The Heartland Institute

This year North Carolina joined the growing number of states considering major changes to its tax system. The North Carolina Tax Fairness Act, introduced in May by Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger , lowers both personal and corporate income taxes, cuts the franchise business tax, abolishes the death tax, and lowers the ...

The emergency financial manager for Detroit has issued a report that says the city's finances are in worse shape than nearly anyone suspected before Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) appointed him to the job in March. Snyder appointed corporate turnaround expert Kevyn Orr to be Detroit's emergency financial manager. He is a lawyer ...

Another secretive budget is in the near future as California Democrats passed 37 empty budget “spot bills” Monday. Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Los Angeles), the author of AB 74, the budget bills and chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, called the bills “budget vehicles.” Blumenfield said Republicans began to care about ...

The Obama administration recently made the establishment of a National Infrastructure Bank part of its proposed budget. The project would allocate $10 billion to the National Infrastructure Bank with the goal of leveraging up to $20 billion in total infrastructure investment. Three major legislative proposals establishing a National ...

A few years ago, I was talking to a new college graduate who was moving to an expensive, distant city where she didn’t have a job. I asked, “How will you support yourself?” She shrugged and said her parents had money and would support her whether or not she found work. I couldn’t help but think, “Her parents aren’t doing ...

If taxpayers and ratepayers want to avoid unaffordable utility bills and huge liabilities in the not-too-distant future, they must insist now on more competition, oversight, and innovation in the way public officials manage the nation’s water and sewer systems. That’s the conclusion of a comprehensive study by the 362,000-member ...

Why such secrecy in Philadelphia? No one who knows will say because, well, it’s a secret. This much we do know: Mayor Michael Nutter and other city officials in April held a two-day conference financed by municipal bond underwriters. Approximately 100 municipal bond underwriters attended. The conference was closed to the public ...

According to Governing magazine, there were 28 public bankruptcies in 2011 and 2012. Although that number fell short of many experts’ predictions, it still represents a significant increase in defaults. Of the dozens of cities considering bankruptcy, Stockton, California is the largest and has received the most attention. A recent ...

The Vermont Legislature is considering a vast new array of tax changes and increases that could have a major effect on Vermonters. The proposals under House bill 528 , which recently passed through the Vermont House of Representatives, would increase income tax rates for higher-income earners while adding new sales taxes that ...

President Obama presented his budget Wednesday, two months late. To many taxpayer watchdog groups and public policy organizations, the $3.8 trillion budget blueprint has not been worth the wait. Some solid supporters of the president also have slammed the budget proposal. Among other things, President Obama would raise taxes approximately ...

Employees of the City of Irvine, Calif., received total compensation averaging $143,691 in 2012, according to a study published by the California Public Policy Center. Median total compensation, which means half of the Irvine city employees received less than this amount, and half received more, was $133,782 during 2012. These ...

“We’ve done several thousand open records requests over the years. It’s rare that you get stonewalled like this,” said Orville Seymer of Citizens for Responsible Government, a grassroots Wisconsin advocacy group dedicated to fiscal conservatism, property rights and honest government. Seymer was referring to the response to CRG ...

The state employee pension system in Illinois is broke, both financially and structurally. Without an overhaul of the current, unsustainable system, Illinois taxpayers will continue to suffer substantially higher taxes to bail out the state for its imprudent policies. If state workers and union representatives cannot accept sensible ...

Saddled with debt payments after sinking $135 million into the construction of a soccer stadium, the Chicago-area suburb of Bridgeview recently had to borrow an additional $27 million to cover required bond payments. The Chicago Tribune reported the new borrowing comes on top of more than $218 million in debt cited in the ...

Lake County Minnesotans can’t field calls or emails over their $66 million federal stimulus-funded Lake Connections broadband network yet, but the powerful U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee sure got through. The federal loan and grant awarded by the Rural Utilities Service to wire vast swaths of wilderness ...

What if most of the public employee compensation enhancements of the past decade or more in California were based on inaccurately optimistic government financial statements? Or to be blunt, what if government decision makers incorrectly thought they could afford these compensation enhancements because the information they relied ...

Illinois is in crisis. According to official government numbers, Illinois has an unfunded pension liability of $96 billion – the worst in the nation. This heavy debt burden, combined with the state’s culture of out-of-control, wasteful spending, has driven the state into an economic death spiral. Illinois cannot be economically ...

Taxpayers have cause for celebration or consternation, depending on which of two recent Congressional Budget Resolutions they read – and, what parts of each they read. “If Budget Resolutions are supposed to provide direction to the nation’s finances, the House’s bill charts a prudent course, but with some disappointing detours ...

Nick Dranias, director of policy development and constitutional government at the Goldwater Institute, explains his plan to reform Washington's budget woes using an interstate compact to advance a Balanced Budget Amendment. ...

Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. So-called “pension obligation bonds” offer an enticing way for Pennsylvania policymakers to avoid a steep increase in pension payments over the next few years, but experts warn to tread carefully. Swapping one type of debt for another could easily backfire and leave the state ...