they going to take it seriously enough? In the average Missouri suburb or mid-sized cities, the police are going to take that a little more seriously, I would think. And a good comparison I like is in Lake of the Ozarks, where some cities have instituted strict rules against short-term rentals, while others, like Osage Beach—at least as of our research—hadn’t instituted anything and took a much more free-market approach: “We’re a tourist area; we want tourists to come here.” So it’ll be a good natural experiment over time to see how it affects property values, how growth is affected, as different comparable cities in the Lake of the Ozarks region choose different paths to move forward. So I definitely look forward to following that.

Susan Pendergrass (19:37)
Well, then I’ll know—another component to this paper is on planning. I think you just said a city doesn’t have to do planning if they don’t choose to, but are Missouri cities or municipalities planners? I mean, is that a planned thing, or are we more like anything goes?

David Stokes (19:56)
Most Missouri cities have plans. Right?

Susan Pendergrass (19:57)
I’ve been to New Town, by the way. I just want to say I have visited New Town, so—before you start talking.

David Stokes (20:03)
Well, that’s the architectural planning—how do we want to design it? Then there’s the legal, defined planning. And luckily, again, I really don’t think Missouri cities need to do any planning outside of general infrastructure planning. So I shouldn’t say they don’t need to do any planning—there’s the general infrastructure planning that pretty much everybody supports, meaning you should have an idea of how growth is going to go in your city and where you’re going to put sewers and sidewalks and streets. You want a general long-term plan for that, even if that plan is—as it should be—thoroughly adjustable and can be changed as growth happens naturally. But then you get into planning like we mentioned with Portland earlier—urban growth boundaries—where the planners really start to say, “You can live here; you cannot live here; you can build here; you cannot build here,” and it gets to be really extreme. We don’t really have that in Missouri. Thankfully, the plans that cities do adopt can be easily amended by any city council. They can be changed. When I worked at St. Louis County, we dealt with the county planning commission for the parts of the council district I worked in that were unincorporated, where the planning commission had a lot to say on that. So elected officials can and should be able to change that plan as they go. And then the biggest—let’s say you permitted a development that’s against your plan, but the elected officials want to do it anyway—I usually don’t have a problem with that. The fact that it’s inconsistent with your plan would generally be something that, if locals want to sue to stop the development, they would cite in the lawsuit—that it was inconsistent with your process and your plan—and then it would be determined by judges and the whole legal process. But planning in Missouri is something that, outside of basic infrastructure planning, cities shouldn’t really do. And to the extent that they do it, it’s easily amended and changed. And that’s a good thing.

Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Mm-hmm. So the first two papers in your series were taxation, right?

David Stokes (22:20)
Taxation was number two, and the first one was just sort of the structure of municipal government in Missouri. It had a lot to do with city managers. And then the fragmentation issue was addressed as well in the first one that we discussed here, because that’s a part of that, obviously.

Susan Pendergrass (22:23)
Introductory. Okay. And taxation. And this is zoning and planning. Right. And then what’s on deck? What’s the next one?

David Stokes (22:41)
We don’t actually know yet what number four will be—germinating. Most of them are ready to go pretty quickly, so I think the next one will be released within the next two months—certainly this year. And I think it’s going to be on public works. But we have papers coming on public works, public safety, parks and recreation—which is one I’m really going to enjoy. You go to Forest Park and there’s all the great things in St. Louis’s Forest Park, and then you realize that many of the wonderful things there are actually done under contract with the private sector, either for-profit businesses like the Boathouse and the ice rink that pay the city to operate, or nonprofit businesses like the Muni that have been in the park for a long time. So it’s a great option to talk about all the different ways to provide parks and recreation services.

Susan Pendergrass (23:18)
Yeah.

David Stokes (23:35)
But those are at least three of the upcoming ones. And then there’ll be a concluding, summarize-it-all-up section as well.

Susan Pendergrass (23:41)
I look forward to hearing more about those, and thanks for coming on to talk about planning and zoning. It’s going to be a great series when it all gets put together. Thanks.

David Stokes (23:48)
Thank you very much, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post A Free-Market Guide to Zoning with David Stokes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

The Demonstration Project is a formal trial implemented with the goal of determining whether the Missouri Assessment Project (MAP) (which tests at the end of the year) should be replaced with an individualized and continuous system. I have discussed the details, benefits, and concerns with this project in two previous posts. If this new system sees success, Missouri could try to incorporate it statewide.

What will change for students this year?

Students in these 20 districts will be tested more frequently—three times in English/language arts (ELA) and three times in math (45 minutes for each subject), and the assessments will be on a computer. Students should know that it is an adaptive test, meaning the test will change in real time based on the responses—if a student misses questions, the test offers easier questions and vice versa. For a test taker, this means one cannot afford to make any careless mistakes. On traditional tests, all questions are weighted equally, so if one accidentally marks bubble C instead of bubble B, it will count as one mistake. However, if one accidentally picks bubble C or carelessly forgets to flip the sign on a negative number, the adaptive test will count it wrong and think the student cannot do harder problems since one of the easier problems was missed. Therefore, students should double check their work, because a careless mistake on the wrong problem can tank their score.

Students in these 20 districts will also take the MAP this year. The federal government mandates that every district in a state participate in a uniform standardized test. The MAP is a federally approved and mandated test, so any exemption from taking the MAP would have to come directly from the federal government. These 20 districts have requested a federal waiver, and we will see whether it is accepted or not.

What will change for parents?

The results of these student assessments will return quickly via an online form, and there will be a detailed breakdown of each student’s strengths and weaknesses (here is an example of adaptive test results). A dashboard will also be designed to report annual performance targets and goals. Page 29 of this report shows a sample dashboard. A parent should be able to access information relating to their district via the dashboard.

Hopefully this new trial will yield success that can help us find better ways to teach and assess our students.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Get the Green Light to Try New Assessment System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This waiver is being requested in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in order to conduct a formal study (called the Demonstration Project) to determine if a new testing system should replace the existing MAP. If the exemption is granted, these districts would use their own test but would not administer the MAP. If the waiver is denied, these twenty districts would use their own test and also administer the MAP.

The MAP test is traditionally given to 3rd through 8th-grade students in Missouri at the end of the school year to evaluate their understanding in mathematics, English/language arts, and science. MAP testing also includes End of Course (EOC) tests for high school students who have completed four chosen subjects—Algebra I (or II if you took Algebra I in middle school), Government, Biology, and English II.

The Demonstration Project will use an adaptive testing system, which will test students and provide timely results three times per year. An adaptive test essentially learns who a test-taker is. As students miss questions, the prompts become easier, and vice versa. Through this process, a computer algorithm can learn a student’s skill set, provide a detailed report to the teacher, remember it, and use that student’s proficiency as a baseline for the next standardized test. In practice, a student will sit down at a computer for 90 minutes to take one 45-minute adaptive test on ELA and one 45-minute adaptive test on mathematics three times per year. Since this system is online and designed for quick feedback, a detailed breakdown of how each student performed will be provided to teachers and parents in order to help students improve throughout the year. The new state assessment will shift from a “lagging” indicator to a “leading indicator.” This system will require 280 less minutes of testing time and will cost $21.60 more per student annually.

Below are the 20 districts that are seeking exemption from the MAP:

• Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

These 20 districts roughly represent the demographics of Missouri, with huge districts, rural districts, and a charter school (although low-income students are underrepresented).

The study was created because of doubts about the effectiveness of the MAP; as the Demonstration Project proposal states, “The MAP was never intended as a progress monitoring tool at the student level.” Since the MAP is administered at the end of the year, districts do not receive test results until fall of the following year. Districts claim that makes it very difficult to make adjustments and corrections within the school year if a student is struggling in a certain subject. They also claim that adaptive standardized testing throughout the year would allow teachers and administrators to make adjustments to help students before the next school year. (There are reasons to take these complaints from districts with a grain of salt, which I will get into in my next blog post.)

It will be interesting to see if this trial is successful. The desire to try something different than MAP (which traces its origins back to 1993) raises plenty of questions in itself, and I will discuss those issues also in my next post.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My brain tells me that the entire Amtrak subsidy should be eliminated. If Amtrak can’t stand on its own, then why should taxpayers subsidize it to such a large extent? There are numerous ways to get across Missouri, including cheap flights and busses for those who don’t drive.

My heart tells me that there is nothing wrong with compromise in politics, and I think the current compromise to fund Amtrak enough to guarantee one trip per day is a good one. In the past, I have argued in support of a limited subsidy for passenger rail service across Missouri. I do believe it is important to have that alternative provided. We subsidize all types of transportation, including cars. There is a public good aspect to having a variety of transportation options available to people.

MODOT released a study several months ago purportedly in support of the service:

The lawmakers set the figure in May, about the time an executive summary of a state-commissioned Cambridge Systematics economic impact study revealed that the four trains each day provide $208 million in annual economic activity, and more than $22 million in tax revenue Missouri would not see if the Runners didn’t run.

I have to be honest here. I don’t believe those numbers; not in the slightest. Like similar studies, this one makes use of exceedingly generous statistics. From the summary of it available online (emphasis added):

Amtrak’s . . . spending in Missouri yields the following direct, indirect and induced economic benefits….

The key words are “indirect” and “induced.” The authors of the study are likely using a robust and flawed multiplier to make assumptions about the tax revenue and economic activity that don’t withstand scrutiny.

Beyond those issues, some of the arguments in favor of a larger subsidy and two trips a day are simply weak (from the St. Louis Post Dispatch article linked at the top of this piece):

Tammy Bruckerhoff, the tourism and economic development director for Hermann, said the line is vitally important to draw tourism to the smaller towns along the route.

There are hundreds of small towns in Missouri. I fail to see why a half dozen of them along the Amtrak route deserve a subsidy for their tourism efforts, which mostly revolve around bacchanalian celebrations of excess (which are awesome, I admit). Do we subsidize Party Cove in Lake of Ozarks? I sure hope not (also, we don’t).

$10 million a year is a generous subsidy to keep Amtrak running in Missouri, and a compromise that I can live with in this debate. A larger subsidy is not warranted. There is no evidence that two trains per day in each direction will accomplish anything more than spending another $2.5 million (at least) in taxpayer money. You can’t wish market demand out of thin air, whether it’s for a trolley, a streetcar, high-speed rail, or Amtrak.

The post Brain Versus Heart on Amtrak in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no doubt that the sales tax is being proposed in order to make sure that tourists pay their “fair share” of the costs for greater law enforcement in the area. The Lake is one region where either a sales tax or a property tax increase is going to raise significant tax money from non-permanent residents, with either tourists paying the sales (and lodging) taxes or vacation homeowners paying the property taxes.

But back to the sales tax increase. Residents know better than anyone if increased or better law enforcement in Camden County is required. They and the tourists (like me) will pay for it. But is there money available outside of a tax increase? Here are some things to consider:

• Online sales tax collections are coming (officially) to Missouri, which will increase local tax collections starting in 2023.
• Parson just signed the gas tax increase, which (assuming it survives legal challenges) will further lead to more money for counties. (The money raised has to be used on roads, but that loosens up other tax revenues.)
• In the short term, Camden County is set to get almost $9 million from the stimulus plan. That is, shall we say, a lot of money.
• Housing values are soaring, and even with the required tax rate rollbacks, there will still likely be noticeable local property tax collection increases.

Leaving aside this increased future revenue, are there other ways to increase funding for law enforcement in Camden County without tax increases?

I would suggest two things. First of all, get control of the generous tax subsidies granted to developers in the region. That is tax money that is given away to private interests instead of going to public services. The Lake Ozark region has currently promised TIF subsidies of $395 million. $395 million! To be clear, because the TIF reports don’t give addresses, and because many Lake of the Ozarks cities are in multiple counties, I can’t determine how much of that is within Camden County itself. But undoubtedly it is a very large amount of tax subsidies over the next decade or so, very likely in the hundreds of millions. That is tax revenue that could have been used for public services, including law enforcement.

Another option is greater consolidation of 911 emergency dispatching services, like Miller County and many other Missouri communities do. Camden County law enforcement agencies appear to operate their own dispatching services, which is an area ripe for economies of scale and cost savings.

But in the end, the choice, as it should be, is up to the voters.

The post A New Sales Tax for Law Enforcement in the Lake of the Ozarks appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If employers are looking for a more skilled workforce, getting more students to earn industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) would be a step in the right direction. IRCs are credentials awarded from industry groups after passing an exam, allowing the bearer to demonstrate proficiency in a specific field. Earning an IRC is a great way to jump immediately from high school to a job.

85 percent of businesses responding to the workforce survey said they have some or considerable difficulty finding applicants with an IRC (only around a quarter of respondents said IRCs were not applicable). According to the survey respondents, IRCs are the most challenging type of educational attainment for employers to find in prospective employees, even including postsecondary degrees.

The variety of survey respondents is also notable. Responses came from a number of industries including healthcare, education, manufacturing, construction, and finance. This is good evidence that the problem of IRC scarcity is widespread and not just confined to pockets of the Ozark economy. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has approved 81 types of IRC exams; only 16 of those exams were completed successfully by an Ozark student. In total, a mere 470 IRCs were awarded to high school students in the Ozark region in 2017. If each IRC was earned by a different student in the graduating class, then only 8 percent of Ozark graduates would have an IRC. The real number is likely even lower than 8 percent, because one student can earn multiple IRCs.

The survey responses make it clear that there’s unmet demand in the Ozark region for students graduating with an IRC in hand. One way to increase IRC attainment is to offer a financial incentive to schools and teachers. An IRC bonus pay program would give teachers financial compensation for each of their students that earn an IRC. Florida implemented an IRC bonus pay program and saw an explosion in students earning IRCs.

The Ozark region has a workforce problem that IRCs could help solve. It’s time to get creative in finding ways to prepare students for life after high school.

The post An IRC Bonus Pay Program Would Benefit the Ozarks appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Post-Dispatch mentioned that many other states have also ended their film tax credit programs due to low returns on the investment. But the Post did manage to find one advocate in Kansas City:

Steph Scupham, director of the Kansas City Film Office, said the benefits of landing a project outweigh the costs.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with people coming in, doing business, spending money and leaving,” she said, “especially when it also educates the people in our industry and gives our industry that is here more experience.”

Indeed, nothing is wrong with “people coming in, doing business, spending money and leaving.” What is wrong is taking precious tax dollars intended to support basic services like police and schools and giving them to private film companies. Not only is it wrong, it doesn’t work.

A recent study from the Beacon Center of Tennessee found that “using available box office data, over 40 percent of films that receive grants made less at the box office than they received in incentives.” That is a stunningly bad track record. Missouri’s own Tax Credit Review Commission wrote in their 2010 report that the film tax credit should be cut because it “serves too narrow of an industry and fails to provide a positive return on investment to the state.”

My colleague Patrick Ishmael wrote exactly one year ago that to the degree Georgia is underwriting a piece about the Ozarks, Missouri is coming out ahead. Thankfully, the Post-Dispatch makes clear there is no danger of reinstating such a film tax credit regime statewide. Kansas City ought to scrap its effort, too.

The post Film Tax Credits: Facts and Fiction appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last month, former Missouri legislator Dr. Roy Holand wrote a letter to the editor of the Springfield News-Leader warning about trends—including both an increase in student poverty and declining test scores—that have the Springfield School District headed in the wrong direction. Could Springfield end up like Kansas City or St. Louis and, as Dr. Holand warns, suffer from “local urban flight” to surrounding districts? Moreover, will students from low-income families be stuck in poor-performing schools because they cannot afford to move to another district or attend a private school?

Based on data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Springfield’s enrollment is remaining steady around 25,000, but it is not faring as well as neighboring districts. Take a look at nearby districts’ performance as measured by the 8th grade MAP tests and student population characteristics compared to Springfield:

Compared to surrounding districts, Springfield has a similar achievement level in eighth grade English, but scores much lower in math. Moreover, Springfield is close to the statewide average of 60.2 percent of eighth graders scoring proficient or better in English, but it is far behind the statewide score of 30.5 percent of eighth graders scoring proficient or advanced in math.

Given these scores, it is not surprising that six out of nine middle schools in the district scored less than 70 percent on the 2017 Annual Performance Review (APR), which is the state’s threshold for full accreditation.

Additionally, legislation has been introduced that would allow for charter schools to open in any district that has at least one school that earned 60 percent or fewer of the possible points on the APR in two of the last three years. Four elementary schools and three middle schools in Springfield currently meet those criteria. If this legislation passes, Springfield will join St. Louis and Kansas City as “charter schools as intervention” districts.

While Springfield is technically still accredited under the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) system, the number of struggling schools in the district is cause for concern. Because some of the 2017 MAP tests were thrown out, 2016 is the most recent year that all school received an APR score; as you can see, the schools’ performance varies significantly:

Considering this range in performance, can a parent in Springfield be confident that their child will be able to attend a quality school? While Springfield does have some choice programs, such as the option to enroll in schools emphasizing STEM subjects and an intra-district transfer option, the seats for these programs—and in the good middle schools—are limited. With so few quality options for middle school, and with the elementary schools being a mixed bag, it would not be surprising if families started leaving for the surrounding districts or sending their kids to private schools.

Holand is not the only one worried about the direction of the district. As the school board considered renewing Superintendent John Jungmann’s contract, former Springfield teacher Carl Herd also argued that district’s performance is “not acceptable” and it will hurt the economic health of the city. Nonetheless, the school board voted unanimously to extend Jungmann’s contract through 2021.

Kansas City’s and St. Louis’s experiences serve as a cautionary tale. Fortunately, families in these cities have charter schools as an option. And while these districts’ enrollment continues to decline, charter school enrollment grew by 11 percent last year. If Springfield’s performance continues to slip—and there is growing evidence that it this is happening—the families who cannot afford private school or are unable to move to another district will suffer.

The needs of the students and parents in the Springfield should be the top priority of the school district. Expanding school choice programs, such as charter schools or education savings accounts, which are popular with parents, would ensure that these students have more quality options.

The post Will Springfield School District Become the Next Kansas City or St. Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now, two years on, the land the project was supposed to be built on just got foreclosed on and sold off. Cue ironic “Field of Dreams” reference.

The property was sold last Thursday in a foreclosure sale after several months of speculation about the project.

The sale included two parcels of land totaling 293 acres on Camping Paradise Road in Macks Creek under development with original plans that developers described as the “ultimate experience” for youth baseball. Long range plans called for facilities for lacrosse, football, field hockey and soccer.

That 293-acre sale appears to capture every last inch of the Ballparks of the Ozarks development plan, which contemplated the project sitting on—you guessed it—293 acres. Maybe the developers will try to repurchase the land from the buyer. Maybe they’ll move the project. And maybe the project is simply dead. Per our friends at KRMS, 

according to Presiding Commissioner Greg Hasty, funding for the grandiose project has apparently dried up effectively killing it and taking with it an expected 100 jobs that were to be created to operate the complex.

Yet in the months leading up to the foreclosure of the property, the Ballparks of the Ozarks developers were still seeking tax money. The county had even signed off on at least some of those local incentive proposals as recently as this year. According to the Kirksville Daily Express,

A Community Improvement District had been approved for the venue in January of [2017] by the Camden County Commission. Developers announced in June they would be looking at the formation of a Transportation Development District.

It’s a multi-layered, stinky onion of tax incentive attempts. Tax credits. A CID. A TDD. And yet apparently none of it was enough to attract the private investment required to keep the project sound and solvent.

I think a baseball resort could succeed in the Ozarks, but if it was going to work, it should have always been at the risk of private investors, not taxpayers.

The post Ballparks of the Ozarks Land Foreclosed On After Two Year Odyssey appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to Ballparks of the Ozarks COO Bob Ramsey,

[the investors] didn’t want chain link fences [for their baseball development.] We didn’t want dusty, aluminum bleachers, with mom and kids baking in the sun and everybody complaining.

What did we want? We wanted [a] destination. We wanted amenities.

Our fields as constructed will be state-of-the-art. What will push our ballparks beyond what competitors have to offer will be our amenities. Families and teams from across the nation will be drawn to the “America’s Baseball Resort” experience.

As a former little leaguer, I’m actually pretty fond of chain-link fences, dusty fields, and aluminum bleachers, but we all know that resorts are supposed to be glitzy and glamorous. If given the choice between little league and big league amenities, developers will understandably pursue the big league amenities.

Folks may not know that to get those big league amenities, this proposed baseball-themed complex may be swinging for the fences to get financial assistance from the government. Novogradac, a national accounting firm that among other things helps “prepare tax credit applications,” hosts on its website what appears to be a New Markets tax credit allocation request for Ballparks of the Ozarks. New Markets tax credits are intended to

foster the construction and rehabilitation of real estate and the expansion of operating businesses in order to create jobs, generate economic activity and improve the quality of services in low-income communities and to low-income persons.

Unsurprisingly given those requirements, the request specifically says that the resort will “support existing ‘lake’ area businesses which struggle during off peak seasons” and will provide “opportunities for low-income, minority and disadvantaged youth to utilize high quality athletic facilities through affiliated organizations.”

In other words, to help the poor, the project summary suggests that the government should help pay for a baseball resort—and indeed, quite a lot of it. Novogradac’s page suggests Ballparks of the Ozarks is seeking to have $14 million in tax credits allocated to the project, and not only that, the summary implies that but-for the federal money, the project might not go forward.

How that jibes with the project’s recent “groundbreaking,” I don’t know.

I wish the developers of Ballparks of the Ozarks the best of luck, but there may be cause for concern from the perspective of sound public policy. If a resort can’t make it on private funds alone, taxpayers shouldn’t have to cover the gap.

The post Is Ballparks of the Ozarks Swinging for the Tax Incentive Fences? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

CIDs are independent taxing districts created to collect sales and property taxes and spend money to improve an area in a variety of ways, including beautification and infrastructure. There are two primary problems with CIDs. The first problem is transparency. The auditor’s office has consistently found deficiencies in reporting and documentation for these districts.

The other issue with CIDs is their lack of a cap on property taxes. Under the current proposal, the CID would levy an additional 47 cents per $100 of assessed value of property taxes on top of what people/businesses already pay. However, there is no statutory language preventing the CID from increasing property taxes further. An extreme example is when a CID in the Lake of the Ozarks levied an additional $4 per $100 of assessed value. I’m not saying this proposed CID will have taxes go up that high, but there is nothing stopping such an increase from happening except the restraint of the CID board.

Given these problems, what is the compelling reason for establishing a CID, especially since the area is already seeing redevelopment? As the Columbia Tribune states:

He also cited Miller’s 2012 purchase of the old Commerce Bank building at 500 Business Loop 70 W., Head Motor Company’s recent upgrades and his own redevelopment of the Parkade Center as examples of the type of redevelopment he would like to see along the corridor. Further east, Business Loop 70 boasts a newly remodeled Burger King and renovated McDonald’s.

“We’re starting to see redevelopment occur, and we want to make sure we have pro-redevelopment policies in place,” Burnam said.

If this article tells us anything, it appears that legal restrictions on renovating existing lots are the problem. Maybe proponents should work on fixing the regulatory environment instead of raising taxes.

CIDs have serious issues and should only be undertaken without serious safeguards in place, if at all. The Business Loop in Columbia might not be a paradise, but is it so blighted that the only thing left to do is establish a CID? Color me skeptical.

The post The 411 on a CID in the B70 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me State forbids charter schools from opening in non-urban, accredited school districts, unless they are sponsored by the district itself. In effect, this means public school choice is limited to residents of unaccredited districts in Saint Louis and Kansas City. However, the need for school choice extends beyond those confines. This is especially apparent to Missouri’s military families.

Fort Leonard Wood, a U.S. military base located in the Ozarks, resides in Waynesville School District, which is home to 4,500 military impacted students. Educating these students can be difficult, since many have attended several school districts in several states within a span of just a few years.

These students come from a variety of backgrounds and have varying educational needs.

Waynesville School District is the only option for many students living on the base. Though the district performs relatively well compared to struggling urban districts, it is unfortunate that charter schools are not permitted in this area. Charters essentially are specialized public schools that serve the unique needs of students.

In other communities, if parents are dissatisfied with the performance of their school district, they can move into another district. For military families, this is nearly impossible. This highlights just one problem of Missouri’s restrictive charter law—it disproportionately limits military families’ access to the school of their choice.

Some states have recognized how charter schools can meet the unique needs of military students. There are currently eight charter schools located on military bases across the United States. One such charter school is Sigsbee in Key West, Florida, which offers coursework in environmental science and marine life. Another is Belle Chasse Academy in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, specifically designed to address the diverse academic backgrounds of students whose parents are on active duty.

Military personnel already make sacrifices for their country; they should not have to sacrifice their children’s education as well. The expansion of charter schools is just one way Missourians can provide more access to better quality education for military families.

For more information about charter school reform, read James Shuls’ case study on the Louisiana Recovery School District.

The post Missouri Charter School Law: A Soup Sandwich for Military Families? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Over the past two decades, Missouri has seen an explosion of new, alphabet soup-like taxing districts that increase tax rates to fund new services of questionable public purpose. These districts include the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Transportation Development Districts (TDD), Community Improvement Districts (CID), and more. Cape Girardeau currently is considering imposing a CID to support its downtown area. Cape Girardeau city officials should think twice before they embark on this course of action. These types of special taxing districts often fail basic good-government principles of transparency and management. In fact, a CID in Lake Lotawana (outside Kansas City) failed and defaulted on its bonds in 2010. Lake Lotawana should serve as the canary in the coal mine for Cape Girardeau.

CIDs are independent taxing districts created to collect sales and property taxes and spend money to improve an area in a wide variety of ways, including beautification, infrastructure, security, and much more. There are two primary problems with the use of CIDs. The first problem is one of transparency. The state auditor’s office has consistently issued reports documenting deficiencies in the management and accountability of public dollars by CIDs, TDDs, and other special taxing districts throughout Missouri. These districts fail to comply with state laws in a number of areas, including the transparency of the special taxes, use of competitive bids, and filing of annual financial reports. If Cape Girardeau chooses to enact the downtown CID, the city council should carefully oversee the CID to ensure it complies with all state laws and any additional local requirements.

The transparency problems often include the lack of an independent board of trustees for existing CIDs. Generally, these boards consist of representatives from the businesses involved with establishing the district, in this case Old Town Cape, Inc. Too often, these boards treat the collected taxes as a private fund instead of what they are, public tax dollars. The Cape Girardeau City Council should insist on instituting a CID board of directors that will primarily answer to the taxpayers of the city and county, and not just the property owners.

Furthermore, Cape Girardeau city officials should place a maximum cap on the level of property taxation allowed for the CID. Unlike most other types of property taxes, CIDs have no legal cap. TDDs have a maximum tax of 10 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, but there is a CID in Lake of the Ozarks with a tax rate of $4 per $100. Nobody is proposing anything near that high for Cape Girardeau. The rate in the petition is set at 67 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, but local government should address the fact that CIDs have no statutory rate limit by making certain the final legislation caps the tax rate at the level set in the current proposal.

In a related issue, businesses and city officials should take steps to inform residents and shoppers about the extra sales taxes they will pay within the CID. If shoppers are aware of the increased taxes and still choose to shop within the district, that is their choice.

The larger issue is that these special taxing districts often fund primarily private goods with public dollars, such as better parking lots for businesses. The proposed Cape Girardeau CID is not as bad in this case as many other taxing districts. The proposal at least states that the new sales taxes will be used in the downtown area to fund public improvements, such as trash and security. However, taxpayers should be concerned that these promises to fund legitimately public concerns are not altered over time and end up funding private aims with tax dollars.

The CID in Lake Lotawana mentioned previously failed on just about every count. The board often did not take minutes. It operated in secrecy, including lending CID money to a company that board members controlled. It spent more money than it should have and did not even properly collect the taxes it was owed. It was a prime example of what can happen when little-known taxing districts like CIDs are given so much authority.

The Cape Girardeau City Council should take a very careful look at the transparency issues with CIDs and the possible tension between public and private interests in this proposal. If officials determine that a CID is an appropriate application in this instance, all possible steps should be taken to make certain the new taxing district is responsible to the people. Many similar taxing districts in Missouri have failed both of those tests – producing what is best described as a non-nourishing alphabet soup.

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

The post Cape Girardeau Should Think Twice Before Establishing CID appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is hard to imagine a more terrible death than electrocution and drowning. Last summer, three people died that way in the Lake of the Ozarks area because of faulty electrical systems on docks. As a result of these tragedies, there have been calls to institute and expand dock electrical inspection programs in Missouri.

Dock inspections should be expanded in Missouri, particularly in tourist areas such as the Lake of the Ozarks. However, in the promotion of safety, it is also important to protect against “regulatory capture” — making sure that inspections do not become a monopoly for a small group.

A number of studies have demonstrated the danger. A famous study in the field found that areas with more stringent licensing of household electricians have higher rates of electrocution.

The reasoning behind that counterintuitive fact is simple. More stringent licensing leads to fewer electricians (which is often the intent in the first place). Fewer electricians leads to higher prices to hire one. Higher prices lead to more homeowner do-it-yourself work, which results in more accidents.

Licensing rules are always sold as protecting the public safety; in reality, however, they are often used to improve the financial position of current operators at the expense of competition (especially nonunion competition).

In setting up a comprehensive inspection program for all docks with electrical power, dock owners and authorities in the Lake of the Ozarks area should aim to widen — not narrow — the circle of potential inspectors.

Fire district officials, city or county code inspectors and private electricians should all be able to perform inspections. The lack of electrician licensing by the local government is not a concern, though I have no doubt some will try to raise it as one.

The goal should be to make regular inspections (once a year seems reasonable) as routine as annual heating and air conditioning checks or changing the oil in a car.

If annual inspections are easy to schedule and affordable, the vast majority of dock owners will be happy to comply. If, however, there are difficulties in scheduling and costs are high because the number of inspectors is limited, compliance will fall. Unless the point is to raise money from fines (and I trust it is not), nobody gains when compliance is reduced.

People do not select their electricians, lawyers or plumbers randomly, with only a government license to protect the public interest. People almost always choose these services based on the advice and experience of family, neighbors or business associates. Undoubtedly, there are dozens of electricians who have served the area well for decades without the government’s stamp of approval. Those private electricians should have the same ability to inspect docks as any code officials.

More inspectors means more competition and choice, and that always benefits customers and the public good. Even more importantly, it will help save lives.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Widen Pool of Dock Electrical Inspectors appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This dispute is wonderful — if you happen to be a policy analyst at a free-market think tank who is paid to study such lunacy. For everyone else, the problems that the overall parking predicament has caused near the Shady Gators and Camden on the Lake at 7-Mile Cover has been enormously frustrating.

To review, a Transportation Development District (TDD) was formed in 2008 to operate parking lots in the area for customers of nearby businesses. Businesses that collect the tax and pay into the TDD (Camden on the Lake) got tired of people parking there but going to businesses that do not pay into the TDD, such as the wildly popular Shady Gators. The TDD instituted a parking charge for parking in the lots. Some people refused to pay the parking charge and started parking on the neighborhood streets. Residents complained. The police started writing tickets for parking violations on residential streets nearby. Vandals started removing the “No Parking” signs, thus making it impossible to write tickets. All the while, the TDD did a poor job of filing proper financial reports. With no ability to enforce “No Parking” rules and the continuance of the fee to park in the lots, more and more people parked in the surrounding neighborhood. Total chaos has ensued. Simple enough issue, right?

Every action in this series is understandable, except the vandalism and the late reporting. It is predictable under economic theory, and it is solvable through enforcement of property rights and reliance on market forces. Here are a few key facts to consider. First, there is no right to free parking. Second, you deal with congestion issues either with price or with capacity. Third, other people have property rights, and if you violate them (by parking in a residential area, etc.) you should expect a reaction. Finally, people will attempt to free-ride when possible, but good policy and enforcement of property rights can help make people pay for the goods they chose to consume (i.e.. parking).

To restate the problem: Businesses like Camden on the Lake have an obvious interest in making it easy for customers to patronize them, but they do not want to pay for people to patronize other stores. So the operators of Camden on the Lake started charging customers of Shady Gators, among others, to use the lots. Shady Gators complained, because they were getting the best of all worlds: free customer parking at no cost to them. This is the classic free-rider problem.

What is the solution? First, abandon the TDD and privatize the parking lots. The private sector is fully capable of operating parking systems. The TDD just gives businesses the ability to pay for their lots via taxes instead of their own charges. Second, respect the property rights of residents. Like Chicagoans who live near Wrigley Field and rent out their garages on game days, residents who choose to allow and charge for parking on their property should, of course, be able to do so. But those who do not wish to have business parking in front of their homes should have the “No Parking” restrictions enforced. Third, (and this is the obvious part) allow market forces to come into play and expand parking capacity. If businesses want the same level of customer demand to continue, it will be worth it to them to purchase additional property for parking or build another level on the current lot. If there is a strong demand for parking (and there clearly is) firms and entrepreneurs will meet that demand. The government should neither subsidize, via TDD, nor block, via zoning, the expansion of private parking to serve the customer needs for the 7-Mile Cove.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Dispute About Parking Stirs Up Trouble In The Ozarks appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

MoDOT’s current director cuts through the canard that cities advance suggesting the cameras are there for safety purposes (parentheses in the original):

“Whether speed or red-light running cameras, they are taking this and using it as a moneymaking, revenue-generating activity, and that’s not fair,” [interim state Transportation Director Kevin] Keith said. “I can’t say everyone is doing it. We have enough indications that there are (communities) doing that. It gives us pause.”

If anyone out there actually believes what the cities say about safety, I have a toll bridge over Lake of the Ozarks to sell you. It’s the only one in the state, so it’s pretty valuable.

There are benefits to having a large number of small governments in Missouri, and particularly in St. Louis County. There are also costs. The primary benefit is the difficulty of enacting comprehensive government planning in an area with so many separate governments. The two primary costs are the fiscal cost of redundant services and the consistent abuses of traffic regulations for revenue purposes by small cities. I commend MoDOT for attempting to halt some of those abuses.

The post Progress on Red-Light Cameras appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Whether they like it or not, many agree Missourians probably will have to raise taxes, as they’ve done in the past when shown specifics about how the money will be used.

I am not automatically opposed to that. There is something to be said for the residents of an area paying a larger share for transportation projects within that area. My main problem with the assertions in the story is they seem to totally discount or ignore the use of tolls and private financing for roads and bridges. Higher taxes, be they local sales taxes or state gas taxes, don’t have to be our only option. The voters and elected officials of the state could easily allow expanded tolling options if they chose to do so. It is an option that needs to continue to be included in these discussions.

Missouri’s only toll road has worked well for the Ozarks, and the option also needs to be considered elsewhere, as an alternative to higher taxes. Although I understand — and can sometimes support — the use of local sales taxes to fund local transportation improvements, a higher gas tax is preferable to a general transportation sales tax as statewide policy (if you don’t use tolling). I will never support any policy that makes walkers or bicyclists pay for highways at the same rate as SUV drivers with extended commutes.

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Child proof safety caps on medicine lull people into not hiding medicine from kids and kids break into the pills. Diabetic medicines for fighting high blood sugar lull diabetics into thinking they can eat lots of sweets.

In the rest of the post, he applies this idea to climate change policies.

Kahn’s insight relates to many facets of the nanny-state agenda, such as smoking bans and caloric restrictions on restaurant food. When restaurant patrons believe that their dining experience is sufficiently regulated to optimize health and safety, they won’t go out of their way to look for the most nutritious menus or the cleanest environments. While some people might be brought up to a higher level of health by the imposed standard, others might make worse choices than they would if they were on their guard.

I would expect complacency to be a negative side effect of most policies, but in some cases it could actually be a good thing. For example, Springfield local food advocates are really worked up about an impending economic collapse:

A food policy council should be created in the Springfield metro area because it would trigger an increase in the local food supply and protect the region if a catastrophic event severed the Ozarks’ national and global food link.

If something so disastrous happened that we couldn’t even bring food into Springfield, I doubt a defenseless community garden would survive unscathed. And even if the garden remained intact, the catastrophe would have to be remarkably well-timed to strike during those months when food can be harvested in Missouri.

I’m not a fan of farms on public land, but if a little garden can get these people to calm down and stop seeing the end of the global food system in the shadow of every tomato leaf, it might be worth it. (That’s assuming they really would be lulled into complacency and wouldn’t just proceed to demand more gardens.)

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