Colorado

The U.S. Supreme Court last week halted an effort by the Trump administration that would have stripped DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients of their lawful status in the country. The 5-4 ruling is a significant victory for immigrant rights advocates and over 643,000 Dreamers—as they’re known—who were brought here as children and have […]

Despite uncertainty all around the nation, a few states passed budgets this week and many more are negotiating to enact theirs before fiscal years close at the end of June. Colorado notably pared back some of its own tax breaks and limited the potential damage on its budget from new federal breaks. California also passed a budget but few in the state actually think the dealing is done. Iowa quietly enacted its budget too, though advocates in the state are making noise about non-fiscal bills that were added late in the game.

As calls to defund the police demonstrate, state and local decisions about funding priorities and how those funds are raised are deeply embedded in racial justice issues. Tax justice is also a key component in advancing racial justice. Racial wealth disparities are the result of countless historic inequities and tax policy choices are certainly among […]

This week the immense scale and uneven distribution of economic and health damage from the COVID-19 pandemic continued to come into focus, hand in hand with greater clarity around pandemic-related revenue losses threatening state and local revenues and the priorities—such as health care, education, and public safety—they fund. Officials in many states, including Ohio and Tennessee, nonetheless rushed to declare their unwillingness to be part of any solution that includes raising the tax contributions of their highest-income residents. On the brighter side, some leaders are willing to do just that, for example through progressive tax increases proposed in New York…

State policymakers are navigating incredibly uncertain waters these days as they attempt to get a firmer grasp on the scale of their revenue crises, identify painful budget cuts they may have to make in response, and look for ways to raise tax revenues coming from the households and corporations still bringing in large incomes and profits amid the pandemic—all while hoping that additional federal aid and greater flexibility in how they can use federal CARES Act funds will help relieve some of these difficult decisions.

State lawmakers are starting to use fiscal policy levers to address the COVID-19 pandemic, but the actions vary greatly and are just a start. Mississippi, for example, is one state still clarifying who has authority to determine how federal aid dollars are spent. Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, and Ohio are among the many states identifying painful funding cuts they will likely make to shared priorities like health care. The Louisiana House and the Minnesota Senate each advanced tax cuts and credits that could dig their budget holes even deeper. Connecticut leaders are looking at one of the more comprehensive packages, which…

April has brought relentless showers of troublesome tax and budget news as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on communities and the public services and institutions that both support and depend on them. There is hope, however, that these troubles have opened the eyes of policymakers and that May will bring more clarity and strong action in the form of federal fiscal relief as well as home-grown state and local responses.

In different ways, Earth Day and the COVID-19 pandemic convey a similar lesson: people around the world face shared struggles and disparate impacts, which they must work together to overcome through both emergency action and systemic change. In keeping with that lesson, state fiscal policy news this week was strikingly similar around the country, as states take account of the major threat posed by the pandemic to their budgets and attempt to grapple with its disproportionate impacts on communities of color and low-income families.

States and families got good news this week as Congress came together to pass major aid to help during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. But that bright spot came amid an onslaught of very difficult news about the public health crisis and the economic and fiscal fallout accompanying it. This week’s Rundown brings you the latest on these developments and state and local responses to them.

This week’s Rundown brings you the most useful reading and resources about how states are affected by and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include: landing pages for the most up-to-date lists of state policy responses; ITEP’s own materials on state policy options and the federal response bills; insights on how a race-forward approach can improve these efforts at all levels; updates on state fiscal troubles and legislative postponements; and the developing picture of which states and communities could be affected more than others.

The COVID-19 novel coronavirus’s effects on public health and economies at all scales are creating a daunting situation for state budgets as well. Lawmakers can choose and prioritize their responses through a straightforward approach similar to that taken by health professionals: marshal and reinforce available resources, triage response options to prioritize the most vital services and most vulnerable people, and enact or strengthen the policies that will help address longer-term issues as well as immediate emergencies.

This testimony explains the advantages of the cannabis tax structure proposed in Connecticut’s Senate Bill 16 and offers additional background information as well as ideas for potential changes to the bill.

State lawmakers have plenty to keep them busy on the tax policy front in 2020. Encouraging trends we’re watching this year include opportunities to enact and enhance refundable tax credits and increase the tax contributions of high-income households, each of which would improve tax equity and help to reduce income inequality.

State tax and budget debates can turn on a dime sometimes, as in Utah this past week, where lawmakers unanimously repealed a tax package they had just approved in a special session last month. Delaware lawmakers are hoping to avoid the similarly abrupt end to their last effort to improve their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by crafting a bill that Gov. John Carney will have no reason to unexpectedly veto as he did two years ago. But at other times, these debates just can’t change fast enough, as in New Hampshire and Virginia, where leaders are searching for revenue to address long-standing transportation needs, and in Hawaii, Nebraska, and North Carolina, where education funding issues remain painfully unresolved.

This week as Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s messages of resisting oppression and fighting for progress, state policymakers can look to some bright spots where tax and budget debates are bending toward justice. Among those highlights, Hawaii leaders are considering improvements to minimum wage policy, early childhood education, and affordable housing; Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is seeking to reduce sales taxes applied to food and restore the state’s grocery tax credit; and advocates in Connecticut and Maryland are pushing for meaningful progressive tax reforms.

State tax and budget debates have arrived in a big way, with proposals from every part of the country and everywhere on the spectrum from good to bad tax policy. Just look to ARIZONA for a microcosm of nationwide debates, where education advocates have a plan to raise progressive taxes for school needs, Gov. Doug […]

Happy New Year readers! The Rundown is back to our usual weekly schedule as state legislative sessions and governors’ budgets and State of the State Addresses begin in earnest. Here’s to clear-eyed 20-20 vision guiding state tax and budget decisions in 2020! So far this year, the harm of Colorado’s TABOR policy and Alaska’s lack of an income tax are coming into focus in big ways. Utah advocates are hoping the benefit of hindsight will help convince voters to overturn a recently enacted tax overhaul. Lawmakers in states including Iowa, Maryland, and Virginia can clearly see a need for revenues,…

In the last few weeks, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has served up his budget proposal, which advocates are eager to dig into and hoping to contribute to with a delectable Earned Income Tax Credit proposal of their own. Utah lawmakers have been cooking up tax ideas as well, but haven’t yet decided when to come to the table to debate them. And Maryland leaders finalized their menu of needed education reforms, now moving on to assigning responsibilities for funding them. With respect to dividing up the pie, our “What We’re Reading” section below includes reporting on evidence that corporate tax…

Many of yesterday’s Election Day votes came down to questions of whether or not to improve on upside-down and often inadequate state and local tax systems. The status quo was maintained in Colorado, where voters failed to approve a proposition to allow the state to invest tax revenue in education and other needs, and in Texas, where a constitutional amendment was approved to prohibit the state from creating an income tax. But voters supported important reforms in other states by approving needed funding for schools in Idaho, opting to legalize and tax recreational cannabis in California. And for more on…

As autumn brings a colorful display of foliage to many states, so too are tax proposals taking on interesting hues as states move from the summer off-season toward 2020 legislative sessions. Ohio lawmakers are blue in the face from debating and re-debating tax and budget issues there. Maryland residents again showed they can’t be called yellow-bellied when it comes to footing the bill for needed education improvements, showing their broad support for higher taxes to fund those needs even despite a hefty price tag. Alaska, Michigan, and other states are giving the green light to laws implementing their new ability…