Speed Gibson

My Favorite Tax

One sentence in Sunday's (4/24) Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial on the upcoming State Budget deserves further comment:

The unfairest tax of all, the property tax, has risen painfully in the past decade as state government has pushed its financial trouble onto local backs.

The least fair tax in my book is easily the estate tax, a bare knuckle second bite on income already taxed.  It's pure government greed even if it affects relatively few taxpayers and collects very little revenue.  But neither I nor most Americans face such prospects so it's not surprising that a new Gallup Poll finds that most Americans indeed like local property taxes least.

The DFL assertion dutifully repeated by the Star Tribune that decreased state money axiomatically must be replaced by local money is a non-sequitur, fiction in terms of law.   Trouble is, too many voters believe just that, even though property taxes seem to rise regardless of state aid.  But are property taxes truly unfair or simply unpopular?

If I had to name my favorite tax to pay, it would be the city portion of my property taxes.  Why?  Because I can see where the money goes, like for Police, Fire, Roads, Sewers, Water, Parks, and the Fourth of July fireworks. I in fact serve on my city's Financial Advisory Commission, so I am more than familiar with the city budget.  Yes, it goes up but it's also very focused on proper government functions like public safety and the budgeting process itself is straight-forward.  (Minneapolis and St. Paul residents: your results may vary!)

The County portion of our property taxes are less focused.  The Public School portion, usually the largest, is anything but transparent.  But does this explain why taxpayers are so frustrated and the DFL always so ready to offer relief?  No, I think it's the variability, the feeling of helplessness that really explains why property taxes are so unpopular.  You can't begin to calculate them even year to year like other taxes.  You can no longer buy a home and assume you'll be able to afford the property taxes into retirement.  And while there's an occasional decrease, when they go up, they go up big.

The big danger for the DFL is that voters might figure out that people like Minneapolis DFL Mayor R. T. Rybak and their Republican-free City Council's might actually be responsible for this mess.  Ditto the DFL / Education Minnesota run School Boards.  Ditto the DFL strongholds that run most County governments.

Another problem for the DFL is that we property owners actually write checks for property taxes.  Even if escrowed within a mortgage, you get multiple mailings a year from the assessor, the county, your mortgage holder, and you see it again when you file your income taxes.  Your mortgage paperwork shows what you paid when you bought the property, inviting more uncomfortable questions for the DFL.

I suppose I should wrap up with a recommendation or two, my first to get K-12 education and county welfare out of the property tax business.  Property taxes should address property-related services, which can include general government and the courts.  And all should then pay them, including non-profit, religious, educational, charitable and inter-government operations.  Third, I'd re-do billing and escrow such that you still write the checks every year, separate checks in fact to the city, county, and schools.

 

And Then What?

The MInneapolis Star Tribune today (4/24) has published their idea of a Budget Plan for Minnesota. 

Shared sacrifice should be the overriding principle for Gov. Mark Dayton and the 2011 Legislature as they complete the work of balancing the state budget in the next month.

It most closely resembles the "balanced" approach of "moderate" Tom Horner, Independence Party candidate for Governor in 2010.  Horner himself commented on it via Twitter:

A familiar budget solution. More innovation and close tax breaks, don't raise rates, but it's a start.

To which Craig Westover responded:

 "Shared sacrifice" instead of "shared prosperity" is self-defeating. We ARE "all in it together." "Sacrifice" implies we are not.

The Star Tribune's plan is about a third each continuing the K-12 shift, cutting spending and as always, raising taxes.  Actually, an additional increase is suggested within the spending cuts that would bring the total tax increase to over $ 2 billion next biennium.  Unlike Governor Mark Dayton's budget, this proposal would actually balance the upcoming budget, assuming that the new top income tax bracket actually brings in more money that is.  It has not in other states, some of which have since retreated from that strategy.

But like Dayton's budget and Horner's budget, perhaps the biggest question of all is completely unanswered: what about next time?  Say you do get all the new revenue specified.  With spending still largely out of control, there will be another large "deficit" next round as Dayton, Horner, and the Star Tribune define deficit: less than we want.

Even the Republican budget isn't all that focused on this, largely content just to match expenditures to anticipated revenue.  But they have at least made some strides.  Don't forget that this is their first turn at the wheel in decades and that they have had only a few months to assimilate all the data.  I expect we will see considerably more and better reforms, particularly if Minnesota remains sane long enough to keep the GOP in charge of the Legislature next election.

The Star Tribune is concerned that our tax structure is more volatile than other states, primarily because we rely more on income taxes than sales taxes.  As State Representative King Banaian has pointed out, it generates too much money in good years, too little in bad years.  This traditionally has meant big spending increases in those good years, at least some tax increases in the bad years.  So one could argue that stabilizing revenues would tend to stabilize spending as well.

But the DFL Legislature under House Speaker Kelliher and Senate Majority Leader Pogemiller ended that tendency in 2007, proposing an astounding $ 5 billion increase on top of a $ 2 billion surplus.  Assistant Senate Majority Leader Tarryl Clark was almost giddy at the thought of all the ideas they contemplated.  It was classic tax (first) and (then) spend.  It continues today, there being wide DFL support for mere wants like Light Rail transit.  And ultra-liberal Mark Dayton is Governor.

If the Star Tribune Editorial writers or any other Democrats want to really contribute to the solution, I suggest that they help all of us get control of spending.  That means a return to funding only the legitimate functions of government, funding those only once, and funding them efficiently. 

Nothing else matters.

 

A Controlling Legal Authority

We have bar exams for lawyers.  We have all manner of licensing for teachers, doctors, operating engineers, even hair stylists.  Without debating their merits, they at least provide an independent check on the applicants' competence beyond whatever post-secondary education they may have successfully completed.  Maybe we should apply this concept earlier.

Mitch Berg at Shot In The Dark goes long on a theory I've expoused myself, that the high school diploma has become so worthless and higher education so ubiquitous that employers are insisting on four year degrees to wait tables.  And why not?  As one of his commenters notes, college graduates are readily applying for clerical and simple bookkeeping jobs.

As if this job market situation isn't proof enough, we also know that more than 1 in 3 Minnesota public high school graduates find that they need remedial work when entering a Minnesota public college or university.  I remember an MPR piece quoting a student surprised that her college expected her to read an entire book, something her high school had never demanded of her. 

I've even heard it said that the only sure way to avoid this surprise is to take Advanced Placement classes as they have independent testing.  Everything else is subject to the officially denied yet unofficially undeniable practices of grade inflation and social promotion.  Even the premiere districts like Eden Prairie are now clearly going this direction as The Activist Next Door has been reporting.

So rather than state curriculum requirements and high stakes state graduation testing, maybe we need to get our high schools - public and private - out of the diploma writing business.  For to maximize state funding, it has become a business.  Flunk a junior and he likely drops out, so socially promote him to be a senior bringing in several thousand dollars.  Better to inflate a promising sophomore's grades lest her demanding parents go shopping elsewhere.

Just as SAT's and ACT's independently assess high schooler's college readiness, why not contract with a similar testing organization to actually test profeciency and certify degrees appropriately?  The district will issue a "diploma application" saying the student should be able to pass this exam.  But the real diploma is not issued until they do.

This would not be high stakes testing per se; you can retake it without penalty or stigma, the submitting school district paying the cost.  Yes, schools might "teach the test" but that's still progress over the current enlightened pragmatism that lets too many thousands of kids skate by, even those college bound.

Oh, and one more thing: aggregrate and publish the results by school.  There will no longer be an excuse for one district's "diploma ready" students failing so much more than another district.

 

To Shrug or Not To Shrug

Should I stay (home) or should I go, to see Atlas Shrugged?  The critics hate it, for valid reasons it would appear: No money, no stars.  No frills, no thrills.  After all, the book doesn't exactly read like an Ian Fleming,Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn novel.  It's a weighty, tedious tome of two dimensional characters.

And yet I seem to find myself re-reading Atlas Shrugged every 10 years or so.  There's obviously something about the struggle portrayed, perhaps including what we perceive as similarities to our age that spark the tremendous, continuing success of Ayn Rand's premiere work. 

Maybe it's because Atlas Shrugged indeed portrays a struggle, a renewed battle for liberty.  We can all name more intellectually satisfying works along these lines, but nowhere in any of them is a plan to bell the cat.  Rand's heroes don't just talk.  They act, enough to make an actual movie, not a documentary.  So maybe I should go.

But I think I won't, at least for now.  Despite the faithful's wide approval, I value my imagination's interpretation more.  I'll have trouble accepting a 26 year old Dagny Taggart, for example.  And I still think a quality audio production is what's truly best here, with a full cast, music, and sound effects.  The old "NBC University Theatre" radio series did many classics like Jane Eyre just so. Odds are you've heard at least one of the many audio versions of Sherlock Holmes done this way.

When parts 2 and 3 come out, I'll reconsider.

 

Is It Truly Better to Give Than Receive?

A commenter referred me to an interesting book, Bad Students, not Bad Schools by Robert Weissberg.  The premise, from its web site reads:

Bad Students, Not Bad Schools is an Emperor’s new clothes book—it openly speaks the unspeakable: America’s education woes are caused by intellectually mediocre, unmotivated students, not “bad schools,” rotten teachers, faculty curriculum, lack of sufficient funding and similar alleged culprits. Alter the student population and push students harder, even if this means lowering their self-esteem and America’s schools will thrive. If mischief-makers refuse to learn, let them drop out! Politicians and professional educators avoid this awkward reality and prefer instead to squander billions while lurching from one guaranteed-to-fail gimmick after the next.

I remembered this again today (4/12), listening to Bill Bennett's Morning in America program.  Bennett interviewed Nancy Larson, author of the Saxon Math program for elementary grades.  She said a lot of things I readily agreed with, like that there is no substitute for rote memorization of multiplication tables.  I recommend listening to the free podcast on Bennett's web site.  Bennett is concerned that too many Americans lack the mathematical skills and instincts to understand the current financial crisis. But this was my take-away quote:

[Learning mathematics] does take work on the part of the child. 

This tied (loosely) with Weissberg's assertion, and together they prompted more thought about the achievement gaps we seem unable to close in the public schools.  Larson went on to clarify what she expects of a student.

1. You have to do all the work assigned.  You can't take a day off.  You have to do all the assignments, every night.
2. You have to be honest about the work, approaching each problem seriously, solving it with your best effort.  It isn't enough to collaborate, asking what answer someone else got and writing that down.
3. You have to ask questions when you don't understand something.  You can't say "I missed one and it doesn't matter" because it is going to matter in math.

Larson has complementary expectations for the parents as well.

1. Check that their child did the work, every night.
2. Review that work with the child, checking answers.  (As Bennett notes, that may be easier in K-5 than high school algebra!)
3. Ask questions when you don't know, possibly by asking the child to explain it to you.

This is what many educators have been saying, that they cannot teach the unwilling or the unprepared.  But I'm not quite ready to let them off the hook, for they usually then proclaim that some new program, approach, or policy will turn things around, only they don't.  Larson suggests that teachers might spend more time motivating the student to work harder as opposed to they themselves working harder to convey the material.  Teaching is the process, but learning is the objective.  However well the teacher "gives" the material, it is what the student "receives" that matters.

So what if students don't apply themselves?  Let them drop out as Weissberg suggests?   Hold them back as I think isn't done enough?  Is the achievement gap not a real problem, merely a symptom?

 

Unintended Consequences

Today's (4/8) Letter of the Day confirmed something I was merely suspecting, that the flashing lights on emergency vehicles are actually causing more problems than they solve.  I remember when police cars had just the one bubble gum flasher on top.  Then two, then a bar, then more lights on the bar, and now these high output high-tech xenon/halogen multi-colored strobes.

Illinois State Police and California Highway Patrol studies (with input from our own University of Minnesota) have shown the collision rate for emergency vehicles displaying full lights while parked next to the highway is two and a half times higher than for nonemergency vehicles.

Illinois removed the light bars from half of its cars in the study and experienced a 65 percent reduction in accidents. In contrast to red and white flashing lights, amber lights send a very specific message: danger, caution, stay away.

It's exactly as this Minneapolis letter writer and another from Plymouth say.  These lights consume your entire attention at night to where you can see nothing else, including people, which includes police and patrol officers who are paying the price.

It's an illustrative example in critical thinking that applies to many situations in life.  I was as surprised as anyone to find out those ramp entrance meters were actually clogging the freeways until then Senator Dick Day forced a six week test to prove the rest of us wrong. 

Hmmm.  Why am I thinking about our public schools just now?

Refocus Transit on Transit

Since the Metropolitan Council seems unable to process the impending transit-related budget cuts, I offer my plan to help them - and the University of Minnesota that is also facing cuts.  The time has come to decide what parts of what is now Metro Transit is actually transit and what is merely show business.

1.  Get the U out of the transit business.  There is no real need for all those campus shuttles and their huge fleet of articulated buses.  Sell them all.  There are plenty of Metro Transit buses running between the East, West, and St. Paul campuses.  In my day, we walked to the West Bank and didn't waste our time talking any class only offered at the St. Paul Campus, a white elephant which should be closed and sold off anyway.

2.  Discontinue all these little U of M shuttle routes, like from Richfield, St. Louis Park, Uptown, New Brighton etc.  In every case there is existing Metro Transit service that will get you to the U and back.  You'll have to transfer.  It'll take 10 minutes longer.  Tough.  That's what we all did 40 years ago, packed like wheat in a shock on the #16 buses.

3.  Outsource the Hiawatha Line operations to a private company.

4.  Begin planning on converting the Hiawatha to a bus transitway, to be executed when the Hiawatha tracks reach the point of required rebuilding or sooner.  No further capital improvements will be made.

5.  Lay off anybody else involved with rail transit, including the Central Corridor which ends now.  Remediate the damage from the CC construction already started.

6.  Shut down the Northstar line (888), and its bus extension (887) to St. Cloud.  Sell the engines and cars.  Raze and sell off the station properties.

7.  Disband the Metro Transit Police.  The individual cities can provide police protection as they always used to and continue to do for people driving, biking, walking, or taking taxis.  Off duty cops and private security can be hired as needed for fare supervision until the Hiawatha Line stops running.

8.  Focus on sustainable routes, ones with enough business to run 6 am to 9 pm weekdays with at least hourly service on weekends.  Dump all these little park and ride 2 trips a day routes.  The reason they make only 2 trips is because they don't have enough business for even 3, hence the 2 must really be losing money.

9.  Start thinking outside the downtown centric model.  I find that crosstown routes like the 2 (Franklin), 21 (Lake/ Shelby), 23 (38th St.), 46 (46th St.), 84 (Snelling) and 515 (66th St.) seem to have a surprising amount of ridership.  Other routes like the 32 and 705 might do better with more predictable times and faster routes.  Not every trip needs to flow through downtown.

10.  And yes, raise the fares.  $3 rush hour, $2 off peak, $5 express freeway express, with the current 10% discount for GoTo cards that greatly expedite boarding.

 

Happy Hour

I said last week that Board meetings in District 281 (Robbinsdale) have been boring lately.  I may have been premature, starting with something I never would have guessed is going on.  Let's go to the audio tape, where at about the 50 minute mark we hear Superintendent Aldo Sicoli say:

"I would like to see fewer Middle School students, if any, in Study Hall."

I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or  "The Numbers Guy" sitting next to me.  Study Hall in Middle School and/or Junior High?  Not when I went to school.  Even in high school, I bet not more than 1 in 3 students used it, since so many of us were in band, choir, or fun elective courses.

Help me out, commenters.  What was your experience?  And if you did have study hall in the middle grades, did you really study?  But back to business.

The context was the final presentation on closing the achievement gaps, today's presentation on the Middle Schools.  Elementary Schools were presented in Feburary, High Schools in March.  And while there was some hope and change in grades 10 and 11, overall the results appear as stubborn as ever.  It's as I expected, as I predicted when I saw the new strategy presented in late 2009.  This District like all others seems unwilling to do what's necessary.  Maybe it would be illegal.

Let's look at the progression in Math gaps for 2010.  After being created equal, the gap leaving Elementary school was 24 ppts (percentage points).  Middle school increased that to 32 ppts.  High school followed this trend to reach an almost unthinkable 38 ppts and that might well be understated because of drop outs.  Reading is better at a pretty steady 25 ppts across all grades, but still much too high.  Together with Math, that's two big strikes against good grades in any other subject.

Dr. Sicoli is right.  How can there be Study Hall in Middle School with scores like these?  I'd put it this way: keep your grades up if you want Study Hall, even in High School.  Still behind?  We'll add an extra hour to your day.  And if that doesn't work, you'll repeat the grade, with the opportunity to fast track back on schedule later.  What's the point of taking on new work you progressively understand less and less for lack of basic reading and mathematics skills?

But like I said, ending social promotion is probably illegal.

 

 

Fund it or the Bus Driver gets it!

An old joke tells of a young lad given two nickels, one for his Sunday School offering, the other for a treat on the way home.  He accidentally drops one, seeing it roll into a sewer grate.  The boy looks skyward and says, "Lord, there goes your nickel!"

So it is with the Metropolitan Council.  The Minnesota House passed its Transportation Bill, which as the Minneapolis Star Tribune accurately (!) reported: House voted to reduce spending on light rail, commuter rail and outstate bus service.  But of course, that's not how it's being spun, even by the Metropolitan Council, which as an unelected body should not engage in this degree of political rhetoric.

Not even the Republican Party is stupid enough to force tripling Metro Transit bus fares or cutting service levels in half as claimed.  But truth is, the Democratic Party is no real friend of bus service either.  All they care about are their shiny new trains that are bankrupting Metro Transit even now.  Fares have been increasing and bus service levels have been ebbing lest the Central Corridor never get built.

What the House Republicans have said is get rid of the chaffe like light rail and you should be able to keep the wheat.  After all, you have other failed programs like affordable housing.  You pick which is of least value and cut it.  It seems like a courtesy when the abolishment of the Metropolitan Council as we know it would be an even better policy to consider.

But just as subsidy cuts always seem to result in police and teacher layoffs, the Met Council is ready to lay off bus drivers, the most visible hobgoblin of injustice they can summon.  If they laid off all those connected with light rail, nobody would notice except some grateful Midway business owners.

 

Half Right

First, a quick aside on Friday's (4/1) Almanac segment with four Minnesota Legislative leaders.  I was again very impressed with Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, clearly the smartest person on the couch, including the TPT staff.  Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk was little more than a grump, needing the more polished House Minority Leader Paul Thissen to actual address the issues from the DFL perspective.  Unfortunately, predictably, a number of Thissen's claims were not factual.  House Speaker Kurt Zellers made no such errors but also had little to add to Koch's strong leadership and well expressed positions.

Both in this segment and the Political Panel segment later, the assertion was again made by the DFL that by cutting Local Government Aid (LGA) the GOP is raising property taxes.  The dimmer bulbs in the Legislature and the Minneapolis Star Tribune might actually believe this as stated, that such language exists somewhere in these spending bills.  But I'll grant that only cause and effect is really being claimed, that if LGA goes down, the cities will have no other revenue and therefore no choice but to raise property taxes to maintain service levels.

That is of course technically false.  Whether a city receives LGA or not, whether LGA is cut or not, there is always the choice to raise, maintain, or lower property taxes.  There are consequences for each, i.e. spending and service level decisions.  If I heard correctly on Sue Jeffer's KTLK program this afternoon (4/2), Cottage Grove is one example of a city that will be raising spending considerably this year, mostly for a new building.

But the prediction of higher property taxes will likely come to pass in many cities losing LGA.  The are run by Democrats.  That's how they think.  Of course you must replace the lost revenue.  All services are essential.  The methods, providers, and efficiency of the service delivery are not to be questioned or questioned further.  So in that sense, the DFL is half right - where Democrats rule or where the ruling Republicans also think like bureaucrats.

There is one more question to ask: if property taxes are raised, will the public question the DFL?  I think they did already - last November.