Free Republic

Years before the city had a crisis with lead in its water, the Flint City Council and mayor ran unbalanced budgets by making "fund raids" on budget funds dedicated to specific functions. Among the targets was a fund dedicated to providing uncontaminated drinking water to residents. But there were other budget gimmicks city leaders used to avoid making needed reforms. In addition to the fund raids, Flint officials also relied on state-backed loans, but these came with a requirement that the city develop a plan to climb out of its deepening financial hole. Its 2007 deficit- reduction plan projected a...

After voting to proceed to a bill that didn’t exist earlier this week, the Senate has finally produced text of the continuing resolution, a short-term government spending bill. The bill, written behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brought to the floor late Thursday afternoon, and for the majority of Senate Republicans, represented their first opportunity to see the text. According to McConnell, senators will have four days (two of them on a weekend) to review the bill before having to cast their votes next week. As far as conservative priorities go, the bill is a failure....

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its allies are outspending their Republican counterparts by a factor of about five to one, according to a new analysis released Tuesday. But the former secretary of State has failed to put away Donald Trump, and many anxious Democrats are baffled as to why the race remains so close.

Kansas has more than 140,000 miles of public roads — the fourth most in the U.S. Such a massive network requires substantial public investment in maintenance and new projects, and some transportation advocates are worried that the state’s revenue crisis will prevent much of this necessary work from getting done. For example, the Brownback administration has transferred more than $1 billion from the Kansas Department of Transportation to the state general fund over the past few years. … Earlier this year, $185 million was removed from the highway fund to counteract meager state revenue collections. This sweep was announced alongside...

Gov. Scott Walker is drawing sharp criticism for his plan to delay highway projects, including the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee. In the past, the governor has hailed the interchange as key to state businesses that transport products throughout the region. Walker mentioned MillerCoors in his 2013 State of the State address. "MillerCoors is in a hyper-competitive industry. They're looking to find a competitive advantage: who can get a cold beer on a bar in Madison or Green Bay or even Chicago, the fastest. Beer trucks are tied up in the Zoo Interchange? The MillerCoors brewery here in Wisconsin is at...

While primary elections for local offices rarely garner much attention, the results of the August election were dramatic for one county in northern lower Michigan. Of seven members of the current county commission, only one will be on the fall ballot. “I did not anticipate such a dramatic and historic turnover on the Emmet County board,” said Commissioner Charlie MacInnis, who ran unopposed in the primary. “The community clearly didn’t support the massive spending projects that were undertaken without adequate planning or voter approval.” Four of the seven incumbents lost primary contests while another two did not seek re-election. Last...

Fresh after Congress and the White House scored the largest transportation spending package in a decade, both presidential candidates this year are proposing billions in funding to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. While both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—and the parties they represent—agree the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system, and ports are in need of repair, the new proposals invite familiar questions over how the spending would be paid for, and whether the federal government is the best provider to pay for it. Those questions, and the lack of a must-pass infrastructure initiative requiring Congress’ attention in 2017, mean that...

In late June 2016, the state released the long-awaited Michigan Education Finance Study, better known as an “adequacy study.” Twice delayed from its original March 31, 2016, deadline due to errors by different parties, the report purchased by December 2014 state legislation has been greeted with an underwhelming reaction. Colorado-based Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates (APA) secured a $399,000 taxpayer-funded contract to produce the report. Every one of the company’s 13 earlier studies of different states’ school finance systems concluded with the same call: Spend more money. As even the adequacy study shows, a massive increase in spending absent any changes...

Perhaps the most persistent myth about public school funding in Michigan is that low-income communities have low-revenue school districts. According to a report in The Detroit News, even elected members of the State Board of Education sometimes repeat the myth. Board member Kathleen Straus was quoted in the school funding story as saying, “The wealthy get better education, have more funding, when it should be the opposite.” Except, data from the state Department of Education, over which the state board presides, refutes this claim. The neighboring Berrien County cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor are often cited by the...

Though the evidence for Michigan spending its way to educational success continues to disappoint, its champions have turned to misdirection and misinformation to keep pressing their cause forward. The release of the $400,000 Michigan Education Finance Study (better known as the adequacy study) was far more of an early summer flop than a box office hit. As Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson laments, the study “landed with the force of a feather on desks in Lansing.” His call for the adequacy study to start “a bigger conversation” about school funding was echoed a few days later in...

Is it possible that a toll road could price itself right out of its market? That's essentially what the Pennsylvania Turnpike is prescribing for itself. Last week the Turnpike Commission informed us that tolls will go up a ninth consecutive year in 2017 — and stay on a steadily upward trajectory until 2044. And of course, there's no guarantee after that. By then, we can only hope, the turnpike will have morphed into a giant solar-powered car-train — for self-driving cars, of course. "Unsustainable" is an overused word these days, but it applies to the toll road's future. The turnpike...

HARRISBURG — Motorists blow past Pennsylvania Turnpike toll booths every year, resulting in millions of dollars of losses. The agency that manages more than 500 miles of highway is supporting legislation to punish those scofflaws. A bill pending in the state Senate would “give us the hammer we need to go after habitual toll cheats,” Turnpike Commission Chairman Sean Logan said. “This measure would ensure that everyone pays their fair share. There are no free rides.” The bill by Senate Transportation Chairman John Rafferty, R-Montgomery County, and Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, would allow PennDOT to suspend the...

Slam on the brakes. That's what state lawmakers want to do to increasingly frequent instances of motorists skirting payment of Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls. The problem wouldn't be nearly as prevalent had many of those same legislators years ago taken a detour around the lame-brain idea that directly resulted in turnpike travel becoming significantly more costly. How costly? Pretty soon only Saudi Arabian sheiks will be able to afford the outrageous tolls, though those guys probably prefer to fly their personal planes from Pittsburgh to Breezewood. Those lacking private jet transportation sidestep the tolls in renegade fashion. They fly through toll...

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, when in fact the results never change, is one definition of insanity. That definition works for economic insanity, too. Over the past seven-and-a-half years, President Obama has maintained a steady course of burdensome new regulations, significant tax increases, and massive federal spending on so-called infrastructure. He has unconstitutionally ordered executive actions, favored labor over business, attacked banks, insulted successful corporate leaders, and backed federal-government mandates on business. And with all this, strong economic recovery from a deep recession -- which has been an American tradition -- never came...

2016 Elections: Largely overlooked because of the dust over his attacks on Khizr Khan, Donald Trump made an eye-opening promise on Tuesday, saying that he'd spend twice as much as Hillary Clinton on fixing roads and bridges. It's an outlandish proposal for any politician to make. But it's almost inconceivable that the Republican nominee for president would be trudging down this dreary big-government path. "We need much more money than (Clinton's plan) to rebuild our infrastructure," Trump told Fox... The numbers we're talking about here are massive. Clinton says that if elected she would boost federal spending... Trump says he'll...

Hillary's solution for our struggling economy: Massive government spending. Massive tax increases and new taxes on individuals and corporations. Massive increase of regulations. Step up the war against coal, gas and oil. Bankrupt all traditional producers of energy. Massive new government spending on "green" technologies and "green" jobs. Bankrupt as many capitalist industries as possible. Implement universal government provided "free" healthcare. Double the minimum wage. Guarantee a minimum income to all "working" families (and non-working families). Free college education, free healthcare and free lunches for all. Open our borders, grant amnesty, citizenship, welfare and voting rights to all comers including...

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually in Georgia on uncompensated care for the uninsured. The uninsured may not have coverage but they do get sick; one way or another, we all pay for their care in a way that is terribly inefficient. • Money should follow people. It is important to support the institutions and providers that make up Georgia’s safety net, but solutions should be people-centered, not institutioncentered. • Innovation requires flexibility and choices. Micromanaging every last detail is a recipe for the status quo. The accompanying table shows the most recent data on the average enrollment...

Senate Democrats sidetracked a $575 billion defense bill for next year late Thursday and threatened to shut down Congress’ work on spending legislation, accusing Republicans of shortchanging domestic programs. The move prompted the leaders of each party to testily accuse the other side of dysfunction. Both parties support the defense measure itself. But Democrats fear that if it is completed and sent to President Barack Obama, they would lose leverage with the GOP for future spending measures financing health, public works, law enforcement and other domestic programs. The Senate voted 50-44 to head off a Democratic filibuster of the bill...

In a critique of our recently published study on the relationship between school spending and academic achievement, Bruce Baker, a professor at Rutgers University, raises technical concerns that lead him to question our empirical methodology and qualitative conclusions. The nature of his comments suggests that a select group of previous research, which stand in contrast to our research in both empirical approach and qualitative findings, are methodologically superior and show a positive relationship between spending per pupil and student achievement. We address both the general and technical concerns Baker raises and describe why our research improves over the earlier papers...

A recent state report indicates that by the end of June, as many as 18 school districts are projected to emerge out of red ink, leaving just 22 districts in a deficit situation. Although some media reports have cast this as a story of underfunded schools, they do so by ignoring the fact that just three years ago 55 districts had a deficit, a state record. Michigan school districts are required by state law to balance their budget each year and not spend more than they take in. Nevertheless, every year some do have expenses exceed revenues, which is labeled...