Animal control services are one of the prime municipal services ripe for privatization, either with for-profit veterinarians or (more commonly) non-profit animal welfare groups. For example, many of the cities on the Kansas side of the state line have contracted with Great Plains SPCA for shelter operations.

Kansas City has gone through a series of privatization efforts for both its animal shelter and animal control operations, as have many other cities and counties. Kansas City first outsourced its animal shelter to a private vet in 2009. The private operator saved taxpayers $175,000 and improved adoption rates at the same time. However, complaints regarding alleged animal abuse caused the city to terminate the contract in 2011 and briefly go back to city operation. Next, Kansas City turned over its animal shelter to KC Pet Project in 2012, and that privatization effort led to tax savings of $40,000 and a significant reduction in euthanasia for the animals. Later, in 2019, when Kansas City contracted with the same non-profit for animal control operations (e.g., capturing stray animals), city employees opposed it on familiar grounds:

City workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 500 worry about the loss of jobs and pensions if the city of Kansas City, Missouri, follows through with its plan to privatize the Animal Control Division.

Recently the operations of the shelter have been questioned due to a dispute between the non-profits that operate it. It seems the city will be retaking control of the shelter. Animal control operations are also apparently coming back under city control. Admittedly, one can see how capturing potentially dangerous animals is more of a police-like assignment than running adoptions from a shelter. I am not sure most volunteers are going to be enthusiastic about dealing with a wild, rabid pit bull.

Complaints about animal abuse, poor conditions, and more in animal shelters are common. As I said in a previous blog post, jails are hard places to operate, whether they are for people or animals. I suspect there is a core group of animal rights “volunteers” that are going to file complaints about any shelter that isn’t entirely a “no-kill” shelter. It doesn’t seem to matter if the shelter is operated by the government or by a non-profit.

The other part of this debate is that government employees are never going to stop fighting to bring back jobs and assignments that were contracted out. We have seen efforts to retake government control with Kansas City trash operations and University City ambulance services, to give just two examples. I don’t automatically believe the “complaints” filed against private providers in these situations. As a resident of University City, I can assure you that bringing the ambulance operations back under city (and fireman’s union) control was an orchestrated political plan.

Is this the case with the animal shelter and control operations in Kansas City? I don’t know. For the sake of the animals, I hope it works out for the best.

The post Concerns about Kansas City Animal Control Operations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Transparency for Public-sector Labor Contracts
• Tax-credit Scholarships
• Licensing Reform
• Medicaid Expansion
• In Memoriam: The St. Louis Trolley

Click on the link below to read more.

The post Show-Me Institute’s March 2020 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Click on the link below to download the entire report, or click here to read it online.

The post Missouri at the Crossroads: Government Union Laws and the Path to Successful Enforcement appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a recent article in the journal Perspectives on Politics, Sarah Anzia and Terry Moe examine whether pension plans that have pension beneficiaries serving on the board are more likely to underfund their pension systems. In the paper, they explain the logic behind underfunded pensions:

Another basic feature of pension politics is that public workers and their unions have incentives to support the chronic underfunding of their own pensions. Due to state statutes, constitutions, and judicial decisions, pensions promised by state politicians are backed by strong legal protections almost everywhere; and public workers thus know they will eventually get what they are promised even if their pension plans are currently underfunded. Indeed, because full funding on a regular schedule would be tremendously costly for state (and local) budgets— crowding out other services, forcing higher taxes, making the true costs of pensions painfully transparent to citizens —public workers and their unions have incentives to prefer that their pension plans be underfunded. Underfunding enables the fiscal illusion that pension benefits are much less expensive than they really are. If public workers and their unions want increasingly generous benefits in future years, they need to convince the public that these benefits are not costly to provide. At the same time, underfunding keeps employee contributions to their own pension funds at low levels; and by keeping contributions by their employers down, they are freeing up public money for other government services, keeping public workers employed—and providing funds for their own salaries and raises.

Each of Missouri’s three teacher pension systems (Kansas City, St. Louis, and Public School & Education Employee Retirement Systems of Missouri (PSRS)) have board members who are also members of the pension system. In St. Louis, the system is currently funded at 78.1%, the lowest funded ratio since 1992. Kansas City’s funded ratio is just 66.2%. PSRS, the system which covers teachers throughout the rest of the state, has the highest-funded ratio, 84.4%. These figures, of course, rely on the pension plan’s rosy assumptions. More conservative (and arguably more realistic) estimates put the funded ratios for each of the plans below 60%.

Overall, support among teachers for Missouri’s teacher pension systems is high. But would teachers continue to support the pension plan if they had to increase their contributions to fully fund their plan? 

The post Why Are Public Pensions Often Underfunded? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Not so in the public sector, where 84 percent of employees can still expect to retire at a relatively early age (55 or so) and get a paycheck (and possibly health insurance) until they die. A bill to allow Missouri public school teachers to decide for themselves whether they wanted a traditional pension or a 401(k) type retirement benefit was filed in Jefferson City last week and immediately attacked by both the Missouri State Teachers Association (the teachers union) and the Missouri Retired Teachers Association.

These two associations claim their main mission is advancing the best interests of teachers. But which teachers? It’s estimated that nearly 4 in 10 Missouri teachers won’t get to the five-year vesting requirement to receive any employer benefits. Furthermore, because Missouri’s system is so backloaded that teachers have to stay in the system for 26 years just to break even, only about 38 percent will even hit that point.

So the Missouri teachers union and the retired teachers association are sounding the alarm about “harmful retirement legislation” being filed. But they apparently are not considering the best interests of young teachers who would prefer contributing 5 percent of their salary towards retirement instead of nearly 15 percent. They apparently are not considering anyone who leaves before vesting and would like to take with them what their employer has been contributing on their behalf for 3 or 4 years. And they apparently are not considering teachers who leave before their breakeven point and end up getting less in retirement than what they contributed.

Defined benefit pension plans are expensive, unsustainable, and antiquated. Yes, they work great for teachers who hit the “Rule of 80”—years of work, plus age (retire at 53 with 27 years of service). What are the chances that our best and brightest college graduates see that as their future? Shouldn’t we at least give them some options? Shouldn’t we let them have some control over their careers and earnings?

The post Support for Teachers? Or Just Some Teachers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One big problem, however, is that many of these agreements are effectively unknown to the public, and to date there hasn’t been a concerted effort to gather these local agreements and their variations, including memoranda of understanding and other, less-formalized agreements between labor organizations and government. Hundreds of these agreements could be out there, and yet research in this area is surprisingly sparse.

That’s where the Show-Me CBAs Project comes in. By gathering these bargaining agreements, we hope to make it easier for the public to see what their elected representatives have committed taxpayers to in the past, In addition, the Project can also make compliance with HB 1413 an easier undertaking both for government workers and for government regulators charged with implementing HB 1413’s reforms. This project is ongoing, and to date, the Institute has already gathered over a hundred bargaining records, available here. But more are on the way. Stay tuned.

The post Introducing the Show-Me CBAs Project appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• A dubious commission to study charter schools
• Public-sector collective bargaining
• Missouri’s charter school environment
• Regulation of short-term rentals
• Medicaid costs
• Municipal spending transparency

Click on the link below to read more.

The post Show-Me Institute’s March 2018 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Regular public union recertification elections.

Regular public union elections would give workers the right to elect union representation to fixed terms. Regular elections would help keep union actions in line with worker interests and lead to competition among unions. It would also help prevent backlash from union leadership in response to decertification petitions.1

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Currently, Wisconsin and Iowa require regular public union elections.

THE OPPORTUNITY: The Commonwealth Foundation recently gave Missouri a letter grade of ‘D’ regarding its public labor laws. Show-Me Institute research indicates that regular union elections need not be prohibitively expensive and offer a way to ensure that unions serve workers—not the other way around.

KEY POINTS

• Public workers in Missouri should have the right to choose who represents them.
• Regular elections would make unions more accountable to those they represent, just as regular government elections pressure politicians to be accountable to voters.
• Regular elections can be held at a reasonable cost to taxpayers.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Essay: The Low Cost of Labor Reform

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Public Union Recertification appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Testimony: Senate Bill 238–Government Union Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post John Wright Discusses Labor Reform on Missouri Viewpoints appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

However, I would like to raise an issue with the language of the bill. The bill includes a financial disclosure provision that appears to require some government unions (fire and police unions are excluded) to make the same sorts of financial disclosures the private sector unions already have to make. As the bill is currently written, these financial disclosures lack teeth.

• For one, a worker has to request the union’s financials in order to access them. This could paint a target on the back of any whistleblower who wanted to report irregularities in the way union executives are recording their finances.
• Secondly, the financial information doesn’t have to be reported to any government agency or made publicly available. Private sector unions have had to make public financial filings with the government for decades. Why should public sector unions be less transparent than private sector unions? And shouldn’t the public have a right to know how government unions are spending taxpayer funded dues?
• Finally, the bill is written in such a way that government union executives can shred their financial documents after five years. Who benefits from this?

Make no mistake: requiring unions to make their financial information available to their members is a good idea. But the financial disclosure provisions in the paycheck protection bill need to be changed, if they are to be worth anything.

***

To underscore the need for financial disclosures, I have included a link (below) showing a list of dozens of federal embezzlement charges brought against the Communication Workers of America (CWA) executives over the past few years. CWA represents some of Missouri’s state employees, and its leadership is vehemently opposed to having to make meaningful financial filings.

https://www.unionfacts.com/olmscrime/Communications_Workers_of_America/embezzlement_charges

The post Financial Disclosure Provision in Paycheck Protection Bill is Toothless appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Testimony: Government Union Accountability Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1959 Congress passed the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), a powerful set of protections for unionized workers and a much-needed check on the power of union executives. Among other things, the LMRDA required all private sector unions to disclose their finances annually in what are called “LM filings.”

The impact of the LMRDA was huge. Although it didn’t fix everything, workers and journalists were better able to discover instances of self-dealing by looking through LM filings. In many cases this meant a better, more responsive union. The lack of secrecy in union finances is still helping workers hold their union leadership accountable.

Unfortunately, the LMRDA does not apply to Missouri’s government unions. As a result, public sector workers have no easy way of finding out where their dues go, which hinders their ability to question the use of these funds. Self-dealing schemes like the kind this AFSCME executive took part in become harder to uncover when union finances are not transparent.

Our public sector workers deserve the same level of protection that private sector workers have enjoyed for decades. It’s time to close the gap between the public and private sectors. Government unions should be at least as transparent as their private sector counterparts.

The post Kansas City Government Union Embezzlement Shows Need for Greater Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Rebecca Friedrichs is a public school teacher in California who has long struggled with the California Teachers Association, a union that advocates for policies that run counter to Rebecca’s beliefs. Because a majority of the teachers in Rebecca’s school district at one time voted to elect the California Teachers Association to represent them, every current teacher in the district—including Rebecca—is now forced to pay to support the Association.

Rebecca believes this violates her rights. And she has a pretty strong case.

Rebecca’s case is fundamentally about the right of an individual or a minority in a group to think differently than the majority. The majority of the teachers in Mrs. Friedrichs’ school district support a union with an agenda that she disagrees with. Rebecca stands apart as someone who wants to speak with her own voice.

The court’s decision could affect public employees here in Missouri. If the court sides with Mrs. Friedrichs, it would expand the first amendment rights of thousands of teachers, fire fighters, and other Missouri government workers. As a result, each Missouri government employee could choose whether or not to support the union that operates in his or her workplace.

The post Rebecca Friedrichs’ Supreme Court Case Could Expand Workers Rights in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1937, Roosevelt wrote to the President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a government union, and gave his opinion that employee organizations have a “logical” role in government. Roosevelt believed that government employees should organize in order to ensure “fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions . . . and impartial consideration and review of grievances.”

However, Roosevelt was careful to clarify that “meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” In particular, he believed that collective bargaining agreements were incompatible with public sector work:

The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

FDR’s issue with government collective bargaining is that in our system of government, “we the people” set public policy through the democratic process. Binding the people to a collective bargaining agreement takes authority away from the people.

FDR applies similar logic to the topic of strikes:

. . . a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. 

The issues FDR was concerned about affect us today. For example, the Monarch Fire Protection District is still bound by the terms of a collective bargaining agreement signed years ago, before voters put a new, pro-taxpayer board in charge of the district. And in University City, unrest with the firefighters union has caused a couple of incidents imperiling public safety. Now the University City firefighters union is using a collective bargaining agreement to try to limit the city manager’s discretion in contracting out for basic services and managing public safety.

Regardless of whether we should go as far as Roosevelt and prohibit collective bargaining in our government, it is important to craft labor relations laws in light of the important differences between the public and private sectors. Laws ensuring that government remains accountable, even when government workers are unionized, could be called Roosevelt laws in honor of FDR’s legacy.

The post What Was FDR’s Stance on Government Unions? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last year the Missouri legislature considered a few bills that would’ve done this. Unfortunately the fiscal notes associated with these bills (basically a price tag for a new law) indicated that the elections would cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of the problems with these analyses was the assumption that elections would have to be conducted by traditional ballots, manned by hundreds of temporary employees hired just for elections. Modern technology makes this unnecessary.

With traditional voting, paid or volunteer workers need to be on location working polls. Moreover, specialized voting equipment needs to be at every polling location. Telephone- and internet-based voting solve these issues. With telephone and internet voting, personnel do not need to be at every polling location, and the voting equipment is nothing more than a telephone or personal computer. A voter just dials a number or goes to a website, enters a PIN or password, and votes at his or her convenience.

Telephone- and internet-based voting give voters greater flexibility. Not only can you vote from anywhere with an internet connection or mobile phone reception, but polls can remain open longer without significantly increasing costs. Imagine having a week to vote and being able to vote late at night or early in the morning. Much better than heading to a poll, parking, standing in line, and then rushing back to the office.

Security is an issue with telephone- and internet-based voting, just as it is with traditional voting, but internet voting can be encrypted. 256-bit encryption, the same encryption many major banks use, is as cost effective as it is secure.

Price doesn’t have to stand in the way of a policy that would empower government workers. If we’re forward thinking and embrace technological innovation, union elections can held at a reasonable cost.

The post Using Technology to Provide Low-Cost Union Elections appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In Missouri, once a union becomes the “exclusive representative” for a group of public employees, that union remains in power indefinitely. Some have suggested fixing this system by allowing unionized public employees the ability to vote to maintain or replace their union every few years. A regular secret-ballot election sounds like a good check on the potential abuses that can occur when a representative body isn’t held accountable to its constituents. But aren’t elections expensive?

This study shows how our state can provide regular elections for its unionized government employees at a low cost to incumbent unions and at no cost to taxpayers. In The Low Cost of Labor Reform, I examine some of the ways the cost of these elections can be greatly reduced or shifted away from taxpayers entirely. 

The post The Low Cost of Labor Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A new study from the Cato Institute shows that average federal compensation is nearly double average private sector compensation. Do you think AFGE took this study in stride?

“Bogus!” cries AFGE in a recent release. Rather than acknowledging the fact that, yes, federal employees are very well compensated and enjoy generous health and pension benefits, AFGE resorts to name-calling,  describing the study as “a shameful piece of propaganda.” Ouch.

AFGE argues that it can be misleading to compare the entire private sector to federal employees because there’s so much diversity across job classifications. True, you need to be careful about the conclusions you draw from an average that lumps physicians in with custodians. Especially if the private sector employs many more unskilled workers than the federal government.

AFGE makes this argument, but you have to get through a lot of angry rhetoric and name calling to get to it. And the Cato authors deal with this objection in the study:

Some people argue that the government has a unique high-end workforce that deserves to be paid handsomely. But you can flip through the federal budget and find mundane bureaus where workers are paid highly for normal bureaucratic jobs. For example, average compensation in the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration—an agency that hands out business subsidies—is about $140,000. And average compensation in the Department of Agriculture's Office of Chief Economist is about $174,000. So it is not just rocket scientists that earn high wages and benefits, it is also federal workers in regular white-collar jobs.

The bottom line here is that we’ve got to bust this myth of the underpaid government worker. Yes, we want government employees to be well paid, but compensation should be reasonable. The government does not need to be the highest paid industry in our economy.

The post Cato Study Shows that Federal Employees Make More than Private Sector; Government Unions Furious appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• 98% of educators surveyed believe teachers should have the right to choose an association that best fits their needs. Missouri teachers do have this freedom. However, while the teacher may benefit from the professional development opportunities and liability insurance their association offers, teachers don’t have a choice as to who represents them during negotiations over salary and benefits.
• 68% of members would prefer to negotiate their own contract. Wouldn’t it be nice if a teacher who works twice as hard as other teachers and increases academic achievement more than other teachers could ask for a raise? This is unheard of in education, where 84 percent of AAE members say collective negotiations do little to recognize excellent teachers. No wonder schools have such a difficult time holding onto great teachers! They can’t reward them appropriately.
• Only 8% of educators surveyed reported ever having participated in a union certification election. That means that an overwhelming majority of teachers surveyed have never had the chance to vote for which union represents them. Can you imagine if you never got the chance to vote for an elected official—state representative, governor, congresswoman—and the elected official stayed in office indefinitely?

Regular union elections ensure that government employees like teachers have the opportunity to vote for the union or professional association that best represents their interests. While education analysts at the Show-Me Institute often advocate for more choice for students, teachers need choice, too. Teachers need the freedom to decide who represents them at the bargaining table. Whether that’s the individual teacher or a preferred association, teachers should have the freedom to choose. 

The post Teacher Survey Makes Case for More Government Employee Freedom appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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