Of QZABs and dirt bonds

As state and local governments grapple with extraordinary fiscal turmoil triggered by the economic downturn—California leading the way, but other states and cities facing staggering budget shortfalls—political leaders are turning to new sources of revenue and capital financing. Earlier this month, the Lincoln Institute hosted its fourth Land Policy Conference, "The Changing Landscape of Local Public Revenues," to review cutting-edge trends in public finance. The gathering of experts examined an alphabet soup of revenue instruments old and new, including:
-- Community Facility Districts or CFDs, issue debt (also known as "dirt bonds") for funding infrastructure for new development financed by a special tax on households and businesses in these districts.
-- Certificates of Participation or COPs, a type of a lease-back plan, where local governments enter into agreements with non-profit entities that issue tax-exempt bonds to finance facilities or projects that are sometimes leased back by the local government.
-- Tax Credit Bonds, where the federal government pays interest in the form of credits against income tax liabilities, used in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for school construction, clean energy projects, recovery zone economic development bonds, and Build America bonds; their origins are in the Qualified Zone Academy Bond or QZAB, dating back to the late 1990s.
-- Business improvement districts (BIDs), of which there are currently some 700 in 46 states, which can either complement or increase public expenditures.
-- Impact fees, although widely used to fund capital investments, have little evidence indicating they correspond to actual community expenditures; theory suggests they can lower property taxes, though empirical support for this is scarce.
-- Homeowner associations, estimated to provide services to some 50 million Americans for such services as road and sidewalk maintenance, street lighting, trash collection, and recreation facilities, encompass about half the residences constructed in the U.S. in the past two decades.
-- CEPACs, or certificates of additional building rights potential, an innovative instrument of value capture used since 2004 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. These are rights purchased from the city government by developers that allow construction of larger buildings.
-- Tax increment financing or TIF districts, now widely used—there are 789 such districts in Wisconsin alone—raising concern that they may increase the volatility of local property tax bases and revenues.
-- A VMT (vehicles miles traveled) tax, where a GPS device in cars allows the charge of 1.2 cents per mile, as the equivalent of a 24 cents per gallon gas tax.
-- Tolling strategies for highways, which have moved to a new phase after privatization and leasing deals in Chicago and Indiana; more sophisticated pricing structures can take into account time of day or allow solo drivers to use high-occupancy toll lanes (so-called "HOT" lanes).
     The experts at the conference were wary that many of these instruments do not require voter approval and are unknown to most residents. "Voters might not approve of these instruments if they knew about them," said Tracy Gordon, assistant professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. In addition, as cities in particular adopt various new revenue instruments—a meals tax, a lodging tax, sales taxes on new items, a local income tax, and additional user fees—researchers will have their hands full keeping up with the analysis of the fiscal impact.
     The proceedings of "The Changing Landscape of Local Public Revenues" will appear in book form by May 2010, as the fourth volume in the ongoing series.

State and local, Brazil and the U.S.

In his book with David J. Barron, City Bound – How States Stifle Urban Innovation, Harvard Law professor Gerald Frug argues that in the U.S., state law determines what cities can and cannot do to raise revenue and control land use – but that state law is often outdated and rooted in an unjustified distrust of local decision making. To avoid the difficulty for cities to formulate a coherent vision for their future, Frug calls for a new structure of state-local relations that would enable cities to take the lead in charting the future course of urban development.
     Edesio Fernandes, visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute, rejoins with the example of Brazil, where local government is given a much greater level of legal and political autonomy – a model of decentralization that guides financial resources. Also in Brazil, Fernandes notes, there has been an increasing recognition that the promotion of inclusive and sustainable urban development requires a different form of legal-institutional articulation among local, state, and federal governments.
    A conversation with Frug and Fernandes, “Legal-institutional designs supporting urban planning and management in federal systems: US and Brazil,” will take place Thursday 8:45 to 10:30 a.m. at Lincoln House, co-sponsored with the Affordable Housing Institute and made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Register online here .

Live from Denver

The Congress for the New Urbanism is in full throttle in Denver this week, wrestling with issues of infrastructure, going green, and financing of projects in these dark economic times. And while it almost seems quaint and old-fashioned to file a blog post from this gathering of 1,000 architects, planners, and others from the design professions, in the age of Twitter analyzed in this excellent article in Time magazine, here are some highlights:
      -- Showing results. The analysis contained in the Lincoln Institute report Smart Growth Policies provided some food for thought in the session "Selling the Green Advantage," as Carol Coletta from CEOs for Cities and Robin Rather from Collective Strengths addressed effective messaging techniques to draw support for post-carbon human settlement. The challenge for sustainability is to demonstrate the impact and benefits of New Urbanist-style development -- that compact, mixed-use neighborhoods really do reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for example.
     -- Riding the rails. New Urbanism's focus on transit-oriented development is paying off with renewed interest in transit infrastructure, and President Obama's high-speed rail initiative holds much promise with the group.
     -- LEED-ND in the works. Standards for the green good-housekeeping seal of approval for entire neighborhoods and not just individual buildings are coming together, and several Denver-area projects, such as Stapleton and Bel-Mar, were put to the test. Interestingly, the Highlands Village neighborhood scored low on some measures because a street was deemed too wide and there was only one floor of street-fronting retail in one section.
     -- Dark age ahead. Author James Howard Kunstler was in typical form with his analysis that the US financial system is broken "at every level," making it impossible to return to the oil-based arrangements to which we've grown accustomed. He argues that a much more locally based economy is on the horizon, with small cities depending on proximate farmland.
     -- Duany says no mas. Reflecting on his experiences building the Katrina cottage on the Gulf Coast and modular housing, DPZ's Andres Duany made the surprising conclusion that architects had only one choice to create affordable, simple homes: designing a better mobile home. Trades contractors and government-imposed permitting and inspection requirements obliterate the savings achieved in low-cost housing construction, he said.
   Blog posts and tweets are abundantly available via the conference Web site, plus postings at The Huffington Post.

A significant database

For nearly half a century, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, which was established by Congress in 1959, provided information on relationships among local, state and national levels of government, including the flagship publication Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism. The commission fell victim to budget cuts in 1996, to the dismay of journalists, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, all of whom made heavy use of the data. After a hiatus of more than a decade, the Lincoln Institute and the George Washington Institute of Public Policy have stepped in to provide  information once again on public finance and local property taxation in all 50 states, with the online database, Significant Features of the Property Tax.
    “This small agency did more to shed light on … the unique features of fiscal federalism than any other group,” said Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, at an event at George Washington University June 8 in Washington D.C. to announce the online database, in the Resources and Tools section of www.lincolninst.edu. “It was a cross between a dictionary, bible, and encyclopedia. Since its demise we’ve been contacted by many who said we want to revive this, but none came to fruition. My hat’s off to you folks.”
     “We’re testing the ‘Field of Dreams’ theorem – that if you build it, they will come,” said Gregory K. Ingram, president of the Lincoln Institute, noting his commitment to make more data available for researchers and others.
      Significant Features of the Property Tax was the brainchild of Joan Youngman, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Valuation and Taxation at the Lincoln Institute, who designed the database to allow users to zero on individual states, but also compare across states. The team at George Washington Institute of Public Policy spent four years tracking down the data and creating tables that can be customized and downloaded as spreadsheets.
      “I get asked all the time – what do other states do, on tax relief or economic development incentives,” said David Brunori, research professor at George Washington Institute of Public Policy and a contributing editor at State Tax Notes. “What this will allow people to do is find the answers, and look at best practices. It will be a roadmap that will be incredibly valuable. This will also bridge the gap between academics and policymakers.”
    Nancy Augustine, former research associate at George Washington and now program manager at the Pew Center on the States, led a walk-through of the online database, and noted that the data, current to 2006, will be updated through 2009. The site is organized in these major categories: General Characteristics of Local Taxation of Property, covering real and personal properties that are taxed, basic and differential local property tax rates, local jurisdictions’ use of transfer charges when properties change hands, and limits placed by states on local jurisdictions’ authority to use the property tax; Property Tax Relief and Incentive Programs, a listing grouped according to objectives for providing relief to homeowners and encouraging economic development and preservation of farmland and open space; and Structural Arrangements of Property Assessment, a data set on land use types in use in each of the states to characterize the property tax base and the assessment standard used to value that property. The site also displays statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau's Census of Governments on the property tax in the context of state and local finances. Data for the years 2005, 2002, and 1992 are reported for state and local governments combined and separately. For each year and each set of governments, data are presented for each revenue source in nominal dollars, as a share of all revenues, per capita, and as a percent of personal income.     
      “Significant Features of the Property Tax reflects our mission of providing data and conducting research on state and local fiscal policy,” said Hal Wolman, director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy.

Bruce Babbitt joins board

With his book Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America (Island Press), Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and interior secretary in the Clinton administration, was one of the most prominent environmentalists to recognize the importance of cities and the need for a national land use planning framework in the U.S. Admiration will no longer need to be from afar, as he has joined the board of the Lincoln Institute.
     “This is a convergence and a coming home,” said Babbitt, who is stepping down in October as chairman of the World Wildlife Fund. “I have worked with the Lincoln Institute for many years as governor of Arizona and during my time as secretary of the interior. I have always believed the Institute is the recognized leader in land policy, and I am honored to become a member of the board.”
    Kathryn J. Lincoln, the    Phoenix-based chair of the board of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, said she was "thrilled that someone with such wisdom and experience will help us guide this great organization.”
     With degrees in geology, geophysics and law, Babbitt was elected to statewide office as attorney general of Arizona on his first foray into elective politics at age 36. After fulfilling that role from 1975 to 1978, he then served as governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987. As governor, Babbitt brought environmental and resource management to the forefront in Arizona, bringing about the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, which remains the most comprehensive water regulatory system in the nation. He was also responsible for the creation of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and a major expansion of the state park system.
       Appointed secretary of the interior by President Clinton in 1993, Babbitt served from 1993 to 2001, bringing about the forest plan in the Pacific Northwest, restoration of the Florida Everglades, passage of the California Desert Protection Act, and legislation for the National Wildlife Refuge system. As a certified fire fighter, Babbitt brought his front line experience to creating a new federal wild land fire policy that emphasizes the role of fire in maintenance and restoration of natural ecosystems. He pioneered the use of habitat conservation plans under the Endangered Species Act and worked with President Clinton to create twenty two new national monuments, including the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. He is perhaps best remembered by American school children as the secretary who brought the wolves back to Yellowstone.
        The departing chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, Babbitt is a research fellow at the Blue Moon Fund, working on infrastructure in South America, and was the founder of the National Landscape Conservation System Foundation.
     Other members of the board of the Lincoln Institute include Thomas M. Becker, president of The Chautauqua Institution; Henry A. Coleman, professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University; Gary Cornia, dean of the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University; William A. Fischel, professor of economics at Dartmouth College; Alberto Harth, president of Civitas in San Salvador, El Salvador; Gregory K. Ingram, president, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Bruce Lincoln of Phoenix, Arizona; David C. Lincoln, president of VIKA Corp. and chairman of the Lincoln Laser Company; John G. Lincoln III, senior engineer at CH2M-Hill in Boise, Idaho; Kenneth T.W. Pang, adjunct professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Andrea Taylor, director of community affairs, North America, Microsoft Corporation; Douglas P. Wheeler, partner at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C.; and Carol Whiteside, president emeritus of the Great Valley Center in Modesto, California.

The 21st century park

Parks in major metropolitan regions will have a new and expanded role in the health of urban life in the 21st century, potentially much more integrated, compared to the model of park as place where the city is not. Three leading landscape architects -- James Corner, George Hargreaves, and Michael Van Valkenburgh -- explored prospects and challenges in park-making at an event earlier this month at the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted by the Forum for Urban Design and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Corner said the 21st century park will be "big, productive, and new' -- at a larger, regional scale, citing Lake Ontario Park in Toronto; performing new functions in sustainability such as Fresh Kills Park and Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee; and uniquely fresh, as in the case of the High Line, the abandoned elevated freight line in New York's meatpacking district that will open this summer as a kind of urban ecological trail. Hargreaves explored the need to rejuvenate distressed sites in central locations and engage in public-private partnerships, and cited major events like the Olympic games and London 2012 park as important drivers. There is both a universal quality of parks and a dynamic dimension relating to ecology, said Van Valkenburgh, who sees landscape as an agent of urbanism, as well as a clear economic benefit. As a respondent, this correspondent noted the role of citizen engagement and stewardship, recalling the rebellion engineered by Jane Jacobs and others at Washington Square Park, and current debates about density along the edges of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, the signature public space over the Big Dig. The panel was moderated by Toronto-based architect and urban designer Ken Greenberg, who was cheered by the "comeback of the public realm" even in the age of the Internet and social networks. An excellent write-up of the proceedings can be found at The Dirt: Landscape Architecture, Sustainability, and Environmental News, the weblog of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Smart growth, evaluated

    Several states engaged in what was first called growth management, and then smart growth, beginning more than 25 years ago -- and in the case of Oregon, it's been nearly four decades of promoting compact development to contain sprawl. But there has never been an assessment of how those states have fared with their policies -- whether and how smart growth has had an impact. Today the Lincoln Institute releases the first major evaluation of smart growth policies in the U.S., evaluating the performance of four states -- Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon -- in five major objectives of smart growth: promoting compact development, protecting undeveloped land, providing a variety of transportation options, maintaining affordable housing, and achieving positive fiscal impacts.
     Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes, the result of a two-year effort involving 21 contributing researchers, found that selected states achieved success in areas such as protecting open space and expanding transportation choices, but that no state did well in all five performance measures. Maryland was successful in protecting natural resources through its land preservation programs and state funding for the purchase of farmland conservation easements; New Jersey, spurred by the Mount Laurel court decisions, managed to slow house price escalation and encouraged multifamily production; Oregon’s commitment to urban growth boundaries helped reduce development on farmland in the Willamette Valley, and encouraged commuters to use transit, walk, or bike to work. But some smart growth states failed to achieve objectives in key policy areas, such as providing affordable housing in Oregon and Maryland, or promoting compact urban growth in Florida.
     The study also looked at four other states without formal statewide smart growth legislation: Colorado, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia. Colorado, with no statewide smart growth program, outperformed some states with such policies by supporting local government actions to pursue effective land use planning within a regional context.
     “The message is clear: achieving smart growth is possible, but states must remain focused on all five of these key policy goals of smart growth,” said Gregory K. Ingram, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and co-author of the report.
     Although the evaluation of smart growth programs concentrates primarily on statewide performance from 1990 to the early 2000s, the findings are highly relevant to today's policy challenges, as states seek to engage in land use planning for neighborhood stabilization, energy independence and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It's likely there will be a new wave of smart growth programs and initiatives in the post-carbon future.
     The report has several recommendations. First, objectives and implementation mechanisms have got to be clearly articulated. States are best served by a variety of regulatory controls, market incentives, and institutional policies coordinated at the regional scale, and should be mindful of the interactions among policies and the need for coordination across relevant agencies. Because it is so hard to move the needle, states need a credible and persistent commitment to smart growth. More information and better data is needed, particularly in the areas of environmental quality, public finance, and the nature of interactions among smart growth policies—land use, transportation, and housing affordability, for example.
     Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes is an objective-based evaluation -- that is, it was designed to evaluate whether selected states achieved the stated objectives of their smart growth policies, typically spelled out in legislation. The study also referred to the widely disseminated 10 Principles of Smart Growth.
     The report is based on an analysis of empirical evidence, using data from the US Census, Census of Government, Natural Resources Inventory, and many other sources. The contributors include Robert W. Burchell, director and professor, Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chair, Department of Planning and Urban Form, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Timothy S. Chapin, associate professor and chair, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida; Thomas A. Clark, professor and chair, Department of Planning and Design, and director, Center for Sustainable Urbanism, College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado Denver; Casey Dawkins, associate professor, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, Alexandria, Virginia; William R. Dolphin, director, Research Computing, Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Beth Goodman, planner, ECONorthwest, Eugene, Oregon; Yu-Hung Hong, fellow, Interdepartmental Programs, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and visiting assistant professor, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Keith R. Ihlanfeldt, professor of economics, DeVoe Moore Eminent Scholar, and director, DeVoe Moore Center, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida; Eric D. Kelly, professor, Department of Urban Planning, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana; Gerrit Knaap, executive director and professor, National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; Rebecca Lewis, PhD research assistant, National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education; Timothy MacKinnon, research associate, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey; Stuart Meck, director and faculty fellow, Rutgers Center for Government Services, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Terry Moore, vice president, ECONorthwest, Eugene, Oregon; Robert G. Paterson, associate professor and director, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas; Rachael Rawlins, adjunct lecturer, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas; Frederick Steiner, dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas; Allan Wallis, associate professor of public policy, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver; and Ming Zhang, associate professor, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin.
     The findings will be summarized at the upcoming Congress for the New Urbanism XVII in Denver, in a session Friday June 12 entitled "Selling the Green Urban Advantage."

A look at the land value tax

The land value tax, an increased tax rate on land and a reduced tax rate on buildings and improvements, has been tried in the U.S. primarily in Pennsylvania, and in some cases has been abolished just as quickly as it was instituted. Henry George's great idea -- that taxing land and not buildings would encourage urban development and curtail speculation -- seems to have had a checkered history in practice. A new book, Land Value Taxation: Theory, Evidence, and Practice, edited by Lincoln Institute visiting fellows Richard F. Dye and Richard W. England, sheds more light on this distinctive approach to property tax reform.
     The book is a comprehensive review of theory and published evidence on the land value tax and explores the results of its implementation in the U.S., primarily in Hawaii and Pennsylvania, and abroad in Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, Estonia, and elsewhere.  “There has long been a need for a careful assessment of the statistical evidence on land value taxation,” said Gregory K. Ingram, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., whose founder, John C. Lincoln, was inspired by the writings of the 19th century philosopher Henry George, an early proponent of land value taxation. “We wanted to learn why a form of taxation regarded as highly efficient by economists is often tried but then discarded, and whether it has achieved desired policy goals.”
       As an alternative to the property tax, a land value tax increases the tax rate on land and decreases or eliminates the tax rate on buildings. A tax on land is often claimed to be very efficient and produce few unintended economic costs, to increase the density of development, to reduce speculation in land, and to speed development generally. The authors conclude that theory supports the first two claims and indicates that a land tax will lower gain from speculation though not eliminate it. Land Value Taxation: Theory, Evidence, and Practice suggests that a land value tax does not alter the timing of development.
       In addition, the authors found that the implementation and political context for the land value tax has been challenging, often due to problems in assessment and issues that arise concerning fairness. In Pennsylvania, the land value tax is in place in 14 municipalities, but was tried and discontinued in 7 others. Harrisburg, a distressed city in the 1980s, initiated the land value tax as a continuing part of its economic development program.  In Pittsburgh, which began a land value tax in 1913, there was evidence of its favorable impact on building activity, but the tax became a scapegoat for poor assessment and rate setting practices, and Pittsburgh reverted to a traditional property tax in 2001.  In Hawaii, the land value tax was blamed for overdevelopment in locations such as Waikiki, where singer Joni Mitchell was inspired to write the lyrics “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” The land value tax was abolished there in the mid-1970s.
      In many cases relatively mild versions of the land tax have been implemented—often a modestly higher tax on land than on buildings—and so produced only small increases in development density, for example, that are difficult to measure. To be politically and economically successful, the authors argue, a land value tax must be accompanied by a sophisticated assessment system, frequent re-assessments, a nimble rate-setting process, effective land use planning, and ongoing public education.
     Land Value Taxation: Theory, Evidence, and Practice provides guidance for additional empirical work by identifying areas where existing studies are weak or contradictory, and informs new attempts to implement land value taxation. It settles some debates about land value taxation and initiates new ones, including issues of fairness and equity in land taxation, winners and losers when a land value tax is implemented, and what political coalitions are likely to form in support of and in opposition to the land value tax.
     The contributing authors include John E. Anderson, interim dean at the College of Business at the University of Nebraska, Michael E. Bell, research professor at the George Washington University, Steven C. Bourassa, director of the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville, John H. Bowman, emeritus professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University, ,Richard D. Coe, associate professor of economics at the New College of Florida, Riël C.D. Franzsen, director of the African Tax Institute, Jerome C. German of Lucas Assessment Research LLC, Wallace E. Oates, economics professor at the University of Maryland, Elizabeth Plummer, associate professor of accounting at the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, and Robert M. Schwab, interim dean at the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland. Richard F. Dye is professor at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Ernest A. Johnson Professor of Economics Emeritus at Lake Forest College; Richard W. England is professor of economics and natural resources at the University of New Hampshire.

A helping hand

State and local governments are struggling in this economic downturn, facing budget shortfalls and scrambling for new revenue sources. Potential responses to these seismic changes in public finance will be the focus of the fourth annual Land Policy Conference, The Changing Landscape of Local Public Revenues, sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge June 1-2.
       “State and local governments are confronting budget challenges that are staggering. We are witnessing, in this economic downturn, a kind of slow-motion train wreck,” said Gregory K. Ingram, president of the Lincoln Institute. “We believe these governments can benefit from the new ideas and practices discussed at this conference.” 
       Panels will address trends in local government revenues and local fiscal autonomy, creative designs of the “patchwork quilt” of municipal finance, local-option sales and income tax, impact fees, business improvement districts, tax increment financing, the role of homeowners associations, the performance of new and old revenue tools, and how changing revenue sources may fundamentally change the role of local government.
     Speakers include Robert P. Inman, University of Pennsylvania, on local revenue sources and cities, Jeffrey I. Chapman, Arizona State University, on new methods of infrastructure finance, Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, Harvard University, on prospects for private finance of highways in the U.S., and many others: John E. Anderson, University of Nebraska at Lincoln; James Edwin Benton, University of South Florida; Richard Briffault and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Columbia University; Leah Brooks and Michael Smart, University of Toronto; Gregory S. Burge and Cynthia L. Rogers,, University of Oklahoma; Jose Carbajo, Frontier Economics; Ron Cheung, Florida State University; Robert J. Eger and Richard C. Feiock, Florida State University; William F. Fox, University of Tennessee; Tracy M. Gordon, University of Maryland; Jocelyn M. Johnston, American University; Rachel Meltzer, New York University; David F. Merriman, University of Illinois at Chicago; John L. Mikesell, Indiana University-Bloomington; Carol O’Cleireacain, The Brookings Institution; Michael A. Pagano, University of Illinois at Chicago; Kim Rueben, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Institute and Urban Institute; Albert Saiz, University of Pennsylvania; Paulo Henrique Sandroni, Getúlio Vargas Foundation and Sandroni Consultores; William Simonsen and Mark D. Robbins, University of Connecticut; David L. Sjoquist, Georgia State University; Mark Skidmore, Michigan State University; Margaret Walls, Resources for the Future; Michael J. Wasylenko, Syracuse University; and David E. Wildasin, University of Kentucky.
       Meanwhile, papers and presentations from last year’s Land Policy Conference, on property rights, has been compiled in a book also published this month, Property Rights and Land Policies edited by Gregory K. Ingram and Yu-Hung Hong. The volumes on the Land Policy Conference from previous years are Land Policies and Fiscal Decentralization, based on the 2007 conference, and Land Policies and Their Outcomes, based on the 2006 conference.

Fiscal turmoil

As California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger mulls his options following yesterday's defeat of ballot initiatives aimed at stabilizing the state's fiscal crisis -- including borrowing against property tax receipts -- this week's National Tax Association symposium, Tax Policy and the Economic Recovery, seems especially timely. Joan Youngman, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Valuation and Taxation, and Daphne Kenyon, visiting fellow and co-author of Property Tax Circuit Breakers: Fair and Cost-Effective Relief for Taxpayers, will be there, at the Holiday Inn Capitol May 21-22. Copies of the report, which outlines ways to reduce the tax burden on families whose property tax bills are a large share of their income, without further stressing local governments struggling to provide services in the economic downturn, will be available.