Special (water) districts mentioned.

Studying how frontline supervisors shape outcomes in public organizations with competing objectives and limited monitoring, from Matthew Gudgeon, Andrew Jordan, and Taeho Kim www.nber.org/papers/w35306

I love finding university programs in the catalog where I cannot find any entity that's responsible for it. Interdisciplinary programs are great, but someone has to run them.

We're about to get a lesson in fiduciary funds.

I guess I should email @bhighsmith.bsky.social to ask about what happens in a company town where the company is a militarized arm of the federal government.

Unpopular fact (that I don't like but it is what it is): these folks were laid off because of financial circumstances. Reinstating them doesn't eliminate the problem and likely makes it much worse.

Ugh, Daily Herald, fix your link previews. From: "School, library officials demand Cook County step up tax payments"

"Payments from 2024 and 2025, for example, are commingled in the system, so even when money has been collected, the treasurer's office cannot tell a library or school district exactly how much of what they received came from which tax year." 🚨🚨🚨

It is super cool to watch a storm come at us, hit the lake, and blow to pieces.

More on the financial precarity of South suburban municipalities.

One of the historical arguments for public authorities (as an institution) was technical competence. This is repeated over and over again in the academic, legal, and trade literatures from the 30s to the 60s. I'm not sure that holds anymore. I'm also not sure why this has changed.

I have to go to several non-academic conferences per year as part of my director job. The demand for these conferences is always high with the conference hotels selling out quickly. The one I just registered for (in Oct) had the conference hotel sell out in less than 2 hours.

Big fan of this paper and I'm glad it found a home. Environmental infrastructure spending is understudied compared to its budget.

Cyclists can only do so much to prop a company up. (Uncrustables are incredibly common long ride fuel)

Hi, public finance expert here. This is an awful idea. We have elections. If you don't like the choices of your local elected officials, vote them out and change the law.

Great system. I'm glad we're installing them nationwide with little to no scrutiny.

You should definitely not read anything into how Cook County runs an entirely different PT system from the rest of the state, and Cook County is the only county with problems.

Why Cook County property tax bills will be late again this summer

IL local govt folks, unite! www.ilsos.gov/content/dam/pub...

Hello Ocarina of Time remake (remaster?) coming this year.

This report highlights that the devil is in the details on incentives. Out of these 50 large clean energy projects, the "median" project has benefits>incentive costs by 47% -- but 13 projects have B/C ratio >3, and 7 have B/C < 0.5.

I keep coming back to this figure.

I hope other journals take this and run with it.

Craig Federighi::Me Appreciators of a good blue shirt (Mine in Oxford broadcloth, please).

Seemingly, we're getting a macOS/iOS Snow Leopard update (laudatory).

Seemingly, local government (general and ed) accounted for ~30% of the jobs growth we saw last week (~50k of the ~172k total).

⬇️ PT revenue = constrained public services. Not a concern to the rich; they provide their own private services. And everyone else aspires to be rich and provide their own private services without knowing getting rid of Prop 13 would also do it (progressively since PT is a wealth tax).

Universities are not really in a position to solve this problem. You can’t catch people up ten years in ten weeks. archive.ph/ZXtQ5

I have a similar experience whenever I get a physical (as a healthy 40ish person)-questions about every symptom of old age known to man. If you want an indication of how much of our healthcare system is completely oriented toward the elderly.

Super useful. I often need to make simple diagrams for lectures and firing up tikz, mermaid, etc is overkill. This is perfect.

Ideocracy alert!

For the handful of people that are interested, here's the FY27 higher ed funding allocations for the al the systems. Looks like 1% increase across the board, but returns reserved funding into the base. Unclear if it unlocks reserved funding from FY26 .

Countless thoughts about this as I head to the IL City Management conference tomorrow. I'll say this: as with most things local government, each state's implementation of general concepts is vastly different. What's described here about city managers could not be further from the experience in IL.

The next ViCE seminar is this Thursday, June 4, at 1pm ET. CarlyWill Sloan will present: "More with Less: The Impact of Mandatory Overtime on Police Wellness and Productivity"

Prediction: retailers will increase prices anyways, so consumers will pay the same, and the state will lose revenue. Always fun to see a transfer of surplus from the state to private.

Following through on NITA changes.

The day after the General Assembly passes a budget is the day I start spamming the IBHE website to see the appropriation changes.

"…lawmakers restored funding to local governments' cut of state income tax back to 6.47%, over the Pritzker-proposed 6.23%" I'm a little surprised about this. It's good, but I expected the cut to stick.

Local governments in the US are more likely to delay or reject FOIA requests ahead of elections in more corrupt states, reducing transparency precisely when it is needed most, from Raymond Fisman, Aron Malatinszky, and Eyub Yegen www.nber.org/papers/w35248

100 mile bike race in the mud. Burned 4700 calories. I only mention that because I am now Ron Swanson.

We're so close to actually enforcing the Impoundment Control Act, which would reverse so many of the terrible things of the last couple of years.

Ah.

Where European conventions on changing clothing in public meets small town Oklahoma cops…

Special districts mentioned.

Readiness score in the 90s, HRV soaring. I must have timed this race taper just right!

This is good. We should teach way more about this rather than assuming the knowledge will accrete over a career.

Well, that's one way to do a wealth tax.

I am very frustrated at the well-meaning but apparently unpersuaded people who say, "There is no e-moto/e-scooter problem! That's made up to distract from the problem of cars!"