St. Louis Should Privatize Its Water System
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You have probably heard about all of the large...
Hunting and Fishing Fees May Be Going up in Missouri
Are higher fees coming to Missouri for huntin’ and fishin’ (but fortunately not for lovin’ every day)? Maybe. The Missouri...
Prudent Pundit Ponders Independence Power Privatization Proposal
The Kansas City suburb of Independence—although it is weird to call the fifth-largest city in Missouri a ”suburb”—is considering privatizing...
Open Enrollment in St. Louis Schools: 55 Years in the Making
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When the Spainhower Commission issued its final report in 1968,...
Pot Taxes Can Help Municipal Kettles Get into the Black
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When Missouri voters approved the ballot initiative legalizing marijuana...
St. Louis’s New Classical School and the Need for School Choice
I recently finished reading Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. The book is Chesterton’s autobiographical account of arriving at belief in the...
Breaking: The Actual Starting Teacher Salary According to DESE
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other major media outlets in Missouri, continually claim that Missouri teachers are, on average, the...
Taxpayers Getting Burned
As I have discussed many times before, some of the worst public policy ideas in Missouri have come from the...
The St. Louis County Budget
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently ran an article on St. Louis County’s budget situation that was lacking, in my opinion....
We’re Number Four? With James V. Shuls
Susan Pendergrass speaks with James Shuls about his return to the Show-Me Institute, the Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card,...
This Is What Number Four Looks Like?
By now, we have all seen that wonderful photo of the young child sitting in the backseat of her parents’...
Eureka Water Privatization Is a Very Good Thing
The Post-Dispatch had a very long story about the just-finalized sale of Eureka’s (an outer suburb of St. Louis) municipal...
Where Is Robertson Fire District, and Why Do They Take So Much of Hazelwood’s Tax Money?
Over the past two decades, a smoldering fire has been slowly burning in North St. Louis County. No, I’m not...
“Stop,” or I’ll Yell “Stop” Again
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When elected officials intentionally ignore the law, we often...
Broken Approval Process Slows Development
Several disjointed developments in the Cortex and Grove areas of St. Louis nicely encapsulate the confusing involvement of elected officials,...
The Scooter Ban Revisited (Or Not)
When I wrote about the downtown Saint Louis ban on scooters a few weeks ago, city officials were planning to...
Hazelwood, Bankruptcy, and Special Laws
The City of Hazelwood has announced that it is cutting back on the services it provides its residents. In related...
Centene Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
There are numerous flaws in the ongoing subsidy-driven economic development strategy employed in Missouri. In this post, I want to...
Is a Scooter Ban the Answer in Saint Louis?
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a piece on Tuesday morning titled “With scooters gone, St. Louis police say weekend was...
Asking Developers to Make “Voluntary Donations” is Troubling
According to the Post-Dispatch, a New Jersey developer—Aptitude Development—will make a $250,000 donation to affordable housing in St. Louis City,...
