Taxation
The Associated Press is reporting that Rhode Island is one of several states that’s been using money from fees on cell-phones, nominally intended to support 911 service, to plug holes in its yearly operating budget…Oregon, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Tennessee are among the states that have dipped into their 911 money recently. New York…
Given the numbers reported in this Los Angeles Times story from today…California’s two huge government pension funds reported whopping annual losses today of about one-quarter of their portfolios. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest in the nation, today posted a preliminary drop of $56.2 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30. The…
On Thursday, our delegation unanimously applauded the legislative progress being made on the nationalization …er, the reform of our healthcare system. In the last eight months, two Congresses and two Presidents have spent the following sums. TARP (bank bailout): $700 billion pledged; $200 billion distributed of which $66 billion has been repaid. Bailout of AIG:…
The letter that Walter Schmidt, of North Scituate, sent in to the Providence Journal deserves a hear hear: A July 2 letter (“Bill’s passage a fine day for the environment”) thanked U.S. Reps. Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin for voting for the “cap and trade” bill. The author, however failed to mention the cost of…
Over the weekend I was at a neighborhood July 4th get-together. The group was a mixed one. If I had to guess, most were either a-political or run-of-the-mill Rhode Island Democrats. The topic turned to the recent closing of a local Warwick elementary school and how property taxes just got a big bump (believe me,…
The Rhode Island Senate has ordered a study of the legalization of marijuana. Would that the goal was merely to adjust our illicit drug use ranking by reclassifying one of the drugs. Alas, they specifically voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana…
By adding in a few other sources to the figures for residential, commercial and industrial tax levies from the previous post, it’s possible to come up with a meaningful estimate of total local revenue-per-resident available to each Rhode Island city and town. The set of sources included in the table below are… Residential Property Tax…
Nothing says it’s the new fiscal year quite like the presentation of new fiscal data, to help provide context for the major local decisions on taxing and spending being made all across Rhode Island. This compilation actually began as an analysis of Providence city government’s claim that it is handicapped in its ability to raise…
OK, what’s this “cap and trade” thing all about? Well, first its a bid to massively change some fundamentals of our economy all for the sake of reducing global warming (by a few tenths of a degree Celsius in a few decades). Although the powerless House GOP has offered arguments against its passage, Democratic leaders…
As you may have heard, the gradually decreasing flat tax in Rhode Island has survived attempts to freeze or repeal it (so far). I’d note, though, an excellent point that Matt Allen made during the six o’clock hour: It’s foolish to think that the flat tax decrease is sufficient. For two things: Rhode Island’s tax…