The piece featured a quote from the mayor bemoaning the passage of Amendment 4 in Missouri, which required the city to up its spending on the police from 20% to 25%. The author begins with a quote from the mayor:

“The current system doesn’t work. We need more accountability, not less . . . We need more innovations in policing, not less.” Lucas explained that he doesn’t believe an increase in funding for the KCPD will be useful in countering rising violent crime.

This is interesting because in his latest budget, Mayor Lucas was eager for the Kansas City Police Department to significantly increase salaries for existing officers as well as new hires. Why would he want that if he didn’t think it would be useful?

The Pitch, perhaps to back up the mayor’s reaction to Amendment 4, offers the following:

A body of evidence shows that increasing police funding has no major impact on reducing local crime rates. One of the tropes used during the campaign for Amendment 4 was the need to fund the KCPD while skewing the increase in homicide rates in Kansas City to present the Lucas administration and the Kansas City Council as far-left partisans who care not for the safety of their constituents.

The first link (“body”) is to a page of Human Rights Watch. It doesn’t expressly conclude that police funding doesn’t reduce crime. Instead, it provides a two-stage yet still heavily qualified claim:

Studies show that investing in health care, housing, universal basic income, child care, universal pre-K, and public safety programs outside the criminal legal system infrastructure would reduce poverty and inequality, and research suggests, is likely to improve community safety. [emphasis added]

All of that may be true. But plenty—in fact most—people living in poverty and suffering inequality do not commit crime. Policing is about getting criminals off the street and deterring crime. And we know that the most common victims of crime are exactly those same poor people.

The second two links (“evidence shows” and “Increasing police funding has no major impact”) are about a single study of the 20 largest cities in Canada. Those may be compelling. But I suspect the dynamics of crime and policing between the United States and our neighbor to the north are sufficiently different to be unhelpful for Kansas City.

The last link (“reducing local crime rates”) has nothing to do with the relationship between crime and police funding. The article merely makes the argument that many places accused of defunding the police have actually increased police funding.

Instead, consider the conclusion of a 2018 study conducted by Princeton University, titled, “More COPS, Less Crime.” The author examined the impact that federal COPS funding (Community Oriented Policing Services) had on crime and concluded, without qualification, “one officer-year was added for every $95,000 spent by the federal government and that the social benefit associated with the ensuing crime reduction [was] on the order of $350,000.”

Another paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2020 concludes, without qualification, “Each additional police officer abates approximately 0.1 homicides.”

Issues surrounding crime and law enforcement are not easily settled. They are made even more complicated by partisan politics. I suspect Mayor Lucas knows better than what he claimed, and The Pitch should be a little more thorough with its facts and research.

The post The Pitch’s Half-hearted Crime Research appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They do, finally—maybe—have a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) from project general contractor JE Dunn. According to The Kansas City Business Journal, JE Dunn “provided the final GMP proposal two weeks ago.” Burke described the number as “preliminary,” making it reasonable to wonder if the price is actually guaranteed.

The Star now says that Hyatt has pulled out of the convention hotel project. This news wasn’t made public weeks ago when it happened, nor has the development group revealed how much the new hotel company, Loews, is investing in the project. This is no surprise; Burke’s group has previously refused to provide information about the hotel. When asked by The Pitch in 2015 to share information about the project, he said,

There’s some sensitivity to releasing anything that’s old or anything that causes us grief with the bond buyers,” Burke tells The Pitch. “The minute we put it out, somebody with the Show-Me Institute will say it’s unrealistic.”

Not only are we left wondering how much the hotel company is investing, but we also don’t know who the other investors are. Those who watched the Planning and Zoning Committee hearing on June 7 saw conflicting testimony. Development team member Steve Rattner now tells the committee, “the financing is in place; we’re ready to go.” Mind you, it was supposed to wrapped up by March or April, and Rattner said it was in place back in October 2015. But the project attorney, Roxsen Koch, said that drafting the bond documents will take months and only after that—in early August—will the financing be in place. How confident should we be that deadline will be met?

Those aren’t the only examples of information from the hotel’s development team being hard to come by or subject to change. Two months ago, Burke promised a summer groundbreaking. Now, he says groundbreaking has been moved to October. Before that it was spring 2017; and before that early 2016.   

Even members of the committee were hesitant to endorse predictions from the development team. Chairman Taylor called for a motion to advance the matter to the full Council and the committee members sat in silence for 9 seconds before Councilwoman Katheryn Shields laughed and offered the motion herself. (See here.) That delay likely represents a well-founded lack of confidence that this project will deliver as promised.

The post KC Convention Hotel: Lack of Transparency Undermines Confidence appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

David Martin over at The Pitch has a great piece about how the positive economic impacts of a Chiefs training camp in St. Joseph have failed to materialize. Residents were promised millions of dollars of revenue in return for taxpayer subsidies. Build it, they were told, and they will come.

They didn’t come. The expected money has not poured into St. Joseph, in part because the calculations used to make the promise to St. Joseph residents were flawed. Martin writes:

The convention bureau arrived at the $6.3 million economic-impact estimate by multiplying 40,000 (the number of fans who attended training camp, according to Missouri Western) by $158. The dollar figure was the average amount of money that surveyed visitors said they’d spent.

That, anyway, is how the convention bureau understood the math. But H2R [Market Research] officials, when asked about the visitor profile, told The Pitch that the average spending was per party, not per person.

The St. Joseph case is not isolated. Calculating economic impact for projects and events is fraught with errors and often with glaring flaws in the premise. Two years ago we wrote that the promised economic impact of hosting the Republican convention in Kansas City was likely overstated. In short, the number crunchers often base their estimates on the assumption that without the event in question, there would be no economic activity at all—that if we didn’t host the Republican Convention, the hotels and restaurants would be left empty. It’s not just projections for events that rely on such flawed reasoning; from stadiums to film tax credits, economic impact studies often miss the mark.

Sometimes the truth can only be known in retrospect, when we look back and compare promises to results, as Martin did in his piece. But by then the public’s money has already been invested and possibly lost. With this in mind, the public and policymakers alike should be more skeptical of economic impact claims.

The post Economic Impact Fallacies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Developers often win over politicians and the public by promising that TIF will help "create" a certain number of new jobs. But those projects often miss the mark, and at times by a wide margin.

Last month, the Missouri Department of Revenue released its annual report for all TIF projects in Missouri. The numbers were stark.

Among the 504 TIF districts across the state, developers estimated that 266,261 new jobs would be created. In fact, 89,485 were realized. That's 33 percent of the projection.

The annual report that Steve cites is here. Pages 258 and 259 show that now that the Power & Light District’s KC Live project is completed, only 1,003 of the projected 2,034 jobs have been realized. The reality, however, could be much worse than that.

Using data provided by Kansas City's Regulated Industries Division, we sought to see if there was any citywide increase in either liquor licenses issued to businesses or the liquor cards issued to individuals who work in bars and restaurants. The chart below shows that since the Power & Light District opened in 2008, these numbers have been flat.

If KC Live created jobs as the TIF report suggests, yet citywide employee liquor cards remained flat, it means that the TIF didn’t so much create jobs as just move them from elsewhere in the city such as Westport or just outside the TIF area.

Yet the financial costs to the city and other taxing jurisdictions for this storefront shuffling are very real. In addition to the cost of foregone tax revenue, the city must pay about $15 million each year to cover the underperforming investment through 2040. 

The question that responsible policymakers must consider is not merely how to move jobs and residents downtown, but at what cost? The city has shown that it can drive property development downtown by paying for it. That's hardly impressive. But it cannot show that there is any real net economic benefit citywide. Without that, we're just throwing good money after bad.

The post TIFs Fail to Meet Expectations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Consultant suggests convention-center expansion. Expansion disappoints. Consultant suggests 1,000-room hotel. No one questions consultant about previous suggestion. Instead, city officials gleefully accept hotel recommendation and hire the consultant to conduct further study.

The above was taken from a Pitch piece in May 2010, and it is certainly as true today as it was then. Actually, it explains Kansas City’s long 46-year dance of expanding convention space and increasing hotel rooms. Consider the following timeline:

•  1969: A number of bonds were put before voters, among them a $23 million bond for a new exhibit hall. A front-page Kansas City Star editorial claimed (12/15/69), “The prime consideration at the polls tomorrow is whether Kansas City is to grow or retrench in the 1970s.” All the bonds failed to get the required supermajority.

•  1971: Undaunted, the City Council developed a plan to fund a convention center through bonds in a way that avoided the two-thirds approval necessary in 1969. The Star again endorsed the plan, editorializing (12/16/73), “Tuesday can be a great turning point for Kansas City.” The bonds were approved, and the Bartle Hall Convention Center was completed in 1976.

•  1986-89: Consultants told city leaders that in order to support the convention center Kansas City needed a new hotel. The Vista International Hotel opened in 1985, but it quickly ran into trouble. According to The Pitch:

Called the “Miracle on 12th Street,” the 22-story hotel was expected to revive the city’s dying center. But within 18 months, its owners were contemplating bankruptcy. The building was damned ugly, too. Donald Hoffman, the Star‘s architecture critic, called the hotel “a public embarrassment” when it opened.

•  The hotel changed management in 1987, and Marriott bought it in 1988.

•  1990: Again wanting to capture more convention business, a campaign launched to increase taxes to expand Bartle Hall. A column in the Star by H. Marshall Chatfield, the then-chairman of the Chamber of Commerce urged a Yes vote and fretted (1/31/90),

[W]ithout an expanded Bartle Hall, we will be able to accommodate fewer shows—and we will lose dollars we could have gained.

    Yael Abouhalkah went one step further in the Star (2/4/1990),

Nothing in this world is 100 percent guaranteed. But the Bartle expansion would create a strong possibility that more development will occur downtown.

    The voters approved new taxes for the expansion. The Star reported (2/7/1990) that not only was the city eager to expand Bartle Hall but,

[Developer Whitney] Kerr and H. Ross Perot Jr. pledged to build a trade center office tower if the city expanded Bartle. “We’ll keep pressing Ross on the trade center,” [Mayor Richard L.] Berkley said. “I’m confident it will be built.”

    The trade center was never built.

•  1994: The expanded Bartle Hall opened to much fanfare. At a gala event, Carl Hubbell, then-board chairman of the Convention and Visitors Bureau and president of a convention services contracting company, told the Star (undated Star souvenir insert),

This means an opportunity for Kansas City to get back into the national picture as a premier destination city. This is a major step to get us back to where we were in the mid-70s when Bartle first opened. We’re 80 percent there. More hotel rooms will take care of the other 20 percent.

•  1992-1998: Kansas City used Tax Increment Financing to tear down Muehlebach Towers and renovate the Muehlebach Hotel. Marriott reopened the Muehlebach in 1998, but according to The Pitch, “The transaction has cost taxpayers millions because demand for the hotel rooms has fallen short of expectations.”

•  2002: Fearing that the city needed more convention space to attract conventions, leaders decided to expand Bartle Hall with the Grand Ballroom. Voters were urged to support new spending and were again told that without a Yes vote the city would continue to lose convention business, just like 1990. Back to The Pitch:

“This is going to be the economic engine,” said Chuck Eddy, then a city councilman, dreaming of the possibilities in 2004. . . . Former Mayor Kay Barnes took a hammer to a wall, celebrating Bartle’s second expansion in 15 years.

•  2015: Kansas City leaders say the city is losing convention business because it doesn’t have enough hotel rooms. And we’re off to the races again . . .

The desire to subsidize more development never abates; developers’ hunger for public funds is never satiated. Each new project costs taxpayers millions that could go to basic services such as police and infrastructure, libraries and schools, but instead the money funds dreams that never seem to deliver on their promises.

The post A History of Kansas City’s Convention Pursuits appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While we wait for hotel cost estimates and earnings projections, it is worth reflecting on previous convention hotel efforts in and around downtown. Hotel consultants have provided inflated estimates in the past.

Overland Park: Projections for their convention hotel were off by about 40 percent. A June 2010 issue of The Pitch published:

Original projections called for Overland Park’s convention hotel to earn more than $110 per available room. Actual number: $67.50.

Kansas City, MO: In 2009, when Kansas City was considering a convention hotel, the hired consultant, HVS, estimated that the average daily rate (ADR) for hotels in Kansas City in 2016 was going to be $162.72. Today it is $121.37, far short of the projection.

Kansas City, KS: The Pitch also reported on the money pit that is the Hilton Garden Inn:

The [Unified Government] hired a consultant to project how much money the hotel would make when it applied for the HUD loan in 1999. The consultant predicted that by 2005 the Hilton Garden Inn would hit $3 million from room revenues alone. Actual financial records show that the hotel has stooped below that $3 million figure. In 2006, the hotel reported only $2.2 million in room revenues. The hotel itself has always operated at a loss, and every independent audit of the hotel project since 2006 has sounded the same warning: The Hilton Garden Inn is a money loser and can’t stay afloat without subsidies from its owners.

It appears earnings projections run about 25-40 percent higher than reality. That is quite a margin of error. As we consider a downtown convention hotel, we must keep in mind that projections are rarely met.

The post KC Convention Hotel Estimates Are Notoriously Wrong appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Steve Vockrodt at The Pitch considers other costs that the city doesn’t seem to be including in their estimates:

The property upon which the hotel will be built (bound by Truman Road and 16th Street and by Baltimore and Wyandotte) is mostly city-owned, which means that it currently generates no property taxes. Troy Schulte, the city manager, has said the land is worth $13 million.

Assuming that valuation is correct, it means that the land—if the city sold it to a developer and it returned to the tax rolls—would generate $333,998 a year in property taxes. Under TIF, the development captures all that money.

Given these arrangements, then, the public subsidy for the hotel is going to be a lot more than $35 million. About half the cost of the $300 million project will wind up being paid for by public taxes.

But wait, there’s more. The Kansas City Business Journal adds:

The post Convention Hotel: Power & Light District v. 2.0? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Monday, Mayor Sly James said the work being performed by Kansas City’s Parson & Associates LLC and Scott Hall & Associates will help the city fulfill a federal requirement to incorporate an environmental assessment into the expansion routes so the city is eligible to receive federal funding.

“If this assessment is not completed, then the city will have no opportunity to receive federal funding,” James said in the statement.

The effort is the subject of an ethics complaint that opponents to the streetcar sales and property taxes have filed, claiming it is electioneering. Alonzo followed up with the federal agency awarding the grants and found there is no such requirement.

No federal mandate requires Kansas City or its contractors to hold door-to-door meetings before part of the city votes on a proposed extension of the streetcar project, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

This is not the first time the mayor and Kansas City officials have been caught trying to blame federal regulators for forcing the city to adopt questionable policies. Steve Vockrodt, at The Pitch, just penned a piece pointing out that the EPA has never cited the Kansas City airport for environmental shortcomings:

City officials distributed a fact sheet in April 2013 that said KCI couldn’t meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for capturing de-icing runoff.

“The current terminal infrastructure does not allow the airport to meet the EPA’s new standards for capturing deicing fluids, which require capturing about 30 percent of the run-off,” the fact sheet reads. “The new single terminal will capture nearly 100 percent of the runoff and resolve Environmental Protection Agency issues the airport is currently facing.”

But there is no such EPA guideline.

Two EPA officials contacted by The Pitch could not identify any published guidelines that call for the capture of 30 percent of de-icing fluids.

And let us not forget the recently ended bid for the GOP convention, in which Mayor James argued that it was necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, in secret, just to keep up.

The Show-Me State’s Harry Truman once famously quipped, “The buck stops here.” But in Kansas City, Mayor James and Kansas City government officials point the finger elsewhere and the bucks don’t stop at all.

The post Blame Canada Washington! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As a policy analyst who has studied local and municipal
government for many years, I know there is solid economic
evidence that having too many elected officials often leads to higher
levels of spending. On balance, therefore, I prefer the Kansas
City/Jackson County system to that of its eastern Missouri rival.

However, that is not to say that Kansas City — or any other
metro area — has devised the perfect system. The following are three
suggestions for changes to government in Kansas City and Jackson
County that I believe would benefit the citizens.

First, at-large elected officials should be truly at-large.

Both Kansas City and Jackson County should do what
Independence does, and have their at-large elected officials
represent the entire city, or county, without being expected to partly
represent districts or wards as well. There are economic studies that
demonstrate lower spending in cities with true at-large elected
officials.

Though Kansas City and Jackson County councils both elect
councilmembers at-large, those at-large officials are also designated
to represent certain areas. This mitigates one of the major benefits
of electing officials at-large, which is to avoid a situation in which
politicians compete to bring home the most pork for their districts.
For at-large officials who are truly at-large, every spending decision
presents a cost that the entire population bears.

Last year, Kansas City’s The Pitch documented how one
district’s at-large councilmembers wanted to spend more than $1
million acquiring new parkland within their district even though
(according to the Pitch) the city is having trouble maintaining the
parks it already operates.

Second, Kansas City municipalities should privatize their local
utilities.

Unlike many of parts of Missouri, most cities in the Kansas City
area have municipal water utilities. Independence even has a municipal
electric utility. The private sector is entirely capable of providing those
services to the public in a more efficient manner than local governments.
These municipal utilities should be auctioned off to private companies.
That would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the Kansas City area.
At the same time, it would expand the property tax base by putting those
assets on the tax rolls; shrink the public-sector workforce; and relieve
fiscal pressures on local governments.

Third and finally, Kansas City should reform the manner in which
it makes tax incentive decisions such as tax increment financing (TIF).

Kansas City citizens and officials should work with state
legislatures to alter how TIF decisions are made in Kansas City. Cities
currently dominate TIF commissions, and are generally focused on their
own well-being with little thought given to schools and other independent
taxing districts. Cities can even override a TIF commission’s rejection of
a plan with a simple super-majority vote of the city council. Counties are
far better able to look at the big picture, and county officials are
responsible to all of the citizens that a TIF affects. Local TIF commissions
should be changed and the statewide rules amended so that only counties
may enact TIFs. This includes ending the ability of cities to override the
TIF commission. This change would likely result in fewer TIFs, with a
greater appreciation for their effects on the entire community when they
are enacted. In essence, Jackson County, not Missouri’s TIF capitol,
Sugar Creek, would be making tax decisions that affect all of Jackson
County.

The Kansas City region has generally chosen a government system
with fewer elected officials and larger, more efficient governments. That
system has served the area well, but these changes could make it even
more cost-effective and responsible to the citizens.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes
market solutions for Missouri Public Policy.

The post Making a Good System Better: Suggestions for Kansas City Government appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The last major project that was financed out of Kansas City’s general fund put the city on the hook for the financial shortfalls of the Power & Light District (P&LD). The damage there? Officials project the district will suck $10 million each year from the city’s budget from now until … 2033. Although the cost of the new project has yet to be finalized — the latest estimate puts the overall price tag at around $300 million — you can bet that the bottom-line cost to KC’s taxpayers, should the project actually happen, will be significant.

City officials say that they won’t let the P&LD fiscal disaster repeat itself — that this time, the city won’t borrow against its general fund to get the hotel started — but Kansas City has already dropped more than half a million dollars in consulting and property option fees pursuing the project. Clearly, the ball is rolling. The question is, when did it start rolling, and why?

The Pitch has the rundown of how the city embarked on yet another building odyssey downtown:

Let’s start at January 9, 2007. That was the day when a 62-page report encouraging the city to build a 1,000-room hotel was completed.

The study was produced by a Minnesota-based consulting outfit called Conventions, Sports & Leisure International. The consultants knew the city. They had contributed to a previous proposal that led to a renovation and an expansion of Bartle Hall — the hall’s second expansion in 15 years.
[…]
Two nights later, 800 civic leaders enjoyed a banquet dinner and jazz at Bartle Hall to celebrate its recent $150 million makeover. The pooh-bahs had high hopes for that Bartle Hall update. In 2004, as the construction work was about to began, Rick Hughes, president and CEO of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association, had suggested to me that a new ballroom might double the city’s convention business.

The problem is that the expansion of Bartle Hall didn’t actually double KC’s number of conventions. According to the Pitch, Kansas City hosted 32 conventions in 2009 — which is basically the same number of conventions it hosted in 2004 and 2005. The project, judging it on this important metric, simply didn’t work.

Perhaps city officials were simply overly optimistic about the effect a Bartle Hall expansion would have on tourism. But that’s one of the recurring problems that Kansas City’s civic leaders have had these days: They invariably overstate and over-promise to get big-idea projects off the ground, but, in the end, can’t help but under-deliver because the economic bases of the projects aren’t really grounded in reality. If you listen closely, you can sometimes hear them admitting just that (emphasis added):

[President of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association Rick] Hughes told the City Council that insufficient hotel space was sending convention planners into the arms of other cities.

Then he dropped this doozy: “It’s really all about what we’re losing now, and just in recent studies, $4 billion in tentative bookings as well as some pretty enormous losses of existing customers.”

Really — 4 billion?

If Kansas City is “losing” $4 billion and action X is being advocated, you’d think that taking action X would net the city about $4 billion. Except … that’s not what it means at all.

Again from the Pitch (emphasis added):

I asked Carr about Hughes’ PowerPoint presentation indicating that Kansas City is “losing” 6.25 million room nights from 2004 to 2014. Carr says this number is based on sales leads that the visitors bureau receives. It reflects “potential” demand.

“We’re not saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we would have landed all these conventions,'” Carr says.

No, because that would be impossible.

Indeed. And yet, for some unknown reason, Kansas City’s political class is slow to learn from its hyperbolic mistakes, and is repeating them as it advocates for this new hotel.

From the Pitch (emphasis added):

One of [Hughes’] PowerPoint slides said Kansas City is “hemorrhaging” convention business.

Interesting word choice. It took me back to an interview I conducted with Hughes five years ago.

“We’ve been hemorrhaging conventions,” Hughes told me as we sat in his office in the fall of 2004.

Of course, back then, Kansas City was losing convention business for reasons other than the lack of a “convention headquarters” hotel.

Same advertising, different project.

The fact is, even if the hotel project weren’t being over-hyped, and even if it didn’t negatively affect the city’s general fund like the P&LD has, that doesn’t change one important economic fact: Taxpayer underwritten developments like the one proposed still ultimately hurt loyal, local businesses without growing the city’s aggregate wealth. It’s bad economics.

Fortunately, at least the president of the city’s steering committee for the project knows it, reports the Star (emphasis added):

[Bill] Lucas said this may [be] a good opportunity for the city to step back and take a fresh look at the hotel proposal. Right now, he’s concerned a new project would only divert business from existing hotels.

“I’m not convinced we can generate that kind of increase in demand,” he said. “We’d about have to double our convention bookings, and I think that’s difficult to do.”

So, to recap what we’ve learned, the convention center expansion was supposed to double the number of conventions the city booked every year, but failed to do it. The P&LD was supposed to revitalize downtown, but is instead draining $10 million a year from the city’s budget. A convention hotel is being proposed because, as Mayor Sly James put it, “To the extent every one of those people stay in the Loop and spend dollars there, it helps offset some of the problems in the Power & Light District and creates more jobs.” But to save the P&LD, the hotel needs the convention center to … double its convention bookings.

And around we go.

If a convention hotel were economically viable in Kansas City, agents in the free market would build it. The absence of a pending private-sector project pretty well indicates the real prospects for such a hotel, with or without taxpayer support. Kansas City isn’t in a fiscal position to take on a risk like this anyway.

Even if Kansas City were in a better fiscal position, though, it shouldn’t take this up. Pushing business around the metropolitan area — whether it’s a hotel or restaurant patrons — with publicly backed incentives is like shoveling sand in a sandbox: It doesn’t make the sandbox bigger or the sand more plentiful. It just raises the probability that, in the end, you’ll have less sand sitting in the box than when you started.

The city should save the taxpayers’ money, by firmly — and finally — declining to back the project financially. Just let the free market work, and if a convention hotel makes sense, somebody will build one to cater to the needs of Kansas City’s visitors.

The post Blueprint for a Blunder: Why Kansas City Should Quash Its Convention Hotel Plans appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But anytime you give the government power to license something, it invites the opportunity for abuse. In St. John, a suburb of St. Louis, a restaurant entrepreneur will have to wait a few more weeks to know whether he can sell alcohol at his restaurant, because one councilmember does not want him to have a liquor license. Now, this may not be that big of a deal, because it appears he will get the license at the next meeting, but it is still a delay in his business plans.

A worse abuse of power was also featured in a Post-Dispatch article yesterday: A liquor license inspector has been charged with bribery. He attempted to force a prospective bar owner to pay him off and give him a job in order for the owner to get the license. Thankfully, the bar owner was able to obtain the license anyway (evidence that it is not all that hard to get a liquor license here), but this is further evidence of the inevitable abuses that come from government control.

I pointed out a moment ago that it is not all that hard to get a liquor license here. Well, that’s not true if you live in the city of St. Louis’ 20th Ward, where the local alderman decided (several years ago) that he does not want any more bars or liquor stores. If you have to have a liquor license process (and we’ll realistically have one whether we like it or not), it needs to be a public, evenhanded process, not reliant on whether or not one elected official approves it.

There are abuses in Kansas City, too. The Pitch has a story on the liquor licenses being suspended in restaurants that have been caught allowing smoking. This is terrible, and most aptly demonstrates the title of this post. If you have a law banning smoking in public establishments, the punishment should be a fine, not the suspension of an unrelated item. At the bottom of the Pitch article, you see examples of suspending liquor licenses for acts that at least relate to alcohol (one of which is actually important enough to warrant some type of punishment).

I won’t get into the dispute over liquor licenses and violence at the clubs in downtown St. Louis. This post is long enough. One good thing about our liquor laws is Missouri is that we generally (with exceptions like the 20th Ward) don’t have numerical restrictions on total licenses in an area, which is usually the worst part of any licensing system. But any system can and will be abused. The most important change we need to liquor laws in Missouri is to eliminate the ability for one individual to block a potential license all on their own — be it an inspector or an elected official. Requiring that all applicants get a vote of the full legislative body could be a good start.

The post Liquor Licenses as Weapons appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As soon as I read the list of cities to which St. Louis is judged as being similar, the issue of government structure jumped out at me:

St. Louis fell in the “Skilled Anchor” category. These cities are typified by slower growth, lower diversity and higher educational attainment. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Akron and New Haven are other Skilled Anchors.

Which two American cities have a metropolitan government structure most like St. Louis? Baltimore and Pittsburgh, and I doubt anyone would dispute that. Baltimore is also an independent city-not-within-a-county, like St. Louis, and the metropolitan Pittsburgh and St. Louis areas are the two most fragmented in the country (as defined by government units per capita).  Both of these cities, especially Pittsburgh, were covered in detail by my “Government in Missouri” policy study. (For the fragmentation info, check out Table 9 on p. 29, and read endnote 23.)

I am not trying to draw any causation here, or even really any correlation. It may be just coincidence that St. Louis, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh are all judged as similar cities by the measures of the Brookings Institution. But then again, perhaps the similar government structures have resulted from how the three communities have adapted to various changes over time, now bringing them into similar circumstances.

The post KC Pitch Blurb About St. Louis Offers Insights to Government Structure appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As if the article was not great enough, I also want to share the remarks of commentor number 3, “jayhawk6”, who said:

Good explanation for just how the land tax works. The spiteful aspect of property taxes […] is that a homeowner can be discouraged from improving his/her home because it will raise its value and thus the tax burden.

We thank both McClanahan and “jayhawk6” for the attention and focus on this important issue. McClanahan is absolutely right when he says that a land tax should be adopted as an eventual replacement for the current property tax system even if the earnings tax is maintained. (But it should NOT be maintained.) Although, as the article explains, this would entail amending the state constitution, counties in Missouri could move in that direction simply by applying more of the current value of property to the land, and less to the improvement. Then, as the property might be improved, the taxes would rise less because the portion determined by land value would hold steady.

The post Great Article About the Land Tax in the Kansas City Star appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post SMI Board Member in the Pitch appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Feel free to check it out. If you enjoy the GQ-style picture here, just hold tight. The swimsuit calendar is coming out this summer.

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