The post Eminent Domain and Uncertainty in North Saint Louis appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We’ve talked before about how Saint Louis City’s attitudes toward non-city alternatives for the NGA expose local leadership’s fair-weather regionalism. After all, no matter what happens, NGA jobs are staying in the region and the area’s economy should remain unaffected. But in a bid to “redevelop” a part of North Saint Louis and keep the earnings tax revenue the NGA currently generates, Saint Louis City is preparing to pull out all the stops.

Saint Clair County is offering a low-cost, green field option on the north end of Scott Air Force base to the NGA, with the state of Illinois preparing to throw in $116 million in infrastructure improvements for the site. Saint Louis City’s original offer was a North City site at a cost $14 million, with $120 million in assistance from the state of Missouri. Now, Saint Louis will waive the $14-million cost, which was supposed to recoup the city’s expenses for preparing the site. Such costs will have to be pushed onto Missouri residents. Additionally, not to be outdone by Illinois’s infrastructure improvements, Saint Louis is throwing a MetroLink expansion into the deal as well. Strangely, Saint Louis has not put forward a solid plan for how it would fund a new billion-dollar-plus light rail line.

While city hall’s financial/infrastructure incentives may seem a little half-baked, they’re nothing compared to its rhetoric. Apparently, according to Saint Louis’s leadership, the city should get the NGA because millennials like to live and work downtown, among other lazy generalizations about an entire generation of Americans. One official stated that, “The days when talented young people wanted to commute 25, 35, 45 miles are over.” An interesting statement, because, since millennials have entered the workforce, the percentage of workers commuting longer than 25 minutes has regularly increased while the share of workers commuting less than 15 minutes has decreased:

This is just another example of how the generation dubbed “millennials” is, largely, much like the generations that preceded them in terms of living, working, and commuting. And city hall’s statements appear to be typical of local government officials using generational stereotypes to justify the types of policies they (not millennials themselves) have pursued for decades.

What’s more, even if millennials are everything that Saint Louis City leaders hope they are (and want to live downtown and take public transportation to work), the existing MetroLink already goes to Scott Airforce Base, where the NGA could be. Millennials could, if the Illinois site were chosen, live on Washington Avenue and ride the train to work. That certainly sounds easier than flattening a large section of North Saint Louis and spending billions to expand the MetroLink. Given the fact the city’s plan would turn dozens of families out of their homes, wouldn’t that be a fairer solution as well?

The post City’s “NGA for Millennials” Pitch Rings Hollow appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, currently in South City, is considering moving to a new location in the region. In order to keep the NGA within St. Louis City, city officials are considering using eminent domain to clear out a neighborhood on the north side. It goes without saying that the people who would lose their homes in the deal are unhappy about it.

Joyce lives in a three-story brick Victorian house built in 1893. Her mother bought the house in the 1960s and she grew up in the neighborhood. “I love my home,” she tells me. If the city uses eminent domain, that home would be bulldozed.

One would hope that city leaders would resort to eminent domain—the power of government to remove a person from their land—only when there’s a very clear public benefit and no clear alternatives.

But in the case of the NGA, there are alternatives. In fact, there are three of them. One in particular, a parcel of land in St. Clair County, would have the advantage of being adjacent to an existing Department of Defense campus at Scott Air Force Base. Of the four proposals the NGA is considering, only the one in St. Louis City requires the use of eminent domain to raze an entire neighborhood.

When I asked Joyce what she’ll do if the city is successful in forcing her to move, she was despondent. “That’s my biggest fear,” she admitted. Joyce still has no idea where she’ll go if it comes to that. “What will I do?”

I have my own questions: Why is the city serving as an agent of the federal government and using eminent domain to clear a tract for a federal agency that may not even locate within the city of St. Louis? Is keeping the NGA within the city worth keeping property owners in limbo while the NGA decides where to relocate? And if the city does use eminent domain to clear out this neighborhood on the north side, where will its residents go?

The post Eminent Domain Puts St. Louis Homeowners in Jeopardy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But what did Saint Louis area residents pay for? According to data from Metro, they did not pay for more buses on Grand Ave.

As of October 2013, Metro operated 73 bus routes, of which 70-Grand Ave. was the busiest, with 9,256 passengers on an average day. It is also Metro’s best-performing bus route financially, with 80 percent of the operating costs coming from fares (for comparison, fares pay for 27 percent of the Metrolink lines).

To deal with the demand for this route, at peak periods, Metro devoted 12 buses. Those buses make 127 daily trips. But what are those numbers in perspective? Metro runs many other routes as well, some of a magnitude less popular than 70-Grand. In fact, 70-Grand has as many passengers per day as 31 of Metro’s poorer-performing bus routes. The resources designated for those routes? Seventy-eight buses at any peak period and a total of 1,203 daily bus trips. As for money, most of these routes make back less 20 percent of their operating costs in fares and some make less than 5 percent. Those buses need far more financial support than 70-Grand. While 70-Grand requires approximately $2,500 per day in subsidies to cover its operating expenses, the least-frequented 31 routes require a combined $54,000 per day.

Saint Louis area residents did not pay more to improve 70-Grand, they paid higher taxes to operate an entire bus system. While buses are crowded in the high population centers in the city, most of the tax dollars and buses in the Metro system are needed to maintain underutilized service in Saint Louis and St. Clair Counties. The bright yellow lines represent those low-passenger routes on the map below.

Maintaining those routes, not pushing more buses onto high demand routes (in blue), was the main purpose of the tax increase.

If Saint Louis area residents want to improve service for crowded bus routes without raising taxes further, they need to re-think Metro’s priorities. Metro’s policy to maintain underutilized routes throughout the Saint Louis region hampers its ability to provide frequent service on high-demand routes.

To be fair, those residents of underutilized transit areas in Saint Louis County pay just as much in taxes to support Metro as city residents do. (St. Clair County funds transit differently, so we will leave them aside for now.) I understand the need to keep offering some transit services to areas that do not use it very much, but Metro needs far greater flexibility to offer that service in a more cost-effective way. More on that to come.

The post Where Are The Metro Buses We Paid For? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

MidAmerica Airport in St. Clair County, Ill., was built in the 1990s with high hopes that business would materialize. Have you ever flown out of MidAmerica? Me neither. The airport failed to ever gain a significant amount of passenger traffic. The government provided subsidies to airlines that did fly there, and many still quickly left the market. Fast forward to today: the airport continues to operate. This is when I wish I could tell you that there was a miraculous turnaround and MidAmerica found a way to become profitable. Oh, how I wish. The airport is still open because it has more than $100 million of debt to pay off. Where would MidAmerica find the money to pay?

The Manhattan Institute just published an article about the growing number of new or expanded airports that are underused or virtually empty. It gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach when I thought about the future of the Columbia Regional Airport. We have written about the airport’s expansion plans and Delta’s recent departure from the Columbia market. The Manhattan Institute article points out that “… airport expansions often increase ticket prices, driving businesses away. After airports have built new facilities, they pass the expense on to passengers in the form of pricier tickets.”

I do not know what the future has in store for Columbia Regional Airport. But MidAmerica’s failure shows us that “if you build it, they will come” is not necessarily true. I am not in a position to say whether Columbia is in need of expansion or improvements. But I take Delta’s departure from the market as a sign that they do not see Columbia as an area for growth in air travel. Columbia officials need to evaluate whether there are real opportunities for growth. If there are not, then a costly government-funded airport expansion is not a wise decision.

The post Empty and Broke appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I would guess that most Illinois residents who can easily purchase smokes or gas in Missouri — such as the many St. Clair and Madison County residents who work in downtown St. Louis — already do so. The current tax difference on cigarettes is large enough to distort economic decisions. If the Illinois legislature increases it by another $1, the marginal changes might not be as large as one would expect, but they will certainly exist, and to Missouri’s benefit.

The post Illinois Legislature Voting on Increasing Tax Collections in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In short, now that the federal government is contracting with a private company to operate the base’s military housing, St. Clair County says the housing is taxable:

  "The structure of this arrangement permits taxation as any other leasehold," Haida said.

The company disagrees, and has filed suit:

"Federal property is exempt from real estate tax, period," said Joseph McDonnell, an attorney representing Scott Air Force Base Properties.

The important thing to remember here is that the property is still owned by the government, rather than the company. So I think it is pretty clear that the housing is not taxable, and the company should win its suit. As this excellent housing privatization program expands, it should be clear to state and local governments that they don’t get to tax the houses now just because a private company manages the federal property. However, some type of payment in lieu of taxes must be made by the federal government (and I think they already do this, in many cases) to the school districts that are educating the children of the servicemembers. With that important caveat, I rest my case.

The post Are Privatized Government Projects Taxable? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Both of the options being considered currently:

Under one plan, Illinois would shoulder the cost of building a companion bridge to the Martin Luther King Bridge. Under another, a private group would pay for and build a bridge and collect tolls ranging from $1 to $6.

are preferable to earlier proposals.  The toll road idea is excellent.  I believe the fears of Illinois politicians are overblown, as most of their voters will remain on the free bridges while many of the same trucks that so often tie up those bridges will choose the new toll road.  Time is money in trucking, and toll expenses are tax write-offs. 

The MLK  companion / addition is also a good idea.  As anyone who had crossed the MLK knows, it is a little tight in the turns.  Making the current bridge all eastbound and adding new westbound lanes on a connected bridge will significantly improve flow into north downtown and onto 70 westbound. 

The final option I like, not discussed in the article, is expanding MetroLink into Madison County.  St. Clair County residents in Illinois use MetroLink more than any other demographic group in the area.  Going north from Fairview Heights to add a line and stations in Collisville and Edwardsville would serve many commuters who work in Downtown St. Louis and greatly reduce traffic.   Any of these three proposals will cost Illinois a great deal of money and Missouri little to none.  So I can’t really understand why Missouri’s reps on the Council all voted against the companion bridge proposal when they are not being asked to pay for it. 

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