The Partnership for Stronger Communities Releases Report on Connecticut’s Housing Market

The Partnership for Stronger Communities (PSC), a Connecticut affordable housing policy and advocacy nonprofit, recently released a report providing a snapshot of the state’s housing market and analyzing how it affects low- and middle-income families.  The report, titled “Housing in CT 2014: The Latest Measures of Affordability,” highlights a number of Connecticut-specific trends, including the following:

• the share of households that rent increased from 30% in 2007 to 34% in 2013; 
• the “housing wage,” what one must earn to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment, fell slightly from $23.22 per hour in 2012 to $23.02 per hour in 2013, but remained the 8th highest nationally; 
• multifamily housing production returned to levels seen just before the 2008 housing market crash, but single-family production remained stagnant (see PSC’s table, below); and
• overall homelessness declined between 2012 and 2013 by 4%, but the number of adult-only households experiencing chronic homelessness declined even more, by 10% (see PSC’s table, below).

The report notes that some of these statistics, such as the increase in renter households, may partly result from shifting demographics.  Much of today’s housing market is made up of millennials and downsizing baby boomers, both of whom often prefer multi-family housing to single-family housing.

Seniors’ Wait-time for Medicare Appeals Cut in Half

According to Kaiser Health News, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) reduced by 50% the waiting time for seniors who request a hearing before a judge.

OMHA decided most of the 5,162 Medicare appeals filed in federal fiscal year (FFY) 14 in addition to 1,535 older cases. This is a significant improvement from FFY 13, where one-third of beneficiary cases remained undecided in addition to 50% of FFY 2012 cases.

According to Kaiser Health News, requesting an OMHA hearing is the third of four stages in the Medicare appeals process and the first chance for beneficiaries or health care providers to present their case before a judge.

Pew Report Compares States on Key Health Indicators

A recent fact sheet from the Pew Charitable Trusts looks at how states compare in 20 health indicators. The indicators cover five categories:  (1) demographics and the uninsured, (2) residents’ health status, (3) vital statistics, (4) prevalence of disease and health risk factors, and (5) prevention and treatment. Most of the analysis is drawn from 2010 or 2011 data.

Here are some examples of how Connecticut compares to the country as a whole.

• In 2010, 10.5% of Connecticut residents reported being in fair or poor health, lower than the national average of 14.1%.
• In 2010 and 2011, the percentage of Connecticut residents age 12 and older reporting substance abuse in the previous year was slightly higher than the national average (9.0% vs. 8.4%).
• The 2009 life expectancy at birth in Connecticut was 80.8 years, compared to a national average of 78.9 years.
• In 2010, 84.1% of Connecticut women over age 50 reported having a mammogram in the previous two years, compared to a national average of 78.1%.

Recent National Labor Relations Board Decision Affects Unionization at Private Colleges and Universities

Faculty members at private colleges and universities have traditionally had difficulty unionizing, thanks in large part to a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that Yeshiva University’s faculty members were managerial employees under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, 444 U.S. 672 (1980)). However, a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board potentially makes it easier for such faculty members to unionize. (Unionization in public colleges and universities is governed by state labor laws.)


The case involved a unionization effort by contingent faculty members at Pacific Lutheran University, which the university opposed. In a 3-2 decision, the board ruled that the university had not demonstrated that the contingent faculty members are managerial employees under NLRA.  The board also ruled that Pacific Lutheran did not qualify for a religious exemption from NLRA.


In the decision, the board also established a five-factor test for determining whether faculty members are considered managerial employees. The test examines the faculty members’ involvement in decision-making processes concerning academic programs, enrollment management, finances, academic policy, and personnel policies and decisions, with greater weight given to the first three factors.

Federal School Technology Funding Gets a Boost

According to The Hechinger Report and U.S. News & World Report, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently approved an increase on telephone service fees to boost funding for the E-Rate program.  As explained in a previous OLR Report, 2013-R-0254, E-Rate provides subsidies to broadband Internet providers that offer discounted service to schools and libraries.  This tax increase is expected to generate an extra $1.5 billion each year for the program, which has not seen an increase in 16 years.

Photo by Laurie Sullivan/CC BY 2.0

The tax increase will add $1.90 in annual fees per phone.  The extra funding is meant to expand the use of computers and websites in classrooms with limited Internet bandwidth and unreliable connections.  This funding boost supports the executive branch initiative, known as ConnectEd, to provide almost every school with a high-speed Internet connection.

Two out of five commissioners voted against the fee increase, expressing concerns that the revenues raised may not benefit the neediest students or ensure equitable online access.  The FCC has estimated that nearly 70 percent of schools lack high-speed Internet connectivity, mostly in poor urban and rural school districts.


In addition to the fee increase, the FCC’s order will also help schools and libraries build their own high-speed broadband facilities where there is no local alternative.

Squaring the Taxing and Spending Circle . . . to Everyone’s Liking

http://bit.ly/1As2gBG

“Squaring the circle” is an ancient mathematical problem that’s impossible to solve with a compass and a straightedge. It’s also a metaphor for trying to solve any seemingly impossible problem, like increasing taxes and spending money in ways that make everybody happy.

Well, it might be a stretch to say that University of Southern California Law and Business Professor Edward D. Kleinbard figured out how to square the tax and spending circle, but he does offer some different approaches to this problem. His new book—We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money—“holds the potential to change our often dogmatic and sometimes toxic public debate over how we tax ourselves and spend our tax dollars into a conversation about how to raise more money with less pain and spend in ways that will produce a happier America,” Syracuse University Law professor David Clay Johnston wrote in a recent book review.

What does this former chief of staff of Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation have in mind? First, that “taxing and spending are the yin and yang, the alpha and omega, that should always be viewed together,” Johnston wrote. Kleinbard “repeatedly cautions about proponents of every perspective looking at only one side of the coin.”

Starting from this premise, Kleinbard precedes to step on many toes across the political spectrum. Because we’re too preoccupied with taxes, we overlook how well-targeted government spending complements the private sector, yielding positive social and economic returns.
 
To bring this about, we must get over our obsession with progressive taxation and design a tax system that produces those returns, according to Kleinbard. To Johnston, that means substituting “the simplicity and efficiency of rough justice for the ever more finely diced rules progressives have promoted for over a century as the best way to get a fair society,” adding that “such fine rules produce the unintended consequence of being material for unexpected pathways through the tax code to what Kleinbard calls stateless income, because no government taxes it.”

It appears that Kleinbard is trying to reframe budget debates, often quoting passages from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to support his claims. What we “really should care about is whether government, taken as a whole, enhances the happiness of society by making socially useful investments and by appropriate levels of social insurance. These goods are financed by tax revenues, but the tax revenues are not the point of the system—the goods are,” Kleinbard wrote.

Foreign Recalls Don’t Necessarily Lead to Recalls Here

A New York Times study of motor vehicle recalls in other countries found that “in dozens of instances . . . problems that prompted recalls or other safety-related actions in foreign countries have not been treated with the same urgency in the United States.”


Federal law requires car manufacturers to notify regulators within five days of learning of a safety defect to start the recall process. But, the Times reports, “the seven top automakers in the United States – GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai – have reported instances to federal regulators when they did not recall cars, even though the vehicles contained the same problematic components as their recalled counterparts abroad.”


The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately direct any of the companies to take stronger action in any of these cases, the Times said. The newspaper found that car manufacturers conducted at least 33 safety actions in foreign countries that never fully led to American recalls.