Rolling out eGovernment

In the Australian State of Queensland, councils are rolling out a new electronic development assessment system, to speed up the application process and reduce costs for councils and industry.  Following successful trials within Redland City Council, Bundaberg will become the second council in the State to bring the Smart eDA system online.  Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Stirling Hinchliffe, says the initiative has been developed by the State Government, in consultation with the Local Government Association of Queensland, councils and industry stakeholders.

He says the system will significantly speed up the existing development assessment process.  "Paper-based development applications are generally difficult to handle, disperse and monitor and place significant demands on councils in terms of staff and costs,'' he says.  "The electronic system provides Queensland with a more efficient, transparent and consistent development assessment process that will reduce the cost of development.”

According to the Minster, officers from the Department of Infrastructure and Planning delivered training to industry stakeholders in the lead up to the system's release.  "The Smart eDA website provides a single portal for industry and applicants to use across local government jurisdictions. Applicants can prepare and lodge their development applications online and also track their progress," Hinchliffe says. "It transforms the current paper-based Integrated Development Assessment System process into an intuitive and interactive, internet-based process.”.  The new system will also enable the integration of council and State Government systems, while helping to identify any applicable referral agencies.

City Halls struggle to contain deficits

Peoria and other cities in Illinois are facing difficult decisions to fend off effects of the recession. In Champaign, not only is Chief Illiniwek gone but so are 19 city government positions, and residents are paying more for cable TV and to retrieve their impounded car. Joliet officials have projected a three-year $67 million deficit and, as a result, 90 fewer employees are working in city government today than last year. Springfield is requiring its employees to take eight unpaid furlough days next year. Sales tax also is going up in the Capital City.

Peoria is hardly alone in battling the crippling effect the recession is having on city halls throughout the U.S. and, especially, Illinois. Local and county governments throughout the state are scrambling to find ways to generate enough money to stay afloat during these tough times without sacrificing public safety, road construction and basic services that range from inspecting structurally unsound buildings to picking up stray dogs from neighborhood streets. "It's far worse than anything I've seen," said Larry Frang, executive director of the Illinois Municipal League. He's been with the league since 1974.

Locally, growth cities such as Washington are holding off on hiring new employees until the economy begins to show signs of recovery. East Peoria is contemplating scaling back its Festival of Lights events. Pekin recently introduced two new taxes on packaged liquor and food and beverages. In Peoria, the city's $10 million deficit has city officials pondering what can be done to restructure government. That means the public can expect immediate changes to the way yard waste is collected, library services and local arts awareness.

Indebtedness

The borrowing spree of the last few years is catching up with the public sector just like everyone else. In Mississippi Gulfport administration estimates the city needs to increase water and sewer rates a minimum of 15 percent for the upcoming fiscal year to cover debt payments. Finance Director Mike Necaise said all localities in Harrison County, not just Gulfport, will soon have to grapple with how to meet the costs of utility payments coming due.

When Katrina hit, the Harrison County utility authority, composed of the county and its five cities, decided to defer debt payments for two years. Necaise said the authority had about $100 million in debt at the time. The debt, he said, was refinanced at 7.5 percent, compared to the previous rate of 5 percent.

The deferred payments plus the higher interest rate mean Gulfport can no longer meet its debt payments with current revenue. Taking the money out of the city’s general fund is not viewed as an option. Incoming Mayor George Schloegel said he supports the rate increase over a property tax increase. He believes utility customers should pay for the service rather than all Gulfport property owners. “It’s consumption driven,” said Schloegel, who on Monday takes office along with a new City Council. “It’s got to be user-based. That’s the only equitable way.”

Replacing property tax

Voters in British Columbia recently re-elected Premier Gordon Campbell, the driving force behind BC's carbon tax. By 2012, the tax will reach about $30 per ton of carbon dioxide, or about 30 cents per gallon of gasoline. Money from the tax is used to reduce other taxes in a "revenue-neutral tax shift," and voters showed their support by backing Campbell and his right-of-center party for a rare third consecutive term. Across the border, two writers opine in the Seattle Times that Washington State should head in the same direction, replacing or winding down the state's property-based taxes with a carbon tax.

Start by eliminating the state property tax, they write, an idea floated a few years ago by the Washington State Tax Structure Committee chaired by Bill Gates Sr. The tax is unpopular and repealing it would ensure that it goes away for good. Control over property taxes then would be entirely in the hands of local voters in cities and counties, and the total burden on the state's property owners would immediately fall by 25 percent.

What about the state's public schools, which currently receive every dollar raised by the state property tax? That's where the carbon tax comes in. A tax on fossil fuels of $30 per ton of carbon dioxide — the same rate as in British Columbia — would be more than enough to backfill the lost revenue.

Subsidising solar

In Nevada, solar energy generation is being subsidized (encouraged?) through extended property tax abatements for renewable energy production plants, which were to expire in this year, and expanded them from 50 percent for 10 years to 55 percent for 20 years. The Las Vegas Sun newspaper reports that solar energy developers had been worried about a fierce stance by Assemblywoman Kirkpatrick, who began the year saying she would not support the industry’s request for a 75 percent property tax abatement and would impose a new tax on renewable energy. The revenue would go to offset higher energy costs for ratepayers.

Kirkpatrick was concerned that solar plants would not bring many permanent jobs to Nevada, and that solar plant construction jobs have gone to out-of-state workers in the past. But the possibility of a new tax “brought development to a halt,” said renewable energy lobbyist Tom Clark. “It sent a red flag to every developer.”

More water prices rises

Wichita, Kansas is set to follow the world-wide trend to higher water bills. The monthly water bill would increase by $2 under a proposal that the Wichita City Council is scheduled to vote on 16 June. The proposed increase comes one year after Wichita's most recent monthly water bill increase of $1 and is meant to make up for an $8.8 million shortfall in projected revenue that the water utility experienced in 2008. If passed, the rate increase would be effective with customers' August bill. There are more rate increases to come. In August, the council is expected to consider a 5 percent rate increase for next year. By 2013, a family that uses a lot of water will be paying about 30 percent more for water and sewer services.

Selfless?

Politicians and many commentators are keen to beat the lower taxes drum. But for many, taxes are the price we pay for living in a community in which we have pride. This is borne out by news from Massachusetts that despite hardships, programs have been preserved. In a baffling trend playing out against an abysmal economy, voters have approved property tax increases in at least 11 communities around Boston in recent weeks, reaching into their own pockets to preserve libraries, schools, and public safety services.

Among them was the town of Rockland, which has passed only one other property tax override since voters enacted Proposition 2 1/2 more than 25 years ago. Late last month, as people around the state watched every penny, not to mention every tax dollar, Rockland voted to raise its property taxes to save an elementary school and a library. At least five communities have also rejected property tax increases in recent weeks, but the passage by 11 other communities underscores the impact of budget cuts on cities and towns.

China's water crisis

If you don't have it you can sell it - or bill for it. And if it's not clean, consumers may not want it anyway. Business Week reports that over the past year getting clean water has been a struggle for many in China. In February one of the most severe droughts to hit China in a half-century affected some 5 million people and 2.5 million livestock in the provinces of Hebei and Henan, near Beijing. Farther south in Yancheng, Jiangsu, 300 kilometers from Shanghai, more than 200,000 people were cut off from clean water for three days when a chemical factory dumped carbolic acid into a river. Just before the Olympics last June, the coastal city of Qingdao, site of the sailing events, saw an explosion of algae in nearby waters that may have been caused by pollution.

These are hardly unusual in China. The country that has a long history of devastating floods and droughts arguably faces an even bigger water crisis today. After almost 30 years of double-digit economic growth and the migration of hundreds of millions of villagers to the cities, China has been barely able to meet the spike in demand for water. Its resources were scarce to begin with and pollution has made clean water even scarcer. Another unknown: the effect of climate change. "Based on our country's basic water situation, [we] must implement the strictest water resource management," said Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu at a national water conference in Beijing in January.

Saving money

America's love affair with locking people up is butting its head against the recession. State of Michigan officials said Friday that the state is closing three prisons and five prison camps in hopes of narrowing a $1.4 billion budget gap for fiscal 2010. The state, which has been hammered by the auto industry meltdown, estimates that it will save $120 million by shuttering the eight facilities. None of the 4,149 prisoners in the facilities will be released early, but up to 1,000 workers may lose their jobs. The State is targeting the correctional system because it takes up 22% of the state's general fund budget, the largest component. (Education is funded separately.) The state must close the $1.4 billion gap before its fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Michigan is not alone in turning to its prison system for savings. Some 25 states cut spending on corrections in fiscal 2009 and another 25 are proposing to do so in fiscal 2010, as they struggle to address massive budget shortfalls. "It's a trend we'll be seeing more and more of in coming months given the dire revenue situation states are in," said Sujit CanagaRetna, senior fiscal analyst at the Council of State Governments, a research group.

The dead have their uses

Four people are accused of using tax breaks for their dead relatives to avoid paying property taxes on their homes says the Miami Herald. For 18 years, Julian Grande received a special tax break for disabled homeowners from the Miami-Dade property appraiser. But Grande was more than disabled. He's been dead since 1990.

Grande's daughter, Maria, is one of four people now facing criminal charges for allegedly exploiting property-tax breaks meant for relatives long dead. According to investigators with Miami-Dade's inspector general and the state attorney's office, the four people continued to file property-tax records indicating their disabled relatives were alive -- forging signatures, in some cases. Along with Maria Grande, those arrested were: Dane Taylor, 60, of Palmetto Bay; Philip Espinosa, 50, of Miami; and Telenia Piedra, 59, of Miami.

Investigators say the four wrongly benefited from a special tax exemption for quadriplegics and others with profound disabilities and low incomes. Beneficiaries of the tax break must submit medical records to qualify, and in some cases they must file financial information annually to prove eligibility. In 2007, 729 homes in Miami-Dade were untaxed under this exemption.

The California tax election

As a result of California’s election, the state now faces a $21.3 billion gap between revenues and spending, reports The Economist. Life, which has been no picnic for many in this state since the recession began, is about to get a lot worse. There have already been two rounds of budget cuts since last autumn. A third, savage, round must now follow.

Mr Schwarzenegger has already hinted at the cuts he will propose to the legislature. The easy part is to release prisoners. California’s 33 prisons, with about 168,000 inmates, many of them locked up because of inflexible sentencing laws passed by voters, are scandalously overcrowded. Mr Schwarzenegger is thinking about freeing 38,000 people. Half of them are undocumented immigrants whom he would transfer to federal custody.

But “the real money is where the pain is”, says Jean Ross of the California Budget Project, a research firm in Sacramento. In health care, for instance. Just as Mr Obama is trying to give more people access to medical care, California will be taking it away: by cutting funding for Medi-Cal, the state’s programme for the poor, and changing eligibility rules for another programme so that 225,000 children are likely to lose coverage. And this at a time when many of their parents are losing their jobs and their employer-sponsored insurance.

Other programmes, from help with birth-control and HIV-prevention to counselling against drug abuse and domestic violence, will be made smaller or eliminated altogether. Child-welfare programmes will be cut by 10%. This means fewer investigations into allegations of child abuse and less supervision of foster care, even as more children are likely to be abused in difficult economic times, says Linda Canan at the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency.

Cuts in the education budget will probably shorten the school year by a week, require teachers to be laid off and cause classes to get bigger. The University of California, a network of ten campuses, will face cuts equivalent to 50,000 fewer students and perhaps 5,000 fewer staff.

Special treatment for elected officials?

Detroit City councilwoman JoAnn Watson held a press conference Sunday afternoon outside her Tudor-style home to clear the air over news reports of her greatly under-assessed brick house on the city's west side which city records indicate has not existed for several years.

Watson, an outspoken critic of tax deadbeats and the city's lack of getting its fair share in outstanding taxes from property owners and businesses, learned last week from newspaper reporters she had been receiving quite a tax break from the city. In 2008, according to city tax records, Watson was assessed only $67.97 in property taxes for her brick home located in the Russell Woods subdivision on the city's west side. Homeowners owning comparable addresses in the neighborhood pay more than $5,600 a year.

"I've been a target of a smear campaign," Watson told reporters gathered outsider her home on Sturtevant off Dexter Sunday. "... I pay my bills and whatever I was billed, I paid."

Watson, elected to the City Council in 2003, blamed her low tax bill on miscalculations made by the city assessment office -- possibly due to storm-related damage by a tornado sometime in the last 14 years. She bought the home on a land contract in 1990 for $40,000 but -- for still unknown reasons -- it has been listed for years in the city records as a vacant, unoccupied lot and is currently valued at only $1,658.

Business Tax Protests

Thousands of businesses are fighting Bernalillo County because the owners said their new property values are outrageous. Some business owners worry about what they're calling devastating effects. "I'm very angry," said John Gustafson, the owner of Broken Arrow Electric in southeast Albuquerque. He couldn't believe his most recent property value assessment. It's 30 percent higher than last year. "I panicked because I know what it means," he said.

It means he could have to pay thousands of extra dollars on taxes, which is money he can't spare in the sluggish economy. "Hopefully that means we won't have to lay off more workers," he said. Gustafson filed an appeal and according to the assessor's office, 9,000 businesses in Bernalillo County have done the same thing. Officials admit it’s far more than what they're used to seeing. "Nobody thinks its right because it isn't right," Gustafson said.

Property tax rebates: ending soon?

Most New Jersey homeowners, already paying the highest property taxes in the nation, will not see a property tax rebate check next year under Gov. Jon Corzine's revised 2010 budget proposal. The updated budget, released Tuesday by Treasurer David Rousseau, keeps rebates for 700,000 seniors and the disabled but eliminates them for everyone else.

Corzine's original proposal, released in March, got rid of rebates for those earning more than $75,000. But with updated revenue projections coming up $2 billion short for the 2010 budget year, Rousseau said rebates were not sustainable this year.

"We simply cannot spend money that we don't have," Rousseau told the Assembly Budget Committee members Tuesday. The move would save the state nearly a billion dollars and cost homeowners $950 on average; renters would miss out on an average $75 rebate, according to the Treasury Department.

At least 1 million homeowners would no longer get rebates; the number of renters affected is unclear, according to Treasury Department spokesman Tom Vincz.

Market dominance

Electricity and to a lesser extent gas billing for consumers large and small has been deregulated in many economies. However the retail energy providers still have to buy their energy from the electricity generating companies. Where fewer of those exist - in say a small country like New Zealand - they can use their market dominance to distort prices. A recent New Zealand Commerce Commission report says that power generators overcharged customers $4.3 billion over six years by using market dominance.

The study has found find that the country's main electricity generators, state-owned Meridian Energy, Genesis and Mighty River Power and privately owned Contact Energy, effectively used their market power to maximise profits, including withholding power at peak times. But the power companies have been cleared of the most serious allegations levelled against them - that they breached the Commerce Act by abusing market dominance and that they colluded to make extra profits.

Government heal thyself

While the public sector may be responsible for billing for utility consumption, it's also a large user of energy. The folks who gave the world the Hummer, the poster child of fuel inefficiency, want to spawn a new generation of eco-friendly military equipment with cross-over potential in the “civilian sector,” say a group of retired American military officers who released a sharply worded report on Monday calling on the Department of Defense to reduce its “carbon bootprint.”

“The American military gave you the Humvee, and now we’re taking it back,” said retired Adm. John Nathman, the former vice chief of naval operations and an adviser to President Obama, in a conference call on Monday. “You’re going to see some fairly dramatic movement by the Department of Defense in terms of public visibility.”

The report, “Powering America’s Defense,” was published by CNA Analysis and Solutions, a research group based in Alexandria, Va., that issued a previous study on defense and energy security in 2007.

Under control

One of the measures of the success of a government is its ability to control its infrastructure. The Thai government, for example, failed miserably to keep the country's major international airport in Bangkok open last December, raising doubts about whether that country is sliding towards "failed state" status. More recently, regional leaders had to be air-lifted from their conference venue as the Thai Army could not guarantee their safety after political protesters broke into the hotel.

In Afghanistan the government has difficulty guaranteeing electricity supplies. Residents of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, haven’t had reliable, nearly round-the-clock power in more than a generation. So there was reason for excitement as officials gathered at the Chimtallah substation just outside Kabul on Monday to inaugurate a new, 261-mile transmission line delivering electricity to the city from Uzbekistan — the backbone of a power system stretching across the northeast of the country.

But while the new line will take time to ramp up to capacity, it is already inadequate to serve Kabul, which now has 4.4 million people. Construction is scheduled to begin soon on a second transmission line, which will deliver power from Tajikistan. And the Afghanistan Reconstruction and Trust Fund recently awarded $150 million to Siemens, a global builder of transmission and distribution systems, and Power Grid of India, a large transmission utility, to further expand and rehabilitate the network.

But hard questions remain, including whether the newly-formed Afghan electricity utility will prove able to manage the system — and protect it from attack by local warlords.

Getting it right in New York

It's no good trying to calculate a water or sewer bill if the underlying data is incorrect. A recently published audit of New York City's Department of Environmental Protection shows that the DEP still fails to ensure that it properly identifies properties that should pay water and sewer bills, and in some cases the failure goes back 15 years.

In 2005, The New York Times reported that about 231,000 water customers in New York City were late paying their bills — some by just a few months, others by decades. In all, these water delinquents owe the city more than $625 million in overdue bills and penalties.

Houses and apartments accounted for 90 percent of those unpaid bills, but the city absorbed the huge losses and passed on the costs to those who paid, rather than risking the political consequences of being seen as hardhearted.

The DEP is now starting to resume shut-offs for unpaid water bills.

European emissions trading

The Financial Times reports that the prices paid for permits to produce carbon under the European Union’s emissions trading scheme suffered precipitous falls last December and in the early part of this year, tumbling from about €30 (£27) last summer to €15 in December before a fresh plunge to only about €8 in mid-February. In recent weeks, the prices have recovered to about €13.30, the analyst group Point Carbon estimates.

The recovery encourages carbon traders. They are affected by the prices, as they amass portfolios of carbon credits to be sold to participants in the EU scheme. The credits are issued by the United Nations to developing world projects that cut emissions, such as wind farms or solar panels.

Direct Debit

Direct Debit is a popular form of bill payment. It means that by the due date the customer's bank account is automatically debited with the amount of the bill. Some customers would like their credit card charged, rather than their bank account - arguably so they can get more frequent flier points! The problem is the merchant fee the credit card companies charge the utilities. Visa has attempted to address this issue by charging a flat rate fee rather than the merchant fee.