Justin Katz

Yes, You Bear Some Responsibility

By Justin Katz | May 16, 2008 |

In the obviously titled “State workers protest any pension cuts,” one protester said the following: Others, including social worker Michael Fallon, said they felt state workers had been unfairly made the “scapegoats” for both the ballooning unfunded liability in the state pension fund and the “poor management” that landed Rhode Island in its current fiscal…

A Marriage of Culture and Disenfranchisement

By Justin Katz | May 15, 2008 |

Apparently, it’s time to dust off the Federal Marriage Amendment; the California Supreme Court has redefined marriage to include same-sex couples. For those who may have forgotten, the most prominent version of the FMA read as follows: Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither…

Anchor on the Air

By Justin Katz | May 15, 2008 |

As those who listened already know, Don switched with Andrew for this Wednesday’s segment on the Matt Allen show. His commentary related to his post on Rhode Island’s failure to address its current crisis can be streamed by clicking here (or download). Next Wednesday at 6:50 p.m., Andrew will have his moment in the spotlight.

What, Me Worry?

By Justin Katz | May 15, 2008 |

Anybody who doesn’t see what the big deal is when Don laments our state’s lack of a sense of urgency need only read through yesterday’s business pages. The values of assets are plummeting: The median price of a multifamily house in Rhode Island during the first quarter declined about 39 percent, to $161,000, compared with…

Sinking Rhode Island Like a Lead Anchor

By Justin Katz | May 15, 2008 |

Maureen Martin’s got it right: If the [lead-paint] verdict is upheld, every dwelling in Rhode Island constructed before 1978 (about 240,000 total) will have to be inspected for lead-based paint, regardless of whether the owners agree to that inspection. Residents will be forcibly relocated if their homes need an “extreme makeover” to remove and replace…

Giving Legislators the Chance to Turn Down Their Cake and Eat It, Too

By Justin Katz | May 15, 2008 |

One wonders whether Senate Democrat Doyenne Teresa Paiva Weed feels that this came out wrong: But while House leaders have declared themselves in support of the move [to require legislators to contribute to their healthcare costs], which has both financial and symbolic significance in a year when the state is facing a huge deficit and…

What’s Not in the Numbers

By Justin Katz | May 13, 2008 |

A few important considerations are missing from Tom Sgouros’s comment of his “review” of state tax revenue statistics: I was reviewing some statistics about state tax revenues last week, and looked at business taxes. Along with the income tax and sales tax, business taxes were once the third important leg of funding state operations, but…

Banking on a System Sure to Fail

By Justin Katz | May 13, 2008 |

Andrew makes a central observation in the comments to his latest post on the pension deficit: If politicians making bad fiscal decisions are the entire story of the pension funding crisis, that is a strong case against defined benefit plans, because there is no reason to believe that current and future pols are going to…

Ending Bumping

By Justin Katz | May 12, 2008 |

Perhaps no practice is a better distillation of the blight that is teacher unionization than bumping. I’m with Julia Steiny in thinking that it ought to end, but the suggestions of the Business Education Partnership that she describes in her column, yesterday, are worth considering as half-way measures: To professionalize education personnel practices, Blais and…

Taking from the Not So Rich

By Justin Katz | May 11, 2008 |

So proud of this little snippet from a Providence Business News piece is Patrick Crowley that he’s mentioned it multiple times: But what about the rest of us? After all, nearly 50% (48.7%) of the returns filed were for incomes BELOW $30,000 a year. And while this group pays 4% of the state’s income tax…