They Know Where You Live.
Dakota County (south suburban Saint Paul) is the first Minnesota county to use Pictometry for law enforcement and property assessments.

Pictometry is yet another imaging company. While conspiracy theories may abound, a member of the county commission lauds the technology for making the county cost-efficient, which will be helpful if its population continues to surge. (permalink)

Free Markets and Free People in Mongolia.
Advocates of sound policy at the state level sometimes have a global reach. Such is the case of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, whose ideas are influencing policy in Mongolia.

Lawrence W. Reed, Mackinac's president, explains. (permalink)

Cool Cities: The Latest Version of Bread and Circuses.
Joel Kotkin diagnoses the ills of cities, and dismisses faddish solutions such as "cool cities," in this TNR essay reprinted at the blog Fix Buffalo Today.

Here's the nickel version of the "cool cities" approach: "Richard Florida ... seems to offer a simple formula for urban revitalization: Get hip and gay. Hip cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Boston are the new role models, Florida has argued; and non-hip locales are duly forewarned, as a headline in The Washington Monthly put it, that cities 'without gays and rock bands are losing the economic race.'"

Here's my favorite dismissal of the "cool cities" notion: "The number-one destination, in terms of net migration gains of young, single, educated people as a percentage of the total population? Naples, Florida."

Naples?

The idea that "cool" is the key to city life is just one of several propositions--call them a different kind of urban legend--that Kotkin takes apart.

Among the other urban legends:

• Cities are again gaining people;
  
• Cities are where the successful people are, or what Kotkin calls the "cult of ... the Darwinian superiority of cities."

So what can cities do? Make sure that the basics are available to residents: high-quality education for children, at a decent price; transportation systems that let people move from here to there at a reasonable price; policing that keeps crime under control, and so forth.

This will take mayors and other city leaders with formidable political courage to take on obstacles to reform. Kotkin cites teacher unions as a prime example.

"Right now school reform is often hostage to the power of teachers' unions. City budgets, which could be applied to improving economic infrastructure, are frequently bloated by, among other things, excessive public sector employment and overgenerous pensions. In the contest for the remaining public funds, the knitted interests of downtown property holders, arts foundations, sports promoters, and nightclub owners often overwhelm those of more conventional small businesses and family-oriented neighborhoods that could serve as havens for the middle class."

Boring policy, it turns out, is good for cities.

Labels: Cool cities fad

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County Sues Companies, Cites Illegal Immigration and Social Costs.
Canyon County, Idaho, is the latest government entity to abuse RICO laws; it has filed suit against several companies, claiming that the firms conspired to increase the county's expenses for social services.

Says the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), "In the complaint, the county says the action was brought "for damages it has suffered as a direct result of the knowing employment of large numbers of illegal immigrants by the defendants." It doesn't specify the amount it seeks as reimbursement.

"We are attempting to recover tax funds expended on services to individuals who entered Canyon County illegally," said County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, who has spearheaded the effort and has promised to make illegal immigration his calling card in a bid for Congress in 2006." (permalink)

Double-Dipping for the Public Good.
What some may call double-dipping, paying school retirees both a pension and a paycheck (through a contractor) is a good thing.

I explain it in today's Current Comment, from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Labels: Education, Public employee pensions

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I Want My MTV.
I want my MTV: municipal television. At least that seems to be the rule imposed on my cable company by the city.

Comcast is doing another song and dance about enhanced product offerings. What their recent mailing means, though, is that a few channels are being moved from the most-basic version of programming packages to the next-up level. No big deal; I've got both basic and extended basic.

But to take this post back to public policy, what struck me about the new channel guide that came with the announcement was the number of government-focused channels. I'm not talking merely of CNN, Fox, and the two C-SPANS, but the public access channels. We have (reading from the channel line-up):

• Metro regional access
  
• Local programming
  
• Public Access Too!
  
• Public Access
  
• City access
  
• Educational access
  
• Community TV schedule
  
• Community showcase

I pay for 80 channels. Ten percent of that is taken up by the channels in the list above.

And what do I get? Nothing much. How many times can even the most civic-minded individual watch a meeting of the city council? How about a low-budget production of a concert? If your child graduates from high school, by all means go to the commencement exercise. But watch it again on TV? Yawn.

Ditto for for local parades. (I've probably been caught on camera once or twice. Oh yeah, some obscure guy walking down a street handing out football schedules with the name of a local politician on the other side. Zzzzz.)

Some of the channels show their schedule of upcoming programs more than the programs themselves.

Meanwhile, some community access channels routinely gripe about the low-budget nature of their operations. Just perhaps the low budgets are a clue that there's not a lot of demand for this kind of TV, and that Municipal TV ought to surrender some of its space. There are a lot of new possibilities for cable TV these days, but in some cities, space on the lineup is at a premium. One reason is the must-carry provision of municipal contracts with cable companies.

Actually, I'd rather be without my MTV. Both of 'em. (permalink)

Professors in the MOB.
The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB, see sidebar) is an informal affiliation of Minnesota-based bloggers. Some of the blogs are personal, others are political, still others are policy-based.

While I was aware of one academic blogger (SCSU Scholars) in the mix, it was only the other day that I discovered Market Power. Like SCSU's King Banaian, the proprietor of Market Power is an academic economist.

If academics isn't your thing, don't be put off; the site is quite readable. It's especially useful if you are interested in the economics of sports, sports stadiums, and the like. (permalink)

School employees retire, get rehired, save taxpayers money.
A man retires from a school district Then he goes back to the same desk, doing the same tasks, drawing both a pension AND a paycheck from his new employer, a staffing firm.

Outrageous? Not exactly. The Detroit News reports on the practice. I have already written a story that explains how this works, to the benefit of employees, employers, and taxpayers. But it's not yet in published form, so I am not able to reproduce it here. But here's the short of it:

(a) the employees who draw retirement money while "re-employed" would have been drawing the money anyway, so there is no net increase in taxpayer pension costs.

(b) since they work as contractors to a staffing firm, not as school district employees, they typically receive less in compensation than someone else who would have filled the job.

Someone retires. Assuming the job will be filled, re-hiring a retiree as a contract employee is often the smartest choice.

Labels: Public employee pensions, School choice

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Education: What is "Suitable?"
The Salina Journal presents a history of how a single word in the Kansas constitution may be leading to a $1 billion increase in spending.

The Journal is well on the way to becoming my favorite small-town newspaper, with two recent, solid articles exploring education policy. (permalink)

Education Back in the Day.
The Plainview Daily Herald (Texas) reprints what was allegedly the final exam exam given in 1895 to students in Salinas, Kansas.

Examples:

7. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

8 Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn and Howe?

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final "e." Name two exceptions under each rule.

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend? (permalink)

Federal Legislation to Promote Health Insurance Affordability.
Three reform bills being floated in Congress are steps in the direction of making health insurance affordable and equitable. Three analysts for the Heritage Foundation call the proposals A Good Start.

A first proposal will "enable small businesses to band together through trade associations to purchase coverage for their employees" through Association Health Plans. It is a small step towards reducing the disadvantage faced by employees of small businesses, compared with people who work for large corporations. One weakness of the bill: it merely extends the employment-based system of insurance, which has its own problems.

A second proposal would effectively create a national market for health insurance. People could shop around in a large market for the policy that fits their needs. It also promises larger pools of insured individuals. Here's how it would work: each company selling insurance would be subject to state regulation (as is the case now), but it could sell policies across state lines. Like the legislation dealing with Association Health Plans, this bill would help close the gap between large company and small company employees. It would also promote competition and consumer choice: if you don’t like the policies issued in your own state, you can find one issued elsewhere. (Some basic regulations would still be applied by the state in which you live, even to policies sold from out-of-state.)

The third proposal sends more federal money to states so that they can create high-risk insurance pools for people who currently have a hard time finding an underwriter. This is fine as far as it goes, though it also risks creating incentives for states to shift their costs to the federal government and not making their own reforms or paying their own bills.

Finally, Edmund F. Haislmaier, Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., and Nina Owcharenko, authors of the report, call for ending the discrepancy between employer-paid insurance and individual-paid insurance through extending insurance-based tax breaks to individuals. The current approach, which gives you a tax break only when you buy a policy through your employers, favors employees of large companies over employees of small companies, the occasionally employed, and everyone else.

Favoring the employment-based approach to insurance locks too many people into their current jobs (think of people who stick with a job only because of the insurance coverage it offers). Locking people into one employer’s coverage raises privacy concerns, introduces a third party (the HR department) into personal decisions, limits personal choice (what does your employer offer?), and promotes a mismatch between people and jobs. Further, the tax breaks are regressive, meaning that their benefits actually increase as personal income goes up.

For a few folks, the siren song of involuntary, politically-driven insurance--socialized medicine--is still alluring. But the problems in health care are not too little government, but too little competition. The proposals outlined in this report point in the right direction.

Labels: Health care

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If This is Treason, Michigan Has More Serious Problems to Consider.
Early last week, Governor Granholm (D-Michigan) took the bizarre step of labeling a college professor and a state representative for publicizing (in the Wall Street Journal) their differences with her economic policies. Rep. Rick Baxter, R-Hanover, she said, made comments that for a sitting office holder were "just unacceptable." He acted to "damage the state," and so he "should be removed from office."

So what is "treason," anyway? Attorney Theodore Bolema give a short review of legal history. He notes wryly that "a review of cases brought by Gov. Granholm in her previous position as attorney general of the state of Michigan indicates that she did not enforce the 'treason' clause of the Michigan Constitution during her four years as the state’s chief prosecutor, even though there were many critics of Michigan’s economy at that time."

One of the authors of the original piece, Gary Wolfram, responds to the charge in a short interview with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. (I've never met Wolfram or Baxter, but like Wolfram, I have also written for the Mackinac Center).

Wolfram reiterates the point of the WSJ essay: to fix the economy, Michigan lawmakers ought to consider something that only they have control over, namely, the tax burden of the state. He adds "I’m a professor of economics, and I can have people say that I’m crazy, or whatever, and it’s not going to affect me that much. But when the sitting governor calls for the removal of a freshman state legislator, I think that’s a moderately big deal."

Commentators across the state and nation have paid attention, giving Baxter and Wolfram's argument even more publicity. The Lansing State Journal, states the obvious when it says that the governor's "falls outside the realm of reason."

I am hoping that the governor merely got carried away with her rhetoric, and overly defensive as well. But at least one Michigan-based Democratic activist is
ambivalent about the matter, suggesting that Granholm's ill-advised remark has at least a handful of supporters. "Since he [Rep. Baxter] is an elected representative from Michigan shouldn't he be for Michigan instead of being against it? Leave it [to] the Republicans," writes one author of "Michigan-dems."

If Michigan takes the attitude that its problems should not be discussed in publications seen by people outside the state--including, I should note, the Detroit News-- its economic condition is more serious than previously thought.
(Originally published by the Detroit News.) (permalink)

What's in a Name? A Short Lesson in Political Language.
From the Associated Press stylebook (c) 2000, the guidebook of many newspapers:

LEFTIST, ULTRA-LEFTIST. In general, avoid these terms in favor of a more precise description of an individual's political philosophy.

As popularly used today, particularly abroad, leftist often applies to someone who is merely liberal or who believes in a form of democratic socialism.

Ultra-leftist suggests an individual who subscribes to a communist view or one holding that liberal or socialist change cannot come from within the present form of government.

Current hit counts for each term, on Yahoo News: 2,359 and 3, respectively.

RIGHTIST, ULTRA-RIGHTIST. In general, avoid these terms in favor of a more precise description of an individual's political philosophy.

As popularly used today, particularly abroad, rightist often applies to someone who is conservative or opposed to socialism. It also indicates an individual who supports an authoritarian government that is militantly anti-communist or anti-socialist.

Ultra-rightist suggests and individual who subscribes to rigid interpretations of a conservative doctrine or to forms of fascism that stress authoritarian, often militaristic, views.

Current hit counts for each term, on Yahoo News: 538 and 67, respectively.

Note: 19 of the first 20 hits for "leftist" and "rightist" are in stories about non-U.S. politics; the 20th was used in an opinion piece on a hobbyist web site.

There is an entry for "conservative" and "liberal," though both point to "political parties and philosophies," an entry that takes several paragraphs to say little.

It seems like the AP has no word for the person who advocates individual freedom and private sector solutions over politically-determined rules and government solutions.

The 2000 edition happens to be the one on my shelf. I don't know if there has been a more recent edition with revised definitions. (permalink)

Green Bay Packers as a Model Sports Team?
The Packers are well known not only for cheesehead apparel, but for being publicly owned. As the team web site puts it, "A total of 4,749,925 shares are owned by 111,921 stockholders - none of whom receives any dividend on the initial investment."

In an article a few years ago, Mother Jones published a fuzzy feel-good story about the Green Bay Packers. (You can probably find many such articles with a little bit of digging.) Players are required to sign autographs, little kids offer up their bicycles as modes of transport around the practices, that sort of thing.

All very good. To borrow from the comedian, in an age of free agency, we root for the jerseys. Free agent players have given way to free agent teams.

With a wide dispersion of ownership in a concentrated geographic area, the Packers aren't going to move anywhere. To the sports fan who likes some tradition with his goal line stands, that's admirable.

While class envy is usually a destructive impulse, it serves as a (weak) impediment to spending tax money on sports teams: if people see the chief beneficiary as "some super-rich guy who lives far away," they may be less likely to support taxes for a non-essential service.

Granted, this is a rather weak barrier, as the record of city after city has showed. But widespread ownership might also make public even more willing to buy the workplaces of talented millionaires. As the Minnesota governor has argued, a cold state in the north may need a "fun tax."

Can the Packers model be emulated? NFL rules won't allow it:
the other owners like very much the ability to engage in rent-seeking behavior by pitting one city against another. That tactic probably wouldn't work with widespread public ownership of a team. (permalink)

Rail is an Inferior Means of Mass Transit.

If you're going to have mass transit, you might as well be smart about it.

****

Randal O'Toole: "Pennsylvania's Great Rail Disasters Continue."

Dozens of cities around the country, including Pennsylvania cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, are building, planning, or considering new or expanded rail systems. But is rail really the best solution for regions looking to provide commuters with an attractive mix of transportation alternatives?

In a word, no. It turns out that transit agencies that rely on buses are more likely to see transit ridership grow as fast or faster than automobile driving than those agencies that build expensive rail lines—and rail’s lack of success should be a lesson for rail aficionados both inside and outside government.

Over the past two decades, transit ridership has declined in nearly two out of three regions with rail transit—including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By comparison, numerous regions that rely on bus transit have seen huge increases in transit ridership at a relatively low cost. Austin, Las Vegas, and Raleigh, for example, have all seen transit ridership grow much faster than driving.

The cost of starting a rail transit line can be 50 to 100 times greater than the cost of starting comparable bus service. Rail also costs more to operate. In fact, rail’s high costs present a triple threat to regions and transit riders.

First, rail transit tends to suffer huge cost overruns, partly because rail proponents often low-ball costs to get their projects approved. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, U.S. rail transit overruns average 41 percent, while highway project overruns average only 8 percent.

Cost overruns threaten transit riders when they force transit agencies to increase bus fares and reduce bus service. Los Angeles started building rail transit in 1985 and experienced huge overruns. Ten years later, it had lost nearly 20 percent of its transit riders, and the NAACP sued the region’s transit agency for cutting bus service to low-income minority neighborhoods in order to pay for rail construction to white, middle-class neighborhoods.

Recessions present a second threat to transit agencies that have gone heavily into debt to pay for rail construction, something they don’t need to do to buy buses. If a recession reduces the tax revenues that support a bus agency by 10 percent, the agency might have to cut bus service by 10 percent. San Jose suffered a financial crisis in the recent recession and lost a third of its transit riders in the last three years.

The third threat to transit systems comes when it is time to rebuild the rail lines. Rails, roadbeds, railcars, power facilities, stations, elevators, and other equipment all must be rebuilt or replaced every twenty to thirty years. Washington DC’s expensive subway system is facing an imminent financial crisis because the agency needs nearly as much money to rebuild the system over the next decade as it originally spent to build it, yet it has no funds to do so.

Of the twenty-three urban areas with rail transit, fourteen of them experienced declining transit ridership over the past two decades. In most cases, the reasons for the decline can be traced to one or more of these three financial problems.

Six other regions with rail transit have seen ridership grow, but it hasn’t kept up with the growth in automobile driving. Moreover, in Portland, Dallas, and Salt Lake City, bus ridership was growing faster before rail construction began than transit ridership has grown since the rail lines opened.

Rail advocates claim rail transit will reduce congestion and air pollution and save energy. Yet it can’t do any of these things if the high-cost rail construction reduces transit ridership, or if it slows ridership growth below the level attained when a region uses only buses.

Rail supporters also argue that rail transit promotes economic development and increases property values. Yet a study published by the Federal Transit Administration found that “urban rail transit investments rarely ‘create’ new growth.” Any increase in property values near the rail line, said the study, was balanced by decreases somewhere else in the region.

The idea of gliding to work in a high-speed train is very seductive. But as the humor newspaper The Onion points out, most Americans want other people to ride transit so they can drive on uncongested roads. [Emphasis added.] Most rail transit lines average only about 20 to 25 miles per hour, and since they are so expensive to build they don’t go where most people want to go anyway.

Rail transit fattens the wallets of rail contractors who can make campaign contributions to powerful elected officials. But if transit agencies truly want to improve mass transit in their regions, they should rely on fast, flexible, and low-cost buses.

[Courtesy of the Commonwealth Foundation.]

Labels: Transportation

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Assorted Items in Education Policy.
It's time to clean house, and mention some short commentaries as well as longer reports that I've come across on education policy.

CHILD ADVOCATE LEAVES A LEGACY
The death of John Walton has brought a number of tributes, specifically his work to offer scholarships for students wanting to escape poorly performing schools.

TEST SCORES UP, BUT DOES THAT MEAN ANYTHING?
Test scores are up in Arizona. But does that mean improved student performance, or that excellence has been defined down?

IS UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL AS GOOD AS ADVERTISED?
If education is good, then more education must be better. Right? Lance T. Izumi points out that studies touting the benefits of taxpayer-financed early childhood education may not stand up to scrutiny.

SCHOOL FINANCE 101
Rising property taxes mean less in state aid to schools--freeing up that money for other purposes in the state budget, good or bad. Byron Schlomach offers these and 10 other observations. They're specific to Texas, but the lessons have wider applicability.

HIGHER EDUCATION CURMUDGEON
If you're interested in finding some commentary and research that goes against the grain in higher education, check out the Pope Center, of North Carolina. One item that caught my attention was this report [PDF] which says that claims of the benefits of public financing of higher education confuse correlation with causality.

WHAT DO FLOATING EXCHANGE RATES, THE VOLUNTEER ARMY, AND SCHOOL VOUCHERS HAVE IN COMMON?
All three were advocated by Milton Friedman in his seminal book Capitalism and Freedom.

The first two ideas have come into existence. With a few exceptions, the third has not.

Patrick Byrne tells CNBC why: In education, "there's an entrenched monopoly that you'd be dislodging by introducing competition. It's not really the case with currency rates. I'll remind you, Milton Friedman also proposed the all-volunteer Army, which was seen as cooky 30 years ago."

GIFTED AND TALENTED PROGRAMS: BARRIERS LOWERED TO MEET RACIAL GOALS?
Xiaochin Claire Yan writes that that Davis, Calif. school board is weakening its gifted student program by lowering the bar, to meet informal racial quotas.

Don't worry; we're all above average.

IS SCHOOL CHOICE THE NEXT CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES?
Clint Bolick (yes) and Laura Underkuffle (no) argue the question for the magazine Legal Affairs.

My favorite line comes when Bolick responds to Underkuffle's suggestion that competition and choice are all fine and good, but only if it is limited to public schools:

[The] inclusion of private schools is essential to true reform. Take the example of the post office. Remember when it was bloated, inefficient, unreliable, and unresponsive? I take it your suggestion would have been that if people didn't like their local post office, they should go to the one in the next town—where they would find an equally bloated, inefficient, unreliable, and unresponsive post office. When USPS was exposed to private sector competition, it was forced to improve.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Go Play in the Dirt, Kid: Recess Ain't What is Used to Be.
Because schools fear litigation, children on some playgrounds are being reduced to playing with dirt. No Running! (permalink)

Avoid Curriculum Fights Through School Choice?
David Boaz remindis us that controversies over school curriculum can be avoided through the use of school choice.

That's generally on the mark. Look at higher education, for example. Though there are accusations on the left and (usually) right about biased instructors, there are lots of choices for people to pick from.

"Education deals with topics that many people feel strongly about," Boaz writes, "and a monopoly requires them to fight over whose values will prevail in the single school system."

Labels: Education, School choice

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Destroying a Charter School.
Charter schools can be one part of turning around public education--if they are allowed to operate.

A school in New Hampshire has a dropout rate of 50 percent, and so some people get together to offer a charter school to meet the need. Though it operates on less than 40 percent of the budget of other schools in the state, the charter school is popular among its constituents.

The school's sole source of funding: a grant from the state, which (as happens in the state) is distributed through town governments.

So how do town leaders react to the new school? They withhold the state money, effectively shutting down the school.

The response of state officials, including the governor, the attorney general, and the state school board? Nothing.

Charlie Arlinghaus explains.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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The Fee, Not Tax Follies.
Numerous other bloggers have commented on the missteps of Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-Minnesota). (A spot-on essay, plus a link to many other commentator, can be found here.)

There are two things to say about this in the context of public policy:
1. Taxes are taxes are taxes. As I argued in a piece for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, tax increases, even cigarette taxes, destroy jobs--jobs that might be used to, well, pay more in taxes. (The Mackinac Center has an updated critique of Michigan's "tax patch," emphasizing the danger to public safety from cigarette smuggling, made profitable by pumping up the cigarette tax.

2. By insisting on calling the tax a fee, Pawlenty breeds cynicism. In the eyes of some observers, increased cynicism may be a good thing for advocates of effective but limited government: if people think that all politicians are flim-flammers, it makes it more unlikely that the public will be willing to accept new government-directed responses to public issues (think HillaryCare, for example).

Fine. It may be the case that cynicism will deter the development of new programs. But the cause of effective-but-limited government cannot proceed unless some significant reforms are made. Three looming problems are health care (health care costs, and Medicare in particular, is the 800 pound gorilla that will squash everyone), education (where we must deal with an unacceptably lousy system in k-12) and retirement planning (Social Security's going to implode).

Implementing meaningful and liberty-enhancing changes to respond to these policy challenges will require straight-shooting politicians whose word can be trusted. Why? Each of the policy areas I've mentioned require significant departures -- departures that many people will find scary -- from the status quo. Shop on your own for insurance? Subject k-12 schools to the competitive marketplace? Do away with the "secure" benefits of the Social Security system as we know it? In each case, known but fatally flawed models must be replaced by approaches that promise superior performance, and (this is where politicians come in) uncertainty.

So what does reforming health care, improving K-12 education, and re-doing our approach to retirement planning have to do with one broken (excuse me, allegedly broken pledge) have to do with Governor Pawlenty? Plenty. While the Minnesota executive doesn't have much to do with the solution to any of these problems, his example, if followed by others in office, will harm prospects of reform.

Pawlenty drew a line in the sand: no new taxes. After two years of standing firm, he blinked. He could have made an honest appeal to voters: "I've changed my mind," perhaps, "and here's why." Or maybe "My hand was forced by the opposition," might have worked for some people. Whatever.

But when politicians respond to critics with "this isn't a tax" and "I don't care what you call it, I call it a solution" can only encourage the kind of cynicism that will doom necessary reforms.

Labels: Health care

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Is There Any Room for Education at the NEA?
J.D. Andary, a fellow blogger at the Detroit News, counts the number of resolutions offered at the annual meeting of the National Education Association. He calculates that less than 10 percent of the resolutions (over 70 in total!) directly touch on the classroom.

Among the subjects included: the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (againt) and withdraw of U.S. forces from Iraq (soon). (permalink)

Another All-Star Game, Another Time to Recall the Failed Expectations of Sports as an Economic Development Tool.
Advocates of sports welfare ("we built it, they profit from it") tout the economic benefits of the SuperBowl, all-star games, and other big events. Yet the benefits of hosting such games is typically oversold.

In a run-up to last year's All-Star game, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewed the claims. One economic development official in the city said that as far as benefits from the game, "The sky's the limit with something like this. There's really something for everyone."

Even discounting for the inevitable hyperbole, the results have been disappointing. Victor Matheson, a professor who has studied the economic effects of nearly two dozen All-Star games, "found actual job growth lagged behind projected growth in every case." It's arguable that baseball visitors merely crowd out other people who might visit a city.

City officials are always on the lookout for new tax revenue. Residents appreciate the high-profile buffing and repairs of streets and facilities that inevitably preceed a major event.

But major improvements in quality of life come through the mundane tasks such as controlling crime, getting the most in public services out of the least amount of tax dollars, and ensuring access to high-quality K-12 education. (permalink)

Wasting Money is Now Cool.
Lipstick on a pig. That's the "Cool cities" initiative of Governor Jennifer Granholm (D-Michigan). Her latest PR campaign: a tour to announce the distribution of "Cool Cities" grants. Among the projects receiving funding: fixing a gay/lesbian gathering place, moving "a unique metalworking school, gallery, and sculpture" from one part of town to another, and putting in a few skating rinks.

Labels: Cool cities fad

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Michigan Governor: Disagreement is Treasonous.
It's hard to imagine that someone so smart would say something to stupid, and so arrogant: Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm (D), wants a member of the Michigan House of Representatives removed from office for criticizing her economic plan.

Granholm wants the state to engage in a fair measure of old-fashioned industrial policy, an attempt to pick economic winners. The quasi-socialist experiment usually fails, but at least it's a subject of honest intellectual debate.

But as an account in the Detroit News explains, the woman who might been a presidential candidate were it not for her birth in Canada said that Rep. Rick Baxter, R-Hanover and professor Gary Wolfram were treasonous for the state of Michigan" for penning an op-ed (published in the Wall Street Journal) criticizing her economic policies. (permalink)

From "Negro Removal" to a Right-Left Opposition to Eminent Domain Abuse.
As John Fund reminds us today, the use of abuse of eminent domain to take from one private party and give to another, in the name of "purpose," has been around for over 50 years. Specifically, it was upheld in the 1954 case of Berman v. Parker. The recent Kelo decision was simply an expansion of Berman, which said that government could seize blighted areas in the name of urban renewal. Cynics labeled the movement "Negro removal."

Says Fund,

Many Democrats who used to scoff at conservative fears about activist judges are now joining their barricades when it comes to eminent domain. "In a way this ruling is about civil rights because it interferes with your right to own and keep your property," says Wilhelmina Leigh, a research analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "It means you have to hope and trust in the goodness of other human beings that if you buy real estate that you will be allowed to keep it." Few appear to be willing to trust government on this issue, which is why the Kelo decision has touched off such a populist reaction against it.

At the federal level, and in states without strong property protection laws, this would be a great time for a liberal-conservative, black-white alliance to put some limits back into government. As Roll Call points out, however, it's not entirely sure that this will happen on the federal level. (permalink)

How Much Money Do You Need? All I Can Get.
Denis Boyles comments on the education funding and constitutional controversy in Kansas, and along the way, points how policy outcomes turn the wrong way.

Courts throughout the legal proceedings that brought the state to this point (10 percent increase in the k-12 budget in one year and a court, not the Legislature, deciding how much taxpayers were going to pay) relied heavily on a consultant's report.

One problem with this approach, Boyle reminds us, is that "Consultants like A&M are notorious for their methodology Â? findings are often heavily influenced by simply going to school administrators and asking, 'How much money do you need' Â? roughly akin to asking a meth-head, 'How much crack do you need?'"

Cast aside the guilt-by-association rhetoric, as it's not simply addicts who will say "More." Wanting "more" is one of the two fundamental tenants of economics (the other part of economics: the supply of whatever it is you want is limited.)

At some point, economic and political reality impose a limit on how much taxpayers will give over to government. Applying the "How much do you need" approach is unsustainable if practiced across an entire government's budget; there's never enough, for anyone. Priorities must be set, with a finite amount of tax dollars spread among a variety of wants and needs. The courts in Kansas (and elsewhere) have refused to accept that the proper place for setting priorities is in the legislative branch.

But the tale of Kansas involves another truth: the best way to determine how much something costs is through the free market of many different consumers and producers. Through a large number of transactions, the mix between product or service quality and price is sorted out. Businesses find ways to adapt to provide what buyers want, and they improve their ways of doing business to meet the demands of buyers.

In education, that competitive pressure is largely absent. There may be many school districts in a state, but the barriers to picking school district B over district A are substantial, involving real estate commissions, moving costs, and the emotional costs of pulling up stakes, even across town to a different district.

The end result: the "true cost" of providing k-12 schooling is bundled up with the costs of doing business with a quasi-monopolistic provider.

Combine the lack of ease in switching to a new school with a "dream ... big" approach used by consultants, and you've got a budget number that is almost certainly inflated. Throw in judicial edicts, and you have bad politics and bad policy.

Labels: Education

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Don't Drop Your Children into the Water. I Didn't Know That!
You've heard, and perhaps seen, enough silly warning labels. You know, the tag on the curling iron that reads "For external use only." That sort of stuff. Blame it on our overlawyered society.

I took a photo of another silly warning label I saw in the open bow of the S.S. Badger a Ludington-to-Manitowoc passenger service ship. (That's Michigan to Wisconsin, for those unfamiliar with the western Great Lakes). The plaque says "Please...do not hold children above or over the rails. They may fall overboard." The Badger is a 7-story high ship that travels the open waters of Lake Michigan. You'd think that parents would not hold their children over a ship railing far above the water, or if they did, they would face criminal charges for child endangerment. Is this plaque a sign of litigation fear only, or a testimony to human stupidity as well?
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(I've removed the direct link to the photo because it appears to interfere with the rest of this page. Click here for the photo). (permalink)

Kansas Legislature Capitulates.
In a worst-of-both-worlds scenario, the Kansas Legislature gave in to the demands of the state's supreme court, without passing a constitutional amendment for the state ballot. As a result, it's clear that the Kansas Supreme Court can tell the Kansas Legislature how much to spend on K-12 education. The court, in other words, has taken on the legislative function of setting budgetary priorities.

Meanwhile, the current k-12 system, which features a lack of competition at the local level, continues. (permalink)

Two Items from the K-12/Constitutional Debate in Kansas
Who holds the power of the purse? You might think that it's the legislative branch. But in Kansas, that state's supreme court wants to have the final say.

Small business owner and advocate Kenneth Daniel finds the whole exercise rather unpleasant, while Sharon DuBois points out that the consultant's study, which anchors the court's opinion, is a blue-sky document that doesn't consider political realities. (permalink)

Another Government Showdown.
In the name of furthering education, the Kansas Supreme Court may order the de-funding of the state's public schools.

The court may go so far as to prohibit the state from making payments on bonds used to finance school buildings.

This controversy has several policy and political debates wrapped up into one. First of all, you've got legislative versus judicial power. How far does judicial power go? According to the Kansas Supreme Court, as far as telling a legislature what its overall level of spending is for a given government function.
A second debate is the proper level of school funding, and how that funding should be distributed. The case in Kansas is not so much about equity as it is total amount. The court wants the legislature to abide by the findings of a private sector consultant that cherry-picked some "ideal" schools and then said "These folks spend $x, the rest of you should, too."

But even "ideal" schools have their shortcomings, and basing a global budget on the operation of one or even a few schools is not a good idea. Under the current policy environment, a "choice" school may be spending $12,000 per student." But under a different one--one that, say, involves free and open competition among traditional public schools, charter schools, and privately run schools serving voucher-enabled students--the costs are likely to be not $12,000, but something less. And equally important, parents would be able to control directly through dollars, rather than indirectly through the political process, what is an optimal education for their own children.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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McDonalds Is Your Kind of Place.
Government is called on to perform all sorts of services, some vital, and some, well, less than that.

Because of an unresolved budget dispute, Minnesota government shut down. Or at least, part of it did. Among the services and offices closed: highway rest areas.

One man told a newspaper, ""So far, the shutdown's not affecting us. But I'm concerned about all the elderly people who will be traveling this weekend and can't use the rest stops. What are they supposed to do, go in the woods?"

As it turns out, it's not even true that all rest areas will be closed. Some will remain open despite the "shutdown crisis." (The linked web page, which doubtless will be updated as soon as the shutdown is over, provides information about rest areas that will remain open.)

As for other facilities, there's always the many McDonalds and other businesses that line the roads. Stop in to do your business, buy a cup of coffee, and get back on the road. You deserve a break today, right? The business gets some small change, and the functions of a rest area are served, at minimal taxpayer cost.

If enough people learn to make a few adaptations, maybe this shutdown business will lead to a rethinking of the expansive state.

Labels: Transportation

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