Posted on 05/12/2011 9:37:46 AM PDT by Qbert
As recession-racked cities struggle to balance their budgets with everything short of feeling behind sofa cushions for loose change, a growing number are seeking more money — just don’t use the word taxes — from nonprofit institutions that occupy valuable land but by law do not pay property taxes.
[Snip]
Boston has been sending letters to its largest nonprofit institutions this year, telling them the value of their land and asking them to begin making annual payments that would eventually rise to a quarter of what they would owe if they paid property taxes. Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel of Chicago wants the city to begin charging water fees to nonprofits, which have been spared them in the past. And the mayor of Providence, R.I., Angel Taveras, cited Boston’s example this month when he called on nonprofits to pay more money to the city.
“Every citizen, every city worker, every taxpayer, every business and every organization — including tax-exempt institutions — must share part of the burden of saving our city,” Mr. Taveras said in his budget address. He proposed closing Providence’s $109 million budget gap by shutting schools, laying off workers, cutting the Police and Fire Department budgets and raising taxes on homeowners as well as seeking larger payments from the city’s prestigious universities and other nonprofit institutions.
[Snip]
As nonprofits grow in size and importance in many cities, manufacturing has disappeared and development has moved to the suburbs, leaving much of the best land in some cities off the tax rolls.
So as the fiscal crisis lingers, some cities are weighing new fees on nonprofits for things like water service, street drainage and streetlights. Others, including New Orleans, want to tighten the rules establishing how tax-exempt status is granted...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How about calling on some of the fat union pensioners who contributed so little to their huge retirements? No, that’s sane.
Mo’ money! Mo’ money! Mo’ money! says the city.
No credit? No problem! No cash? Problem!
Feed me! Feed me! I demand mo’ money! Feed me! The more I eat the hungrier I get! FEED ME!!!!!
What will the cities reactions be, if these non-profits close their city offices, and move to suburban office parks? What will they do if their demands for “voluntary” contributions trigger the reaction of simply shutting down their city offices? Then the cities are left with nothing, right? The economic activity generated by the jobs which used to be in these buildings will be gone. The lunch hour spending, shopping, etc. by workers who were in the city will now happen outside the city borders.
Don’t liberals like charities? If these non-profits are compelled to make “voluntary” donations to the cities, they will have less to fund their charitable mission. Do the liberals really want to hurt charitable organizations this way????
“Squeezed” ?
Or “Mismanaged”?
It just never occurs to them to spend less.
Starve the beast. If I were a NP I wouldn’t give the government the time of day.
We are living in the final chapters of Atlas Shrugged. This is gonna get ugly. It becomes more obvious with every passing week, and every report of a liberal city official talking of what needs to be done.
It really IS like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
There will be war.
If they're becoming enlightened they're clearly not interested in allowing the info to inform their feeble minds.
It could well be that Obama feels constrained by the need to run for re-election.
It could be that everything will be no holds barred with Obama, if he gets re-elected.
Then, the key brake against him would be GOP control of the House, and perhaps the GOP taking the Senate in 2012.
“Feed me! Feed me! I demand mo’ money! Feed me! The more I eat the hungrier I get! FEED ME!!!!!”
You got me thinking there- maybe we could use Michelle O’s endless sermons about eating limited portions and losing weight in order to not become bloated as an analogy to convince deranged Libs about the importance of limited spending and not having bloated government. Who knows?
I also think there will be war. But I also still think Urkel will not finish his first term. I think it will get that bad.
No!
Liberals only like charities which they control through grants. Otherwise, charities are competing against the government and liberals love government.
Just think of all the things government does today that used to be done by charities.
Our bloated, morbidly obese Federal government definitely needs to go on a diet. We can easily turn their desire to control everything we eat into controlling how much money of ours they consume.
I guess asking public employees pay more for the healthcare and pension, and cutting back on questionable funding, like the Arts and Planned Parenthood would be too extreme?
True but consider all the damage that those anti-American nonprofits do by working against us; acorn, pp, the many gungrabbers, aclu and on and on.
I wouldn't mind sending them a bill
“Don’t liberals like charities? If these non-profits are compelled to make “voluntary” donations to the cities, they will have less to fund their charitable mission. Do the liberals really want to hurt charitable organizations this way????”
I honestly think they don’t care. Big Gov is the answer to everything for them. The Koch Brothers can set up cancer research foundations, Rush Limbaugh can donate millions, etc, and it simply doesn’t matter. Attempting to better human lives in some substantive way is irrelevant. George Soros will still be their hero because he’s all about Utopian Big Gov.
But what can I say, why bang your head against the wall searching for the answer? Sometimes it’s better to admit the obvious: it’s a mental disorder.
True, but nonprofit does not equal charity. It would be pretty straight forward to remove the exemption from non charity nonprofits.
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