Property taxes & user fees

Content for Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Readings

Property Taxes

• The Illinois Property Tax System, ILDOR.
• Chapter 3 in in A Budget Guide for Local Government (Bland and Overton 2019).
• Chapter 12 in in State & Local Public Finance (Fisher 2023).
• Elaine S. Povich, “Why Are Property Taxes so Unpopular in Many States?” Governing, May 14, 2014.
• Jason Grotto, “How Unfair Property Taxes Keep Black Families from Gaining Wealth.” Bloomberg Businessweek. March 9, 2021.
• Christopher Ingraham, “Home in poor neighborhoods are tax at roughly twice the rate of those in rich areas, study shows.” The Washington Post. March 12, 2021.

Fines & Fees

• Chapter 5 in in A Budget Guide for Local Government (Bland and Overton 2019).
• Chapter 8 in in State & Local Public Finance (Fisher 2023).
• Andrea Noble, “Georgia Towns Too Reliant on Fines and Fees as a Revenue Generator,” Route Fifty, October 28, 2019.
• Mike Maciag, “Addicted to Fines,” Governing, August 21, 2019.
• Robert Mackey, “Tennessee Firefighters Watch Home Burn,” The Lede, October 6, 2010.

Asset Forfeiture

• Sarah Stillman, “Taken,” The New Yorker, August 5, 2013.
• Worrall, John L. “Addicted to the Drug War.” (Worrall 2001)
• Mughan, Siân, Danyao Li, and Sean Nicholson-Crotty. “When Law Enforcement Pays: Costs and Benefits for Elected Versus Appointed Administrators Engaged in Asset Forfeiture.” (Mughan, Li, and Nicholson-Crotty 2020)

Recommended

• Chirico, Michael, Robert Inman, Charles Loeffler, John MacDonald, and Holger Sieg. “Deterring Property Tax Delinquency in Philadelphia: An Experimental Evaluation of Nudge Strategies.” (Chirico et al. 2019)

Assignments

• Write Memo 1 Case
• Contribute to the discussion board

References

Bland, Robert L., and Michael R. Overton. 2019. A Budget Guide for Local Government. 4th ed. Washington DC: ICMA Press.

Chirico, Michael, Robert Inman, Charles Loeffler, John MacDonald, and Holger Sieg. 2019. “Deterring Property Tax Delinquency in Philadelphia: An Experimental Evaluation of Nudge Strategies.” National Tax Journal 72 (3): 479–506.

Fisher, Ronald C. 2023. State & Local Public Finance. 5th ed. New York, NY: Routledge.

Mughan, Siân, Danyao Li, and Sean Nicholson-Crotty. 2020. “When Law Enforcement Pays: Costs and Benefits for Elected Versus Appointed Administrators Engaged in Asset Forfeiture.” The American Review of Public Administration 50 (3): 297–314.

Worrall, John L. 2001. “Addicted to the Drug War.” Journal of Criminal Justice 29 (3): 171–87.