Governors Revolt!
What’s gotten in to the governors? Across the country, a number of them seem to be fed up with their respective budget crises and are proposing bold action. As Eileen has written in the New York Post,...
View ArticleWhat Spending Contraction?
Eileen has a great response to Ezra Klein’s piece on the “anti-stimulus.” Klein writes that “[state] budget shortfalls are the equivalent of a massive anti-stimulus, which some experts believe has...
View ArticleWill We Learn From Greece?
A few weeks ago Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, warned, “Greece is a lesson for us…. We shouldn’t be so arrogant to think that that couldn’t happen to us.” Mr....
View ArticleWhy This Isn’t A Time to Worry that Government Is Spending Too Little
Last week, Ezra Klein wrote that state budget shortfalls constituted a massive “anti-stimulus” which might overwhelm the Federal Stimulus (implying the need for further federal spending). I responded...
View ArticleChristie’s Property Tax Cap Evolves
A key component of Governor Chris Christie’s spending and tax reduction plan is his proposal to place a hard cap of 2.5% on property tax increases, based on Massachusetts’ Prop 2 and 1/2. A compromise...
View ArticleWhat Caused the State Budget Gaps?
I know the conventional answer: the recession. And surely there is validity to the conventional answer. The recession was the proximate cause: it sent revenues in a free fall at the same time that it...
View ArticleAssorted Links
Jeff Dircksen at the National Taxpayers Union writes about a new ranking of state governments: There’s a new ranking that looks at how well states are run, or in some cases not so well run. According...
View ArticleStill short an accurate accounting
FY 2011 is a year in which states are having to reset their expectations. The stimulus is spent and the federal government is not likely to appropriate more to filling state budget gaps. Pamela Prah...
View ArticleWhen the Long Run Shows Up Today
A spate of recent articles regarding the fiscal situation of states and localities have lumped together their current fiscal problems, stemming largely from the recession, with longer-term issues...
View ArticleDo a majority of Americans prefer tax hikes to state budget cuts?
According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, the real third rail of politics isn’t Social Security it is state budgets. According to the poll results, 55 percent of Americans favor freezing wages for...
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Does Progressive Taxation Make State Budgeting More Difficult?
Virtually every state reported growth in overall tax collections as well as in tax collections from two major sources: personal income tax and sales tax. That is according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller...
View ArticleStates’ long road ahead to recovery
AP has produced an analysis of state budget shortfalls that reveals most states face long-term challenges to balancing their budgets. Two structural problems are stressed: Medicaid costs and pension...
View ArticleIncentives Matter
Last year, California’s legislature adopted its state budget a record 100 days after its due date. In the intervening months, California voters passed Proposition 25 which did two things: 1) it did...
View ArticleGovernor Christie’s pared down budget
The Star Ledger reports that Governor Christie, “took an axe” to the state’s budget and “slashed $900 million in a budget he blasted as ‘unconstitutional.’” Cuts were made to state aid to...
View ArticleTightening Municipal Bankruptcy Laws
There have been 629 municipal bankruptcies in the US since 1937. Some of the most recent include: Vallejo California, Central Falls Rhode Island, Boise County Idaho, and as of last week, Harrisburg...
View ArticlePension News From Around the Country
In California: LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown offered a far-reaching proposal on Thursday to reduce the cost to government of public pension programs, calling for an increase in the retirement age for...
View ArticleFlorida Senate Votes against Privatizing Prisons
Yesterday, the Florida state senate voted down a bill that would have privatized 27 of the state’s prisons. The shift was projected to save $16.5 million in a state with a $2 billion budget deficit....
View ArticleThe Ravitch Volker report: State Budget Crisis is Real
The recession of 2008 pulled the mask off of state budget pathologies that had been identified as institutional weaknesses in the decades leading to the crisis. The “new normal” for state and local...
View ArticleThe battle of the taxes
In my last post, I discussed several exciting tax reforms that are gaining support in a handful of states. In an effort to improve the competitiveness and economic growth of these states, the plans...
View ArticleGovernors’ Priorities in 2013: Medicaid Funding, Pension Reform
As the month of March draws to a close, most governors have, by this point, taken to the podiums of their respective states and outlined their priorities for the next legislative year in their State of...
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