|
RIPR is a (paper) newsletter
that looks at local, state and federal policy issues
that affect life here in the Ocean State. Each issue focuses on
particular policy areas of interest. Future issues will examine
controversial aspects of environmental policy, health care,
state tax reform, and education spending. The intention is to look at
action rather than talk.
RIPR also issues a weekly column about public policy, carried by
ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. See
here for an
archive of recent columns.
If you'd like to help, please contribute
an item, suggest an issue topic, or buy a subscription. If you can,
buy two or three (subscribe here).
Search this site
Available Back Issues:
- Oct 07 (28) - Choosing the most
expensive ways to fight crime, bait and switch tax cuts, review
of Against Prediction, about the perils of using statistics
to fight crime.
- Aug 07 (27) - Sub-prime mortgages
fall heaviest on some neighborhoods, biotech patents in decline, no photo
IDs for voting, review of Al Gore's Against Reason
- Jun 07 (26) - Education
funding, budget secrecy, book review of Boomsday and the Social
Security Trustees' Report
- May 07 (25) - Municipal finance: could citizen
mobility cause high property taxes?
What some Depression-era economists had to say on investment, and why
it's relevant today, again.
- Mar 07 (24) - The state budget
disaster and how we got here. Structural deficit, health care,
borrowing, unfunded liabilities, the works.
- Jan 07 (23) - The impact of real
estate speculation on housing prices, reshaping the electoral college.
Book review of Blocking the Courthouse Door on tort "reform."
- Dec 06 (22) - State deficit: What's
so responsible about this? DOT bonding madness, Quonset, again,
Massachusetts budget comparison.
- Oct 06 (21) - Book review: Out of
Iraq by Geo. McGovern and William Polk, New rules about supervisors
undercut unions, New Hampshire comparisons, and November referenda guide.
- Aug 06 (20) - Measuring teacher
quality, anti-planning referenda and the conspiracy to promote them,
affordable housing in the suburbs, union elections v. card checks.
- Jun 06 (19) - Education report, Do
tax cut really shrink government?, Casinos and constitutions, State historic tax
credit: who uses it.
- May 06 (18) - Distribution
analysis of property taxes by town, critique of RIEDC statistics,
how to reform health care, and how not to.
- Mar 06 (17) - Critique of commonly
used statistics: RI/MA rich people disparity, median income, etc.
Our economic dependence on high health care spending. Review of
Crashing the Gate
- Feb 06 (16) - Unnecessary
accounting changes mean disaster ahead for state and towns, reforming
property tax assessment, random state budget notes.
- Jan 06 (15) - Educational equity,
estimating the amount of real estate speculation in Rhode Island,
interview with Thom Deller, Providence's chief planner.
- Nov 05 (14) - The distribution of
affordable houses and people who need them, a look at RI's affordable
housing laws.
- Sep 05 (13) - A solution to pension
strife, review of J.K. Galbraith biography and why we should care.
- Jul 05 (12) - Kelo v. New London:
Eminent Domain, and what's between the lines in New London.
- Jun 05 (11) - Teacher salaries,
Veterinarian salaries and the
minimum wage. Book review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
- Apr 05 (10) - Choosing a crisis: Tax fairness and school
funding, suggestions for reform. Book review: business location and
tax incentives.
- Feb 05 (9) - State and teacher
pension costs kept artificially high. Miscellaneous tax suggestions for balancing the state budget.
- Dec 04 (8) - Welfare applications and the iconography of welfare
department logos. The reality of the Social Security trust fund.
- Oct 04 (7) - RIPTA and DOT, who's really in crisis?
- Aug 04 (6) - MTBE and well pollution, Mathematical problems with property taxes
- May 04 (5) - A look at food-safety issues: mad cows, genetic engineering, disappearing farmland.
- Mar 04 (4) - FY05 RI State Budget Critique.
- Feb 04 (3) - A close look at the Blue Cross of RI annual statement.
- Oct 03 (2) - Taxing matters, a historical overview of tax burdens in Rhode Island
- Oct 03 Appendix - Methodology notes and sources for October issue
- Apr 03 (1) - FY04 RI State Budget critique
Issues are issued in paper. They are archived irregularly here.
Subscription information:
Contact:
For those of you who can read english and understand it, the following
is an email address you are welcome to use. If you are a web bot, we hope
you can't understand it, and that's the point of writing it this way.
editor at
whatcheer dot
net
Archive:
2007 print columns
2008 print columns
Deep archive
Links:
Links page
RSS
RIPR is primarily a print publication (yikes! how 20th century!),
and the work it represents is supported by its subscribers. Feel
free to use this link to an
RSS feed for
the blog, but the real meat is in the newsletter, so come back and
subscribe when you have a chance.
Responsibility:
 Tom Sgouros
|
|
Fri, 21 Apr 2006
The Senate Tax Plan
Posting has been light while I finish up a big project, but news of
the Senate tax reform plan brought me back. You can read about the
plan here,
but here's a summary:
- Reduce the property tax levy cap to 4.0% per year from the current
5.5%.
- Reduce the cap on state budget increases from 5.5% per year to
4.0% per year.
- Increase the property tax circuit breaker for the elderly and
disabled.
- Eliminate "unfunded mandates" of the state on cities and
towns.
And here's why it's so stupid.
- Capping the levy increases
- Who thinks that towns are
increasing their budgets just because they want to? Who is it who
believes that city councillors and town managers are not seeking ways
to reduce their budgets? Show me one of those people and I will show
you someone who doesn't pay much attention to their local government.
Or I will show you an idiot.
Announcing to the world that you will
insist that municipal governments cut their budgets is another way to
say that you actually have no clue at all how municipal governments
can possibly lower their budget, but also that you don't really
care.
- Capping the state budget
- What a grand idea. Presumably
after forcing all those spendthrift towns to cut their budgets, we
have to make darn sure that the state can't step in and pay for
valuable services the municipality can't afford. No, dear, we can't
have that.
- Property tax circuit breaker
- This is slated to go up from
a maximum of $250 per year to a whopping $300. Wow.
- Unfunded mandates
- This is actually a very good idea, but
it's a little difficult to see how it's going to work as proposed.
For example, the whole idea of public education is an unfunded (or
only partially funded) mandate. Is the Senate simply proposing that
the courts work this out for them?
The whole proposal smells like the same old same old: hashed over
ideas aired by people who don't really have any idea what goes on in
city halls and school departments. This can't possibly be the best
the Senate can do.
14:25 - 21 Apr 2006 [/y6/ap]
link
|
Ads and the like:
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
|
