We have all seen the television ad where the man walks into the sandwich shop and orders bread but nothing inside of it because that’s all he can afford. “Everything is so expensive these days,” he says.

That may well be how many Americans are feeling, but I only wish that were true for our government. The price tags for government’s infrastructure “improvements” are becoming astronomical, and at some point we have to recognize that this isn’t an unfortunate fact of life. The high cost is a choice, not a requirement.

Let’s start with the high-speed rail disaster in California, which was originally approved in 2008 for an estimated cost of $33 billion; the current estimate is $135—for a system that won’t have anything completed until the 2030s at the earliest. Actually connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised, is many more years away. All this for a system that hasn’t laid any track 15 years after it was approved.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Spain, they built an entire 2,500-mile system of high-speed rail for $62 billion. That’s obviously a lot of money, but it got them an entire, advanced rail system for less than half of what California will spend for two routes at best.

Unlike high-speed rail, elevators have been around for a long time. There is nothing fancy about an elevator. Yet in New York City, a project to replace 70 elevators at transit stations cost taxpayers $5.5 billion, or about $80 million per elevator. Elevators for subways may indeed be more expensive than in office buildings, but in Germany they have managed to hold the cost to less than $10 million per elevator per transit station. Something is deeply wrong with how we fund government infrastructure in America.

Closer to home, St. Louis County is considering several options for its governmental complex in Clayton. The most expensive and most comprehensive plan—which includes replacing the main county administration building with an entirely new building among other projects—is estimated by the county to cost around $600 million. If that sounds preposterous, it should. The key part of that proposal—the new administration and public safety building in downtown Clayton, is estimated to cost $250 million for a 190,000-square-foot building. (This doesn’t even include the cost of demolishing the existing buildings.)

Currently, a 21-story residential tower has been approved by the city for downtown Clayton. It would have 299 units, some retail space, and over 300,000 total square feet. What is the total estimated cost of that project? $106 million. This residential tower would be significantly larger than the new county building, yet it would cost approximately $150 million less. Based on cost per square foot, the proposed county building is almost four times as expensive.

In Robert Caro’s book The Powerbroker, about Robert Moses, the autocratic boss of New York city and state infrastructure projects for four decades in the mid-20th century, Caro spent an entire chapter detailing the way Moses employed various interest groups to get his projects going, no matter the cost. Moses had support from a wide cross-section of interest groups because he made sure that they all made money from his projects. Construction companies, contractors, labor unions, consultants, banks, law firms, the list goes on. If any politicians started opposing his projects, there was an orchestrated campaign of pressure from all these groups to get it approved. The people who benefitted from these enormous expenditures benefited greatly and quickly. The taxpayers or commuters who paid more than they should have did so in small increments over time via higher taxes, tolls, or other fees, but they didn’t feel the higher costs all at once. So the taxpayer shakedown has continued on to the present day.

In simpler terms, the developer of the high-rise in Clayton is spending its own money to build it, where St. Louis County officials are not. The county is spending taxpayer money, obviously, and when you do that in Missouri’s largest and richest county you can get away with spending a lot of it. Taxpayers aren’t going to revolt over an extra $50 a year in taxes spread out over 365 days of sales tax on purchases or mixed in at the end of the year with a dozen other property taxes on their bill. This is why you end up with a proposal for a new county building that costs four times more (per square foot) than a new, private building nearby.

Addressing this overall problem is going to be extremely difficult. Every option for change involves cutting off someone else’s golden goose. For now, let’s just hope St. Louis County government doesn’t put the New York Transit Authority in charge of the new elevators. Then it’s going to really get expensive.

The post Government Infrastructure Costs Are Out of Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Fast forward a year and Vockrodt writes that the new Aviation Department director, Pat Klein, was unaware of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidelines on conducting an environmental assessment. He writes,

Klein said there had been an assumption that the city could put out solicitations for certain construction work before the FAA approved an environmental assessment in October, and then signing those contracts shortly afterward.

“What we’ve been told initially by the FAA is they don’t think that’s a smart idea,” Klein said. “They think we should hold, so we’re in discussions with them to do that. That’s a three-, four-, five-month lag on our schedule, which could be the difference between summer or winter of 2022.”

Now we learn that even before construction has begun, the project’s opening is being delayed 11 months to October 2022 and will cost much more than originally planned. Delays and increased costs such as these are not surprising for such large projects. After all, the Aviation Department itself has been all over the map on costs for years. Changes in costs and timelines can be forgiven. Not knowing FAA rules on construction suggest a deeper problem of management.

The Kansas City Star editorial board rightly called for more transparency in the construction of the new airport terminal. The Show-Me Institute has also called repeatedly for more transparency in the airport process since 2013, when the Council first took up the matter.

It’s difficult to be confident that the City will suddenly adopt a position in favor of transparency after years during which the process was opaque. We remain confident, however, given the Aviation Director’s unfamiliarity with FAA guidelines, that transparency remains the highest need.

The post Kansas City Airport Stumbles Along appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Michigan Repeals Prevailing Wage, and Missouri Should, Too appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is disconcerting, then, that a minor bevy of similarly complicated prevailing wage “reforms” keep creeping out of the shadows. One would peg wages to county wage averages; another would lightly tinker with wage reporting requirements. Sometimes the prevailing wage would attach. Sometimes it wouldn’t. And so on.

Just stop.

I understand the appeal of keeping the prevailing wage in place to construction interests, since it props up their pay. However, legislators should be supporting the interests of taxpayers and acting to steward taxpayer money, not conjuring new ways to rebrand a Rube Goldberg public construction wage system that frankly shouldn’t exist. To put it plainly, this is a question of taxpayer interests versus special interests. Policymakers shouldn’t complicate an issue that, in the end, is that simple.

The post Don’t Complicate Prevailing Wage Repeal appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The prevailing wage sets a floor for pay, but it can actually hurt the workers it’s intended to help by denying employment to people who can do the job at a more competitive price. To make matters worse, making projects more expensive also means that less taxpayer money will be available for other priorities.

THE SOLUTION: Let the market set wages.

Rather than dictate wages, the government should have policies that support a healthy jobs environment where higher wages for all sorts of construction projects—including public construction—develop on their own without the harmful effects of wage floors.

Policymakers must keep in mind that project delays can hurt their communities over time. It would be better to let the market set wage rates for these projects and to begin delivering those public services sooner rather than later.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? States with no prevailing wage law include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

THE OPPORTUNITY: Moving away from market-distorting policies like the prevailing wage will help the state promote job growth and spend taxpayer money efficiently.

KEY POINTS

• These reforms would promote job growth and make public works projects more affordable.
• Taxpayers get the most bang for their tax buck when their money is spent efficiently and effectively.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Blog Post: Special Interests Inhibiting Joplin’s Recovery?

Blog Post: Playing Favorites on the Board of Aldermen?

Blog Post: The Race Is On: Wisconsin Pushes to End Project Labor Agreements and Prevailing Wage

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

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Could the airport just be a legacy project? Two years ago, then–Aviation Department Director Mark VanLoh made it seem that way when he told the Northland Regional Chamber of Commerce, “You don’t have [all the information] yet. We don’t even have it yet. I know what I want because I want a new airport.” He just wanted it.

VanLoh is gone, but the strange enthusiasm for a single terminal continues. The new plan is just as over-the-top as the old one. The justifications for the spending come and go—claims of EPA mandates, TSA concerns, and airlines’ refusal to expand services—but the project itself remains the same: a $1.2-billion single terminal that is actually a downsizing of what we have now.

What is new in this round of the discussion is the financing and no-bid contracting. But regardless of who finances and builds the airport, the risk to Kansas City comes from the possibility of increased fees to airlines and passengers. Right now, Kansas City’s airport is very cheap for airlines, and travelers benefit with lots of flights from here. Increase the costs to airlines, and we risk losing that competitive advantage. Other airports have suffered after building new terminals for just that reason (Consider Cincinnati, Sacramento, or San Jose.).

The good news is that the city is no longer claiming that the airlines agreed to finance the project. This was never the case, despite incorrect claims from the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Business Journal. In truth, the airlines merely agreed to pay higher rent for a new terminal while reserving their right to renegotiate once the terminal is built. They did not issue or back any debt; they accepted no risk.

Proponents of a new terminal are fond of telling us that the new terminal idea is not a Taj Mahal. In fact, they’ve been using that curious term over and over again for years (see the Google search here). The Taj Mahal, of course, is a 400-year-old elaborate mausoleum in India built to house an emperor’s wife. Such determination to settle for nothing less than a new terminal, however, combined with the candor of Mark VanLoh and the out-of-hand dismissal of cheaper alternatives, suggests that this is exactly what the new terminal is: a modern monument to political ego—not what is best for Kansas City.

The post Kansas City’s Airport: A Monument to Political Ego appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But RTW isn’t the only labor reform where states are scrambling to beat their peers to the finish line. Indeed, states are also looking to reform their project labor agreement (PLA) laws, which circumscribe who can work on some public projects, and their prevailing wage laws, which can affect the price taxpayers pay for public projects.

And as in Missouri, the policy pairing of PLAs and prevailing wage has hit the top of the reform list in Wisconsin.

Prevailing wage requirements and project labor agreements would be prohibited under a proposal in Wisconsin’s 2017-19 biennial executive budget and tandem legislation speeding through the state legislature.

Gov. Scott Walker (R), already recognized for his tough stands against organized labor, included a single sentence in his 644-page budget proposal Feb. 8. The language repeals the state’s prevailing wage requirements and bans “any unit of government in the state from requiring or considering the use or lack of use of a project labor agreement by a contractor as a condition of bidding on a public works project.”

The state legislature could beat Walker to the punch under separate bills that would prohibit state and local units of government from requiring project labor agreements as part of public works programs. The Senate passed its version of the PLA bill, Senate Bill 3, by a vote of 19-13 on Feb. 8. The Assembly’s Committee on Labor approved nearly identical legislation, Assembly Bill 24, on a party-line vote Feb. 9.

The post The Race is On: Wisconsin Pushes to End Project Labor Agreements and Prevailing Wage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Despite the need, there is concern that political leaders will fall back on old practices of moving money around. Fearing this, a neighbor of mine in south Kansas City wrote some members of the City Council with a very salient concern:

What becomes of the existing general fund budget allocated to Public Works for street preservation and sidewalk repair? Does it continue to be used for street preservation or is it siphoned off to another area?

According to Kansas City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for fiscal year 2015, the budget for the Public Works Department was almost $183 million. (The budget was $187 million in FY 2014 and $212 million in FY2012.) The Council is free to allocate the general fund as they see fit. It is, after all, what we elect them to do. The response my neighbor received was not promising:

The City’s Public Works Department confirms that the funding policy for Public Works street maintenance is set by ordinance. GO Bonds will dramatically expand revenue available for street reconstruction, maintenance, and repair. By law, GO Bond proceeds can only be used for GO Bond projects and cannot be diverted.

This answer plays right into my neighbor’s worry. Yes, the GO Bond proceeds may be restricted to public works projects. The concern is that the addition of new money from the GO bond will simply allow the Council to redirect discretionary spending from the general fun elsewhere. For example, imagine telling your child that any proceeds from her summer job will be dedicated to her college fund—then reducing your own contribution to the fund by the amount that she contributes to it. She may agree to make an additional contribution, but it won’t have the impact she is expecting. Similarly, voters may approve Question 1 giving $600 million in bonds for street and sidewalk repairs, only to find that the totality of money spent on street and sidewalk repairs does not increase by $600 million.

The fear is compounded by the Mayor’s refusal to commit to specific projects and timelines. He tells us that he doesn’t know what the city will be faced with in 20 years, yet he is fine with asking voters to commit to raising their taxes for 40 years. And as stated above, the reason Kansas City faces this problem in the first place is that previous councils did not fund needed maintenance.

The ballot questions at hand ask voters to ignore decades of experience with politicians’ bait and switch.

Kansas Citians would be wise to demand more explicit and binding commitments from City Hall, and smaller, shorter-term bonds. That way they have more opportunities to hold politicians accountable.

The post The GO Bond Bait and Switch appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me Institute has weighed in on such public projects, from the Stan Span to trolley systems in University City and Kansas City. In each instance we asked, just as you would before taking out that home-improvement loan, whether the projected benefit of the project was greater than the projected costs borne by taxpayers. And even if we make the somewhat dangerous assumption that the costs won’t increase as the project goes on, the answer too often is “no.”

Our conclusions are shared by Harvard economics Professor Edward Glaeser. In a recent article that appeared in the City Journal, Glaeser exposes the fairy tale of infrastructure investment as an economic cure-all. It isn’t that he (or we) believes that well-thought-out investment in roads and bridges is unimportant. Quite the contrary. The problem is that the way in which policymakers decide which project goes forward often leads to costly miscalculations that in the end simply do not deliver the promised improvements.

A couple myths about infrastructure that Glaeser dispels are:

• Infrastructure spending stimulates economic growth. Japan, which spent over $6 trillion on “construction-related public investment” between 1991 and 2008, and has arguably one the world’s best train systems, has not experienced sustained economic growth in over two decades. Will building more highways in areas with little population improve economic conditions in U.S. States? It seems unlikely.
• The public benefits, so funding should be done with general tax revenues. It is a near fact of life that funding a project from afar reduces the discipline needed to make sure it is done in a cost-efficient manner, and—perhaps more importantly—makes it less likely that the project will actually benefit the public (and not just those proposing it). Ill-advised, federally funded projects such as Detroit’s People Mover Monorail and Alaska’s Gravina Bridge (a.k.a. “the bridge to nowhere”) serve as cautionary tales. Spending federal funds on local projects like Kansas City’s trolley system is similarly likely to yield little or no economic benefit.

There is much more to Glaeser’s article, and I cannot do it justice in this space. I think you will agree, after reading his article, that maybe that new road or light rail extension being peddled by the local mayor or city council isn’t as critical to the region’s economic vitality as some might have you think.

The post About That New Home Addition . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Construction unions are pressing the City Council to adopt a “project labor agreement” mandating union labor and other rules for the $28 million police headquarters-court facility approved by voters in April. In return, unions agree not to call strikes on the project.

While a project labor agreement that forces the city to use union labor rather than the best available bid is a bad idea in its own right, the fact that construction unions appear to be threatening a disruption in order to get exclusive access to this project is beyond the pale.

Where to begin?

Shouldn’t public works projects be awarded based on contractor qualifications and bid amounts? Doesn’t this combination get taxpayers the best value for their dollar? On the other hand, when a city adopts a constraint on a public works project that favors a certain kind of contractor for reasons other than value, isn’t that a bad sign?

I would say so. An agreement that awards contracts exclusively to unionized labor seems to be less about getting taxpayers the best deal and more about appeasing a politically active special interest group. If unionized businesses offer taxpayers in O’Fallon a better deal than non-union shops, they will win public contracts through the strength of their bids. Special treatment is unnecessary.

I don’t think anyone wants to see a slowdown on a $28 million public works project like this, but special treatment for unions trying to exercise political muscle should be non-negotiable, especially if they’re threatening to punish the city if they don’t get their way. O’Fallon should do the right thing for its taxpayers: Take bids from all parties and assess them on their merits.

The post Will O’Fallon Use a Competitive Bidding Process? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I am not categorically against a state or other governing entity issuing bonds for worthwhile spending on infrastructure, but putting the state in debt just to launch a public works program looks like a mini version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (i.e., the Stimulus), which really covered itself in glory. To be fair, the Stimulus was not entirely composed of infrastructure spending, but infrastructure spending was a significant part of it.

There are other reasons to be wary of a state issuing debt, as Chris Edwards from the Cato Institute explains:

• . . . debt financing is more costly than current tax financing because of the interest expenses and related charges.
• The most important reason that voters should hesitate to approve bonds is that the country already faces huge government liabilities. At the state level, pension and health benefit plans for retired workers have funding shortfalls of about $2 trillion.

Again, there may be good reasons for the state to issue bonds. Transportation and higher education infrastructure are both legitimate uses of public dollars. However, before putting the state further into debt, it is important that these potential bond issuances are thoroughly examined to see which projects they would be financing.

I will write more about these potential bonds in future posts. I can see myself and others at the Show-Me Institute supporting some type of bond issuance, but I hope the primary plan is not that they will serve as some sort of jobs program.

The post The Name’s Bond . . . Building Bond appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Dr. Strauss appears as part of a KMOV report on the status of the “China Hub” proposal in the Missouri Legislature’s Special Session, calling Aerotropolis a “pie in the sky” project. That segment is below:

Meanwhile, Dr. Haslag has written an article for the Columbia Business Times expressing similar concerns on the jobs front, saying that “the models used by DED [to estimate tax credit project success and job creation] have been discredited” predominantly because they fail to incorporate the cost of the government taking money from the private sector to fund the project. Dr. Haslag also tells a brief but useful story about the problem of trying to “count” jobs. (Emphasis mine)

There is a legend about employment and government projects involving Dr. Milton Friedman. During a visit to India, an official was taking Friedman on a tour of a public works project. New machinery was being used, and the official touted the number of jobs that were created by the project. Friedman responded by saying that if you wanted to count new jobs, the project leaders should have provided the workers with spoons instead of state-of-the-art construction equipment. If it is jobs we want, there are lots of silly ways to get those jobs created. A nobler goal is to find a set of rules that promotes opportunity for all, not just gifts graciously handed to a select few.

Our skepticism of the wide array of Aerotropolis job estimates has been well-documented. Dr. Strauss’s and Dr. Haslag’s analyses of the project again confirm the questionable nature of proponents’ jobs assessments.

The post SLU and Mizzou Economists Weigh in on Aerotropolis Jobs Estimates appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here’s the back story: Evidently, government officials decided that two runways weren’t enough for Lambert. Construction on the runway began in 1998, and it continued despite several setbacks. (As the Riverfront Times aptly put it, “Still, the bulldozers rolled on.”) Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Trans World Airlines went bankrupt and American Airlines bought it. In 2003, American Airlines cut its operations in half at Lambert, and revoked the airport’s hub status. In the meantime, people flew far less than projected.

Unfortunately for Missouri taxpayers, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. The new runway did not reduce delays. Plus, with each passing year, Lambert saw fewer takeoffs and landings. Just one year after the new runway was built, only 5 percent of flights used it. Several airlines asked to avoid using the new runway altogether. Because it was built so far away from the terminal, planes had to taxi as many as three miles to the terminal, burning more fuel.

Not only did the project fail to bring the traffic it promised, it tore apart the city of Bridgeton. Government officials used eminent domain to move seven major roads, kick 6,000 people out of their homes, and bulldoze six churches and four schools in order to make room for a third runway.

Government does not have a good track record in steering economic development — particularly in the Saint Louis area. Studies repeatedly show that they fail to produce the results that they promise. Most recently, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments concluded that the Saint Louis government has provided $5.8 billion in subsidies to private development in the city, but doesn’t have much to show for it.

Expanding the airport didn’t work then, and there’s no compelling reason to believe that it will work now. (Remember: No formal agreement has been signed, nor has any study been completed.) Lawmakers are in danger of repeating the same mistakes, so they should take a longer look at this.

We have a shared goal: an economy that is thriving and attractive to new businesses. Lawmakers are sticking the same old policies (tax credits!) — even though they have been shown to fail. If lawmakers in Missouri were serious about growing the economy, they would abandon the failed policies of the past and take a different strategy.

The post Airport Expansion Failed in the Past; Why Will This Time Be Any Different? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Speaking in favor of the tax increase, Mayor John Nations of Chesterfield said that the details of plans for future expansion are contingent on the availability of funds from the federal and state government. Speaking in opposition of the tax increase, John Burns of Citizens for Better Transit noted that MetroLink’s plans do not stipulate where and when a project would be built, and that a “plan” needs to answer these questions before it can really be considered a plan.

This difference strikes me as an application of the following passage in Economics in One Lesson, “Public Works Mean Taxes,” by Henry Hazlitt:

But a bridge built primarily “to provide employment” is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. Instead of thinking only of where bridges must be built the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built.

Public works projects are acceptable when they serve an actual purpose. However, successfully securing funds from the federal or state government does not constitute an actual purpose. This is a concept on which John Burns, Henry Hazlitt, and I appear to agree. If they are to be economically productive, such expenditures must fulfill a need other than diverting creating jobs — or, as Mayor Nations said during the debate, “providing an economic engine for the region.” At the very least, a plan should include basic information such as when and where a public works project will be built. Otherwise, it’s another proverbial “bridge to nowhere.”

The post Building a Light-Rail System to Nowhere appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

First, neither Missouri nor the federal government is presently flush with cash, and the money could instead be spent on other programs, like education, or returned to taxpayers. Missouri’s projected mid-year FY2010 budget gap is $690 million, and officials are seeking ways to reduce this deficit, not expand it.

Second, in general, public works projects should be paid as much as possible by the taxes of those who benefit. This is a more efficient means of taxation, and it encourages funds to be spent more wisely. If I were a taxpayer living in rural Missouri, I would not be enthusiastic about paying for the bus and light rail system in urban Saint Louis, which is something that I would use very rarely, if at all. If I were a taxpayer in a state other than Missouri, similarly, I would be even less enthusiastic about subsidizing public works projects with benefits concentrated in a state in which I may never set foot.

Third, federal funding is not “found money” — it still comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, no differently than money spent by state and local governments. Public works projects that use federal funds should exercise the same kind of fiscal responsibility as those that don’t. Unfortunately, when planners have access to federal funds, they are even more shielded from seeing the true cost of their spending, and this causes them to over-consume.

The post Arguments Against Federal and State Assistance for Public Works Projects Like Proposition A appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So here’s a scenario that’s a result of force-feeding the U.S. economy through the tube of federal agencies: While $12.5 million in stimulus money will fund projects on French Island and Brice Prairie, projects that local contractors say they could handle, only a handful of out-of-state firms are allowed to bid them.

In one case, a Kansas City, Mo., company got the nod to build a $6.1 million district office on French Island for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And only three firms, all out of state – one them a Missouri-based subsidiary of an Australian steel company – are in the running to handle two projects at the Upper Mississippi Environmental Sciences Center.

It’s rare that I read an article that interests me on a both a biographical and a public policy level. Initially, I feel compelled to pick sides — but which should I support: the state in which I lived for 20 years or the state in which I live presently? Ultimately, I must decide that my conflict of interest is false, because I disagree that the subject of the editorial is even an issue.

The purpose of the fiscal stimulus was to incite economic recovery on a national level, not for certain states on an individual level. Therefore, the La Crosse Tribune shouldn’t lament the fact that a project wasn’t awarded to a Wisconsin-based firm — instead, it should celebrate the fact it went to an American firm. Furthermore, federal money comes from taxpayers in all states, not just those who live in Wisconsin or in Missouri. State officials and residents shouldn’t feel that their companies are entitled to federal stimulus money simply because a project lies within its borders.

States win and lose business from each other all the time in response to supply and demand — this is the beauty of the interstate trade. Wisconsin lost at least one free-market research analyst to Missouri in the last year, along with other business, but the editorial board at the La Crosse Tribune didn’t write about that. Why, then, does it bring this particular project to light? There are probably many public works projects in Missouri that are bid on by out-of-state vendors, perhaps even from Wisconsin.

As some readers point out in the comment section, awarding the project to a Missouri-based firm may not result in as many lost jobs for Wisconsin individuals and families as suggested in the article. This is because the Missouri firm could use local laborers, including perhaps the employees of the Wisconsin-based firms that were outbid.

The practice of soliciting bids from many contractors, regardless of their origin, is very good because it encourages competition and its positive consequences. If many contractors bid for a single public works project, it drives down cost and taxpayers get more for their money.

The post Is the Federal Stimulus Benefiting Missouri at the Expense of Wisconsin? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.