Friday, April 30, 2010

Friday Links

Here are a few things notable things from this week that I flagged but didn’t turn into full blog posts:

1. For those voting in the Republican primary, Donald of Cincinnati Blog says Ghiz over Monzel:

The contrast between Ghiz and Monzel was clear. Ghiz offered nuanced answers, the kind that you'd expect from someone who has thought about how to address development, budget, and public safety issues. Monzel, on the other hand, offered nothing but bits of his stump speech. His campaign strategy seemed clear: do nothing but throw out "red meat" to the base, and hope that the voters don't catch on.
2. The Cincinnati Enquirer had a story on how Chris Bortz ignored the Ohio Ethics Commission’s decision on his obvious massive conflict of interest in the Streetcar project.

3. Bortz responds today:
It is well known that Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls owns a condo a block away from the proposed route. Mayor Mallory's father owns a home less than three blocks away from a proposed connector to Uptown. Former Vice Mayor Jim Tarbell, who voted on the streetcar while a member of Council, owned a business along the proposed route. Under the staff attorney's reasoning, none of these dedicated and committed public servants would be able to participate in the streetcar debate. … So a member of council who lives near a park can't vote on the Parks Department budget?
Obviously those are not the same as the Bortz family’s significant holding along the route. …But actually I’d be okay with Bortz’s rule.

4. The Enquirer’s Politics Blog has a list of companies giving money to Issue 1 “The Third Frontier” …Surely, they not giving just for influence over the $700 million in grants the program is giving out. The Enquirer repeats a line about the initial program “Ohio voters approved spending $500 million in 2005 … generating an estimated $6.6 billion in economic benefits.” If a hack economist gave them those numbers, they should be fired. …Or let's increase the program 100x and we’ll all be rich.

5. Tyler Cowen presents it as a Dutch peculiarity, but this sounds like a really good idea:
Potholes, stray garbage, broken street lamps? Citizens of Eindhoven can now report local issues by iPhone, using the BuitenBeter app that was launched today. After spotting something that needs to be fixed, residents can use the app to take a picture, select an appropriate category and send their complaint directly through to the city council. A combination of GPS and maps lets users pinpoint the exact location of the problem, providing city workers with all the information they need to identify and resolve the problem.
Enjoy your weekend

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Angry to What End?

Many Cincinnati City Council members are to paraphrase Megan McArdle "Angry, Very angry, Do you understand Roselawn voters? They're very very angry at Kroger for closing its store."

This is one of those stories that gets a thousand crazy comments on Cincinnati.com, so I'm hesitant to wade in. ...But, I'm not sure there was much point to city council's hearing yesterday, except to express that city council doesn't like the economic reality that companies sometimes have to close stores. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Kroger is not closing their store because they hate Roselawn, but because the store has not made a profit in ten years and it didn't make sense to have a location there anymore.

I suspect that the more important message that Council is sending to businesses is this: When you open a store in Cincinnati, you should understand that if things do not go as planned and the store is unprofitable (or loses a million dollars a year) you could be hauled in front of city council and berated if you decide to close it.

City Council is putting a burden on businesses that want to operate in the city, and it's something any company should consider when it opens a significant store in the city. They will be publicly badmouthed by the government if it doesn't work and they need to back out. On the margins, some businesses could be less likely to take a chance investing in Cincinnati with this risk. This risk factor might not be big enough to have a noticeable effect. But, all else equal this means fewer companies taking chances to invest in Cincinnati and perhaps fewer grocery stores.

It might make sense to create a tax break for operating a grocery is an underserved area. But, what Council is doing doesn't improve anything. So, it's just bad for the city.

File under: Bad Government

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Good New for Streetcars (and Columbus), Bad News for the Rest of Cincy Metro

Veronique de Rugy of Mercatus has done some analysis of the allocation of federal stimulus spending based on the data available at Recovery.gov. One of her findings is that where money is spent doesn't appear to be related to unemployment or decline in employment in districts (As economists would like to be the case with a Keynesian stimulus). What explains how stimulus spending is allocated?
The average Democratic district receives 81 percent more than the average Republican district.
A significant part of this result is due to state capitals being mostly located in Democratic districts, and receiving much more in stimulus allocations. However:
Even after taking out the money spent through state capitals, the average Democratic district receives at least 30 percent more than the average Republican district.
So, good news for projects (such as the Streetcar) located in Ohio's 1st district, currently represented by Democrat Steve Driehaus. But, it's bad news for people living in the other districts of the Tri-State which are all currently represented by Republicans - They are paying the same taxes for stimulus spending across the country, but on average receive significantly less. ...I live in the 1st district ;-)

Monday, April 19, 2010

A Desire Named Cincy Streetcar

The Cincinnati City Council is expected to approve some funding today for streetcars. the Streetcar movement is popular in the Cincinnati blogosphere (They’re way more hip than riding a bus, right?). And there are some points to be made by activists in favor of streetcars. However, I think the streetcar effort is primarily driven by the big property owners along the proposed route (some of whom are on city council). The project takes tax dollars from everyone across the city and spends them to improve transportation along a certain 3.9 mile stretch. This will certainly improve the land values for those who are fortunate enough to own property along the chosen route. The area will gentrify. But, these improved property values will be paid for by the taxes of everyone else in the city. It’s a classic case of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. In other words, I would say it’s pork for a certain group of Cincinnati elites.

This is not to say the streetcar is a bad idea. I’m undecided, but certainly not convinced.

The relevant question is - is this the best use of the taxpayers’ money? Chris Bortz today argued that it was and said it would have a 14 to 1 return (!!!). Yet, there’s another form of public transportation, which the city has been cutting recently, which appears to be a better investment - buses. They’re more flexible to respond to changing demand, require no major capital investment, and help people from the suburbs gets to their jobs downtown (i.e. a big economic return for the region). Streetcar backers have not been able to put together a convincing argument on why a small streetcar is better than additional busses. I suspect the city will move forward with this project anyway, not because of the debate, but because the streetcar has important support from relevant special interests in Cincinnati. This is unfortunate.

Update 4/20:
I don't want to give the impression that I'm alleging some conspiracy emanating from a smoked filled room. The supporters who would benefit are pretty visible - Besides the activists who spoke at the city council hearing, many of the other speakers were various business/land owners who would benefit from a streetcar. I've read Tom Luken also made this point at the hearings (not that I necessarily want to be associated with him). They probably genuinely believe it's a good project, but they are lobbying for tax dollars to help themselves. So, it's a classic case of a small group of people who would benefit and a large group who will pay the cost (city taxpayers). I don't think the streetcar will be a disaster, I just think it's probably not the right investment decision, and may be being made for the wrong reasons. Could be worse...

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Stats on Tea Partiers

Some interesting poll numbers about Tea Partiers via @binarybits: Tea Partiers are 65% pro-choice, 57% pro same-sex unions, and 53% pro maintain/increase legal immigration.

Here's the New York Times story. FYI - I'm not the Tea Party type, but I do think they've been unfairly painted by the left as bigoted extremists. This gives Democrats a comfortable naritive about themselves, where all opposition to their plans is illegitimate and probably motivated by some dark internal flaws.

John Cleese offers insight on this mindset in a 1987 SDP/Liberal Alliance spot:


"The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the world is in you! Attractive, isn't it?"

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Ohio Style Casinos

Allow me a brief sarcastic rant - The Columbus Dispatch reports new rules being proposed by Neo-Puritanical Ohio politicians:

"The four new casinos in Ohio would not be granted 24-hour liquor permits, nor would they be able to offer complementary alcoholic drinks to players, under the set of ground rules that House Democrats plan to introduce within the next two weeks."

Wouldn't it be interesting if you could just choose to gamble and drink legally wherever you wanted - not just at the casinos and tracks that have given adequate dollar amounts to the correct politicians in exchange for a legal monopolies? Nah, we'd all gamble and drink ourselves into Gamorrah...

HT Politics Extra

Update Nice story on the lobbying effort against this.