Show-Me Institute Podcast

Missouri Taxpayer Bill of Rights, Back to School, and STL County Changes

David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss: a Missouri Taxpayer Bill of Rights, St. Louis County considering adopting a 'county manager' form of government, what the latest test scores tell us about Missouri schools, and more.

Read the Taxpayer Bill or Rights here: https://showmeinstitute.org/publication/taxes/a-taxpayer-bill-of-rights-for-missouri/

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Duration:: 42m
Broadcast on:: 14 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Show Me and Suit Podcast. I'm Zach Lawhorn from Show Me Opportunity, and today I'm joined by Avery Frank, Elias Chappellis, and David Stokes. Elias, last week we released your and Aaron Headlands co-authored policy brief on a Missouri taxpayer bill of rights, Mo Tabor. Give us an overview, what is the Missouri taxpayer bill of rights, and why is now the time that the policy makers should think about implementing it? - Well, that was a perfect time to be kind of looking at our fiscal house. We're gonna be getting a new governor, a new legislators all across the board, and what we've talked about in the past is that Missouri's budget has doubled over the last five years. We're going down a very troubling path in terms of increasing state spending, and when we look across the country, Missouri's losing ground to states with better tax environment. States like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and in terms of our tax and expenditure limit, the Hancock Amendment, as you mentioned, that isn't really working anymore. Look across the country to a state that what has considered the gold standard of tax and expenditure limits Colorado, they received, every Colorado taxpayer received $800 in refunds last year from, instead of growing their government, their tax receipts were higher there. So that was given back to taxpayers. So we're focusing in Missouri on a better version of the Colorado taxpayer bill of rights, which would be a major improvement on the Hancock Amendment, is as a way to essentially constrain Missouri's government growth, slow it down because this doubling over five years is clearly unsustainable. And when the government grows, we would be returning that to taxpayers via refunds or tax cuts, and that's something that the Hancock Amendment hasn't done for over 20 plus years now where Missourians haven't received a refund. So really, we're trying to rein in Missouri's government growth, and we think now is the perfect time to be focusing on that. - So currently the state has an estimate of what they think they're gonna receive through tax revenues. And if more, if the revenues hire from taxes, they get to keep that money and they can find ways to spend it, they can start new programs. But with Tabor, they would have to go to the voters and say, we have extra money, may we keep it? - Yeah, and so how we're looking at this is essentially the Hancock Amendment was trying to limit government growth by just focusing on revenues. And it was using a metric of personal income, which really has been shown over the last 30, 40 years to be really flawed because what that's saying is that when Missourians are earning more money, that essentially gives the government license to grow. And so what we're saying is with our taxpayer bill of rights, we'll use essentially the metric that Colorado's used, which has been really successful, is the sum of inflation and population growth. So we're saying, let's keep the size of Missouri's government the spending per person the same. So the only reason state spending should go up would be if more people move into the state or the cost of what the government is currently providing increases. And if the government wants to grow faster than that, meaning they would expand services into new things, that should go to voters. And so if revenues come in high, instead of giving the government license to spend that on new things, as we've seen, that would be going back to taxpayers. And I think in Missouri, there's been a little bit of hesitance from the elected officials to go to voters on things. That's what we saw a few years ago with the gas tax increase. You know, that was something that voters had rejected several times. And then it was something, well, the legislature decided to do that on their own. Well, and especially even over the COVID spending over the last several years, we've seen a large growth in terms of how the government is providing childcare, other things like that. So a real expansion of the scope of government, we're trying to lock things in and really kind of turn the power back to voters to say, you know, what level of government services they really want. - One of the areas of taxation that Tabor would reform is property taxes. So if you could, please explain the property tax cap portion of the plan, and then David, I have a question for you. - Sure, so Missourians are already accustomed to getting what are called tax rollbacks with their, when their property tax assessments go up faster than inflation. So that would be the taxes they're paying on, the value of their home. Well, what we've seen in Missouri over the last several years is that we're also paying property taxes on our personal property. And so when the value of used cars went up, especially the last four or five years, a lot of Missourians saw their old cars, the taxes that they're paying the government increase on that. And so that is something that the Hancock Amendment didn't apply to. And so we'd be expanding the rollback provision to personal property taxes. And then something that it's never applied to would be also a commercial property. And so that's something that has been disincentivizing capital investment in Missouri. And so we say the rollback provision of the Hancock Amendment is a good idea. It should stay in place, but we should expand it so that it's covering all types of property. - And David, you talk about property taxes a lot and specifically rollbacks at the municipal level. How would something like this taxpayer bill rights impact property taxes at the local level or would it? - Well, just a quick one. I just had one minor adjustment to what Elias said there. When he talked about the rollbacks and commercial property, we're talking about expanding taper to the commercial surcharge tax, which was a special tax and only commercial property pay. And that's what we need to apply the rollback provision. So commercial property does pay the general property tax and the rollback already applies there. So I just wanted to clarify that. So how, as proposed currently, the taper changes to the property tax system would not be major, the local property tax system it is. I mean, Elias just described the two primary ones, making sure that the rollback rules apply to the surcharge and personal property. And I think those would both be very beneficial to our state. But beyond that, as we currently have it right now, those are the two main changes and improvements to it. - And the other thing, Elias, I found especially interesting, just given the environment that we're in in the taper plan, is this idea of making Missouri more resilient to the possibility of recession. So we've spoken about a few times before how Missouri is constantly ranked as one of the states that is least prepared for a recession. So how would taper help to solve that problem? - Well, Missouri's current rainy day fund is, it's not functional, it is too small, it's too hard to access and it's even harder to repay. So since Missouri's had this rainy day fund, a little over, I wanna say it's 25 years now, the state has never used it a single time for budget stabilization. And so what happens when Missouri experiences a recession or some type of economic emergency, the state really doesn't have any money set aside. So we're sort of left relying on the federal government to bail us out or you're looking at some extreme cuts if needed to the budget, which at a lot of times you're not really trying to do that during a recession. So what we're proposing with the taxpayer bill of rights is what we're calling a recession preparedness fund, which would be a much better, it'd be a little bit bigger rainy day fund that is made specifically for budget stabilization. So it would work. It would essentially be funded with the excess revenues that we would be receiving from tax collections and it would be easier to use. And it would provide the service that a lot of people, I think whenever you start talking about a new tax and expenditure limit, there's concern there of, okay, you're gonna rein in spending. Well, state spending sometimes does have to increase during a recession because you have higher unemployment claims, you have more people going on to Medicaid because they're losing jobs, things like that. And so states do need money and currently we're very reliant on the federal government in that sense. And so what we're trying to focus on here is making it so the state doesn't have to do that. We don't have to make extreme cuts at very difficult times in terms of trying to abide by whatever limits are in place. So it's kind of putting at ease some of the concerns of a new tax and expenditure limit because really we're trying to constrain the growth going forward, trying to stop the next five years from the budget doubling again. But we're not trying to kick the state when it's down and something like that. We're trying to prepare for recessions, get us into better fiscal shape, but also be sure that going forward that this is a taxpayer bill of rights that stands the test of time and kind of keeps Missouri on a better footing going forward. - So would potentially cap spending, they would be tax cuts either through rebates or triggers that lower tax rates in the state. It would help prepare the state better for recessions. What about economic growth? What do you think the impacts on the state's economic growth would be from a Missouri taxpayer bill of rights? - Well, the hope would be that it would really improve the state's economic prospects because as the state is growing and you're not seeing more and more of the state government kind of crowding out private investment by taking all of whatever excess revenues they have and using it to grow government, you're gonna be giving that money back to Missourians. And so that will be money that will be distributed throughout the economy, but also as the longer the taxpayer bill of rights is in effect and you have more refunds or tax cuts that's going to make Missouri more desirable to other states to residents of other states. We're gonna have a much more desirable tax climate because over the last several years, Missouri's basically had some income tax cut triggers that the legislature has passed via statute. What this would do is this would put in the Constitution essentially every time that the government is growing faster than the rate of population and inflation, that that would lower the income tax rate. And so what we've looked at and Aaron Headland has done some simulations on this. And so looking at if we would have had Missouri's taxpayer bill of rights, say that went into effect about 20 years ago, instead of Missouri's top income tax rate currently being 4.8, we'd be somewhere in the mid 3% range right now, which would be, you know, it's not as good as something like Tennessee, which has zero income tax, but over a percentage better today would mean a lot. And I think that would get us closer to attracting residents and improving our economic prospects like you're seeing in states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee. - My final question before we move on, what are the ways that this could be adopted? What does that process look like? - Well, one of the first things we're focusing on is to get some of our elected officials on board with this kind of spreading the word of this idea and, you know, really making clear the path that Missouri's on, the unsustainable spending path. So that's getting, you know, people in Jefferson City are new elected officials and old ones, people working on the budget. And then, you know, the new governor trying to get, you know, the new leaders to see this. And so if the legislature wanted to, they could adopt a taxpayer bill of rights and put that on the ballot, because this would be a constitutional amendment, Missouri voters would have to approve it. So the first route would be, you know, getting our elected officials to, you know, realize that this is a very good path to go down. But if, you know, if not, if there is a little push back there, because it, you know, it would, a tax and expenditure limit in theory would kind of force our elected officials to make some tougher decisions on spending than what they have been doing lately. That is something that, you know, Missourians can take into their own hands and get an initiative petition going. It requires a, you know, number of signatures. We're going to be seeing a lot of initiative petitions this November. I think that was just announced yesterday. So this is something that happens a lot. Missourians are accustomed to it. We're just hoping that we're hoping this is something that Missourians can weigh on sooner rather than later. - You can read the full policy brief and watch the webinar at ShowMeans2.org. - David, there's a discussion about some changes in St. Louis County and their administration, how the governments run, the people that are in the government. What is the current setup and what is the change that is being discussed? - Well, the current setup is that St. Louis County is one of five counties in the state with a charter form of government. And meaning that they had the freedom to sort of establish their own system of local government within common sense rules, within the Missouri Constitution, of course. But so they're a charter form. And right now it would be considered a strong county executive form of government, or a strong more commonly referred to as a strong mayor form, but it's a county, not a city. So meaning that the county executive is certainly the dominant elected official in St. Louis County government and the county council serves as sort of a check on the county executive. That's how the system was designed and how the system has worked since the first charter was passed in 1950. And I think overall has worked fairly well. There have been some exceptions to that in history, of course. But overall, I think it's worked well. Now there's a proposal to really substantially change county government into a county manager system. You hear that term again, like cities more in the phrase of city manager, where cities have a designated appointed bureaucrat, generally hired by the mayor and council of that city, who really runs the day-to-day operation of city government and tries to be apolitical and nonpartisan and all that. I think those positions tend to be more political than people want to admit, but they certainly are less political than somebody like overtly running for reelection. A lot of cities in Missouri have that. I think about 190 cities have either a city manager or a city administrator and thousands and thousands around the country. County manager systems are a little less common, though by no means unheard of. And that's what's being proposed in St. Louis County, meaning to really reduce the power of the county executive in particular, in hire, a day-to-day manager to run county government. It would be in an appointed position serving at the pleasure of the county council and the county executive. And as part of this, the role of the county council would be increased in county government, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've supported efforts over the past decade to make some small changes to the charter to improve the resources that the county council has as a body. So this would be a really major change to go to a county manager form of government to have this appointed bureaucrat, and I don't say that term disparagingly, although I sometimes do, but I'm not doing it right now. To have that appointed person run day-to-day government and appoint the department heads and be in charge of hiring and firing employees and running the operation. So there was a committee hearing on it yesterday. I testified at the hearing, the testimonies up at showmeinstitute.org. And while there are certainly good arguments for it, I myself am generally skeptical. - So you touched on the incentives there a little bit on it. So it's theoretically, it's an apolitical position. So maybe they're not worried about optics as much, but what are some of the other ways that the incentives of hiring a professional bureaucrat would differ from someone who is in a political position? - Let me put it like this. The research shows that under professional management, some things get better, one thing gets worse, and a number of things, there's just not much evidence that there's any difference. So some of the things that get better, there does tend to be less overt criminal level corruption, which has been an issue in county government over the past decade. Financial preparation, budgeting, reporting, auditing tends to be better under professional management. And I think the incentive there is that professional managers, they get judged on the quality of budgeting and auditing and financial reporting. That's like, that goes on their resume if they get certain rewards or honors for that. So those things tend to be clearly better. Also, there is less politics overall. And politics is an automatically a bad thing. These are political offices. But there does tend to be, as measured various ways, less political, Republican versus Democrat, fighting over minor issues in a professional management. And I think that's probably, well, that's not probably, that's definitely a good thing. But there's also a number of areas, important areas of local government that there's really no evidence, there's much of a difference. There may be, but the evidence doesn't show that. And taxes and spending are one, quality of local government services are a big one. Crime, there's no evidence that crime is any different under city or county managers or politicians. Those are three major ones. And without that type of evidence that the overall quality of services are going to employ pay, there's no difference in that. And that was something a number of council members asked about last night. So without evidence, a lot of those things get better under professional management. I'm still really, really skeptical of this move. I'm in philosophical terms, I'm opposed to turning over more of control of our government to the bureaucracy and less to people, politicians responding directly to voters. But more importantly than that sort of general feeling is I just don't see the evidence that supporters of the county manager system claim. I don't think it's really there in a lot of important instances. At the hearing was, did there seem to be a consensus of reasons for support? So were the people who liked this idea, were they citing corruption, like he said, reduction in crime, saving money? Or was it just everyone had their own benefit that they thought this would lead to? Well, the two people who primarily spoke in favor, both city managers from St. Louis County, one recently retired. They both give very, they both give excellent presentations, very, very insightful and informative. And they both tended to talk more on the lack of politics in the day-to-day operations of the government. In their cases and their cities, it's probably true. I think both of these gentlemen have been successful as city managers, but there's plenty of examples, alternatively, where I think there are, certainly are politics in the city manager position. So they talk about the lack of politics, the consistency in that department heads, and employees know that an election day isn't necessarily gonna bring in a whole new slate of people who are gonna change all their employees. Those were really the formats. And then they talked about, they do then start talking about things like service quality and consistency. And things like that, they're sort of an assumption that things get better under city manager. And that's one of the key points I wanted to make in my testimony yesterday, is that a lot of the things people claim to be good reasons for a county manager system. And I keep saying city manager because most of the academic research on it is on the more common city manager position. That a lot of the benefits of it, people are claiming and they might be true, but they're not automatically true, like it's not evidence for it. Doesn't make it wrong, but there's just not the evidence that people, they speak of it as if there's strong evidence for a lot of these claims. And too often there just isn't. And so that was one of the points I made there, along with one of my big problems with city manager positions, is that they often come with what would be called non-interference clauses, meaning rules against elected officials, contacting city employees other than the city manager. And usually you're allowed to ask questions of them for purposes of inquiry would be the phrasing. But I wanted to, if they move ahead with this, I suggested strongly, and I think a few members on the board seem to agree, that there needs to be very clear language and that elected officials do have a right to contact city employees and ask questions, make inquiries, make suggestions. They might not be able to order somebody around or interfere with their work, but you should be able to talk to your city employees and not just the city manager or county manager and department heads. So that was one of the things I stressed. - What are the major differences in getting rid of a professional administrator, a city manager as opposed to a county executive? I assume that it's a political process for the county executive, since the manager is appointed by the county council, they can get rid of the administrator any time they want to. - They can, yeah. And that's it. The cities I follow, and this was discussed last night, you tend to have either cities that have a lot of turnover 'cause I can't find the right person. And then when you do find the right person, they tend to stick around for a long time. So that can be a very good thing. Maplewood, for instance, had a city manager that was there in Maplewood for like 30 years in the 1990 through 2020 or something like that. Then they replaced him and the new city manager and the new mayor didn't get along. So they got rid of that city manager and then the mayor tried to sort of put the fix in. And there was sort of machinations here to hire somebody, a supporter of hers that wasn't really qualified for the position. And then the voters threw the mayor out of office. So sort of Maplewood is a city that has seen both instances of this in the last few years. But yeah, it's not hard. Sometimes it should be no more complicated than a majority vote. And with agreement by the mayor depending or county executive, depending on how you set that up, sometimes a super majority vote would be required. So that would really depend on what the county charter, if amended by voters, would say. But it should be fairly simple to remove the county manager. - So the voters have to amend the county charter. So that's the next step? - The next step is to put this bill before the voters based on the committee hearing yesterday that certainly didn't seem that was guaranteed to happen. Based on deadlines, they'd have to pass this bill and put it on the ballot within the next two weeks, I think, to make the November ballot. That could happen, it also might not. And I don't think it would be a bad thing if the process were slowed down to make sure that the way it's formed and the charter changes are better before it goes to the ballot, perhaps next year. All that said, I don't necessarily see myself supporting this. I think while city managers are an effective way to run municipal governments, especially sort of mid-sized suburbs and mid-sized cities and towns, I'm not convinced that they also make sense at the county level. - All right, well, a lot to keep track of and I'm sure you'll keep us up to date. Avery, it's back to school time. And so we just got some fresh test results, some reading and math scores. How are we doing? What'd they say? - I love a good comeback story. And whether it's in movies, TV shows, books, you name it, I'm a sucker for a good comeback story. And when Missouri scores dropped in math and ELA from after the COVID-19 pandemic, I was really hoping that we would be one of these comeback stories and I'd enjoy it and I'd just be so fired up at our schools and our students are getting back on track. But sadly, that hasn't come to fruition, really. There's some silver linings we can glean. You know, in the most recent, 2023, 2024 Missouri Assessment Program, which is our state assessment program. And the most recent results, math scores did go up, they went up 2% and they've now surpassed our pre-pandemic levels. So we can be happy about that, we can feel good about that. But our ELA scores are English language arts. Those scores are still very low, they have not bounced back at all. And I think as we go up, upcoming in these upcoming years, we really gotta hone in on what's going on with our reading scores. But we gotta make sure to get those reading scores coming back up and keep the trajectory for the math scores. - So I think the reading discussion is interesting because there's not only debate about the scores, the results, the outcomes, but there's also a lot of debate about some of the tactics being used to teach reading. So tell me about some of the differences that are being discussed about how to teach reading. - Missouri has been trying recently to slowly start incorporating evidence-based reading, which is a big focus on phonics, on digging into the real science of reading. Reading's not a natural thing to the human brain. I mean, you think of history, illiteracy rates were really high. Not too long ago, they were very high. And now it's flipped as we've taught people how to read. People have always been able to speak, but people haven't always been able to read. It's not naturally, it's a science and something has to be taught. And with that, that means there are better ways to teach it than others. And there have been a lot of studies from the US Congress, from multiple scientists, from education researchers about how evidence-based reading, which focuses a lot on using phonics, is very beneficial and the best way to teach reading. And Missouri, it's dabbling into that with its letters program. It's trying to get a lot of our educators in on it, trying to get them to use it in their classroom. But it's still not mandatory. For only students that are at risk for dyslexia, or have dyslexia, are required to be taught with evidence-based reading and with phonics. And with all the reams and reams of research that back evidence for based reading, I don't understand why it would only be limited to them. And when we look at other states that have succeeded in reading scores in the post-pandemic area, we look at South Carolina, we look at Mississippi, we look at Tennessee. These three states have evidence-based reading instruction mandatory for their teachers and in their classrooms. South Carolina have seen their scores jump nine points higher than pre-pandemic scores. Mississippi has seen its jump five points higher, Tennessee three points higher. In Missouri, we're five points lower. We are not bouncing back from the pre-pandemic levels. And I think that evidence-based reading, we've seen it work in other states. And I think we should just commit to it, go for it, and try to incorporate it in all of our classrooms. - So for the trying to address learning loss during the pandemic, as you said, there are some states, some surrounding states in Missouri that are seeing, I don't know, these shape recovery might be a little bit too, but there definitely are states where the recovery is at a steeper angle than Missouri. And 727 was passed last session as fall starts. Beyond the evidence-based reading, are there any other things being planned to try and make up for this learning loss that we're not seeing the recovery as dramatic as other states? - Missouri has, I won't talk about it too much 'cause we've talked about it a lot, but Missouri has really dabbled into the four-day school week a lot, which has been shown not to improve reading scores, not to improve academic scores. And Missouri needs to just focus on things that do improve scores 'cause our students really need it. We markets matter in education, free markets matter in education, competition matters in education, and there's a lot of school choice policies that I think could increase competitions and make our schools just better overall, not just in ELA, but in math and science and social studies and history, and so many different things. And I think that open enrollment ESA programs, letting parents and students get matched to schools that meet their preferences and letting schools have to compete with one another to make themselves better so they can get these students. I think these are things that have proven beneficial in other states, and I hope that Missouri can really lean into free market principles to help make our education system better. - You know, we keep hearing about how English and math scores are not improving in the four-day school week system, but I think it's important that we know that it's my understanding that video games scores of Missouri children are dramatically improving in schools with the four-day school week, being that you now have three days a week to stay home and do nothing but play video games instead of just two. And I think it's important that we talk about the pluses of this as well. - You just don't hear about it, it's not being reported. I don't know why the media is falling behind on that story. Avery, you make a very good point about why the free market is important and especially in education. And it's convenient that we've just published a paper by Mike McShane up at showmeansuit.org. Why markets matter for education? So people should go there and check that out. One more education topic, Avery, I want to touch on. There's been a lot of, I'll say drama, a lot of things going on in the St. Louis Public Schools district, the superintendent recently left. There'll be more on that later, but as they started the school year, they don't have a bus provider. So they're having to do some innovative, interesting things to get kids to school. So what does that look like as school is starting the next couple of days? - So Missouri is big, I mean, St. Louis Public Schools, biggest bus vendor, they just canceled on them a year early and it left the administration just reeling 'cause they only now have a little bit over half of their bus fleet. So that's gonna be, that's gonna be a lot of trouble. That's gonna be a big thing, a big endeavor. They're gonna have to undergo. They have an emergency plan. And we think of looking at the stats from last year when they had their full bus fleet, you had 56% of your bus seats were empty and 25% of your routes had less than nine students. That efficiency is not gonna work this year when you have a little over half your buses. And so St. Louis Public Schools, they're having to make some big changes. They're having to actually divide their schools into three tiers. One tier will start at 7.15 and get out at two. One will start at 8.15, get out at three and one will start at 9.25, get out at 4.22. So the traffic for following school buses is gonna be a little different and it's gonna be a little more widespread this year. And they're also giving out Metro Passes. They're partnering with ride sharing companies. And I've seen like a lot of Facebook groups doing carpooling groups where parents are meeting together to try to get their kids to school. So there's a lot of different strategies they're employing to try to make up for this emergency. And I think, and while there is a lot of reason to be concerned, I think there is some reason to be hopeful that in this emergency they can actually find some more ways to be efficient. They're gonna be trying out microtransit which is the use of buses for students that are clustered a little further away. And that could be a good strategy to keep in the long run. They might look into carpool stipends which you directly pay parents to drive your kid to school. And some other cities like Philadelphia have done that successfully where you can get paid to drive your student to school either before or after. And I think with this, they can find ways to make it more efficient when they are back to full strength. - One of the problems we've talked about is chronic absenteeism. Do you have any thoughts on how a new 715 start time for some schools could impact that? - I don't know if everyone listening can think back to their time in high school but I know when I was in high school when I had to drive myself to school I'd be thinking like, maybe I can just lay in bed today, you know? It's real early, 715, I gotta go get a shower to get ready to go. And now we're asking students to get up even earlier than that to make it to school by 715 for high school students. That's a really hard ask. And St. Louis public schools particularly, their high school has really struggled with their chronic absenteeism. So proportional attendance rate, which is the measure you use to measure chronic absenteeism basically means it measures the percent of students that went to class 90% or more. So 90% of the days, did they attend more than that? And so last year, Missouri's high, I mean St. Louis city's public school system, only 38.4% of their students went to class 90% or more days. That's really low. And it's really, and it's, our whole state is struggling with chronic absenteeism but this district in particular is really struggling with it. When you look at the rest of the state for their high schools, it's about 85% is their proportional attendance rate. So St. Louis public school is about 50 points lower than the average. And now we're asking students to go, those high school students to go even earlier when there's been a lot of studies out there that have come to the conclusion that earlier start times actually decrease attendance rate. And so I'm personally a little concerned with that policy. - That's an astonishing statistic. 38% of city high school students showed up more than 90% of the time and 90% that's not very good if you're only in school nine out of 10 days but 38% were at that level or better. And now they've substantially increased the start made earlier, the start time of the day and taken away lost the buses to get there. So now kids have to take high school kids as my understanding are getting bus passes. So now I have to figure out their own systems. I mean, I too would be deeply concerned that that 38% is gonna fall significantly further. - I think so and we'll keep an eye on the, like I said, there's a lot going on with the St. Louis public schools and there's a lot of reporting left to be done and we'll find out more, sounds like there's gonna be a state audit and yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Instead of our normal closing segment of what you're looking forward to over the next week, I wanna end with looking backwards with David and then forwards there was an election a couple of weeks ago, we talked a lot about Amendment One, it was defeated. So if you wanna give some reflections on that and then where does this childcare affordability conversation go from here? - Well, Amendment One was the proposal to make all childcare facilities in the state tax example from all property taxes, except importantly, home-based childcare facilities, like say a mom taking in watching her kids and a few neighbor kids at their house. That wasn't included in it, it shouldn't have been, but just more evidence as to why the whole proposal was a bad idea. Keep in mind, many childcare facilities affiliated with churches, schools, whatever are already tax exempt. So this was sort of focused on the for-profit childcare industry, and I have nothing wrong with for-profit childcare centers, but I don't see why they deserve tax exemptions that other businesses don't get. So it was, I was delighted that it was defeated by about 10 points, I think it was about 5545. We had a letter to the editor that expressed the policy problems with this proposal around the state and number of newspapers ran it, which we really appreciate. You can see that on the website as well. Talked about it on talk radio live. It was just great to see the voters see that this idea of narrowing the property tax base further really was gonna have harms to our tax system and just benefit a very small industry. And I'm delighted to see it was rejected by the voters. - And so where do we go from here? - Where do we go from here? Great question. Mostly, we need to resist the efforts to further license and regulate daycare and childcare. Missouri has overall pretty decent rules on that. I don't compare to other states, our rules are not all that strict nor should they be. Famously, in this regard, if you follow these things closely, a year or so ago, Washington DC passed a law that all daycare and childcare providers had to have a college degree, which is of course a proposition so ludicrous that you can't even imagine it would be passed. Why would you not allow a young person, a college student to work part-time in a daycare center while in college or out of college? And the idea that you need a college degree for this work is preposterous, not that it's not important, it's very important, but there's no connection to being good at this job with having a college degree. So we need to resist the efforts to further regulate and license the industry in Missouri. And we need to just allow churches, individual residents who want to have their house operated as a daycare in their neighborhood and all these people provide this service. And if companies want to start putting daycare centers on their sites, which in part this proposal was aimed at, like large companies making a portion of their campus, a daycare center for their employees' children, I think that's a wonderful thing. I don't think taxpayers need to subsidize that. The expenses for doing so, I'm not an accountant, but I believe that would be a business expense that you could write, that you could include in your taxes. And I think that's far enough. - I do think, well, I have a couple of things to add on this. So I do think that Missouri's elected officials, specifically in our legislature, should look at those election results before going into the next legislative session to sort of decide where their priorities are, because last year there was a big push for a suite of childcare tax credits, so one for businesses. The other two did a variety of different methods to try to subsidize the childcare industry, but it wasn't an especially close vote here. Missourians aren't really decided on how the best way to handle childcare is. And so regardless of whether there are some businesses that would like some tax benefits to build out a daycare center, I think Missourians don't necessarily, it's not clear that they want that. And so I think the legislature should go back to the drawing board in terms of what they think they should be doing, because going back to the tax credits that they didn't get across the finish line last year and just passing those because the voters didn't want to give tax incentives, I think is an especially bad idea. And then in terms of the budgetary topic, I think the state should also resist the urge to expand its subsidized childcare program, because there's a lot of push for that, especially now that the federal government has pulled back some of the money that they were providing for that, which is a program that Missouri does have and will need to keep that the federal government largely pays for childcare for the lowest income Missourians. But if the state wants to start funding more of that out of our tax dollars, as opposed to a federal thing, and you start having the state providing, responsible for providing the childcare for more and more citizens and setting the rates for what those childcare issues will be. So if you think there is a shortage of childcare providers now or the cost is too high, just wait till Missouri government takes over more of that sector and see what happens. But I don't think it will be good. I don't think Missourians are ready for the government to take over that sector. So I think it's time to kind of take a step back. And if it really is such a major issue in Missouri that needs addressing, I think there should be some different approaches considered. - Missouri taxpayer bill of rights, why markets matter for education, blogs, testimony, podcasts, all at showmeinstitute.org. Elias, David, Avery, thank you very much. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)