Government Finance Review articles from June 2000

Government Finance Review archives from June 2000

SEC Reaches Historic Yield-burning Settlement.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Seventeen Wall Street firms have, agreed to pay more than $138.3 million to reimburse the U.S. Treasury and compensate state and local governments for losses in connection with advance refundings. The 3,603 advance refundings, conducted between...

High Court Weighs In On Comp Time.(Supreme Court)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public, employers can force their hourly workers to take time off to avoid paying them overtime. The 6-3 ruling leaves it to employers, not workers, to decide when "comp time" is used. The issue came before the...

Cost of Government Estimated at 50 percent of GNP.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2000... Between 1900 and 2000, the cost of federal, state, and local government increased from 11 percent of Gross National Product (GNP) to 50 percent. During the 1930s, spending by governments grew from 13 percent to 20 percent of GNP while the...

House Passes Internet Tax Moratorium.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... The controversial proposal to extend the Internet moratorium beyond its October 2001 sunset date overwhelmingly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill extends the Internet tax moratorium an additional five years to October 2006...

More Governments Adopt ABC.(Activity Based Costing)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... As performance management and performance budgeting practices Continue to spread, more state and local governments are giving activity-based costing (ABC) a try. ABC allows governments to improve efficiency by tracking the costs of delivering...

School Funding Up for Grabs in Election Year.(United States Department of Education)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... While the presidential candidates debate education policy on the campaign trail, the U.S. Senate is acting on legislation that will affect how states receive and spend federal education dollars. Republican senators defeated a Clinton plan that...

Census Response Rate on The Rise.(Bureau of the Census)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2000... Due to a strong response rate from minorities, census officials estimate that 67 percent of all households will reply to mailed census forms this year. Although there has been an overall decline in response rates since the 1970s, census...

Texas Changes Way It Invests Public Funds.(Texas Legislature)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... The Texas Legislature is giving the state's municipalities more freedom over their investment portfolios. The new flexibility comes in response to criticism that current legislation limited municipal officers' options for investing public...

New York Regulates Pollution Credits.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... The New York State Legislature has passed a bill that will prevent major polluters from selling pollution credits to New York companies. Citing a desire to keep pollution out of the state, the New York State Legislature hopes that their action...

Wanted: State Seeks IT Workers, Willing to Pay.(Arizona governor signs tax credit bill)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Arizona's governor has signed into law a bill that will award tax credits to businesses that train workers in information technology (IT) disciplines. The state's Department of Commerce will identify IT skills that are deemed crucial to the...

States Eliminating "Snack Tax.".(Maine; California; Maryland)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... In the tight budget times of the early 1990s, many states turned to creative taxes to spur revenue growth. One such tax was the snack tax--a tax placed on the purchase of junk food, such as chips and candies. Maine is the last state to single...

Move Over e-Business.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Industry experts are predicting that egovernment will be the next major trend in information technology. The Gartner Group, an IT research organization, predicts that by 2003, more than 60 percent of state and local governments will let...

Louisiana Leads Nation in Tourism Growth.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... With major events and aggressive promotion, tourism in Louisiana has outpaced national figures, growing more than 17.6 percent over the last five years. Nationally, tourism grew less than 7.5 percent over that period. With more than 600 annual...

Managing Fiscal Slack: You Have a Surplus ... Now What?
June 1, 2000... With the economy booming and state and local revenues swelling, many governments are facing the enviable dilemma of managing a budget surplus. This article addresses some options for reducing a surplus that can alleviate political pressure and...

Linking Performance Measures to Resource Allocation.
June 1, 2000... What do you do after you develop performance measures and targets? This article describes Dallas County, Texas' strategy for ensuring that measures are not only published but also studied, discussed, and utilized to make corrective actions and...

Embracing Risk-Based Auditing in Local Government.
June 1, 2000... This article describes risk-based auditing--a type of audit that considers departmental objectives, risk, and adequate controls as interdependent concepts that must function together for success--and advocates its widespread adoption in the...

The Organizational Structure of City Finance Offices.
June 1, 2000... This article describes a recent GFOA study of the organization of city finance offices across the U.S. and investigates whether integrated finance organizations are more efficient and effective. Nearly a century ago, the model city charter...

Constitutional Questions about Tax Lien Foreclosures.
June 1, 2000... As more and more local governments consider bulk sales and securitization of delinquent tax liens, constitutional questions remain about the enforceability of the liens. This article addresses some of those questions surrounding tax lien...

Rate Setting for Municipal Utilities: Detroit's Combined Sewer Overflow Facilities.
June 1, 2000... Regulations on combined sewer overflows are necessitating new models in cost allocation and treatment techniques for sewer systems. This article highlights Detroit's efforts toward rate setting for sewer fees. Recently enacted...

The Beginning of the End of Paper Procurement.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... San Diego County, California, was one of the earliest and most successful counties to adopt Internet purchasing. In 1995, with a growing population and increasing demands for county services, Purchasing and Contracting staff struggled with...

Affordable Software: The Rise of Application Hosting and Application Service Providers.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Organizations spend roughly $17 billion on the implementation of new packaged software applications each year, and 80 percent of those costs come after the purchase of the software. The price of implementation, in addition to other factors...

The Digital Age and Data Privacy.
June 1, 2000... As the 106th Congress moves through its shortened election-year session of challenging policy topics, a number of information privacy issues, prompted by advances in technology, have emerged as legislative proposals. One indicator of the...

Trends in European Public Finance: Is the UK Outsourcing Government?
June 1, 2000... In 1992, the United Kingdom (UK) began the implementation of an innovative public finance program that offered the promise of rebuilding Britain's infrastructure without a politically unpalatable increase in public borrowing or taxation. Termed...

Effective Strategies for Community Development Finance.(Review)
June 1, 2000... Washington, D.C.: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Administrator of National Banks, 2000.(98 pp) Although most banking institutions strive to fully meet the credit needs of their communities, they often lack the information...

Securing Prosperity The American Labor Market: How It Has Changed and What to Do about It.(Review)
June 1, 2000... Osterman, Paul Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999. (222 pp) With a robust domestic economy and increased productivity, it is logical to believe that there is no real crisis in the labor market. After all,...

"The Benefits and Threats of PBB: An Assessment of Modern Reform".(performance-based budgeting)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Smith, James Fielding Public Budgeting & Finance, Fall 1999, pp. 3-15. Building, maintaining, and managing a performance-based budgeting (PBB) system involves layers of complexity. This article argues that these complexities make PBB...

"Local Government Reserve Funds and Fund Balance: Some Applications of Business Concepts".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Shelton, Michael and Tyer, Charlie Municipal Finance Journal, Spring 2000, pp. 1-18. This article examines how a government should determine the amount of fund balance it needs to retain in a governmental fund. A government's fund...

"Tax Exemption and State Capital Investment".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Douglas, Jennifer Ritter Coronado, Julia Lynn National Tax Journal, September 1999, pp. 473-481 It is commonly assumed that the federal tax exemption on interest paid to municipal bond holders lowers the cost of capital for state...

"Is it the End of Pay-as-You-Go in Transportation Finance?".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Sundeen, Matt and Reed, James B. State Legislatures, April 2000, pp. 20-23. Transportation systems require frequent repair and expansion, but the costs are often greater than available financing. In the past, states have funded...

"Internet Economics: A Thinker's Guide".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... The Economist, April 1, 2000, pp. 64-66 The Internet has created a lot of activity in the financial markets and the business press, but what has been -- and what will be -- the fundamental impact on the economy? This article strives to go...

"Click Here to Buy".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Bridgman, Anne American School Board Journal, April 2000, pp. 46-51. This article examines the effect of e-commerce on school purchasing. According to one estimate, schools spend as much as $85 billion, including intangibles such as...

Local Government On-Line: Putting the Internet to Work.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... O'Looney, John International City/County Management Association, 2000. 140 pp The Internet offers state and local governments endless possibilities for saving money and improving services. Local Government OnLine: Putting the Internet to...

"Five Characteristics of a Great Website".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Colorado Municipalities, March-April 2000, pp. 26-27. Communities across the country are finding that Internet home pages are a relatively easy and economical way to reach many of their taxpayers. But merely creating a Web site is no longer...

"Internet Facilitates Benefits Administrative Solutions for Employers of All Sizes".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Burzawa, Sue Employee Benefit Plan Review, March 2000, pp. 32-34. The Internet is beginning to affect how human resource data is maintained, as small and large employers install Web-based technologies. Businesses are using solutions...

"Telecommunications and the Tangle of Taxes".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Mackey, Scott State Legislatures, February 2000, pp. 23-25. Electronic commerce depends upon telecommunications networks. But state and local tax policy has not kept up with the continuing changes in telecommunications technology. Tax...

"The Required Tax Rate in a National Retail Sales Tax".(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Gale, William G. National Tax Journal, September 1999, pp. 443-457 In national debates over reforming the federal income tax system, a commonly suggested remedy is to simply eliminate the federal income tax and replace it with a...

Key GFOA Staff Member Mourned.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
June 1, 2000... Betsy Dotson, Director of GFOA's Federal Liaison Center, died unexpectedly on April 8, 2000. "We are all in shock and deeply saddened by the sudden loss of our dear friend and colleague," said Jeffrey L. Esser, Executive Director of GFOA. Ms....