Archives for John LaPlante

Did You Do It For Love, Did You Do It For Money?

Posted by John LaPlante on Monday, February 6th 2012

Advocates of public sports stadiums should admit that they are homers, not economic development experts. That’s the conclusion of an editorial from Bloomberg.com. The headline announces: “As Super Bowl shows, build stadiums for love and not money.”

It notes that the Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of the recently completed Super Bowl XVI, cost $720 million–of which the chief beneficiary of the spending, the Indianapolis Colts–spent a mere $100 million.

Fellow policy fellow David Strom has suggested that the Minnesota Vikings have as much of a claim on the “cultural” money from the Legacy Amendment as the Guthrie or any of the state’s “high culture” institutions. Officials in Indianapolis have come to a similar conclusion: As the expenses of the stadium exceeded projections, the county-city board “had to reduce arts and cultural grants.”

When you take all the costs and all the benefits into consideration, are stadiums worth it? The Bloomberg editorial, in a review of various economic-impact studies on the question of stadiums, concludes:

(a) stadiums don’t have a long-term impact on economic growth

(b) cost overruns are typical, costing taxpayers 40 percent more than advertised

(c) in some cases, taxpayers are still paying off debt incurred on stadiums that have been demolished to make way for new and more expensive stadiums

(d) the number of jobs created by a stadium ranges from 0 to 1,000, with the number more likely to be the former than the latter

(e) the jobs a stadium creates are likely to be low-wage, part-time, and seasonal

(f) building a new stadium might actually destroy jobs by diverting money from purposes that are more economically productive

(g) a stadium, far from increasing regional wages, may reduce them

(h) a stadium may revitalize one small footprint within a metropolitan area, but at a cost that far exceeds what policy makers would have to spend had they taken a different path (jobs from a new stadium in Baltimore $125,000 a piece; those from other programs cost $6,000)

The editorial concludes with some sensible observations:

(1) All costs of a stadium should be made known to the public, broken down by category of subsidies

(2) governments should bargain hard, increasing as much as possible the portion paid by the team/league

(3) any deal the government makes should make maximum use of surcharges on tickets as well as other arrangements that use fees directly related to the project, rather than taxes

(4) the project should be put to a public vote.

Commenting on that article, Richard Rider suggests that teams be required to post performance bonds to cover overruns. That strikes me as the last that public officials can do.

category: John LaPlante

tags: Sports stadiums

Happy Digital Learning Day

Posted by John LaPlante on Wednesday, February 1st 2012

Today is “digital learning day,” a celebration of the possibilities of using online tools to deliver education. Curiously, Minnesota is not one of the 39 states officially observing the day.

That’s too bad, when you consider the possibilities it has to offer students ways to get classes they might not otherwise be able to get, at a time that works for them, at a pace that works for them. See Mitch Pearlstein’s recent report on digital learning in Minnesota, as well as the resources at Digital Learning Now!

category: Education, John LaPlante

Funding the Child through Local Aid Proposed

Posted by John LaPlante on Thursday, January 26th 2012

A legislative proposal to direct more money towards charter schools is a half a step in the right direction. The idea is that if a child leaves a district school to go to a charter school, some of the locally raised money goes with the student to the charter school.

Is send local money to a school that isn’t controlled by the local board of education an untested idea? Not at all. Small towns in Maine and Vermont have been doing this for over 130 years. Under “town tuitioning” arrangements, the local government collects tax money, which children can use to spend at public or non-religious private schools elsewhere. Some of the students even attend out-of-state schools with the money. Between the two states, about 12,000 students get their schooling this way.

It’s a beautiful approach. It recognizes the widely held belief that government should levy and collect taxes to pay for the formal education of children, and still lets local taxpayers decide how much they pay for education. At the same time, it gives parents and students a choice in where the children will be schooled.

The Minnesota proposal helps address the disadvantage that charter schools when it comes to funding, so it should help encourage their development. Families will benefit from more choices in pedagogy, curriculum, and school calendars

But there’s one significant limitation: The money goes with the child to the charter school only if the school is inside the geographic boundaries of his district. Such a policy discourages the charter school from accepting students from a larger area. A charter school in Minneapolis would get extra money from students who live in Minneapolis, but not from students who live in Bloomington, for example. Charter schools must by law have open enrollment policies, but the differential funding would give them incentives to find creative ways to keep out children who lived outside certain lines on the map.

The limitation also means that if you want your child to attend a charter school that lies outside the confines of your local district, you will (effectively) be shortchanging the charter school.

I suppose the limitation is one way to limit the amount of money that flows from districts to charters. If that is a concern, however, other ideas should be in play, such as lowering the percentage of the local money that can be transferred.

Still, give Rep. Kelly Woodard, the author of HF1860, credit for advancing the idea.

category: Charter schools, John LaPlante