Interesting article about college towns (and cities) confronting private campuses over their property tax exemptions, focusing on Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It’s a commonly-known fact that colleges don’t pay property taxes, despite exerting heavy tolls (especially in policing and fire protection) from the local communities. Negotiations over what colleges and universities pay for…
Category: Cities
Cuomo’s Cap on Property Taxes Rankles Communities – NYTimes.com
A much-heralded cap on property taxes championed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is encountering resistance as some communities across New York chafe at what amounts to a restriction on their spending and seek to exempt themselves from the new limits. This article ran back in October, but it highlights an issue that people don’t often…
Detroit meetings must be public
A blog about urban austerity and fiscal crisis can’t help but get preoccupied with Detroit. There’s so much backstory here that it’s unavoidable to jump in to the middle. For now, I wanted to highlight the development of a twist in the state’s effort to declare a financial emergency in Detroit. The panel charged with…
What a Drag | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
A simple and elegant statement of why balanced budget laws and cutting government spending aren’t necessarily economically responsible, even as they are touted as the height of fiscal responsibility. Unlike the feds, states have to balance their budgets every year, which means they either raise taxes or cut services. They haven’t done much on the…
Cities and tax foreclosures
What happens when property owners stop paying their taxes? On January 8, 2012 the Detroit Free Press examined the property tax problem in Michigan (“Unpaid taxes put thousands of metro homeowners at risk of foreclosure”). This story reminds us that cities and counties are losing tax revenue not just as property values fall, but as people struggle…