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Virginia House of delegates votes to reject health care reform. Governor Christie creates privatization task force. New Jersey residents debate Governor’s suggestion: Public workers to pay for parking....
View ArticleTalk on States Fiscal Health at GMU, April 21
George Mason University’s Department of Public and International Affairs is hosting Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, on April 21 from 4 to 6 PM for a talk...
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Calm Before the Tax Storm Wealthy Greeks pay cash for London houses Detroit to have Streetcar in 2013, but residents want more bus routes Are N.Y. taxi drivers overcharging? Public workers to protest...
View ArticleHurricane Season Begins
Today is the first day of the 2010 hurricane season, which NOAA predicts will be more active than usual, with 14 to 23 named storms. (In fairness, NOAA has been way off the mark in recent years, to the...
View ArticleThe State of State Pensions
Eileen is the guest on this week’s Inside State and Local Policy Podcast, with your host Jim Musser. She discussed her new paper with Andrew Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute. You can listen...
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Good pension policy requires transparency Wisconsin may reduce pensions Public workers protest cuts School reform in Detroit N.J. mayors agree to service sharing
View ArticlePension accounting narratives
The controversy over just how expensive public pension plans are, and are likely to be, is growing more contentious. The reason is that some defenders of the current system cavalierly dispense with...
View ArticleOlivia Mitchell on the future of defined benefit pensions
Steve Forbes’ interview with Dr. Olivia Mitchell of Wharton on the health and future of defined benefit pension plans raises a few points worth considering for policymakers and beneficiaries: Public...
View ArticleThe True Cost of the Columbia Pike Trolley: Priceless
A proposal to build a trolley car system on Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia continues to provoke strong reactions from residents. The County Board estimates it will cost between $214 million and...
View ArticleThe Economy as an Ecosystem
On Wednesday I testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. The title of the hearing was “Perspectives from the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Creating Jobs and Growing...
View ArticlePublic pension plan portfolios: pursuing higher risk at what cost?
How should a public sector pension plan invest its assets? A trend since the 2007 financial crisis is public pension funds making up for losses by seeking higher returns in riskier portfolios. Michael...
View ArticleCrony Capitalism and the Revolving Door
A colleague just handed me the latest issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (it’s hot off the presses, so an electronic link still isn’t available; here is a link to the previous...
View ArticleWhen Regulatory Agencies Ignore Comments from the Public
A few days ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a rule setting energy efficiency standards for metal halide lamp fixtures. Last October I wrote a public interest comment to the DOE to point...
View ArticleHercules, California’s Herculean debts
What lead the city of Hercules, California to default on its debts? Guest poster Marc Joffe, Principal Consultant at Public Sector Credit, finds a case of mission-creep in the “dynamic city on the...
View ArticleStrong words from the SEC on Public Sector Pensions
As state and local governments begin to pull back the curtain on the true value of their pension liabilities with the implementation of GASB 68, Daniel Gallagher, Commissioner of the SEC issued an...
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What to do when technology outpaces the law?
The recent cease-and-desist letters from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to taxi alternatives Uber Technologies and Lyft remind me of my first trip to D.C. in 1997. An awkward high school...
View ArticleWhen new ideas meet old regulatory solutions
With the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission recently issuing cease-and-desist letters to ride-share services Lyft and Uber, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto invoked the Age of Reptiles to describe the...
View ArticlePaving over pension liabilities, again
Public sector pensions are subject to a variety of accounting and actuarial manipulations. A lot of the reason for the lack of funding discipline, I’ve argued, is in part due to the mal-incentives in...
View ArticleCorporate welfare spending is not transparent
Over a century ago, the Italian political economist Amilcare Puviani suggested that policy makers have a strong incentive to obscure the cost of government. Known as “fiscal illusion,” the idea is that...
View ArticleBanking on risky investments is no way to guarantee a public pension
Over the past several years I’ve spent a lot of time studying public pension systems. That’s involved diving into the economics and actuarial literature, reading through many individual plan reports,...
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