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Wednesday, December 15
Iowa Budget Crisis: Cuts, Costs Hitting Cities, Counties
by
Linda Thieman
on Wed 15 Dec 2004 04:34 PM CST
 Iowa Budget Crisis: Cuts, Costs Hitting Cities, Counties
Iowa Fiscal Partnership
Report Shows State Policy Squeezing Local Government Services
DES MOINES, Iowa
(Dec. 15, 2004) -- State budget shortfalls and higher costs that hit
Iowa cities and counties over the last four years have compromised
basic services while driving local taxes up and fund balances down, a
new study reports.
The
report, the fourth in a series from the Iowa Fiscal Partnership about
the impact of Iowa's budget crisis, illustrates a dilemma increasingly
faced by local government officials: how to meet residents' demand for
services with fewer or restricted means to pay for it.
"Short-sighted
state policy is putting local policy-makers in an impossible
situation," said Peter Fisher, research director of the Iowa Policy
Project and co-author of the report for the Iowa Fiscal Partnership.
"As our report illustrates, when the economy contracts, people demand
more services – at the same time that the state is cutting back,
property values are stagnant and costs are rising. In this climate,
local officials are asked to do more with less.
"Like
the state, local officials are turning to one-time sources of money for
ongoing services, and they can't do that year after year."
The report noted:
-- State support for local governments has fallen by 42 percent, $119 million, since FY2001.
--
All but two of Iowa’s 99 counties have reached or exceeded their
general fund property tax levy limit, with 17 using their authority to
go higher due to unusual circumstances. Only one county did that in
FY2001.
-- The percentage of cities at their general fund levy limit has gone from 71 percent in FY2001 to 78 percent in FY2005.
--
Health insurance costs have increased for local governments just as
they have for private employers. From FY2001 to FY04, the cost for
county health premiums rose by 78.4 percent. Local governments have
increasingly used special levies to finance the added costs. On
average, about three-fourths of the increase in overall city property
tax rates is due to employee benefit levies.
-- Despite an increasing use of local-option sales taxes, this has not solved local governments' financial problems.
--
The property tax base has not grown to keep pace with either higher
costs or cuts in state support. This primarily is due to the state's
system of rollbacks, which has effectively reduced residential
valuation to less than half of its market value, and to the system of
valuing agricultural property based on productivity rather than market
value.
"Our
findings have critical implications for the coming debate on property
tax reform in the Legislature," said Victor Elias, senior associate at
the Child & Family Policy Center and a co-author of the report. "We
have a combination of limits on tax rates and slow growth in valuation.
This has clearly constrained the ability of cities and counties to
finance services."
The
Iowa Fiscal Partnership (IFP) is a joint initiative of two nonprofit
policy research organizations, the Iowa Policy Project in Mount Vernon
and the Child & Family Policy Center in Des Moines. Reports from
the IFP are available on the web at www.iowafiscal.org.
The
first three reports in the current IFP series on the state budget
crisis are available at that site. They include an overview comparing
Iowa's handling of its fiscal challenges to efforts of other states; an
analysis of the impact of the budget crisis on education; and an
analysis of the impact on human services.
Follow-Up: California Grocery Strikes
by
Chad Thompson
on Wed 15 Dec 2004 01:32 PM CST
 Follow-Up: California Grocery Strikes
Ten
months after the UFCW settled the strike by agreeing to a 'two-tier'
contract, it seems that the split between younger workers and older
workers has doomed the unionization of California grocery stores.
Nearly
10 months after the end of the bitter Southern California grocery
strike and lockout, the three companies and the union that waged the
longest labor standoff in U.S. supermarket history are still in
turmoil.
Profits
at Albertsons Inc., Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Pavilions stores and Kroger
Co.'s Ralphs are being pinched by the price cuts they've made to woo
shoppers alienated by the 4 1/2 -month dispute.
The stocks of all three companies have fallen since a new contract was signed in February.
The
chains maintain that they'll rebound, largely because the two-tier
contract allows them to give new hires significantly lower wages and
benefits than veteran workers.
Safeway,
for one, doesn't want to wait for attrition to realize the payoff. The
Pleasanton, Calif.-based company plans to offer buyouts to roughly
one-third of the 22,000 people who work at its 293 Vons and Pavilions
stores in Southern and Central California to hasten their replacement
with new hires.
People
familiar with the buyout program said Safeway was prepared to spend up
to $50 million on it. So if 1,000 workers accepted, they would receive
$50,000 each.
"They
want to get rid of the old-timers and bring in a new class of
citizens," said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 770, which represents 4,266 Vons and Pavilions employees
in the Los Angeles area.
As
it is, the two-tier system is breeding discord between experienced
workers and new hires who aren't happy about being paid less to perform
the same tasks. Turnover among new hires is unusually high, union
officials said, and some new employees are chafing at paying union dues
that average nearly $50 a month.
(Click Here To Read The Rest of the Article)
It seems
obvious that to keep the union movement going, younger employees are
going to have to get on board and join the labor unions.
When those union leaders sell them out... well, there is a reason that new employees chafe at paying union dues.
I really don't know the solution here (living on strike pay alone won't
go very far), but labor leaders are going to have to figure out how to
address these problems - and figure out how to do so fairly loudly.
Republicans Absent at Vote Fraud Hearings: Help Get Congress Involved!
by
Trish Nelson
on Wed 15 Dec 2004 07:23 AM CST
 Republicans Absent at Vote Fraud Hearings: Help Get Congress Involved!
VotersUnite.org
Last
Wednesday, the Honorable John Conyers held a hearing on the allegations
of fraud in the Ohio election. Monday he held another one in Ohio. No
Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee were present at the
hearing on Wednesday.
Take action:
1. Call
2 (or more) Republican committee members and urge them to participate
in the investigation Congressman Conyers and others are holding. Scroll down for a list of names.
2. Call
2 (or more) Democratic committee members who were not involved and urge
them to participate — to add legitimacy to the protest against the
fraud that is being exposed in Ohio. See the list at the end of this
email.
3. Email
or call the New York Times [or the Des Moines Register - letters@news.dmreg.com] and ask why they did not cover the hearing
last Wednesday. The event was historic and deserved serious media
attention.
4. Every day, from this day on, call 3 (or more) members of Congress.
Verify
that the legislator understands: 1) The counts are not yet final and we
have no way of knowing, in many parts of the country, what the actual
vote count was; 2) Between vote suppression, voter intimidation,
registration fraud, and software flaws, neither the results nor the
counting process is legitimate; 3) The Conyers hearings make it obvious
that, because election irregularities were so widespread, there is no
way of telling whether the election outcomes are an accurate reflection
of the people's will.
Ask your
representative: What is the solution when the election is clearly
illegitimate? What can Congress do and what can we, in our thousands of
community organizations do, to prevent this fast approaching
miscarriage of justice?
5. Each
time you call, record it at http://www.usvip.org/congresscall. [Note,
if you haven't already registered, click the JOIN US link first, and
sign in. Then report your calls.]
To reach any member of Congress, call the Capitol switchboard at 1-800-839-5276 and ask for the member by name.
Thanks,
~ The VotersUnite.Org team
————————————————————————————-
House
Judiciary Members are listed below, Democrats first, in order by state,
then Republicans, in order by state. An * indicates those who have
participated in the hearings and/or the letters to the GAO and
Blackwell. Call and thank them. Call the others and urge them to
participate. It is their responsibility.
Remember 1-800-839-5276 reaches the Capitol switchboard.
Hon. Howard Berman (D) California, 28th
Hon. Zoe Lofgren (D) California, 16th
Hon. Linda Sánchez (D) California, 39th
Hon. Adam Schiff (D) California, 29th
Hon. Maxine Waters (D) California, 35th
* Hon. Robert Wexler (D) Florida, 19th
Hon. William Delahunt (D) Massachusetts, 10th
Hon. Martin Meehan (D) Massachusetts, 5th
** Hon. John Conyers (D) Michigan 14th [Ranking Member]
* Hon. Jerrold Nadler (D) New York, 8th
Hon. Anthony Weiner (D) New York, 9th
* Hon. Melvin Watt (D) North Carolina, 12th
Hon. Sheila Jackson Lee (D) Texas, 18th
Hon. Rick Boucher (D) Virginia, 9th
Hon. Robert Scott (D) Virginia, 3rd
* Hon. Tammy Baldwin (D) Wisconsin, 2nd
Hon. Spencer Bachus (R) Alabama, 6th
Hon. Jeff Flake (R) Arizona, 6th
Hon. Elton Gallegly (R) California, 24th
Hon. Tom Feeney (R) Florida, 24th
Hon. Ric Keller (R) Florida, 8th
Hon. Henry Hyde (R) Illinois, 6th
Hon. Mike Pence (R) Indiana, 6th
Hon. John Hostettler (R) Indiana, 8th
Hon. Steve King (R) Iowa, 5th
Hon. Howard Coble (R) North Carolina, 6th
Hon. Steve Chabot (R) Ohio, 1st
Hon. Melissa Hart (R) Pennsylvania, 4th
Hon. William Jenkins (R) Tennessee, 1st
Hon. Marsha Blackburn (R) Tennessee, 7th
Hon. Lamar Smith (R) Texas, 21st
Hon. John Carter (R) Texas, 31st
Hon. Chris Cannon (R) Utah, 3rd
Hon. J. Randy Forbes (R) Virginia, 4th
Hon. Bob Goodlatte (R) Virginia, 6th
Hon. Mark Green (R) Wisconsin, 8th
Hon. James Semsenbrenner (R) Wisconsin 5th [Chairman]
Join your fellow Iowans in the fight to take back the media for ordinary citizens. Click here to join RapidResponse - Iowa.
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