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How to Fix OKC’s Transit: Get Rid of It
As a new resident of Oklahoma City's downtown, I have had the "privilege" of getting acquainted with the city's public transit system. I don't have a car, so I rely on alternative means of transportation; so far, none of the public options have impressed me. The streetcar is pretty, but I walk faster than it generally moves to my destinations and have yet to benefit from it. The buses aren't much better, so I have resorted to private solutions like Lyft to get around town. Unfortunately, my experience with OKC's public transit system isn't unique. Sadly, public transportation often doesn't work all that well, especially given the cost. Only 20 percent of OKC residents are satisfied with the city's public transportation system, according to OKC's most recent survey of residents. Any private sector service with numbers that low would be starved for business, creating room in the market for a better company to provide service to consumers. However, Embark's 2019 budget of $16.9 million was increased in 2020 to $18 million, following a general trend of increased funding for public transportation by about $1 million every year. Given the cost and the lack of satisfaction, it would be...
Muddy, Shallow Thinking Versus Clarity in Education Reform
Monopolies are the best! If we are to gain maximum efficiency and create the greatest value for people, monopoly is the way to go. Competition creates administrative inefficiency since instead of one set of managers, there are as many as there are companies, and all of them cost money. Competitive companies make products that do the same basic things, but waste resources by making products with different features. Standardized products would save money. Were research and development under one roof, instead of many competitive ones, researchers could coordinate more closely, saving money and ultimately being even more innovative. Monopolies would therefore benefit everyone. Everything in the first paragraph is, of course, balderdash. Monopolies, especially those created by government, stifle innovation, develop bloated management, produce too little at low quality, and charge too much. Why? Because they can. They’re monopolists. Without competition and with nearly guaranteed profits, they have little incentive to care what consumers really want or to produce efficiently. So they don’t. Disappointingly, the mud-puddle thinking (shallow and murky) reflected in the first...
Lack of Transparency by the Oklahoma Supreme Court Continues to Amaze
Squirrels hide acorns for the winter by burying them in the dirt. It is somewhat amusing to watch squirrels in Florida engage in this little ritual, since they live in a place where there is no winter coming. It’s just what squirrels do. They are programmed to hide their nuts. The Oklahoma Supreme Court seems to have a similar modus operandi: the Court’s default is to hide its actions from public view, even when there is no reason to. Allow me to explain. The Court recently heard a legal challenge to an initiative petition that seeks to change how Oklahoma draws its legislative and congressional districts (spoiler alert for a future post: the redistricting initiative is a terrible idea). The Court scheduled the case for oral argument on January 21 of this year in the ceremonial courtroom in the State Capitol building. This may sound routine, but for the Oklahoma Supreme Court, it is notable. Unlike most appellate courts in the country, the Oklahoma Supreme Court very rarely grants oral argument, instead choosing (for no apparent reason) to deprive itself of the benefit of rigorous adversarial debate on the issues it decides, and the litigants of the opportunity to persuade....
No License, Sherlock: Licensing for Private Investigators
What does a private investigator do? Surely, we’re all familiar with various movies and shows featuring the exciting adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Magnum PI. However, reality is often disappointing, and the fact is private investigation is usually dull and relatively safe. Private investigators are tasked with conducting surveillance and fact-finding missions for their clients, but they gain no special powers to do so. My recent paper deals with the licensing of private investigators. Oklahoma’s private investigator licenses are governed by the Council of Law Enforcement Education and Training (CLEET), which follows the advice of a committee made up of people who run private investigative agencies. Improved competition is not likely to be in the best interest of these agencies, so it is questionable whether they should be in a gate-keeping position they could easily turn to their advantage. Private Investigators must undergo a series of trainings and pass an exam to gain their license, followed by continuing education requirements to maintain it. These mandated trainings go over generally applicable laws, which everyone has to follow, and how to conduct an investigation,...
Senator Sanders Misses the Mark On Oklahoma Education
Minimum Wage for Teachers Senator Sanders recently wrote an op-ed for the Oklahoman. Among other radical ideas, he proposes a federal minimum wage for teachers of $60,000. In a free market, a minimum wage hurts those who earn less than the minimum wage. If they can’t produce more value than the minimum wage, they will be unemployable. For teachers, who operate in a regulated market, it will still be more difficult for inexperienced teachers to find a job. Incentives to pursue further training and education, or to take on additional roles like advising clubs or coaching sports will be diminished. Or perhaps young teachers will be required to take on one or more of these extracurricular activities to justify their higher cost. Lost in the promise of a minimum wage is the idea that the best teachers should be paid the most. Instead, most public school teachers in Oklahoma are paid in lockstep - meaning that an outstanding teacher makes the same as a mediocre teacher with the same level of experience. Adding a minimum wage would further flatten the pay scale - every teacher currently below the $60,000 threshold would be paid the same - meaning a great teacher with 25 years of...
Why We Fight: Checking Government-Granted Privilege
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged Some years ago, I debated Robert Reich, President Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, on a PBS program about income inequality. It wasn’t much of a debate, really, as I was a bit intimidated. Stephen Moore, one of President Trump’s economic advisers, at that time a Wall Street Journal editorialist, was originally supposed to have been on the program when I had agreed to go on. His not showing, despite some warning ahead of time, put me in an unexpected spot in a venue I’d never before experienced. But enough excuses. At the time I argued that income inequality in the United States is an artifact of how our market-based economy works. Inequality benefits us because highly productive and innovative...
AG Hunter Lowers Boom on Barrier to Entry; Legislature Should Follow His Lead
Even as the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a recent alcohol distribution law, the Attorney General paved the way for the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Law Enforcement Commission (ABLE) to remove an obstacle from the expansion of liquor store competition - finding that Oklahoma’s five-year in-state residency requirement before one can own a liquor store likely runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution and recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The AG’s opinion, issued at the end of December, informs the state’s alcohol commission that portions of the state constitution (Article 28A, Section 4(A) & (B)) are unenforceable. These provisions require that ABLE issue a Retail Spirits License or Wine and Spirits Wholesaler License only to someone who has been a resident of Oklahoma for the previous five years. Presumably ABLE, who requested the opinion, will now begin issuing licenses to otherwise qualified applicants regardless of how long they have lived in Oklahoma. Tennessee had a similar provision, though only a two-year residency requirement. Last year the law was declared unenforceable because it conflicts with the dormant aspect of the federal constitution’s Commerce Clause....
Here’s a Way to Shore Up State Employee Pensions: Sell Unneeded State Assets
The State of Oklahoma owns a lot of property. This includes land and buildings, but it also includes valuable assets like the state-owned electric power company, the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA). GRDA reports nearly $1.8 billion in assets on its most recent balance sheet, with a “net position” of more than $622 million. Or the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET), which sits on a $1.2 billion endowment that does nothing but sit and produce investment income to fund the yearly operations of TSET. To the tune of roughly $50 million per year. We would all most likely be better off if some (probably most) of these assets were sold or leased to private entities where they could (1) be put to more economically productive use, (2) be put on the tax rolls (they are not taxed now), and (3) relieve the state from the burden of maintenance and operations expenses. What’s more, such an asset sale/lease (a “monetization”) would generate a large financial windfall for the state, which could be used to address long-term funding challenges like unfunded pension obligations and infrastructure needs. In the case of pensions, eventually those bills must be paid by taxpayers. And those...
Compact Dispute Solution: End the Casino Monopoly
With Governor Stitt and Oklahoma’s tribes at loggerheads over the gaming compact, it seems like a good time to reconsider the tribes’ gambling monopoly altogether. While there is only one Las Vegas, Oklahoma is a casino state. And regardless of the dispute between the governor and the tribes or its outcome, Oklahoma will remain a casino state. The question we should ask ourselves is, why should the tribes be exclusively able to operate casinos? As I understand the history, casino gambling exclusively allowed of tribes in other states arose out of a legitimate need for impoverished reservations to generate some cash flow. Reservations, in my opinion, are basically great big quasi-autonomous concentration camps. In Arizona, where I lived for nearly a decade, I found reservations to be sad, undeveloped, generally poverty-stricken places with a few poorly-exploited natural attractions that tourists could have attended in greater numbers if anybody had the incentive to promote them. It’s easy to understand why tribes in those circumstances would jump at the chance to generate a relatively easy cash flow from gambling attractions, limited to the geographic confines of the...
Want to Improve Public Education? Put the Governor at the Top of the Executive Branch.
Whatever your gripe about the state of public education in Oklahoma, don’t tell it to Kevin Stitt. He can do very little about it. That’s not because he doesn’t want to or because he doesn’t have good ideas about how to improve our schools. It’s because our governor lacks the most basic authority needed to shape state education policy: the power to oversee and direct the State Department of Education. Ditto for a host of other executive branch functions, including law enforcement (Attorney General), regulation of the state’s largest industry (Corporation Commission), scrutiny of agency expenditures (Auditor), management of the public purse (Treasurer), oversight of insurance (Insurance Commissioner) and regulation of labor and employment issues (Labor Commissioner). Each of these executive branch agencies are siloed under separate elected officials who do not answer to the Governor. Most organization charts display a neat hierarchy of accountable offices forming a chain of command. Our state org chart more closely resembles the dot-connecting of a ranting conspiracy theorist. Don’t tell it to your legislator, either. The Oklahoma Legislature can, and does, pass bill after bill...
A Minimum Wage Hike is Bad for Oklahomans – Especially Those at or Near Minimum Wage
Proposed minimum wage hikes have sprung up across the country, and Oklahoma is not immune. Here is why a minimum wage hike will hurt Oklahomans. What happens when the price of something goes up? Take oil, for instance. As of this writing, the price of oil is just above $59 a barrel. Imagine the Oklahoma legislature set a minimum price for oil, and that number doubled. If gas went from $2.50 a gallon to $5 or more would it change your behavior? Would you drive less? I know I would. This is a basic illustration of the laws of supply and demand. As the price goes up, demand goes down. This is true for oil. People would still have to get to work, but they might rethink that summer road trip. Those who live near the border might drive farther to buy gas from a neighboring state. These same principles hold true for all commodities. Why wouldn’t it apply just as much to labor? If you have to pay more for each employee-hour worked, wouldn’t you start to cut back on the number of hours you asked someone to work? Imagine you own a small business that makes widgets. You sell the widgets for $1 more than cost of materials. You have no overhead expenses. Your goal is to make enough money to...
Is Effective Education Reform Even Possible? The Answer is “Yes.”
Education Reform. Every time a legislature meets in this country, education reform is a topic of discussion. It’s easy to see why. Our schools, especially when you consider the amount of money we spend, don’t do a very good job. It’s really not that hard to casually look around the internet and find that the U.S. ranks in the top five of all nations, year after year, in average per-student spending in public education. Unfortunately, that does not translate into results. Many nations that spend a fraction of what we do outperform us in international academic comparisons. China’s students outperform ours by four grade levels. Oklahoma’s performance is below the national average. Anybody who knows one or more active public school teachers also knows that most of them work hard. Yes, they get longer holidays than most, and there are those relatively few who do the minimum, but there are the many who are conscientious. The problem is, they are swimming upstream in an institutional system that automatically flows to the lowest common denominator and frustrates efforts at attaining excellence. Teachers and students (and their parents) actually work outside of education’s iron triangle...
Will the United States Supreme Court Stand Up For Lawyers’ First Amendment Rights?
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical. Oklahoma law requires attorneys to join and pay dues to the Oklahoma Bar Association in order to practice their occupation. The folly of this this requirement lies not just in the financial burden imposed on lawyers, but in its affront to their First Amendment rights. This is because the Oklahoma Bar Association (OBA) routinely uses the money it receives in mandatory dues payments to support political causes. As a result, attorneys are forced to subsidize political activity and opinions they may disagree with. Over the Christmas holiday I filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief urging the United States Supreme Court to weigh in. You can read my brief here. The case in question involves a North Dakota attorney, Arnold Fleck, who sued North Dakota’s mandatory bar association for using his mandatory dues to engage in the same type of activity the OBA engages in. The North Dakota Bar used its members’ dues money to advocate the defeat of a state ballot measure Fleck had personally supported with his own time and money. In essence, North Dakota’s...
10 New Years Resolutions for Oklahoma
The new year brings with it the promise of new beginnings. A chance to reset. To do better. In that spirit, 1889 offers the following resolutions to policymakers across the state. 1. Reduce occupational licensing This originally read “End (or greatly reduce) occupational licensing,” but let’s be a little more realistic. If Oklahoma would even start moving the right direction (that is, shrinking the number of occupations for which a license is required, instead of growing it), it would be a huge win for the state. It would improve the overall economy. It would allow more people to find a job they are good at. Government rarely gets a shot at such an obvious win-win. 2. Reduce the number of branches of government to a manageable number. We will follow John Adams’ lead and suggest only three – legislative, executive, and judiciary – and recommend getting rid of the TSET, the Corporation Commission, and the host of other independent agencies with unelected oversight in Oklahoma. Agencies with no accountability to the executive or the legislature end up forgetting they are ultimately accountable to voters and taxpayers. When they don’t have to convince the legislature to fund them...
‘Tis the Season for Humility
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2 Christmas is almost here and, being a Christian, this time of year always gets me thinking about the religious aspects of the holiday. The 1889 Institute does not have a religious mission, and so it’s certainly not my purpose here to proselytize. There is an aspect of the larger story of Christmas, however, that all men of all creeds do well to remember and take heed. This is the concept of humility and what it really means. Whether one considers it myth or historical truth, the Bible teaches that God humbled Himself and came to earth as a man, deigning to be born in a barn to a carpenter’s household and grow up to wear, not a crown of gold and jewels, but one of thorns for the occasion of a tortured, earthly, sacrificial death. Without going into the theological aspects of the story, it is plain that it is, if nothing else, a lesson in extreme humility. Humility is a lesson that has been taught from ancient times in a number of traditions, religious and otherwise. Socrates, who pre-dated Christ, taught that true wisdom starts with knowing how much one does not know. That is, always be...
Eat Your Vegetables: City Council Considers A Well-Disguised Sin Tax
The Oklahoma City Council is considering a well-disguised sin tax. They call it a Healthy Neighborhood Zoning Overlay, but the effect is the same. It limits new dollar stores in the specified neighborhood. The ostensible goal is to create a welcoming environment for grocery stores selling fresh meat and produce. But it accomplishes this goal by giving existing dollar stores a monopoly, which will raise prices, and punish residents for shopping at the purveyors of (allegedly nothing but) junk food, instead of subsisting on fresh, organic kale smoothies like good little citizens. Why would the Council intentionally restrict the supply of stores where many of their residents buy basic household goods and food? Several possibilities present themselves, though none are sound. A fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of supply and demand. Economists call the current state of the neighborhood a contestable market: dollar stores choose low prices because the mere potential of competition keeps them honest. If they charged monopoly prices, a competitor, enticed by the potential for abnormally high profits, would enter the neighborhood, causing both sides to lower prices again. The...
A Simple Way to Improve Oklahoma’s Selection of Judges: Open Up the Process
The synod has finished its secret meetings and taken its vote behind closed doors. The public waits with bated breath (well, some of us) to get a glimpse at the new high priest who will don his formal vestments and take his seat at the commanding heights of doctrinal authority. Who will it be? Who will it be?! Then, as if delivered from the heavens, the names appear in a short announcement tucked in an obscure corner of the internet. WE HAVE CHOSEN. I am not describing the last papal conclave. I am describing Oklahoma’s unnecessarily mysterious process for selecting Supreme Court justices. All we are missing is the plume of white smoke. The nuances of the judicial selection methods employed by the 50 states are as varied as the cuisine. Some utilize elections, some gubernatorial appointments, some even have legislative appointments. We have commented on the relative strengths and weaknesses of these various methods, and will continue to do so, but some things are so fundamental to good governance that they should be present no matter the selection method used. I am talking about things like transparency, written rules, and public accountability. Quite a few states use a system...
Congrats, MAPS 4: The Magic of Obscure Election Dates
How surprising was it that MAPS 4 in Oklahoma City passed? It was a hard-fought, noisy campaign, with debaters “FOR” and “AGAINST” duking it out in public forums, polls showing a race that was neck-and-neck, hard feelings on both… Oh wait. Nope. We were thinking of some other election, maybe one that occurred on a date when people were actually engaged and thinking about voting. You know, some date, like we don’t know, in November of an even-numbered year. The MAPS 4 vote happened yesterday, December 10, in an odd-numbered year, on a date that pretty much said “Hey, really folks, don’t bother. Just leave this to us.” The “us” in a city numbering 650,000 citizens was a total of 44,439, or 6.8% of the population. That’s right, just over one-twentieth of the population has decided that everybody is going to continue paying extra sales tax. Except that’s overstated. Actually, only 31,865 people voted in favor of MAPS 4. That’s only 5% of the population. But wait, the difference between the “Yes” votes and the “No” votes was 19,291, which means only 3% of Oklahoma City’s citizens determined that everybody else would pay the MAPS 4 tax. The turnout and margin of victory are even worse...
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon Dioxide
When I was a young child, I remember speculating with my school classmates about how close a nuclear bomb blast might occur if there were all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. I grew up about 25 miles from Sheppard Air Force Base, which we all assumed was a potential target of the Soviets. It was an odd, concerning feeling deep in the gut, to contemplate the possibility of suffering radiation poisoning and the end of the world. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone, certainly not little kids, that gnawing deep-down fear that occasionally welled up depending on the news. That’s partly why the fear-mongering over global warming is more than just an aggravation to me. It makes me angry that propagandists like Al Gore have so frightened kids about the future that one has turned herself into an advertisement for depression treatment and anger management. I am especially angry because the truth about climate and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the opposite of what the mainstream news doses us with on a daily basis. The news is actually good. At the current 400 parts per million (400 millionths of a unit), CO2 makes up a tiny fraction of our atmosphere. In percentage terms, it is 0.04% of...
Profile in Failure: Why Can’t Oklahoma’s Kids Read Any Better?
I once met a highly decorated retired Air Force colonel only because he wanted to learn how to teach his grandson to read. This was not because the grandson was being homeschooled. The boy was attending public school in a generally decent middle-class school district in South Carolina, but he was struggling and obviously was not reading well. In researching how to teach his grandson, the colonel embarked on a journey that literally changed his life from quiet comfort in retirement to a one-man grassroots activist. It occurred to the colonel that he was not a particularly good speller himself as he discovered that he and his grandson had been taught reading in basically the same way. This was through the “whole word” method, a system that has gone by a variety of sometimes sophisticated-sounding names, including “Look-Say,” “See-Say,” “Sight,” “Psycholinguistic,” “Word,” “Whole-Word,” and a highly-modified version called “Whole Language.” This involves viewing the written English word much like a Chinese pictogram, where the word is viewed as a whole and not broken down into constituent sounds with individual letters and letter combinations matching those sounds. The breaking down...