State Rundown 9/6: Most Statehouses Quiet, Many Pondering Harvey’s Impacts

It’s been a quiet week for tax policy in most states, though lawmakers are still making noise in Pennsylvania, where a budget agreement is still needed, and in Wisconsin, where legislators are searching for the will to raise revenue for the state’s ailing transportation infrastructure. In our “What We’re Reading” section you’ll find interesting reading on the fiscal fallout of Hurricane Harvey, as well as an in-depth series on how states’ disaster response needs are likely to continue to increase.

— Meg Wiehe, ITEP Deputy Director, @megwiehe

• Pennsylvania House Republicans have a new budget balancing plan based entirely on funding cuts for public services, but it has not been met with enthusiasm.
• Transportation funding continues to be a sticking point for Wisconsin Although Gov. Scott Walker has come out in support of a higher registration fee for electric and hybrid vehicles, any new revenues raised from these higher fees don’t begin to address the state’s burgeoning needs.
• Opponents to the soda tax are preparing to spend $1.4 million on advertisements in Illinois leading up to the next Cook County board meeting where a proposal to repeal the new tax is expected to be considered.
• There is an effort underway in Oregon to undo a recently passed tax on hospitals to help fund Medicaid, but it first has to pass the legal hurdle of developing clear enough language for the ballot.
• August state revenues came in higher than anticipated in some states and lower in others, with Arkansas seeing flat sales and low personal income tax revenue, while Kansas experienced higher than expected tax revenues for the second month in a row.
• A larger share of revenue from Washington state’s tax on marijuana is going to fund the state’s share of education funding rather than getting passed on to cities.
• A recent ruling by the World Trade Organization’s appeal body overturned a previous WTO ruling that found certain Washington state tax incentives given to Boeing to be prohibited because they shut out imports.
• A California city official’s proposal to tax robots is drawing interest as more people think about how to use tax policy to address the changing labor market due to the anticipated rise of automation.
• A lawsuit in North Carolina will test whether property appraisals there have exhibited illegal bias against predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

What We’re Reading…

• Governing reviews some of the massive fiscal impacts of Hurricane Harvey, which will likely cause both sales and property taxes to plummet in the affected areas.
• A study of Pennsylvania education finance over the past several years demonstrates how an influx of charter schools can drain needed funding away from public schools.
• Stateline delivers a three-part series on the ways federal pull-back and increasingly frequent and expensive storms will force states to step up in disaster mitigation due to federal pull-back and storms that are more frequent and more expensive.
• Forbes weighs-in on the controversial Oregon bike tax, distinguishing between taxes that are intended to deter certain types of undesirable behaviors from use taxes that are intended to collectively fund public investments by those who most directly benefit from them.

If you like what you are seeing in the Rundown (or even if you don’t) please send any feedback or tips for future posts to Meg Wiehe at [email protected]. Click here to sign up to receive the Rundown via email.

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