Cities struggling with vacant properties can use their ability to place liens on properties that fall behind on their taxes, a terrific way for cities to reclaim properties not being used by their owners (usually property speculators). Flint and Cleveland have used this, as have other so-called ‘shrinking’ cities. But in this terrible twist, Washington…
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Daily Reminder of Texas State Budget Cuts – NYTimes.com
Texas’ hostility to public investment is starting to come home to roost in tangible ways. Great piece in the New York Times about how falling transportation funding manifests itself in gravel roads, one of the few places where spending cuts are felt by nearly everyone. Transportation is not the state’s only underfinanced program, but it…
Rich Man’s Recovery – NYTimes.com
I’m too jet-lagged to write much about this, and am coming late to the lively discussion over Saez & Piketty’s latest piece about rising income inequality. The dramatic rise in earnings and wealth inequality between the 1% and the rest of the country is important, and as Krugman says, demoralizing for most Americans. But there’s…
Thousands of Marylanders are losing homes in second wave of foreclosures – The Washington Post
Cities have been devastated by falling property taxes, fueled by both falling property values and a growing number of properties for which no property taxes are being paid. Property taxes continue to fall as the valuations catch up to the new market values, and now a long-predicted “second wave” of foreclosures is likely to damage…
Detroit, bankruptcy, and the national pension fixation
The post I wish I had time to write: how easily people can imagine taking away a retiree’s pension, how small those pensions usually are, and how controversial the assessment of Detroit’s (and everyone else’s) actual pension problem is (for starters, Morningstar says Detroit followed industry practice for its pension plan right up until the…