What do you do with a program that has failed repeatedly and led to corruption and cronyism? Well, if you are government in Missouri, you expand it of course.
St. Louis County wants to follow the example of the City of St. Louis and create a land bank. This land bank will allow the county to become more aggressive about acquiring and selling property, primarily through tax auctions. If the examples in St. Louis and Kansas City are any indication, the land bank will fail in its goal of getting property back to the private sector. Creating a land bank will, however, increase opportunities for corruption and hold property off-market as a favor to politically influential developers. In case you have forgotten, here is the story on land bank corruption:
[Former Alderman] Boyd admitted accepting a total of $9,500 from Doe for his help convincing the city’s Land Reutilization Authority to accept a lower bid from Doe for a commercial property on Geraldine Avenue in Boyd’s ward. The LRA ultimately accepted Doe’s $14,000 bid. The LRA initially listed the property as worth $50,000. Boyd then worked to get a property tax abatement for Doe.
Inexplicably, the state authorized land bank expansion last year. St. Louis County is moving ahead with it. This is really the worst move the county could make and it isn’t going to end well for St. Louis County.
On the other side of the state, when St. Joseph created its land bank several years ago, the authorizing legislation included elements to help protect against corruption. It prevented people who might have a conflict of interest, such as anyone affiliated with St. Joseph city government, the land bank itself, or relatives of land bank staff or St. Joseph city government, from buying land from the land bank. Keep in mind that family members of the Jackson County Executive were able to purchase and flip land bank properties in Kansas City under questionable circumstances, to say the least. From the Kansas City Star:
No houses were built, and the company formed by Frank White’s stepsons Joseph, Darrel and Jordan Hurtt more than doubled its initial $3,700 investment by selling just four lots to a woman who lived near the properties on Montgall.
Now that it’s been several years since the St. Joe land bank was created and it has accomplished nothing, there is a bill in the legislature to remove those protections against corruption. It’s astonishing. What is the thought process here? Do St. Joseph city officials want to flip a few empty houses so badly that allowing those with inside information to profit is suddenly alright in St. Joseph? When something isn’t working under honest means, the answer is not to try it with dishonest means. I hereby award House Bill 717 the title of the worst bill in Jefferson City this year.
