Government Finance Review articles from October 2000

Government Finance Review archives from October 2000

The Digital Revolution.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Information technology is revolutionizing organizations across the world. Quantum leaps in the quality and quantity of communication, information exchange, and commerce have taken place in the past decade. Those who lead our organizations are...

Sports Teams Drain Community Resources.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... A new report charges that professional sports reams are more likely to drain local economies than promote economic growth. The report, written by two University of Maryland economics professors, concludes that the average net effect of...

Arizona Judge Voids State Income Tax Initiative.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Voters in Arizona may nor decide in November whether to eliminate the state income tax, thanks to an August 9 court ruling in Maricopa County Superior Court. The judge there ruled that Proposition 107, which would have required Arizona to...

Tobacco Money for Bankruptcy Debt?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Orange County, California's Board of Supervisors has agreed to let voters decide whether 40 percent of the county's tobacco settlement stipend should be dedicated to paying down the bond issues resulting from its 1994 bankruptcy. Under its...

State of Ohio Audit Reports Online.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Financial information concerning Ohio's public entities is now available on a Web site established by Ohio's State Auditor. The site contains routine financial audits, special audits, performance audits, financial forecasting, fiscal...

Georgia Tops List of States with Threatened Parks.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Development near 25 of Georgia's 63 state parks earned the state the designation of most threatened in a recent survey by the National Park Trust, a private land conservancy. According to the report, 8,212 of 74,542 acres of Georgia slate...

Electronic Bill Payment Slow To Catch On.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Electronic bill payment and presentment--paying bills online--may be the next greatest thing, but consumers are balking at using it. Several private-sector utilities have tried to promote usage by their customers, with little success. While the...

San Diego Officials Decry Rate Plans.(electric utility rates)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... As the legislative session in California neared its August close, officials from San Diego made the trek to the state capitol in Sacramento to plead for relief from electricity bills that have cost San Diegans hundreds of millions of additional...

Police Department Can Be Sued Under RICO.(Los Angeles Police Department)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... A federal district court judge has ruled that the government's anti-racketeering statute, created to deal with drug bosses and organized crime figures, can be used in lawsuits against the embattled Los Angeles Police Department. Besides...

SEC Proposes Restrictions on Audit Firms.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed a restriction that would ban auditing firms from offering non-audit services to their audit clients. The impact of this proposal would be enormous, as "the Big Five"...

Consumer Spending Follows Stock Market.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... When stock prices dropped in April and May, consumer spending also dropped. Was this a coincidence, or does it show that stock prices--and the wealth that people have tied up in stocks--can determine the course of consumer spending? The wealth...

House GOP Offers Deal on Tax Cuts.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... House Republicans have offered to support a $1 increase in the minimum wage in exchange for an increase in a tax cut package for small business owners. The new package would include a total of $76 billion in tax cuts over the next decade. The...

IRS Threatens to Declare Bonds Taxable.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Investors holding some tax-exempt bond issues may be getting an unwelcome letter from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS is negotiating closing agreements with a dozen or more issuers over charges that the issuers misused tax-exempt...

The Building Blocks of a Digital Government Strategy.
October 1, 2000... Rising citizen expectations for electronic service delivery and the costs of delaying electronic commerce are pressuring state and local governments to change. The author discusses the building blocks of implementing an e-commerce and...

At the Dawn of e-Government: The Citizen as Customer.
October 1, 2000... This article displays the results of a survey of top management in state-level governments around the world and highlights how those governments are using electronic government to improve customer service. Editor's note: This article is...

Racing to e-Government: Using the Internet for Citizen Service Delivery.
October 1, 2000... This article provides a short history of electronic government, a snapshot of current efforts in e-government, and an approach for moving government services onto the Internet. As has been amply documented, the Y2K bug was mostly a...

Technology and Strategy for Customer Relationship Management: A Primer for Finance Officers and Public Managers.
October 1, 2000... This article examines technologies and tactics governments can adopt in order to better their customer relations with the citizenry. According to a poll conducted for the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government last year, most...

Assessing Citizen Utilization of e-Government Services: A Survey of Issues and Attitudes in Texas.
October 1, 2000... In a newly released survey, researchers reveal their findings from a large survey of citizen attitudes on e-government in Texas. Among other areas, the survey questioned taxpayers on the types of services they would like to see offered over the...

The Role of Government in the Age of Knowledge.
October 1, 2000... This article identifies five new rules of the electronic economy and what they mean for governments. Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the May 2000 issue of Insights, and is reprinted and adapted with permission from...

BidOhio: Using Technology to Earn More for Taxpayers.
October 1, 2000... Through the use of an Internet auction, the State of Ohio has been able to generate more investment income for the state and revolutionize the way that interim funds are invested. On October 5, 1999, Ohio became the first state in the U.S....

Document Technologies for Digital Government: A Primer for Finance Officers and Public Managers.(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2000... This article demonstrates how document technologies are presenting a new value proposition for the public sector. Many public-sector organizations are consumed by decisions regarding what technologies will allow their organization the most...

Controlling the Cost of Risk in State and Local Governments.(the Public Risk Database Project)(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2000... In the last 20 years, many public entities have chosen risk financing alternatives, such as self insurance and intergovernmental risk pools. One result of this movement away from traditional insurance has been a reduction in the public-entity...

Preparing Employees for Retirement: The Role of Individualized On-line Investment Advice.(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2000... As the public-sector workforce ages, retirement planning and education will take a more prominent role in overall pension administration. The leading edge of the baby boomers will turn 60 in 2006. This demographic shift--coupled with the...

Rating e-Gov Web Sites.(e-government)(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2000... Planning the path to digital government is the single most important issue facing most governments today. The Economist's recent "Survey of Government and the Internet" (June 24, 2000) contained an article which stated that while "e-government...

The Emerging Impact of the Financial Services Modernization Act.(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2000... On November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (GLBA), repealing after 66 years the Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited cross-sector affiliation between the banking and...

City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Frug, Gerald E. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (223 pp) City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls is a provocative look at how to foster a broader sense of community in America by breaking down...

Irrational Exuberance.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Schiller, Robert J. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000. (312 pp) If Irrational Exuberance could be summed up in one sentence, it could be this: "Absurd prices sometimes last a long time." Amplifying on Federal...

"Accounting for the Business of Government--New Goals, Old Myths".(Review)
October 1, 2000... Mosso, David Public Budgeting & Finance, Winter 1999, pp. 65-74. This article discusses four key elements of an effective performance management system. Over the past 20 years, state and local governments have moved from cash to...

"The Basics of Budgeting for Newly Elected Officials".(Review)
October 1, 2000... McLain, Lewis F., Jr. Texas Town & City, June 2000, Pp. 19, 22-25. This article illuminates the budgeting review process that municipalities undertake each year. The author selects a council-manager backdrop for his discussion, but the...

"Understanding Special Districts and Public Debt".(in California)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Debt Line, August 2000, PP. 1-10. Like many other states, California allows for the creation of special districts. Special districts are intended to provide local services that other municipal entities could or would not provide. Like city...

"State Guarantees for School Debt and the Texas Penalty".(Review)
October 1, 2000... Clarke, Wes and Bland, Robert L. Municipal Finance Journal, Summer 2000, pp. 1-12. At first glance, the title of this article would seem counterintuitive. In Texas, school district debt is insured by the Permanent School Fund (PSF)--a...

"Survey of Government and the Internet".(status of e-government around the world)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... The Economist, June 24,2000, pp. 62-63. This 34-page survey is a combination of 10 articles written about the progress and status of e-government thus far. They range in detail from ideas of e-democracy and the provision of government...

"No Free Lunch Online".(funding government e-commerce sites)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2000... Perlman, Ellen Governing, August 2000, pp. 28-32. This article discusses the issues related to funding government e-commerce Web sites. The article mentions six methods of funding. One method is to use the government's general fund....

"Digital Economy 2000".(Department of Commerce releases report on information technology sector)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2000... U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, June 2000. (84 pp) The Commerce Department's third annual report on the sector of the economy devoted to information technology (IT) shows mostly goods news. First, the...

"Going Green".(uprgrading and expanding park lands in the U.S.)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Platt, Kalvin Planning, August 2000, pp. 18-21. This article provides a whirlwind tour of several recent initiatives to expand and upgrade the United States' network of greenways and parks. The author begins by touching on the benefits...

"Welfare Policy Innovation and Diffusion: Section 1115 Waivers and the Federal System".(federal-state relations in development of welfare policy in the United States)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Arsneault, Shelly State and Local Government Review, Winter 2000, pp. 49-60 In this article, the author uses the concept of "permissive federalism" to analyze the development of welfare policy over the past two decades. Permissive...

"Avoiding Local Government Financial Crisis: The Role of State Oversight".(recommendations from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... The Citizens Research Council of Michigan CRC Memorandum, July 2000. State government has five basic options when designing fiscal relief policy for its local-level counterparts. Four of these are not only reactive in nature, but are...

"Sherlock Online".(Federal Bureau of Investigation launches its new crminal identification database)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Swope, Christopher Governing, September 2000, pp. 80-84 After a decade of development, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally has its National Crime Information Center (NCIC) 2000 database up and running, but it's not going to be...

Taxes and Other Revenues.(report examines state finances)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... State Fiscal Issues and Risks at the Start of a New Century Boyd, Donald J. Fiscal Studies Program, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, June 2000. (38 pp) This report is an examination of what lurks under the surface of...

"Tapping Into Water Shortage Solutions".(local governments taking measures to avoid drought)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Wade, Beth American City & County, June 2000, pp. 45-58. Local governments are spending more energy than ever to mitigate the potential effects of drought. This article explores contingency measures that water district planners have...