Now there is one more “doom loop” article about the challenges facing St. Louis. Governing magazine wrote recently about how declining downtown activity leads to economic decline. Its observations are similar to those in the Journal. Cities like St. Louis, where vacant office spaces drive down property values, are experiencing a vicious cycle where diminished tax revenues lead to reduced public services, further pushing businesses and residents away. According to Jason Bram, an economist interviewed in the article, “It’s a very slow-moving, long-term trend that’s only gotten worse.”

This pattern of urban decline is related to the broader challenges facing cities that fail to address fundamental issues like public safety, infrastructure, and housing. St. Louis, already burdened by economic stagnation, could face further setbacks unless city leaders refocus on foundational public services.

Flashy developments like downtown stadia won’t cut it; St. Louis needs to avoid repeating those expensive mistakes. Instead, cities should prioritize core services. For St. Louis, that means investing in improving public safety, maintaining infrastructure, and focusing on policies that encourage growth.

Without addressing these fundamental issues, St. Louis risks being caught in a permanent cycle of decline. Other cities should also heed this warning and ensure that they focus on sustaining a healthy urban core before chasing grandiose development projects.

The post The Many Doom Loops of St. Louis appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As systems evolve and become more complex over time, certain things that used to be commonly provided by cities and counties have moved beyond the realistic capacity of local governments. Two such examples are sewers and hospitals. The last public hospital in St. Louis closed in 1997, and municipal sewer systems in Arnold and Eureka have both been privatized recently. Not all of these changes result in the private sector taking over service provision. For example, in the City of St. Louis and most of St. Louis County, the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) is a large, independent public agency with the resources and expertise to manage the sewer system for our region. Local governments in two areas in our region are currently preparing to hand over responsibility for major services to outside providers, and in each instance the prospects for beneficial transformations are being put at risk by a process that is not being managed in the best interest of the public.

First, the sewers. Festus and Crystal City are considering selling their shared municipal sewer system to the Jefferson County Public Sewer District (JCPSD). Like MSD, this larger, regional system has more resources and expertise than the cities do. However, the leadership of both cities have missed an opportunity to get the best deal for their residents. Earlier this summer, both councils approved a plan to consider only JCPSD’s proposal for a $5 million sale of the sewer system—that is, to exclude any other potential applicants from participation—after quietly negotiating only with JCPSD for months. This is despite the fact that representatives from both Missouri-American Water, which has recently purchased systems in Jefferson County, and Central States Water Resources, which operates sewer systems throughout Missouri, expressed interest in making a proposal once the idea become public. Those private utilities have been denied the opportunity to participate thus far.

Leaders in both cities deserve credit for their willingness to consider major changes to their sewer system. JCPSD’s $5 million offer may well be the best overall proposal the cities receive. But how can the cities know it is the best deal for their residents if they don’t even take any other offers?

The hospital example is even more troubling. In Perry County, located between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, the county hospital board is planning to sell county-owned and operated Perry County Memorial Hospital (PCMH) to Mercy. Such a deal is almost certainly necessary and likely beneficial for the county and its residents, but the manner in which it has been conducted would make former Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast blush. While they probably don’t have smoke-filled rooms for politicians in Perry County hospital, they might as well have. There are two boards that run the hospital—one elected and one appointed—and the boards have gone so far as to deny vital financial information to elected members of the hospital’s own board who have had the audacity to ask tough questions about the deal. You read that right. Elected members of the hospital board who aren’t falling into lockstep are being shoved aside as the board majority forces the deal through. Things like the Sunshine law and open records requirements are not suggestions; they are the law, and someone needs to inform the Perry County hospital boards of that.

In general, I strongly support local government changes such as outsourcing services to the private sector or other, larger public bodies. Divesting entities like the Perry County hospital and the Festus–Crystal City sewer system could benefit both communities. However, elected officials in both places have a responsibility to go through the process in an open, transparent fashion. They have utterly failed that test in Perry County, and they aren’t off to a good start in Festus and Crystal City. Residents of Perry County, Festus, and Crystal City should demand better from their local leaders.

The post Good Ideas Done Poorly in Jefferson and Perry Counties appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jackson Kurtz at KMBC Channel 9 in Kansas City after the Royals finished their press conference and give him my views on the situation. I’ll have more to say on the Royals tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s the story we were a part of that ran earlier this week.

The post Show-Me Talks Royals Stadium Move on KMBC appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Many cities are failing their primary task to provide basic services, and one big reason they are failing is because too much time and money is being spent trying to attract big projects such as airports, convention hotels, stadiums and the like. As a result, money that would go to schools, libraries, roads and police is diverted away. It’s true in Kansas City and St. Louis and most cities across the country.

There is plenty of opportunity to debate how public dollars should be spent to provide better services—and plenty of room to disagree. The Urban League and Show-Me Institute agree on at least this much— public dollars should be used for core services and not diverted away to private developers to do what the research tells us they were going to do anyway.

The post Thank You to the Urban League of Greater Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Originally, the city paid for solid waste collection from ordinary tax revenues. However due to budget constraints—maybe due to the city giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies—the Board of Aldermen passed a bill in 2010 to implement an $11 monthly fee per household to help cover refuse costs. Last August, the Board voted to increase the fee to $14. The additional money was for, among other things, obtaining new garbage trucks to “ensure garbage collectors won’t be forced to work overtime because they’re stuck with poorly functioning trucks.”

And what have the results been? The city’s fleet of garbage trucks continues to deteriorate. Roughly half of the 84 trucks are in disrepair, leaving the other half to cover the 55 daily routes. Even with extended hours and 12 new—leased—trucks, the city still lacks the resources to pick up the trash on time, so the dumpsters continue to overflow.

We are not suggesting that the problem here is exclusively the fault of city officials. For one thing, piles of uncollected garbage don’t make for good optics if you’re an elected official with constituents to keep happy. And the decision to lease new trucks rather than buy them looks like a reasonable response from a city that is behind on maintenance for the trucks it already owns.

Maybe the larger issue is that garbage collection is a better fit for private companies than for a city government. Privatizing this service would allow residents to choose their garbage collector, unlike now, creating competition among service providers and incentivizing high-quality, efficient operations. Wichita, Kansas, a city with 80,000 more people than St. Louis, has no city-run solid waste collection system. The average household in Wichita spends $25 per month on garbage collection. (In comparing this rate to costs in Saint Louis, keep in mind that St. Louis’s current $14 per month fee is in addition to the money from the overall city budget that goes toward trash collection.) As for the quality of service provided, we can’t claim to have our fingers on the pulse of the Wichita trash-collection scene, but our internet searches yielded nothing like this or this or this in Wichita.

Maybe it is time to see if the private sector has an answer to this embarrassing—and smelly—problem.

The post Time to Take out the Trash appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We’ve written about this before. The Star is correct that jazz serves only a niche audience, but they argue,

Still, other jazz festivals draw audiences many times larger. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this year drew 425,000 for the seven-day event, the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival attracted 205,000.

Are those fair comparisons? The 2017 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival hosted such non-jazz performers as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Kings of Leon, Usher, and Snoop Dogg. The Rochester International Jazz Festival featured Cheryl Crow—not a jazz artist. And as the Star notes, these festivals took place over more days than in Kansas City.

The Star then speculated whether the cause for such lackluster attendance here in Kansas City was fear of crime or racism. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who led the effort to spend public money on 18th and Vine in the 1990s when he served as mayor, offered that New Orleans and Memphis seem to have gotten past this, but not Kansas City. In order for this claim to be true, one needs to believe that the Kansas City region contains tens of thousands of jazz fans who are staying home simply because of the festival’s venue. Does anyone believe that? It seems more likely that event supporters are merely pointing the finger at others for their own failures.

Memphis’ Beale Street is a great success largely, we suspect, because it is privately run. Back in the late 1990s, Beale Street boosters sought private investment at the same time Cleaver was insisting on public financing for 18th and Vine. As to which was the wiser approach, two decades later we know the answer: Cleaver was wrong. New Orleans has a long list of private corporate sponsors; Rochester does too. Kansas City’s sponsors appear to include only “National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Kansas City, and Hall Family Foundation.”

Private administration and sponsorship is a powerful incentive for success and probably accounts for why these festivals include lots of performances by non-jazz artists. That is the lesson Kansas City must learn; government jazz isn’t working. To spend public money and then blame the public for not attending will not make anything better.

The post Jazz, Race, and Crime in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And it’s the “real job” debate that percolated during the first special session that I want to address here, since it’s now come back up in the second. During the first special session it appeared that a handful of senators might already have been looking ahead to the Memorial Day weekend, which I don’t begrudge them. But a common refrain during the session’s debates was that a few senators were put out by having to come back to the Capitol—that being a senator wasn’t a “real job.” At least one senator even threatened to try and close down future special sessions because his “real job,” whatever it is, was more important than finishing his work as a senator.

Are senators the victims here? They don’t donate their time to be senators. They’re paid. They’re aware that special sessions can be called. They weren’t tricked into this line of work.

And can you imagine U.S. Senators behaving like this when talking about their public service? Constituents aren’t honored by electing a senator to public office. Senators are, in fact, given the honor of representing their constituents. 

So when I hear a senator complaining on the People’s floor about his pay, the burden of his office, and the inconvenience of doing the job he sought and received, I am left to wonder why he is standing there to begin with.

And now, as would happen in a real job, some of these senators are going to have to earn their cash advance. They were happy to walk away with their salaries during the regular session as bill after bill was buried by their filibusters and foot-dragging. Now they’re being paid per diems to do jobs that should already be done.

Maybe next year these senators will treat their real jobs—doing the People’s business—more seriously; otherwise, I suspect the summer of special sessions will evolve into an annual tradition. Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.

The post On Special Sessions, Public Service, and “Real Jobs” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to University City Council member Paulette Carr, the delay was caused by a lack of mutual aid. Ordinarily when there is an emergency call in University City, EMS personnel and firefighters from surrounding cities such as Clayton and Brentwood are available to help. Most of the fire departments in this part of the county provide relief for one another to help lighten the load and improve response times. This is how mutual aid works.

According to Carr, Clayton had an ambulance ready to go. Under these circumstances, a 15-minute delay was unnecessary.

We’ve been told by reliable sources that the other fire departments in the region recently blacklisted University City from the mutual aid agreement. University City contracted out for EMS with a private company earlier this month, against the wishes of some of the bosses in the county firefighters union. The result: if you don’t play by our rules, we won’t cooperate with you.

When there’s a labor dispute between a private sector union and a private business, it doesn’t cause this kind of problem. If UPS and the Teamsters can’t work well together, consumers can use FedEx instead. There is not an alternative fire service for citizens of University City to use. When it comes to the government, union executives cannot afford to let petty disagreements stop the delivery of services.

A handful of executives in the St. Louis County firefighters union seem to be playing games with people’s lives. If they can’t put service to the public above getting their way on every little thing, then perhaps they don’t belong in our government. 

The post Playing Games with Lives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the full case study: .

The post Policy Breakfast: Government Privatization in Missouri: Successes, Risks, and Opportunities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When I was growing up, I regularly played golf at the Forest Park municipal golf course in Saint Louis. Later, in my high school and college years, I noticed that the quality of the course was improving, a lot. This happened at the same time (late 1980s) that the city of Saint Louis outsourced the management of the golf course to a private company. As that outsourcing, or privatization, of the golf course has continued, the quality of the course has continued to improve. I doubt you would find one golfer familiar with the course before and after who thinks the outsourcing of its management and operations did not significantly enhance it.

That same type of story is repeated throughout Missouri. Good government need not be big government and the public sector does not have to provide public services in every case. There is a role for private delivery, often regulated, of public services in Missouri. In many cases, the private sector can deliver those services more affordably and at a higher quality than the government.

In fact, Southwest Missouri is home to one of America’s most enterprising privatization projects. The Branson Airport is America’s only fully private commercial airport. In a capitalist system, not every business attempt succeeds, and the Branson Airport may yet fail. (I hope not.) But if it fails, private investors will be out their own money, unlike Mid-America Airport in southern Illinois, where local governments have had to continually fund that little-used white elephant.

On the other end of the spectrum is City Utilities (CU), Springfield’s municipal behemoth. Missouri’s other large cities are primarily served by private utilities. Those private utilities pay taxes, face more regulations, earn a return on investment, and still charge comparable rates to CU. Springfield needs to consider following the example of Florissant, Mo., a decade ago, and divest itself of its public utilities.

Research has shown that privatization works best when the driving force is pragmatism, not ideology. Politicians and voters can still debate about what services should be provided as part of the eternal debate over the role of government in our society. But privatization is more about how those services are provided, not whether they should be. Unless you genuinely believe that as many people as possible should be on the public payroll, like the big city political machines of yesteryear, then a government service that you depend upon or care about likely can be addressed with privatization.

There are certain roles that should always belong to the government, such as police powers, and never to the private sector. Furthermore, the role of government regulation in many privatized public services is important, such as regulation of private utilities. Finally, in some instances, such as animal control, private partnerships with non-profit groups may be preferred to for-profit companies. Whatever way you look at it, there are numerous examples, such as Cox Health operating ambulance services in Christian County or the existence of private libraries in Taney County, where privatization can provide better services at lower costs for Missourians. Just play golf at Forest Park to see the evidence.

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

The post Privatization Can Benefit Missouri Taxpayers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When I was growing up, I regularly played golf at the Forest Park municipal golf course in St. Louis. Later, in my high school and college years, I noticed the quality of the course was improving, a lot. This happened at the same time (late 1980s) the city of St. Louis outsourced the management of the golf course to a private company. As that outsourcing, or privatization, of the golf course has continued, the quality of the course has continued to improve. I doubt you would find one golfer familiar with the course before and after who thinks the outsourcing of its management and operations did not significantly enhance it.

That same type of story is repeated throughout Missouri. Good government need not be big government, and the public sector does not have to provide public services in every case. There is a role for private delivery, often regulated, of public services in Missouri. In many cases, the private sector can deliver those services more affordably and at a higher quality than the government.

Ambulance service is one area where Southeast Missouri is a leader in the privatization debate. In much of Missouri, government agencies provide ambulance services. However, in Cape Girardeau and Butler counties, ambulance services have long been privately provided. Government operation of ambulance service in most other parts of Missouri leads to a constant pressure to increase taxes and spending. In fact, voters in St. Charles County (outside St. Louis) rejected an ambulance tax increase in 2013, only to see the exact tax increase planned again for 2014. Those private ambulance companies in Southeast Missouri are serving the community just as well as a government agency could, and taxpayers are benefiting.

Research has shown privatization works best when the driving force is pragmatism, not ideology. Politicians and voters can still debate about what services should be provided as part of the eternal debate over the role of government in our society. But privatization is more about how those services are provided, not whether they should be. Unless you genuinely believe as many people as possible should be on the public payroll, such as the big city political machines of yesteryear, then a government service you depend upon or care about likely can be addressed with privatization.

There are certain roles that should always belong to the government, such as police powers, and never to the private sector. Furthermore, the role of government regulation in many privatized public services is important, such as regulation of private utilities. Finally, in some instances, such as animal control, private partnerships with not-for-profit groups may be preferred to for-profit companies. Whatever way you look at it, there are numerous examples, such as the ownership and management of Maramec Spring Park near St. James by the private, not-for-profit James Foundation, where privatization can provide better services at lower costs for Missourians. Just play golf at Forest Park to see the evidence.

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

The post Ambulance Service An Example Of Privatization’s Benefits appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Peruse the 2004 Missouri legislature’s Subcommittee on Competition and Privatization report as well as several examples of contracts and proposal requests between local governments and private sector partners.

Watch David’s interview with Ferguson Mayor James Knowles (full version below, click for two-minute teaser):

Read the full case study below:

The post Government Privatization in Missouri: Successes, Risks, and Opportunities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is nothing wrong with a business manipulating its prices and practices when it is confronted with a budgetary dilemma. But there is something wrong when it fails to adequately serve customers while the state prohibits competition. In the private sector, businesses compete to provide the best for the least. In the case of the USPS, however, customer satisfaction can simply be sacrificed for financial health. After all, why worry about quality customer service when a competitor cannot put you out of business?

The least weak argument in favor of public mail delivery is that private enterprise could not profitably serve rural areas. For example, my grandfather often patronizes the post office in Centertown, Mo., a small town in Cole County. He prefers it to the one in Jefferson City, as there is never a wait. My guess is that the privatization of the USPS would spell the end of the Centertown branch, as well as countless other small town post offices across the state. Or perhaps they would remain, but mail delivery to and from such remote locations would be significantly more expensive.

Public support is likely necessary if many rural areas are to maintain their post offices, but this is not a justification for such support. Many things are relatively expensive for rural dwellers (e.g., Internet, gas to get to the grocery store); others are comparatively cheap (e.g., land).  The reverse is true for urbanites. What sense does it make to subsidize something simply because it is comparatively expensive in a given area?  The bottom line is that living in a particular locale comes with its unique set of costs. The most sensible route to take is to stop artificially reducing the cost of mail service in rural areas; let those who remain in these areas face the commensurate costs.

Privatizing the USPS, in short, makes both practical and moral sense.

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Property taxes are one of the three main types of taxation in the United States, along with sales and income taxes. Like any tax system, property taxes have benefits and costs. The primary benefit is that they are the most effective mechanism for connecting the public services taxpayers use with the tax dollars they pay. Research has determined that the quality and cost of the public services within an area are capitalized into the price of the property. People make choices on where to locate based on their various demands for public services and their different capacities for paying taxes. Local governments respond to those various demands by implementing differing menus of taxation and public services that appeal to different members of the public.

Related Case Study

Commentary: A $ 109,000 School “Voucher”: A Story of Tax Rates and School Districts

Commentary: Changes to Property Assessment System Would Improve Fairness

Video: Property Taxes in Missouri: Police, Fire, Municipal Bands?

The post Homes, Taxes and Choices: A Review of Real Estate Assessment and Property Taxation in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Chiacgo aldermatic objections to the privatization bid center on the private operator’s proposed plan to charge an admission fee and (gasp!) sell tickets to the accompanying concerts. Chicago has been a leader in privatizing public services, and you might think that a major food festival should be an obvious choice once you have privatized a highway, parking meters, and (almost) an airport. But apparently some alderman are drawing the line at food and music festivals:

“Is there a cap? What contract are we signing? Is it gonna be another thing where they can increase the rates every year?” [Ald. George] Cardenas said, referring to the deal that privatized Chicago parking meters. “It’s a tragedy that we have to be in this situation where people can’t even enjoy their own city, enjoy their own lakefront. They have to pay for it.”

By “enjoy their own city, enjoy their own lakefront,” he does not mean taking an evening stroll along the beach. Rather, he’s suggesting that attending an enormous food festival with booths, bands, security, sanitary facilities, promotional marketing, street and parking adjustments, and scores of other necesities that all cost money … that should all be free of charge to the people who attend, until they actually buy something. (I will give the alderman the benefit of the doubt that he does not think even the food should be free.)

This relates to issues in Missouri. The city of Clayton recently attempted to pass a hotel tax increase that would have been partly used to fund the Taste of Clayton.  Instead of trying to fund Taste of Clayton with tax dollars, Clayton should allow restaurants (or any private operator) to host it themselves, and charge the private actor for any extra costs incurred by the city, or not host it at all. A food festival is something that private organizations can provide, and is not a core function of local government.

I hope that Clayton follows Chicago’s example and bids out the entire management and operation of the “Taste of Clayton” to private operators, without any taxpayer support.

The post There’s No Such Thing as a Free Food Festival appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some estimates project that the proposal will save New Jersey $210 million annually in taxpayer funds. From the article:

“The question has to be, ‘Why do you continue to operate in a manner that’s more costly and less effective?’ rather than, ‘Why change?’?” said Richard Zimmer, the former Republican congressman who chaired the task force.

By and large, privatization lowers costs and raises quality. Unlike the government, which can continually operate in the red, a private firm must turn a profit to stay in business, a fact that makes private service providers much more accountable to consumers. The unresponsiveness of public service providers is especially evident when spending hours in line at the DMV or post office. A private firm with a similar service record would either have to take steps to become profitable, by increasing service and lowering costs, or face going out of business.

Missourians would benefit if state officials followed New Jersey’s lead by finding ways to privatize services and save taxpayer money. The efficiency gains that privatization bring would provide a means to cut costs without cutting services. Missouri could do well for itself by entrusting responsible private businesses to help carry some of the state’s fiscal load.

The post New Jersey Looks to Privatization as a Means to Trim Budget appeared first on Show-Me Institute.