But starting in paragraph four, a massive story—with greater implications than a simple story of institutional failure—begins to emerge. The reason the union is going “out of business” isn’t just because it’s short on money; it’s because over 95% of the employees were choosing not to pay the MCOA for its representation. (Emphasis mine)

In December, Parson’s Office of Administration announced it would end dues withholding for 5,500 employees who oversee some of the state’s most dangerous rapists, murderers and drug dealers.

The administration said it ended payroll deduction because the union’s contract had expired. It was not clear, however, why the decision came in December because the contract had expired in September.

But as of Friday, the effect of that decision was clear: Just 209 of those workers are paying dues to the union, despite attempts by the MCOA to convince guards to continue paying.

That’s an extraordinary figure. Months after it became clear the government wouldn’t be withholding dues for the union, fewer than 4 percent of the covered employees chose to continue funding the organization. That so many of these workers have decided not to renew their union memberships makes the implied, potentially decades-long wrong committed against these employees all the more extraordinary.

How much money was redirected to a union that apparently didn’t have the support of its members? How much money is being redirected to other unions right now that don’t have the support of their membership?

Whether it’s a statewide union or a local union, government workers should have a regular opportunity to opt into paying union dues—or to simply keep their money. It’s appalling that the MCOA was able to survive so long without the apparent support of its members, and it’s broadly concerning for all other public union members for whom the government remains a union dues collector.

The post The Appalling Lede Buried in Prison Guard Labor “Dispute” Story appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the aftermath of the decision, government unions were unable to convince many non-members to become full-fledged members and pay dues. As I discussed in a previous post, union financial reports submitted to the Department of Labor show the National Education Association lost the 88,000 non-member agency fee payers it had in 2017. And the Americans Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union lost 110,000 agency fee payers. The financial reporting of another large public-sector union, the American Federation of Teachers, does not reflect the impact of Janus because its reporting period ended in the same month as the decision. However, a new report from the Freedom Foundation states that “union spokespeople indicate the union lost nearly all 85,000 agency fee-payers it had at the time of the decision.”

As Kovacs notes later in the piece, the Janus decision doesn’t only affect non-member fee payers, who in many states were the primary beneficiaries of the case, but also union members themselves. As the ruling notes, “Unless employees clearly and affirmatively consent before any money is taken from them, this standard [for waiving one’s First Amendment rights] cannot be met.”

But are union members aware of these rights? Kovacs persuasively suggest that the answer is no, and that state law can still act as a barrier to securing these rights.

Prior to the Janus decision, workers who wished to opt-out of union membership were restricted by what are known as window periods. For example, in Michigan, many public employees could only leave their union once a year during a short period of time in August. Other window periods only permitted members to leave the union for a brief time period around the anniversary of their hiring.

Despite the text of the decision that allows workers to resign union membership nearly at any time, labor unions are still blocking workers who want to leave by enforcing these invalid window periods. In a recent case, Hendrickson v. AFSCME, New Mexico public employee Brett Hendrickson, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, was prohibited from exercising his Janus rights to resign from union membership. Hendrickson, a quality control specialist for the New Mexico Human Services Department, attempted to leave AFSCME Council 18 and stop dues from being deducted from his paycheck, but was told he could only opt-out during a narrow window period. This is just one of many examples of unions coercing worker to continue paying dues and undermining their First amendment rights.

To what extent Missouri government workers are having their rights curtailed is the subject of rigorous debate. For instance, a court injunction against House Bill (HB) 1413, which reformed much of Missouri’s labor law framework, has created uncertainty as to what the law is on basic issues like union membership and representation. Also, collective bargaining agreements in the state were (to be generous) lightly overseen by the state even before HB 1413 became law, meaning that violations of workers’ rights could be ongoing—and hardly anyone would know about it. Fortunately, Missouri did not technically allow for “fair share fees” of the sort that Janus put an end to nationwide, so many Missouri workers had at least incidental knowledge of their labor rights in the Show-Me State. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

The better educated workers are about their rights, the better off they will be. Especially in this post-Janus legal environment, that educational process is more important than ever.

The post Are Government Unions Adequately Informing Workers of Their Rights? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Well, my friend, if you are, I have to admit: You had a couple of modest “wins” in 2018. Here in Missouri, free-market thinking took it on the chin in two ballot initiatives. On Aug. 7, by an overwhelming majority, Missourians voted to kill a right-to-work law passed by the Missouri Legislature in 2017. Then on Nov. 6, Missouri voters passed another ballot initiative boosting the state’s minimum wage from today’s $7.85 to $12 by 2023.

Compared with other news, however, those victories by deep-pocketed trade union groups and their co-dependent, big-government allies were small beer. The year’s big story was the striking success at the national level of free-market policies in driving faster growth and widely shared prosperity for all groups of people. For two years, the federal government has been lifting the burden of regulations and taxes on businesses and consumers alike. The dynamism of American capitalism has done the rest.

Recent GDP growth has been close to 4 percent – or about double the rate sustained over the eight years of the prior administration. Suddenly, there are more job openings than people seeking work. That, in turn, has led to higher pay for people at all income levels.

On Oct 2, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he was raising his company’s internal minimum wage for warehouse and other unskilled workers to $15 an hour. This led to mutual back-slapping between Bernie Sanders and Bezos. The self-declared socialist complimented the world’s richest man on “doing the right thing,” and Bezos responded with self-congratulations, saying he hoped that other companies would follow his lead.

But guess what? He wasn’t leading. The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that wages for nonsupervisory warehouse employees had risen 4.6 percent from a year earlier, to $17.87 an hour. That’s almost $3 an hour more than the wage set by Amazon’s act of supposed enlightenment. Faced with the demands of an expanding economy and a tight labor market, companies did what they had to do – they raised wages to poach workers or keep the ones they have. So it wasn’t Mr. Bezos who deserved the compliment, but the unimpeded operation of the free market.

If you look around the country and the world, you see people everywhere who are fed up with the cluelessness of wealthy and long-established political elites who continue to pursue highly questionable policy objectives regardless of the cost in higher taxes, reduced paychecks, and lost economic growth. We are witnessing what the Wall Street Journal calls a “Global Carbon Tax Revolt,” with ordinary people rising up in protest against fuel-tax hikes and costly climate-change initiatives aimed at boosting unreliable renewable power. That has happened with the violent “Yellow Vest” protests in Paris and many rural areas that have rocked the presidency of France’s Emmanuel Macron. Other hot spots in the same revolt by taxpayers opposed to sacrificing growth on the altar of environmental piety include Germany and Canada, along with the states of Arizona, California, and Washington.

In sum, 2018 was a bad year for government-failure deniers. It was a much better year for those who believe in the unrivaled power of free markets to create and spread wealth and to promote greater individual freedom, responsibility, and creativity. But 2018 wasn’t all roses either, with rising fears of a global trade war sparked by retaliatory tariffs.

Tariffs are another tax – a tax on commerce. Of course, the more you tax something, the less you get of it. Missouri is a soybean basket to the world. Our state can ill afford a major disruption in world commerce. Neither can the nation. Looking ahead to 2019, let us hope that the substantial economic gains made in 2018 are not jeopardized or lost through the folly of managed (or mismanaged) trade policy.

The post 2018: A Bad Year for Government-failure Deniers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Well, my friend, if you are, I have to admit: You had a couple of modest “wins” in 2018. Here in Missouri, free-market thinking took it on the chin in two ballot initiatives. On Aug. 7, by an overwhelming majority, Missourians voted to kill a right-to-work law passed by the Missouri Legislature in 2017. Then on Nov. 6, Missouri voters passed another ballot initiative boosting the state’s minimum wage from today’s $7.85 to $12 by 2023.

Compared with other news, however, those victories by deep-pocketed trade union groups and their co-dependent, big-government allies were small beer. The year’s big story was the striking success at the national level of free-market policies in driving faster growth and widely shared prosperity for all groups of people. For two years, the federal government has been lifting the burden of regulations and taxes on businesses and consumers alike. The dynamism of American capitalism has done the rest.

Recent GDP growth has been close to 4 percent – or about double the rate sustained over the eight years of the prior administration. Suddenly, there are more job openings than people seeking work. That, in turn, has led to higher pay for people at all income levels.

On Oct 2, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he was raising his company’s internal minimum wage for warehouse and other unskilled workers to $15 an hour. This led to mutual back-slapping between Bernie Sanders and Bezos. The self-declared socialist complimented the world’s richest man on “doing the right thing,” and Bezos responded with self-congratulations, saying he hoped that other companies would follow his lead.

But guess what? He wasn’t leading. The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that wages for nonsupervisory warehouse employees had risen 4.6 percent from a year earlier, to $17.87 an hour. That’s almost $3 an hour more than the wage set by Amazon’s act of supposed enlightenment. Faced with the demands of an expanding economy and a tight labor market, companies did what they had to do – they raised wages to poach workers or keep the ones they have. So it wasn’t Mr. Bezos who deserved the compliment, but the unimpeded operation of the free market.

If you look around the country and the world, you see people everywhere who are fed up with the cluelessness of wealthy and long-established political elites who continue to pursue highly questionable policy objectives regardless of the cost in higher taxes, reduced paychecks, and lost economic growth. We are witnessing what the Wall Street Journal calls a “Global Carbon Tax Revolt,” with ordinary people rising up in protest against fuel-tax hikes and costly climate-change initiatives aimed at boosting unreliable renewable power. That has happened with the violent “Yellow Vest” protests in Paris and many rural areas that have rocked the presidency of France’s Emmanuel Macron. Other hot spots in the same revolt by taxpayers opposed to sacrificing growth on the altar of environmental piety include Germany and Canada, along with the states of Arizona, California, and Washington.

In sum, 2018 was a bad year for government-failure deniers. It was a much better year for those who believe in the unrivaled power of free markets to create and spread wealth and to promote greater individual freedom, responsibility, and creativity. But 2018 wasn’t all roses either, with rising fears of a global trade war sparked by retaliatory tariffs.

Tariffs are another tax – a tax on commerce. Of course, the more you tax something, the less you get of it. Missouri is a soybean basket to the world. Our state can ill afford a major disruption in world commerce. Neither can the nation. Looking ahead to 2019, let us hope that the substantial economic gains made in 2018 are not jeopardized or lost through the folly of managed (or mismanaged) trade policy.

The post 2018: A Bad Year for Government-failure Deniers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When?Janus vs. AFSCME?was decided earlier this summer, its immediate effect was on the 22 states that allowed government unions to collect agency fees from workers. Thanks to?Janus, those government workers can no longer be compelled to support a union as a condition of employment. But fortunately, workers in Missouri had those rights already by statute, namely Missouri Revised Statute §105.510. That section makes clear a number of things, but relevant to the agency fee discussion?is this?(emphasis mine): 

For instance, Crystal City in Jefferson County appears to have amended an existing agreement on March 26 of this year to add a provision requiring employees to pay and become union members, to pay the union the amount of union dues but not be a member, or be fired.?Page 13:

Meanwhile in a contract agreed to this past June, the City of Grandview also included in its contract with Grandview Firefighters, Local No. 42, a provision compelling non–union members to support the union’s activities through a “modified agency shop.” Page 2 of the agreement: 

The post Agency Fees in Government Aren’t Allowed in Missouri, But That Didn’t Stop Some Local Governments appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But regardless of the extent to which the case affected a given state, the Court’s ruling highlights a pair of important questions that Missouri educators have to grapple with each year: namely, why might teachers join a union, and if they joined, what would their dues pay for?

Unionized teachers do receive some tangible benefits from their membership, such as legal services in the event they’re fired or sued, and liability insurance. The cost of union membership varies depending on location and the union involved; dues are typically either flat, such as the annual $219 for the Missouri State Teachers Association, or a percentage of salary, such as the one percent for the St. Louis chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Of course, if a teacher doesn’t join, he or she is still covered by the salary schedule; not joining has no impact on things like health insurance, tenure, or seniority.

But if a teacher does join a union, a portion of their union dues often goes to advocacy work and to support political candidates. Given the diverse opinions of teachers, the funneling of dollars to particular causes often runs afoul of an individual teacher’s own personal beliefs. For example, at the national AFT conference just a few weeks ago, a resolution was passed that stipulated what policies a candidate must support to receive the union’s endorsement. These included, among other things, universal health care, universal and free child care, doubled per-pupil expenditures for low-income students, and free college

What a lot of teachers don’t know when faced with the decision of joining a union is that the vast majority of the benefits unions offer are also available through other vendors. For example, dues for Association of American Educators (AAE), a non-union professional organization for teachers, are just under $200 per year, and the benefits are similar to those offered by unions—disability insurance, legal protection—but without the politics. And if joining a group of any kind isn’t your style, teachers can always buy many of the benefits they want a la carte on the open market.

In short, Missouri teachers have a lot of options in determining how they’ll advance their professional interests—and they can do so with or without the political speech embedded in the operations of a government union. And especially after the passage of HB 1413, teachers in Missouri are particularly empowered to have a say in who represents them to their districts, and to see how unions spend the money they receive from members. Perhaps one day, public school teachers will even be able to negotiate their own employee contracts and have a freer hand to choose their health insurance and retirement plans, like many of the rest of us already have. But until then, Missouri teachers still have a lot of choices that they can make, and fortunately, subsidizing a union’s political speech doesn’t have to be one of them.

The post Missouri Public Teachers, Take Note: Union Membership Is Optional appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We already have a RTW law – passed by the Missouri Legislature and signed by the governor in early 2017. It was supposed to take effect on Aug. 28, 2017. However, on Aug. 18, organized labor groups collected enough signatures to give voters the choice of implementing the law (with a “yes” vote on Prop A) or rejecting it (with a “no” vote). A simple majority wins.

At a labor rally in St. Louis on June 23, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka joined with other labor leaders in proclaiming that RTW would set off a “race to the bottom” for all workers, not just union members. He said: “Proposition A will lower wages, destroy jobs, (and) increase poverty.”

Naturally, no union boss who can limit the supply of labor to members of his own union wants to give up that ability. Who wants competition – when you are in the cushy position of not having to compete? But the idea that competition is bad for growth and job creation is complete nonsense.

In fact, RTW states have consistently outperformed forced-union states in job growth, personal income growth, and economic growth. That’s not a matter of opinion; it comes from hard data provided by three federal bureaus (Census, Labor Statistics, and Economic Analysis) over the ten-year period from 2004 to 2014.

During this period, average job growth in the 22 states with RTW laws in place for most or all of that time was more than twice as fast (at 9.1 percent) as in the 28 forced-union states. The RTW states also had considerably faster growth in personal income (at 54.7 percent compared to 43.5 percent), and a much stronger economic growth (50.7 percent compared to 38.0 percent).

And there were other ancillary benefits, including faster population growth (more than double that of forced-union states). From 2004 to 2014, many Americans voted with their feet in moving into RTW states and out of forced-union states.

The devastation that befell the U.S. auto industry during and after the 1980s exemplifies what happens when companies are kept from responding to market forces as a result of compulsory unionization, forced to pay an artificially high price for labor, and forced to absorb “legacy” costs (health care and pensions) they cannot possibly afford over the long run.

During the Great Recession of 2008–2009, two of the three big automakers – GM and Chrysler – would have collapsed but for government bailouts totaling billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Meanwhile, Toyota and other foreign manufacturers that had opened plants in RTW states continued to perform well without bailouts.

In 2012, Michigan – the state that gave birth to the United Auto Workers union – became the 24th state to adopt RTW. Gov. Rick Snyder said that he believed that the legislation would lead to “more and better jobs for Michiganders.”

It is not just employers who benefit from right to work. It is anyone and everyone who seeks employment. Compulsory unionization represents an unfair and counterproductive abridgement of the freedom of people to offer their services to the highest bidder; they should not be locked out of an opportunity because a union with political clout has been granted a broad monopoly over the supply of labor.

The post How and Why Prop A Will Boost Jobs and Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I was, after all, a male entering elementary school teaching. There was a chance that I’d give a child a hug or have them sit on my lap and someone would leap to the wrong conclusion. Before I knew it, I’d be falsely charged with some crime. Or, heaven forbid, a student would get hurt while under my supervision and I’d be sued for negligence. Still more likely was that I could be discriminated against, harassed, or targeted by a reckless administrator. Whatever the situation, the message was clear—I needed to join a union for the protection it offered. A union, I was told, would watch out for my interests; it would have my back.

My professors, whom I believe were well intentioned and likely just following the advice they had received, prodded and pushed me to join a student chapter. So, I did. Having spoken with many teachers over the years, I’m fairly confident this is the number one recruitment strategy of teachers’ unions in the state. If I was ever told that a union would help me grow professionally or become a better teacher, it was only an afterthought.

When I began teaching first grade in southwest Missouri, I went from student membership to a full-fledged membership. Over the next two years, however, I began to realize that my beliefs were not in line with the union’s agenda. I supported limited government, individual responsibility, and free-markets. The union, I discovered, did not.

At the same time, I also began to realize that the fear that led me to join a union was based on erroneous information. Lawsuits against teachers are not that common. In a 2009 article in the Journal of School Leadership, Diane Holben, Perry Zirkel, and Grace Caskie noted, “Empirical research on school litigation frequency suggests a decreasing, rather than increasing, basis for fear of litigation, contrary to the common conception.” The likelihood of a teacher getting sued independent of the school is miniscule, and the school district wins these cases nearly 90 percent of the time. Even if I was worried about lawsuits, I found I could get liability insurance through other means. The union wasn’t the only option for watching my back.

Fortunately, I was a public-school teacher in Missouri, where I had the right to work without joining a union. This meant I could not be compelled to join the union or forced to pay dues to support collective bargaining. It also meant that I did not have to financially support causes that violated my conscience. All workers should be so lucky.

The post Teachers’ Union Recruitment Thrives on Fear appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And over the past few months in Missouri we’ve seen claims like this made repeatedly in anti–Right to Work advertisements. Show-Me Institute chief economist Joe Haslag recently wrote about one such ad that claimed that in Oklahoma, passage of Right to Work caused wages to fall while simultaneously encouraging businesses to leave the state. That just doesn’t make any sense!

Suffice it to say, I’m used to seeing this type of over-the-top claim in opposition to Right to Work, so I wasn’t surprised by most of the arguments in the Columbia Missourian piece. That is, until I got to the part where the author argued against Right to Work because it would make it harder for unions to engage in political activity. She writes, “weaker unions mean less organized ability to advocate for social justice issues and progressive campaigns.” That’s exactly the point! Conservatives, libertarians, and many other Missourians do not want to be forced to support “progressive campaigns” and policies they don’t agree with. That’s why they want out.

As stated in the Show-Me Institute’s 2018 Blueprint, “Right to work ends forced unionism and lets workers decide whether joining a union best serves their interests.” The economic arguments for and against Right to Work are important, but the fundamental issue here is worker freedom. Should someone be forced to support causes they disagree with as a condition of being employed? The answer seems obvious.

The post Right to Work Commentary Misses the Point appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hard-luck stories are a common feature in election-year advertisements, and I hope the gentleman from Oklahoma has found his way out of his job loss—which, based on Oklahoma’s right-to-work timeline, may have happened nearly twenty years ago. But that doesn’t alter the underlying facts about Oklahoma’s economy and the effects of right-to-work laws generally—facts which the ad either ignored or mischaracterized.

First, let’s look at the employment facts for Oklahoma. Oklahoma voters passed a right-to-work law in 2001. In March 2001 (before the recession that year and before the passage of right-to-work) there were 1.53 million people employed there. As of May 2018, there were 1.68 million Oklahomans employed. Simple arithmetic reveals that 150,000 more people are on Oklahoma’s payrolls now compared with payrolls before right-to-work passed, so since 2001, tens of thousands of jobs have actually been added in Oklahoma, not lost.

Could the gentleman be referring to what happened to employment between December 2001 and July 2002, when Oklahoma payrolls declined by 40,000 workers? Maybe, but that decline was unlikely to have been related to right-to-work legislation. The recession of 2001 is a much better explanation for why employment fell in Oklahoma during that period, as payrolls were declining in many places at the time.

But the issues with the ad don’t stop with the numbers themselves. The ad essentially claims that right-to-work laws lower employment and lower wages, but economically speaking (and, as seen in practice,) that claim is highly suspect. Here’s how it works in terms of old-fashioned demand-and-supply: When the cost of labor is no longer driven up by the bargaining power funded by compulsory union dues, it becomes less expensive for employers to hire new workers. The less expensive labor is, the more of it employers can buy.

Claiming broadly that “wages will fall” as a result of right-to-work is grossly misleading. Employers are not going to slash the pay of the current workforce. Without union interference, newly hired workers will be paid what they are worth, and there will be more of them.

Somehow, our ad-man argues that both wages and employment will decline. He doesn’t explain why making it less expensive to hire workers will lead businesses to hire fewer of them.

Unfortunately, the ad conceals a great deal in its depiction of Oklahoma and of facts in general, cocooning a host of dubious conclusions inside a hard-luck personal story. That might be politics, but it ain’t economics.

Luckily, people throwing numbers at Missourians also need to show us why their explanation is better than the one suggested by basic economics. I look forward to an exchange of ideas rather than thirty-second sound bites.

The post Prop A Facts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s low unemployment rate is welcome news, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are other important factors that predict economic well-being, such as labor force participation and statewide output, where Missouri’s economy is underperforming compared to other states. Tennessee, for example, is a demographically similar state but has shown significant growth compared to Missouri while also boasting a 3.5 percent unemployment rate.

As shown in the graphs below, Missouri’s labor force is stagnating. During an economic expansion, one would expect the number of interested laborers to increase. Missouri, however, defies these expectations. Our labor force shrunk by almost 30,000 people from 2016 to 2017. In this same period, our neighbor to the southeast, Tennessee, saw a spike in their labor force with 81,000 people joining.

People are entering the workforce in Tennessee to take advantage of the employment opportunities there. Some are Tennessee residents who have decided to look for work, and some are coming from outside the state. The state’s low unemployment rate suggests that Tennessee is capable of absorbing these additional potential workers and turning them into payroll employees. Compared to Missouri, Tennessee is attracting and employing people at a faster rate.

Additionally, Missouri’s production lags behind that of Tennessee as well. Missouri’s real gross domestic product, the measure of overall economic health, is growing slowly. Since 2012, Tennessee routinely experienced 2 to 4 percent annual growth in real GDP. Missouri struggles to hit 1 percent annual growth. The growing gap between Missouri’s and Tennessee’s GDPs, shown below, is stark.

Such slow growth is problematic for Missouri’s economy. The national economy is doing well, but Missouri is failing to take advantage of the rising levels of consumption, investment, and employment found throughout the country and is consequently losing out on major economic opportunities.

So what about Tennessee as compared to Missouri makes its economy grow faster and pull more people into the workforce? There are a few possibilities. First, Tennessee has no income tax, and two years ago Tennessee began to phase out the tax on investment income and will eliminate it entirely by 2022. Second, beginning in 2014 Governor Bill Haslam started reforming higher education by offering all high school graduates the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree or professional certification at no cost to them. Moreover, there has been greater coordination between colleges and businesses to ensure that the curriculum fits employers’ needs so that students learn skills that are in high demand. Third, Tennessee is a Right-to-Work state. Fourth, Tennessee is known as having a business-friendly environment.

It may be hard to pinpoint exactly what has led to Tennessee’s success, but tax-cutting policies combined with investment in workforce development and other pro-business policies like Right to Work stand out as reasons Tennessee is experiencing growth that Missourians can only envy. Continuing to push for elimination of the individual income tax and exploring potential workforce development policies could work just as well in Missouri.

The post Missouri’s Economy Struggles Despite a Low Unemployment Rate appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Certificate of Need (PDF): Missouri’s Certificate of Need (CON) law restricts health care competition by requiring health care providers to get state approval before entering new markets or expanding services offered in existing facilities. This restriction hampers innovative start-ups and market newcomers that would provide Missourians care and puts upward pressure on health care prices.

Charter School Expansion (PDF): Demand for charter schools in Missouri is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, charter schools are functionally limited to the Kansas City and Saint Louis School Districts. Tens of thousands of students are denied the opportunity for a better education.

Course Access (PDF): All across Missouri, students do not have access to higher-level coursework such as AP courses, calculus, or physics. A course access program would allow students to take courses outside of their traditional public school courses using a portion of their annual per-pupil funds to help pay for them.

Earned Income Tax Credit (PDF): State spending is on the rise in Missouri, led by a growth in public welfare dollars. Public welfare spending now accounts for more than 46% of total spending and 34% of spending growth. The growth in public welfare shares of total spending has eclipsed the growth of all other general expenditure functions. 

Economic Development Subsidies (PDF): Excessive use of economic development subsidies has hollowed out municipal tax bases and diverted tax revenue to specific developers. In the past 15 years, Saint Louis City alone has allocated $709 million away from municipal services through tax increment financing (TIF) and tax abatement. Studies from across the country indicate that these subsidies fail to generate promised jobs and growth. 

Education Savings Accounts (PDF): Missouri students are underperforming. On the 2015 NAEP exam, only 31 percent of Missouri 8th-graders were found proficient in math and only 36 percent were found proficient in English. For the Class of 2016, only 22 percent of Missouri ACT test-takers scored “college-ready” in all four tested subjects. Education savings accounts could help students who are trapped in failing schools via residential assignment to purchase school supplies, tutoring services, or even private school tuition.

Higher Education (PDF): The University of Missouri system, and higher education in the United States in general, are at a crossroads. Tuition is rising, resulting in over $1 trillion in student loan debt nationwide. At the same time, students who fail to secure a high-income job face serious financial consequences. As schools struggle with these crises, a rising tide of anti–free speech policy is sweeping across the higher education landscape.

Highways/Transportation Infrastructure (PDF): The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) will likely face funding shortfalls in the near future. The state will need to generate new revenue in fair and economically sound ways.

Income Tax Reform (PDF): Missouri’s economy has been stalled for almost two decades, as startup growth has slowed and entrepreneurs and taxpayers are leaving the state. Missouri is shrinking relative to other states and economies, ranking 48th out of 50 states in real GDP growth between 1997 and 2015. Individual income taxes are destructive to the state’s economic growth, productivity, and income, encouraging taxpayers to move their work or investments out of Missouri. This not only lowers economic output for the state, but also destabilizes revenue for state and local governments.

Open Collective Bargaining (PDF): Under current Sunshine Law in Missouri, government bodies may close meetings, records, and votes relating to contract negotiations until the contract is executed or rejected. This lack of transparency in negotiations between government unions and government officials can lead to contractual agreements that aren’t in the public’s best interest.

Prevailing Wage (PDF): Many government construction contracts dictate what potential contractors must pay workers. This can put projects out of reach financially for taxpayers, and can also hurt laborers by denying jobs to people who can do them at a more competitive price.

Public Pension Reform (PDF): Defined benefit (DB) pension plans promise employees annual payments for life upon retirement, but if a public plan does not have enough money to make these payments, taxpayers can be forced to fund the difference. Pension plans can come up short if they fail to make sufficient contributions or overestimate their investment returns. Nationwide, state and local public pension funds are underfunded by more than $1 trillion dollars.

Public Union Recertification (PDF): Once a government union comes to power, it can stay in power indefinitely. No further elections are scheduled and no term limits are imposed. This means workers can do little to ensure their union truly represents their interests and is held accountable.

Right to Work (PDF): Until last year, many workers in Missouri could be forced to join unions. That was unfair not only to the employees disempowered by the law, but also to employers who had to operate under it. Governor Eric Greitens signed right to work legislation into law on February 6, 2017, but in 2018 the state will hold a referendum on that law.

Sentencing Reform (PDF): High crime and incarceration rates present a significant cost to taxpayers, and imprisoning minors is especially expensive. Relaxing harsh and automatic sentencing laws for minors—while still allowing judges to try minors as adults for especially serious crimes—could reduce costs while increasing public safety.

Special Taxing Districts (PDF): Special taxing districts are political subdivisions formed to fund specific services and improvements such as fire protection and infrastructure. In practice, however, they often allow narrow special interests to tax the public for their own private gain while allowing little or no public input or oversight.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Moving Missouri Forward appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Right to work.

Right to work ends forced unionism and lets workers decide whether joining a union best serves their interests. This means that being a member of a union cannot be a requirement for employment, and gives employees the final decision about whether they want to give money to a union that may or may not have their best interests at heart.

In 2017, Missouri passed Right to Work, but in 2018, the state will hold a referendum on that law.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

THE OPPORTUNITY: If the state’s Right to Work law is put into full effect, Missouri will join the majority of American states that already have right to work laws, finally placing Missouri employers and employees on a level playing field with other states.

KEY POINTS

• Missouri will be better able compete with neighboring right-to-work states in attracting businesses.
• Existing unions will be more responsive to the concerns of members, thanks to the credible threat of members leaving the organization.
• Employees will have greater control over their representation in negotiations with their employer.
• Employers will have greater flexibility in managing their businesses and making their operations more successful.
• Private employers are the focus, but similar laws in the public sector, like paycheck protection, should be pursued by policymakers as well.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Op-Ed: Rise of the Roosevelt Law: Is Reform in Government Unions Coming to Missouri?

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: Right to Work appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The accomplishments of the session still leave Missouri far from where it needs to be. And certainly we would offer our 2017 Blueprint as a baseline for the sorts of reforms our state needs going forward. That menu of reforms includes the elimination of the state’s Certificate of Need laws; expansion of school choice through education savings accounts, charter schools, and course access; and substantive transportation and labor reforms to make sure that the state can compete for jobs and capital, whether already in the state or currently outside of it. Alongside the policy, we need procedural reforms in the state Senate where an historic number of bills languished and died; indeed, a filibuster on the last day of session nearly killed the state’s minimum wage reforms.

Still, there is ample room for optimism. The governor’s Committee on Simple, Fair and Low Taxes seems well-positioned to make 2018 the year of serious tax reform. Those reforms should include advancement of an earned income tax credit, the reform of state and local tax incentives, and the reduction of taxes on individuals and businesses in the state. Moreover, the passage of some priorities this year obviously clears space for the passage of other priorities in education, labor, and other areas that didn’t make it to home plate as the 2017 session closed.

The key, as some Kansas City Royals fans might put it, is to “keep the line moving.” The legislature doesn’t have to hit a home run every time it steps up to the policy plate; it just has to keep hitting singles with increasing frequency. And as baseball fans would tell you, if you do those small things right, chances are good that big things will eventually come.

While we would all have loved to see a towering moonshot of a legislative session, the Legislature ultimately hit enough singles to merit a cheer from free marketeers. Missourians had a good inning; we’re looking forward to seeing bigger and better things happen in the next one.

The post Keep the Line Moving: Looking Beyond the 2017 Session appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Homicide and economic development in Kansas City
• A mid-term review of the 2017 Missouri legislative session
• Soccer stadium subsidy
• Right to Work in Missouri
• Opportunities for school choice in 2017
• Special taxing districts
• What Betsy DeVos’s appointment may mean for Missouri

Click on the link below to read more.

The post Show-Me Institute’s March 2017 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Also coursing through the state House and Senate, however, are two important measures that would protect government employees as well. My former colleague John Wright wrote at length about the substance of the first measure, dealing with recertification votes and transparency in government unions. That basket of reforms will likely also include common-sense financial transparency requirements for government unions as well, consistent with disclosures private unions already file. Taken in total, that worker empowerment proposal is a game changer on its own.

The second measure, Paycheck Protection, also deserves attention from good governance supporters. Rather than forcing workers to opt out of a union, Paycheck Protection flips the presumption by allowing employees to opt-in to a union instead. It’s sort of like a mini-recertification vote; if an employee wants the union to represent her, she can confirm her support and continue the representation, or do nothing and keep her money. Either way, it’s the employee that’s empowered, not organized labor.

This year’s government union reform proposals are superior to versions that were proposed in previous years, in no small part because they don’t carve the rights of first responders from the bill. Why those rights have been carved away in the past is a subject of debate, but dealing strictly with the policy itself, passing a government reform bill that doesn’t protect first responders would be disappointing. First responders should be able to see what their union is spending money on, to keep or drop a union that represents them, and to retain or give the money in their paychecks that may currently underwrite a union’s activities. That this year’s law includes these workers deserves praise. I never understood why first responders would be deserving of fewer rights.

If these reforms are enacted, Missouri workers will have a lot to be excited about in the months and years ahead.

The post First Responders Have Rights, Too appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Note: The earlier testimony to which Patrick refers in today’s piece is available here.

The post Testimony: House Bill 251, “Paycheck Protection” 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.

The first proposal, brought forth in the Senate, would request a “global waiver” from the federal government for Missouri’s Medicaid funds. A global waiver would deliver federal funding to the state’s Medicaid program without all the strings attached. Such a dramatic change in policy would allow for enormous flexibility for state legislators to craft a Medicaid program that can best help our state’s most vulnerable citizens without the similarly enormous burden of federal regulations that currently bedevil the program.

This is how Fox 2 describes the idea:

A Senate committee heard testimony Wednesday on a bill that would direct the state Department of Social Services to seek a “global waiver” from federal Medicaid requirements to remake the state’s program.

Sponsoring Sen. David Sater says the intent is to ask the federal government to provide Missouri’s Medicaid money as a block grant, giving the state greater flexibility over how to spend it. Federal Medicaid dollars currently are provided on a matching basis for each state dollar that’s spent on health care services.

Translation: Missouri would decide how best to serve Missouri Medicaid patients. Crazy, right?

Now if the waiver sounds to our longtime readers a lot like the block grant idea we’ve written about in the past, that’s because functionally, it is. Our full proposal would take the grant money and split it into HSAs for low-income beneficiaries, empowering them to make decisions about their health while simultaneously providing incentive for participants to save money and shop for care. These ideas are largely captured in the second bill I referenced in the introduction. That HSA idea is, of course, just one of many potential reforms to the Medicaid program that could happen under a waiver or block grant, so Missouri’s plan could be different from plans agreed to in Florida, Illinois, or any other state. That’s a feature of the block grant, and given that a block grant proposal is currently being floated by the President, we may soon have the opportunity to see the laboratories of democracy at work in an effort to provide and better-tailor care in the Medicaid program.

But to get there? The doors to those labs need to be thrown open, and that’s where the waiver and block grants come in. I hope these ideas continue to work their way through the legislative process, as they are likely to be front and center during this legislative session—especially, as seems reasonably likely, if the federal government green-lights block granting of Medicaid from its end.

The post Medicaid Waiver Request A Great Idea appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Its passage was also long overdue, as many of the state’s geographic peers have long crossed that bridge of worker choice. Before Governor Eric Greitens’ signed the bill into law, Missouri was surrounded on all sides by Right to Work states here in the Midwest, with the exception of Illinois. Or, if you view Missouri as a southern state, Missouri was the lone holdout among the members of the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference. Missouri becomes the 28th Right to Work state, joining the majority of states who have adopted this common-sense reform.

Right to Work is a victory that empowers workers, but legislators should not rest on their laurels while the list of other opportunities in labor reform remains long. I look forward to the upcoming debates about Paycheck Protection, prevailing wage, project labor agreements and union transparency. 

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