Reason Foundation

September 5, 2015

Devastating Fires Show Forest Management Reforms Are Badly Needed

How to fix the management of forests in the Northwest to better prevent and fight wildfires

Julian Morris

In the past three decades, the area burned by wildfires in the U.S. each year has grown dramatically, while the number of fires has remained roughly constant. The big change has been the average size of each wildfire, which has more than doubled.

Student-Based Budgeting Helps Principals Be More Effective Educators

Some school districts fear budget autonomy will distract principals but are finding it actually helps principals identify what is working and what is needed at their schools

Aaron Smith

City-Owned Golf Courses Should Be Sold or Privatized

The Bobby Jones Golf Course in Sarasota shows why government shouldn't be in the golf course business

Adrian Moore

How do you solve a problem like the Bobby Jones Golf Course?

Once again, the city of Sarasota is wrestling with what to do about the Bobby Jones Golf Course, a perennial albatross around the city’s neck.

City documents show the golf course lost $228,000 in 2013 and was expected to lose about $875,000 in 2014 and another $700,000 in 2015. 

Twice — in 2008 and 2014 — the city hired the National Golf Foundation to review operations and the club and recommend how to improve things. Both times, it came back with an overall recommendation that the city sink a lot of money into the golf courses, clubhouse, etc.

The latest move by the city was to create a committee to, again, examine the club and recommend what the city should do. So far, that committee has said it needs a lot of time and money to do the job.

It’s past time city leaders cut the cord.

Spending more on more studies that recommend spending more money won’t solve anything. Providing a golf course is not a core competency of city government. The area has no shortage of affordable golf courses that are open to the public. The only real question is what the city should do with the money-losing course.

Privatization & Government Reform Newsletter #20 (August 2015 edition)

August 2015 edition: pay-for-success contracting in community corrections, pension-related ballot measures in Arizona, carbon regulation and more

Leonard Gilroy

In this issue:

• CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Pay for Success Contracting and Recidivism Reduction
• PRIVATIZATION: Outsourcing in Two California Cities
• PENSIONS: Arizona Election Results on Pensions
• TRANSPORTATION: Reconsidering Truckers' Opposition to Tolling
• ENERGY: Overstating the Social Cost of Carbon
• EDUCATION: Unions Target L.A. Charter Schools
• News & Notes
• Quotable Quotes

Arizona Election Results on Pensions

Voters reject pension tax in Prescott, approve modest reforms in Phoenix

Leonard Gilroy

The outcomes of last week's votes on ballot measures in Phoenix and Prescott suggest that voters remain open to changes in the design of pension systems for new hires (even weak ones, as in Phoenix’s case) but are not keen on paying higher taxes to cover pension debts, as Prescott proposed.

Unionization Efforts Could Halt Progress at Innovative Los Angeles Charter Schools

United Teachers Los Angeles aims to unionize successful Alliance College-Ready Public Schools built on flexibility and autonomy

Lisa Snell, Savannah Robinson

While the Los Angeles Unified School District was making national headlines for a catastrophic iPad scandal in which the district’s efforts to give every student access to an iPad and a new curriculum failed spectacularly, the Los Angeles-based Alliance College-Ready Public Schools charter school network quietly deployed iPads to more than 12,000 students. The group successfully used the iPads to implement a blended learning curriculum using individualized instruction across all of their charter schools that is paying off in terms of higher student achievement for a lower cost per-pupil than Los Angeles Unified. 

The Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is a nonprofit group educating more than 12,000 low-income students at 27 public charter high schools and middle schools. Six of Alliance’s schools rank in the top 5 percent of high schools nationwide according to U.S. News & World Report. 

The Social Cost of Carbon Underestimates Human Ingenuity, Overestimates Climate Sensitivity

The Clean Power Plan and climate change models assume the climate is more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide than is actually the case

Julian Morris

To great fanfare, the White House recently released its final “Clean Power Plan,” which seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation. The Obama administration also released a 343-page “regulatory impact assessment,” which purports to detail the Clean Power Plan’s costs and benefits. But as I show in a new study for Reason Foundation, one of the key assumptions underlying that assessment, the so-called “social cost of carbon,” is deeply flawed. As a result, the administration has massively exaggerated the benefits from reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Under more realistic assumptions, the plan would fail a basic cost-benefit test.

The Clean Power Plan is the latest in a series of federal regulations targeting emissions of greenhouse gases. Under federal law, agencies proposing new regulations are required to assess their costs and benefits. Since 2010, federal agencies have counted the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by multiplying the estimated total reduction of such emissions (measured in tons) by the “social cost of carbon” (measured in dollars per ton).