Public finance

After serving 18 years in Congress, former Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, a Democrat, will continue his service in a different federal institution — prison. He was sentenced recently to serve 13 years for bribery. But his fellow prisoners will have to forgive Jefferson if he grins and whistles as he stamps out license plates.  

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan on Friday vetoed an Assembly amendment that would have required the city to pay off its bond debt as scheduled, in opposition to Sullivan's plan to delay. Sullivan put forth a proposal to delay payments of Anchorage's voter-approved bond debt as scheduled this year, but the Assembly passed an amendment against that plan on Tuesday which would have required the city to pay off the debt as scheduled. In issuing the veto Sullivan said refinancing city debt is necessary to bal  

Angel Cognetta has spent the last several years caring for her aging parents, a full-time job that requires her to help them with their bills, manage their many medications and bring them to countless doctor's appointments. Over the summer, the Stamford resident heard from a social worker about a state program that helps provide a respite for caretakers of family members with Alzheimer's disease. Cognetta figured with the $3,500-a-year benefit, she could send her 85-year-old mother, Tula Chalikis, who h

I have clients that are calling us every week in desperate need   -Marie Allen

 

More spending cuts and borrowing could be under consideration, as well as Gov. Jan Brewer's desire for a temporary sales tax increase and still-developing economic recovery proposals. Other topics being discussed include legislation to head off existing or potential legal challenges to previous budget-balancing steps.

If we try to do it all at once, we just have sticker shock   -Bob Burns

 

About $55 million in state revenue sharing funding is expected to be released to Detroit following the city's submission of a late financial audit. Mayor Dave Bing says in a release Friday that the 2008 fiscal year financial report and deficit elimination plan has been turned over to the state Treasury Department. An audit of city finances is due each Dec. 31, six months from the June 30 end of the previous fiscal year.  

To comply with budget reductions ordered by the City Council, the School Committee cut nearly $1.3 million from its 2009-2010 spending plan Thursday night. "We did it [made cuts] judiciously," district chief operating officer Lonnie Barham said while explaining the recommended reductions to the school board. You see we did not cut salaries anymore.  

The way the federal government requires stimulus grant recipients to report spending and job creation has led to incomplete and often misleading information being posted on the government Web site designed to keep track of the data. According to an Arizona Republic review of Phoenix data from Recovery.gov , eight of 27 grants the city reported online omitted key information including the project's name, description and the federal agency that awarded the money. The missing information makes it difficu

People just need to drill down further   -Tasya Peterson

 

The latest forecast projects a further $10.2 million drop in personal income taxes and $9.2 million in corporate income taxes from the most recent forecast Aug. 27. Still, Potiowsky said, those projected losses are small compared with a total of about $13.4 billion for the 2009-11 cycle — so the forecast is essentially flat. "Under the circumstances, a flat forecast is the best we can expect," said Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, who leads the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee.

So I will be interested to see what's going on here, because Oregonians have consistently gambled through the last recession. Clearly, fewer of them are, which on one level is a good thing, but it does have a negative effect on our revenue.   -Vicki Berger

 

Given limited time, a government task force will apply nine guidelines to weed out wasteful spending for projects requested in the fiscal 2010 budget that cannot be thoroughly scrutinized. The guidelines include the elimination of overlapping projects conducted by different ministries and agencies and a review of funds held by public interest corporations and independent administrative agencies. Members received reports from lawmakers and other reviewers who completed their first round of reviews over