The financial struggles of Houston and the cities of the Silicon Valley area—as well as tens of thousands of others across North America—have the same underlying cause.
Read More
Houston’s fiscal problems are less critical than other major cities with large budget shortfalls—yet, their mayor is correct when he said his city is broke, that the financial approach of the city is clearly not working. Here’s why.
Read More
Eric Goldwyn, a leading urban scholar and program director at the Marron Institute of Urban Management, joins us to talk about the importance of both transit and local government.
Read More
“Is this a good project, or will it set up my city for financial insolvency??” Here’s how to find out.
Read More
If we’re not paying attention, it can be hard to tell whether a city is using debt to simply to smooth out cashflows, or if it’s just covering up insolvency. Here are four telltale signs of the latter scenario.
Read More
You’ve just been sworn into your first elected office, and you’re committed to improving your city’s transportation network… But not so fast: not all money is free.
Read More
Conventional thought would tell us that the new commercial developments in a city should be the most productive compared to the older buildings downtown, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Read More
Many of the problems in our cities come down to a shortage in the budget—but the solution to this problem is staring us in the face.
Read More
In Baltimore, some of the city’s least wealthy individuals may be overpaying on their property taxes by nearly $300 a year, whereas some of the richest could be underpaying by $14,000 or more.
Read More
Detroit’s mayor is endorsing a land value tax plan that could lead to 97% of the city’s homeowners getting a 30% reduction in their taxes.
Read More
A 2020 study revealed that areas around streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. are more segregated and poorer than the United States average. Now, data shows property values in these areas are affected, as well.
Read More
In exchange for a $3 billion dollar subsidy, the company Foxconn promised to build a $10 billion factory that would create 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin. That promise still hasn’t come to pass, and there’s no evidence that it ever will.
Read More
In today’s cities, governments sink millions of dollars into public investments before securing any taxable private wealth to fund said investments. This is a financial risk we can’t afford to continue taking on.
Read More
I was asked how much the typical suburban development is costing this Tennessee city. Here’s what I found.
Read More
For local governments, it’s often easier to let the tangled web of debt at the heart of the budget go unexplored. In cities reliant on sales tax, these problems are only magnified.
Read More
The Just Accounting for Health coalition has been researching and reporting on property tax inequities for the past 18 months. But the real work is just getting started—and it starts with you.
Read More
Dating back to the 1800s, researchers in the U.S. have challenged the property tax system. So why, to this day, do the richest continue getting a "discount" on their taxes, while the poorest are overcharged?
Read More
The Family Dollar system operates more stores than McDonald’s, Starbucks, Target, and Walmart combined. And that’s not good news for your community.
Read More
Plenty of debate swirls around the question of whether or not government services like transit should be "free" to the end user. Here's what's missing from that debate.
Read More
When a housing complex in Milwaukee's downtown was set aside in favor of building storage units, instead, this local wasn't just disappointed: he's alleging the plans shouldn't have been approved, in the first place.
Read More