Fiscal Policy

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According to the U.S. Dept. of Treasury, the IRS collects $2.4 trillion dollars each tax year from an estimated 234 million tax returns. If the data submitted on all tax returns and W2s was available in an electronic format, state governments could perform big data analytics to identify and prevent fraud and recover billions of dollars in tax revenue.[read more]

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Idaho has launched a new government transparency website which includes downloadable financial reports from public offices over the last several years. The reports range from broad summaries of State revenues and expenditures with easy-to-read charts and graphs, to detailed snapshots of agency-level finances.[read more]

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The federal government is increasingly facing challenges of greater complexity that demand faster action than the current institutional structures can respond to effectively. Presented here are three sets of interrelated solutions termed “Anticipatory Governance.” Anticipatory Governance can be defined as: “a ‘system of systems’ comprising a disciplined foresight-policy linkage; networked management and budgeting to mission; and feedback systems to monitor and adjust.”[read more]

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As CivSource reported, wind energy has been steadily growing in the US, supported in large part by this tax credit. Clean energy projects were announced in 30 states in the second quarter and nearly one-third of those announcements were in Midwest states, including Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois – all states with high unemployment and drought conditions, making the need for renewables real and immediate.[read more]

Photo by Takver via Flickr

Cities continue to face the prolonged effects of the economic downturn according to a new report by the National League of Cities (NLC). The 27th annual City Fiscal Conditions report shows that for the sixth straight year city revenues continue to fall as financial pressures such as infrastructure, health care and pension costs combine...[read more]

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Being wrong about the macro economic fundamentals need not stop anyone from becoming Governor of the Bank of England. Given how hopeless the "experts'" orthodoxy, I'd say it was probably a prerequisite.[read more]

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The World Bank held a series of seminars this past Spring on the state of the international public sector performance and results movement over the past two decades. I came away more encouraged than I had expected regarding advances in several developing nations – with implications for the more developed countries.[read more]

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It will not do to blame this on the Eurozone. Trade with the Eurozone accounts for less than 10 percent of all economic activity in the UK.[read more]

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a homeowners bill of rights. The new law provides additional options for homeowners that are facing foreclosure and are being unduly hassled by bill and loan collectors. The law comes as new data shows that California leads the nation in foreclosures, with the highest rate since 2005....[read more]

I'm at the annual IIMC conference where municipal clerks from around the world are looking for the next must-have legislative solution. Speaking to clerks at the conference, I’m reminded of just how much the legislative clerical process has transformed over the past twenty-five years.[read more]

Christine Largarde, IMF director

An IMF loan takes precedence when it comes to paying people back. So adding more IMF-backed loans into the Eurodebt mix will increase the chance of other creditors not getting their money back.[read more]

Saving the Euro, suggest ministers, will restore economic growth to Britain. It is, they imply, the most important thing we must do to ensure our own recovery. Perhaps if the single currency was such a panacea for growth, we'd have seen a little more of it in stagnant Euroland this past ten years? Maintaining the Euro at any price won't...[read more]

As Daniel Schuman wrote on the Sunlight Foundation’s blog today, Delaware Senator Tom Carper wrote yesterday to federal CIO Vivek Kundra about the effects of a 75% cut to e-government funding at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including questions about how the Obama administration intends to go forward. For...[read more]

  Fred Krupp What a different just a few years can make. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time not long ago when Congress appeared to be on the verge of a bipartisan agreement to regulate global warming pollution. Republicans John McCain, John Warner, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty all supported efforts to put a cap on...[read more]

I just did an interview on the Daily Politics about public spending cuts - and why the government was actually finding it rather more difficult to curb spending than the rhetoric suggests. It is a mathematical fact that total public spending is actually set to rise from £669 Billion in the...[read more]