Voice For Liberty

Tag: Regulation

  • At Kansas Board of Education, some questions aren’t allowed

    At a meeting of the Kansas State Board of Education, it became clear that there are certain topics and questions that aren’t to be discussed in public.

    At September’s meeting (video here), BOE chair David Dennis interrupted questioning by board member Walt Chappell and proceeded to the next member’s questions. Chappell was asking whether “cut scores” had declined and whether definitions of “meets standard” and “proficiency” had changed. Dennis would not allow these questions to be answered.

    It’s clear that Dennis — and the entire Kansas public school bureaucracy — doesn’t want to talk about these questions. Here’s why.

    Until this year, scores on Kansas-administered and controlled assessments have been rising — “jumping,” in the recent words of Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker. But scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Kansas students don’t reflect the same trend. Scores on this test, which is given every two years, haven’t been rising as they have on the Kansas-controlled test scores. Sometimes they decline.

    We now know why the Kansas-controlled test scores have risen: The Kansas State Department of Education has lowered standards. Kansas Policy Institute has done the research.

    In Removing Barriers to Better Public Education, updated in June with new data, KPI concludes: “In 2000 and 2001 a student needed at least 87% correct answers in Reading to be Proficient (the second-highest performance level), but from 2002 through 2005 they only needed 80% correct answers to be Proficient (the third highest level) on the same test; Proficiency in Math required only 48% correct answers, down from 60%.”

    It’s not only KPI that has noticed that Kansas schools have low standards. Data from U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveals that Kansas has low standards for its schools, compared to other states.

    These are the types of things the Kansas school public school establishment doesn’t want Kansans to know. Board of Education chair David Dennis uses his authority to silence those who might mention these facts.

    While Dennis squelches those who ask inconvenient questions about Kansas public schools, he floated a proposal to increase regulation of homeschooling in Kansas. It’s simply incredible that someone presiding over a failing system — and proud to be part of that system — would want to extend his influence and control over people who have taken great effort to escape the public schools.

    Related: Test scores decline; educators quick to blame funding cuts

  • Special interests will capture south-central Kansas planning

    Special interest groups are likely to co-opt the government planning process started in south-central Kansas as these groups see ways to benefit from the plan. The public choice school of economics and political science has taught us how special interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society, and we will see this at play over the next few years.

    Sedgwick County has voted to participate in a HUD Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant. While some justified their votes in favor of the plan because “it’s only a plan,” once the planning process begins, special interests plot to benefit themselves at the expense of the general public. Once the plan is formed, it’s nearly impossible to revise it, no matter how evident the need.

    An example of how much reverence is given to government plans comes right from the U.S. Supreme Court in the decision Kelo v. New London, in which the Court decided that government could use the power of eminent domain to take one person’s property and transfer it to someone else for the purposes of economic development. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Stevens cited the plan: “The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community.” Here we see the importance of the plan and due reverence given to it.

    Stevens followed up, giving even more weight to the plan: “To effectuate this plan, the City has invoked a state statute that specifically authorizes the use of eminent domain to promote economic development. Given the comprehensive character of the plan, the thorough deliberation that preceded its adoption, and the limited scope of our review, it is appropriate for us, as it was in Berman, to resolve the challenges of the individual owners, not on a piecemeal basis, but rather in light of the entire plan. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.”

    To Stevens, the fact that the plan was comprehensive was a factor in favor of its upholding. The sustainable communities plan, likewise, is nothing but comprehensive, as described by county manager Bill Buchanan in a letter to commissioners: “[the plan will] consist of multi-jurisdictional planning efforts that integrate housing, land use, economic and workforce development, transportation, and infrastructure investments in a manner that empowers jurisdictions to consider the interdependent challenges of economic prosperity, social equity, energy use and climate change, and public health and environmental impact.”

    That pretty much covers it all. When you’re charged with promoting economic prosperity, defending earth against climate change, and promoting public health, there is no limit to the types of laws you might consider.

    Who will plan?

    The American Planning Association praised the Court’s notice of the importance of a plan, writing “This decision underscores the importance for a community to have a comprehensive development plan formulated through a democratic planning process with meaningful public participation by everyone.”

    But these plans are rarely by and for the public. Almost always the government planning process is taken over and captured by special interests. We see this in public schools, where the planning and campaigning for new facilities is taken over by architectural and construction firms that see school building as a way to profit. It does not matter to them whether the schools are needed.

    Our highway planning is hijacked by construction firms that stand to benefit, whether or not new roads are actually needed.

    Our planning process for downtown Wichita is run by special interest groups that believe that downtown has a special moral imperative, and another group that sees downtown as just another way to profit at taxpayer expense. Both believe that taxpayers across Wichita, Kansas, and even the entire country must pay to implement their vision. As shown in Kansas and Wichita need pay-to-play laws the special interests that benefit from public spending on downtown make heavy political campaign contributions to nearly all members of the Wichita City Council. They don’t have a political ideology. They contribute only because they know council members will be voting to give them money.

    In Wichita’s last school bond election, 72 percent of the contributions, both in-kind and cash, was given by contractors, architects, engineering firms and others who directly stand to benefit from new school construction, no matter whether schools are actually needed. The firm of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture led the way in making these contributions. It’s not surprising that this firm was awarded a no-bid contract for plan management services for the bond issue valued at $3.7 million. This firm will undoubtedly earn millions more for those projects on which it serves as architect.

    The special interest groups that benefit from highway construction: They formed a group called Economic Lifelines. It says it was formed to “provide the grassroots support for Comprehensive Transportation Programs in Kansas.” Its motto is “Stimulating economic vitality through leadership in infrastructure development.”

    A look at the membership role, however, lets us know whose economic roots are being stimulated. Membership is stocked with names like AFL-CIO, Foley Equipment Company, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Kansas Aggregate & Concrete Associations, Kansas Asphalt Pavement Association, Kansas Contractors Association, Kansas Society of Professional Engineers, and PCA South Central Cement Promotion Association. Groups and companies like these have an economic interest in building more roads and highways, whether or not the state actually needs them.

    The planners themselves are a special interest group, too. They need jobs. Like most government bureaucrats, they “profit” from increasing their power and sphere of influence, and by expansion of their budgets and staffs. So when Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Skelton asks a professional planner questions about the desirability of planning, what answer does he think he will get? It’s not that the planners are not honest people. But they have a vested economic and professional interest in seeing that we have more government planning, not less.

    And we have evidence that planners watch out for themselves. It is not disputed that this planning grant benefits Regional Economic Area Partnership (REAP). Sedgwick County Commissioner Richard Ranzau says that John Schlegel, Wichita’s Director of Planning, told him that “acceptance of this grant will take REAP to another level, because right now they are struggling, and this will help plot the course for REAP.” He said that REAP, which is housed at the Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs at Wichita State University, needs to expand its role and authority in order to give it “something to do.”

    We see that REAP is another special interest group seeking to benefit itself. In this case, our best hope is that REAP engages in merely make-work, that the plan it produces is put on a shelf and ignored, and that the only harm to us is the $1.5 million cost of the plan.

    By the way, did you know that Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Unruh, who voted in favor of the plan that benefits REAP, is now chairman of REAP? Special interest groups know how to play the political game.

  • Municipal stormwater regulation on White House agenda

    Some scoff at those who raise warnings about overreaching federal regulation. But even though the national economy is suffering and we are drowning in debt, the administration of President Barack Obama can find time to meddle in the regulation of municipal stormwater.

    Following is an email from NACo, the National Association of Counties, to county commissioners, presumably across the nation. The email, which presumes that “green” stormwater management practices are most desirable, asks for suggestions from commissioners to present at a national conference on the topic, hosted by the White House.

    The agenda for the conference is White House Conference Municipal Stormwater Infrastructure: Going From Grey to Green. Following is the email commissioners received.

    From: Julie Ufner [mailto:jufner@naco.org]
    Subject: Green Infrastructure Information Request

    Next week, I will be representing NACo at the White House’s Stormwater Infrastrucutre [sic] event. The White House asked participants to be prepared to discuss the questions below. If you have any comments or responses to the questions, please feel free to forward those responses no later than COB on Wednesday, September 19th.

    1. What do you see as the most significant barriers to the wider use of green infrastructure practices to manage municipal stormwater?

    2. What steps should federal agencies, communities, or others take to promote the use of green infrastructure practices in municipal stormwater management?

    3. Are there specific infrastructure practices, or categories of practices, that you believe are most effective, provide the greatest benefits, or are most easily implemented?

    4. Are there funding strategies for municipal green infrastructure that you have employed and would recommend?

    Thank you in advance for any comments you may have.

    Julie Ufner
    Associate Legislative Director
    Environment, Energy and Land Use
    National Association of Counties
    202-942-4269
    jufner@naco.org

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Thursday September 6, 2012

    Debbie Wasserman Schultz lies about lying

    During these convention weeks, advocates on both sides have been fact-checking the other side, and charges are being made about which side is the biggest, boldest liar. But when people lie about lying … that’s a whole new level. Human Events reports on DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and sums up this way: “It was already common knowledge that Wasserman Schultz is a serial liar — on one memorable recent occasion, when CNN host Wolf Blitzer called her out for lying about Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposals, she essentially insisted that the urgency of her political agenda gives her the right to lie as necessary.” See Debbie Wasserman Schultz Caught Lying about Lying.

    Speaking of facts and Politifact

    What happens when the fact checker of record isn’t reliable? That’s the situation Politifact finds itself in, according to reporting by Jon Cassidy in Human Events: “Once widely regarded as a unique, rigorous and reasonably independent investigator of political claims, PolitiFact now declares conservatives wrong three times more often than liberals. More pointedly, the journalism organization concludes that conservatives have flat out lied nine times more often than liberals.” More at PolitiFact bias: Does the GOP tell nine times more lies than left? Really?

    Your share of the debt

    Now that the U.S. national debt has passed $16 trillion (or $16,000,000 million as I like to say) you might be interested in learning the magnitude of your personal liability. The Economic Freedom Project has a calculator to tell you. Click on What’s Your Lifetime Share of the National Debt?

    Pachyderms to host House candidates

    This week the Wichita Pachyderm Club features Republican candidates for the Kansas House of Representatives. Scheduled to appear are: Jim Howell (District 81), John Stevens (86), George F. “Joe” Edwards II (93), Benny Boman (95), and Phil Hermanson (98). The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. Meetings are Fridays at noon, in the Wichita Petroleum Club on the top floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway. The meeting costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch and beverage. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Even garage sales can’t escape the regulatory regime

    Kansas Policy Institute comments on garage sale regulations in Wichita.

    Apply for Wichita’s civilian sign corps

    Related to garage sale signs, Wichitans can now apply to be part of the civilian sign enforcement patrol. The city has made these documents available on its website: Overview of the Volunteer Sign Removal Program and Sign Removal Volunteer Application. If you want to participate in this program, you’ll need to complete a volunteer sign removal application, complete the required training course, sign a liability release, sign an oath or statement agreeing to abide by city codes and the program rules, submit to and successfully pass a background check, have valid Kansas drivers license, have a currently registered vehicle in good operating condition, have current vehicle insurance, commit to a geographic area and time, commit to safety first; appropriately use provided vests and tools, commit to provide required reports, commit to dispose of signs as directed, commit to wear the provided identification badge, and commit to allowing only authorized (city trained and approved) persons to remove signs. The city also advises applicants to check with their insurance agents for coverage relative to the use of vehicles in this program. I can’t imagine most auto insurance companies will be happy that their customers are using their cars in a quasi-law enforcement application. … For more on why this law is a bad idea, see Proposed Wichita sign ordinance problematic.

    Activists organize!

    As a result of an excellent day-long training session recently produced in Wichita by Campaign for Liberty, activists that support limited government and free markets are meeting regularly. For information about the Wichita meetings, contact John Axtell.

    The seven rules of bureaucracy

    In this article, authors Loyd S. Pettegrew and Carol A. Vance quote Thomas Sowell: “When the government creates some new program, nothing is easier than to show whatever benefits that program produces. … But it is virtually impossible to trace the taxes that paid for the program back to their sources and to show the alternative uses of that same money that could have been far more beneficial.” In order to understand the foundation of America’s morass, we must examine bureaucracy. At the root of this growing evil is the very nature of bureaucracy, especially political bureaucracy. French economist Frédéric Bastiat offered an early warning in 1850 that laws, institutions, and acts — the stuff of political bureaucracy — produce economic effects that can be seen immediately, but that other, unforeseen effects happen much later. He claimed that bad economists look only at the immediate, seeable effects and ignore effects that come later, while good economists are able to look at the immediate effects and foresee effects, both good and bad, that come later. … Both the seen and the unseen have become a necessary condition of modern bureaucracy. (Bastiat: That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.) The first rule? “Maintain the problem at all costs!”

    Democracy, or majority rule?

    A new video from LearnLiberty.org, a project of Institute for Humane Studies is titled Should Majorities Decide Everything? To me, the most important part is near the end, when the speaker says that without a properly limited government, rule by majority “substitute[s] the tyranny of a king with the tyranny of a larger group.” LearnLiberty also explains: “According to Professor Munger, democratic constitutions consist of two parts: one defining the limits within which decisions can be made democratically, and the other establishing the process by which decisions will be made. In the United States Constitution, the individual is protected from majority decisions. Professor Munger warns, however, that these protections are slowly being stripped away as American courts of law fail to recognize the limits of what can be decided by majority rule.”

  • Minimum wage increase not a solution

    Those who advocate for a higher minimum wage law appear to have the best interests of workers as their concern. But as is almost always the case when government intervenes into markets, the unintended consequences create more harm than good.

    In the case of the federal minimum wage, we need to remember that this law — as well-intentioned as it may be — is not the solution to unemployment or raising the standard of living of workers.

    The great appeal of a higher minimum wage mandated by an act of Congress is that it seems like a simple and harmless way to increase the wellbeing of low-wage workers. Those who were earning less than the new lawful wage and keep their jobs after the increase are happy. They are grateful to the lawmakers, labor leaders, newspaper editorialists, and others who pleaded for the higher minimum wage. News stories will report their good fortune.

    That’s the visible effect of raising the minimum wage. But to understand the entire issue, we must look for the unseen effects. Milton Friedman explained in Capitalism and Freedom:

    Minimum wage laws are about as clear a case as one can find of a measure the effects of which are precisely the opposite of those intended by the men of good will who support it. Many proponents of minimum wage laws quite properly deplore extremely low rates; they regard them as a sign of poverty; and they hope, by outlawing wage rates below some specified level, to reduce poverty. In fact, insofar as minimum wage laws have any effect at all, their effect is clearly to increase poverty. The state can legislate a minimum wage rate. It can hardly require employers to hire at that minimum all who were formerly employed at wages below the minimum. … The effect of the minimum wage is therefore to make unemployment higher than it otherwise would be.

    The not-so-visible effect of the higher wage law is that demand for labor will be reduced. Those workers whose productivity — as measured by the give and take of supply and demand — lies below the new lawful wage rate are in danger of losing their jobs. The minimum wage law says if you hire someone you must pay them a certain minimum amount. The law can’t compel you to hire someone, nor can it force employers to keep workers on the payroll.

    The people who lose their jobs are dispersed. A few workers here; a few there. They may not know who is to blame for their situation. Newspaper and television reporters will not seek these people, as they are largely invisible, especially so in the case of the people who are not hired because of the higher minimum wage level.

    Some things employers do to compensate for higher labor costs include these:

    • Reduce non-wage benefits such as health insurance.
    • Eliminate overtime hours that many employees rely on.
    • Substitute machines for labor. We might see more self-service checkout lanes at supermarkets and more use of automated telephone response systems, for example.
    • Use illegal labor. Examples include paying employees under the table, or requiring work off-the-clock.
    • Some employers may be more willing to bear the risks of using undocumented workers who can’t complain that they aren’t being paid the minimum wage.
    • Some employers may decide that the risks and hassles of being in business aren’t worth it anymore, and will close shop.

    Solution to low wages

    If we are truly concerned about the plight of low-wage and low-skilled workers we can face some realities and deal with them openly. The primary reality is that some people are not able to produce output that our economy values highly. These workers are not very productive. Passing a law that requires employers to pay them more doesn’t change the fact that their productivity is low. But there are ways to increase productivity.

    One way to increase workers’ productivity is through education. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that our public education system is not producing graduates with the skills needed for well-paying jobs. But this is a problem that can be fixed.

    Another way to increase wages is to encourage more capital investment. But capital is a dirty word to liberals, as it conjures up images of rich people earning income from the labors of others. But as the economist Walter E. Williams says, ask yourself this question: who earns the higher wage: a man digging a ditch with a shovel, or a man digging a ditch using a power backhoe? The difference between the two is that the man using the backhoe is more productive, although the worker using the shovel is undoubtedly working harder. But it is productivity, not work effort, that is valued. That productivity is provided by capital — the savings that someone accumulated (instead of spending on immediate consumption or taxes) and invested in a way that increased the output of workers and our economy.

    These savers and investors are not necessarily wealthy people. Anyone who defers current consumption in order to save and invest — no matter how small the amount — provides capital to industry.

    Education and capital accumulation are the two best ways to increase the productivity and the wages of workers. Ironically, the people who are most vocal about raising wages through legislative fiat are also usually opposed to meaningful education reform and school choice, insisting on more resources being poured into the present system. They also usually support higher taxes on both individuals and business, which makes it harder to accumulate capital. These people and organizations should examine the effects of the policies they promote, as they are not in alignment with their stated goals.

    Minimum wage as competitive weapon

    We also need to examine the motivations of those calling for a higher minimum wage. Sometimes they see a way gain a competitive advantage.

    In 2005 Walmart came out in favor of raising the national minimum wage. Providing an example of how regulation is pitched as needed for the common good, Walmart’s CEO said that he was concerned for the plight of working families, and that he thought the current minimum wage of $5.15 per hour was too low. If Walmart — a company the political left loves to hate as much as any other — can be in favor of increased regulation of the workplace, can regulation be a good thing? Had Walmart discovered the joys of big government?

    The answer is yes. Walmart discovered a way of using government regulation as a competitive weapon. This is often the motivation for business support of regulation. In the case of Walmart, it was already paying its employees well over the current minimum wage. At the time, some sources thought that the minimum wage could be raised as much as 50 percent and not cause Walmart any additional cost — its employees already made that much.

    But its competitors didn’t pay wages that high. If the minimum wage rose very much, these competitors to Walmart would be forced to increase their wages. Their costs would rise. Their ability to compete with Walmart would be harmed.

    In short, Walmart supported government regulation in the form of a higher minimum wage as a way to impose higher costs on its competitors. It found a way to compete outside the marketplace. And it did it while appearing noble.

  • Republicans recognize overcriminalization

    A section of the platform agreed to at the Republican National Convention expresses concern over the rise of overcriminalization:

    “The resources of the federal government’s law enforcement and judicial systems have been strained by two unfortunate expansions: the over-criminalization of behavior and the over-federalization of offenses. The number of criminal offenses in the U.S. Code increased from 3,000 in the early 1980s to over 4,450 by 2008. Federal criminal law should focus on acts by federal employees or acts committed on federal property — and leave the rest to the States. Then Congress should withdraw from federal departments and agencies the power to criminalize behavior, a practice which, according to the Congressional Research Service, has created ‘tens of thousands’ of criminal offenses. No one other than an elected representative should have the authority to define a criminal act and set criminal penalties. In the same way, Congress should reconsider the extent to which it has federalized offenses traditionally handled on the State or local level.”

    Overcriminalization has risen to become a serious threat to the freedom and liberty of citizens, placing increasing and arbitrary power in the hands of federal officials. According to The Heritage Foundation, overcriminalization is characterized by these factors:

    1. The use of strict liability crimes (i.e., offenses that dispense with the requirement that a person act with a “guilty mind,” however defined) to outlaw conduct, particularly in commercial and regulatory fields;
    2. The passage of several laws applicable to the same conduct, which enables prosecutors to multiply charges and thereby threaten a person with a severe term of imprisonment if he does not accept a plea bargain;
    3. The delegation to administrative agencies of the responsibility for filling in the details of a substantive criminal law, which thereby vests in the agency responsible for enforcing the law the power also to define its terms; and
    4. Enforcing through the criminal law conduct that, if it is to be enforced by the government at all, should be enforced through administrative or civil mechanisms.

    The first item should be particularly troubling to citizens, as it removes one of the elements necessary to convict someone of a crime — that the person intended to commit a crime. The Heritage Foundation paper Without Intent: How Congress Is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law explains:

    “A core principle of the American system of justice is that individuals should not be subjected to criminal prosecution and conviction unless they intentionally engage in inherently wrongful conduct or conduct that they know to be unlawful. Only in such circumstances is a person truly blameworthy and thus deserving of criminal punishment. This is not just a legal concept; it is the fundamental anchor of the criminal justice system.”

    After noting the 4,450 federal laws and estimating that tens of thousands more are located in federal regulations, the authors explain the problem regarding intent:

    “But something fundamental is often lacking from this tidal wave of penal provisions: meaningful mens rea requirements. Mens rea is a Latin term describing a culpable mental state, without which there can be no crime. Lamentably, Congress has enacted scores of laws with weak or no mens rea requirements, the result of a legislative process that is haphazard at best and arbitrary at worst. In doing so, it has eroded the principle of fair notice beyond recognition and dangerously impaired the justification for criminal punishment that has for centuries been based on an individual’s intent to commit a wrongful act.”

    While overcriminalization is often seen as a federal problem, it infects states and cities, too. Recently the Wichita City Council passed a sign ordinance that has the characteristics of overcriminalization. A key provision is this: “The existence of a temporary sign in the right of way or on public property directing attention to a person is prima facie evidence that such person has caused the placement of such sign in the right of way or on public property.”

    This means that the mere existence of a sign promoting a candidate being in the wrong place is evidence that the candidate is guilty of a crime. No matter how well a candidate trains staff and volunteers on proper sign placement, if a sign is in the wrong place, the candidate is presumed guilty. It’s difficult to defend against this presumption.

    The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has created a series of short videos that explain more about overcriminalization. The first, titled “Overcriminalization: Criminalizing the Everyday” is presented below, and additional titles may be viewed here.

  • Kansas counties decline sustainable communities planning

    Two of the five Kansas counties that were asked to participate in a sustainable communities planning grant have decided not to join the effort. Of the five counties (Sedgwick, Butler, Reno, Harvey and Sumner), Butler and Sumner county commissioners voted against participation.

    The REAP sustainable communities planning process is designed to, in the words of REAP, “create a long-term regional plan for ensuring the health and productivity of our local economy. The grant will support community engagement to identify common values and goals, followed by local and regional efforts to enhance economic development, connect people with jobs, reduce housing and transportation costs, ensure public safety, and use of limited public funds efficiently in the years ahead.”

    Critics of government planing processes such as this are concerned that the planning process would subject us to additional control by the federal government. These are the so-called strings that are thought to accompany federal grants.

    (For those who are interested in what strings look like, here’s an example of one that is relatively innocuous. A HUD document titled Program Policy Guidance OSHC-2012-01 explains “Applicants that reach a certain qualifying score under the Regional Planning Grant Program or the Community Challenge Grant Program will receive PSS designation. PSS designation provides your entity access to bonus points for selected other HUD grant programs, technical assistance, and other capacity building opportunities that will strengthen future efforts to apply to the program.” REAP has been awarded this status, as it complied with this “string.”)

    When the Wichita City Council deliberated its endorsement of and participation in this program, Council Member James Clendenin (district 3, southeast and south Wichita), asked a series of questions of Joe Yager, chief executive officer of REAP, as to whether these concerns were true. Yager said no, there are no strings accompanying the grant. But what about after the planning process is over in three years? Will the plan be forced upon us, Clendenin asked?

    Yager answered no, that local governing bodies would have to vote to implement any of the ideas or programs that resulted from the plan. Nothing will be forced upon us, nothing is mandated, he said. We wold simply have a “toolkit” of things to use.

    This view or attitude — that local elected officials will protect us from the harmful elements that will emerge from the plan — is dangerously naive. First, in his short time in office, Clendenin has regularly voted for expansions of government planning, power, and spending. He doesn’t stand out from most other council members, not even the Republican members (except for one), as they also regularly vote for these things.

    Second, we know that after the plan is complete there will be the argument that since we have the plan, that since we spent three years and $2.2 million on the process, we might as well go ahead and implement it.

    Then, there will be the future grants and undoubtedly increased local spending required to implement the plan. There is now research that looks at the effect of federal grants on future local spending. In their research paper titled Do Intergovernmental Grants Create Ratchets in State and Local Taxes? Testing the Friedman-Sanford Hypothesis economists Russell S. Sobel and George R. Crowley concluded this: “Federal grants often result in states creating new programs and hiring new employees, and when the federal funding for that specific purpose is discontinued, these new state programs must either be discontinued or financed through increases in state own source taxes.”

    The authors cautioned: “Far from always being an unintended consequence, some federal grants are made with the intention that states will pick up funding the program in the future.” See Federal grants increase future local spending.

    Sedgwick County Commissioner Richard Ranzau has researched the sustainable development movement, and has written a paper explaining what he found.

    Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, has written extensively on government planning, especially regarding land use and transportation. His op-ed on this topic follows:

    The vast majority of Americans, surveys say, aspire to live in a single-family home with a yard. The vast majority of American travel — around 85 percent — is by automobile. Yet the Obama administration thinks more Americans should live in apartments and travel on foot, bicycle, or mass transit.

    To promote this idea, the administration wants to give the south central Regional Economic Area Partnership (REAP) the opportunity to apply for a $1.5 million grant to participate in “sustainable communities.” Also sometimes called “smart growth,” the ideas promoted by these programs are anything but sustainable or smart. (As members of REAP, the governing bodies for both Wichita and Sedgwick County endorsed this grant.)

    The urban plans that come out of these kinds of programs typically call for:

    • Redesigning streets to increase traffic congestion in order to discourage people from driving;
    • Increasing subsidies to transit, bike paths, and other “alternative” forms of travel even though these alternatives are used by few people;
    • Denying owners of land on the urban fringes the right to develop their property in order to make single-family housing more expensive;
    • Subsidizing high-density, developments that combine housing with retail shops in the hope that people will walk to shopping rather than drive;
    • Rezoning neighborhoods of single-family homes for apartments with zoning so strict that, if someone’s house burns down, they will have to replace it with an apartment.

    My former hometown of Portland, Oregon has followed these policies for two decades, and the results have been a disaster. In their zeal to subsidize transit and high-density developments, the region’s officials have taken money from schools, libraries, fire, and police, leaving those programs starved and in disarray.

    Since 1980, Portland has spent more than $3 billion building light-rail lines. Far from improving transit, the share of commuters taking transit to work has fallen from 9.8 percent in 1980 to 7.5 percent today, mainly because the region cut bus service to pay for the trains. Traffic congestion quadrupled between 1984 and 2004, which planners say was necessary to get people to ride transit.

    The region’s housing policies made single-family homes so expensive that most families with children moved to distant suburbs where they can afford a house with a yard. Residents of subsidized high-density housing projects drive just about as much as anyone else in the Portland area, and developers have learned to their sorrow that if they follow planners’ guidelines in providing less parking for these projects, they will end up with high vacancy rates.

    Despite these problems, Portland has received lots of positive publicity. The reason for this is simple: by forcing out families with children, inner Portland is left mainly with young singles and childless couples who eat out a lot, making Portland a Mecca for tourists who like exciting new restaurants. This makes Portland a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there unless you like noisy, congested streets.

    The idea of “sustainable communities” is that planners can socially engineer people into changing their travel behavior by redesigning cities to favor pedestrians and transit over automobiles. Beyond the fact that this is an outrageous intrusion of government into people’s lives, it simply doesn’t work. Such experts as University of California economist David Brownstone and University of Southern California planning professor Genevieve Giuliano have shown that the link between urban design and driving is too weak to make a difference.

    To protect livability and avoid unsustainable subsidies to transit and high-density development, Wichita, Sedgwick County, and other REAP members of south central Kansas should reject the $1.5 million grant offered by the federal government.

  • Proposed Wichita sign ordinance problematic

    The Wichita City Council will consider a revision to its sign ordinances aimed at reducing the proliferation of temporary signs placed in right-of-ways, mostly at intersections. The city calls this “sign blight.”

    Here’s what the proposed ordinance states, in part: “The existence of a temporary sign in the right of way or on public property directing attention to a person is prima facie evidence that such person has caused the placement of such sign in the right of way or on public property.”

    The Wikipedia entry for prima facie explains “It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a matter appears to be self-evident from the facts. In common law jurisdictions, prima facie denotes evidence that — unless rebutted — would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact.”

    Law.com says the term means “[a case] which the evidence before trial is sufficient to prove the case unless there is substantial contradictory evidence presented at trial.”

    Additional sections of the proposed ordinance extend its reach to “owner or the agent for the owner of that business, product or service” and “promoter of that event or the agent for the promoter.”

    In simple terms, this ordinance states that the mere presence of a sign in a prohibited area will be evidence that the person, business, or event promoted on the sign is guilty. While the prosecution still has the burden of proving guilt, this ordinance makes that burden very easy to overcome. I don’t know how someone would defend themselves against this charge. The stakes can be high, with the fine for first violation $50, and subsequent violations fined from $50 to $1,000. The violation, and fine, is per sign.

    The ordinance also allows for citizen enforcement of this law. The ordinance exempts “city, county or state government entities” from having to comply with this law, another example of government making rules for everyone to follow but itself.

    I wonder: Since this ordinance appears to apply to political campaign signs, do you think that opponents of candidates will place their opponents’ signs in illegal locations, causing the campaign to be fined?

    Do you think people might do this to cause business competitors to incur fines?

    All it takes is finding a legally-placed sign and moving it across the sidewalk.

    It’s hard to believe that the city thinks this ordinance is workable. It’s also possible it is unconstitutional.

    Proposed Wichita Sign Ordinance

  • Kansas schools receive NCLB waiver

    Last week Kansas received a waiver from the main provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

    The press release from Kansas State Department of Education reads in part: “With the approval, the accountability system for Kansas schools will shift from ensuring a prescribed percentage of students achieve proficiency on state reading and math assessments each year to ensuring schools achieve a prescribed level of improvement on at least one of several Annual Measurable Objectives (AMOs) established by the state. … With the waiver in place, the state can now look to multiple measures to assess the performance of Kansas schools in helping all students achieve.”

    One of the major criticisms of NCLB is its emphasis on high-stakes testing in reading and math, which may lead to over-emphasis on these subjects at the expense of others. “Teaching to the test” is another related criticism.

    But we need to be watchful of the standards Kansas state officials establish going forward. That’s because few states have lower standards than Kansas. One of the features of NCLB is that it let each state establish its own standards for evaluating student learning. What we find is states like Kansas have rising scores on their own state tests, but steady or even falling scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, called “the nation’s report card.” See Kansas needs truth about schools.

    The waiver will also require Kansas to modify the way teachers are evaluated. Again, from the KSDE press release: “Another key component of the state’s waiver is related to evaluating teachers and school leaders. Among the criteria for achieving a waiver request was implementing an evaluation system that includes student achievement as a significant factor in the evaluation. The Kansas plan calls for appointing a commission to identify the most effective means of tying student achievement to teacher and leader evaluations and building that into the existing Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP).”

    KEEP is an evaluation system that was first used in the last school year on a pilot basis. In April Peter Hancock of Kansas Education Policy Report wrote: “Under guidelines for the waiver, states must either have an evaluation system in place that makes student achievement a ‘primary component’ of an evaluation, or they must commit to putting such a system in place by the end of this school year. Kansas is currently piloting a new system called the Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP), but it does not currently have a component that includes student achievement.”

    Many people would be surprised to learn that student achievement has not been the primary factor used in evaluating teachers in Kansas. This is one of the reasons why Kansas has been found to rank low in policies on teacher quality.

    The fact that 33 states have been granted waivers — and more have applied — raises questions regarding public policy and rule of law. Last year David Boaz wrote regarding the increased use of waivers from federal laws and regulations “The rule of waivers is not the rule of law. … Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School says waivers raise ‘questions about whether we live under a government of laws. Congress can pass statutes that apply to some businesses and not others, but once a law has passed — and therefore is binding — how can the executive branch relieve some Americans of their obligation to obey it?’”

    The No Child Left Behind law has proven to be very unpopular. The solution is to repeal it, rather than offering piecemeal waivers, especially since the waivers are accompanied by other regulation.