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Louisiana teachers' union concerned about educators' future; Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump immunity case; Court issues restraining order against fracking waste-storage facility; Landmark NE agreement takes a proactive approach to CO2 pipeline risks.

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Speaker Johnson accuses demonstrating students of getting support from Hamas. TikTok says it'll challenge the ban. And the Supreme Court dives into the gray area between abortion and pregnancy healthcare, and into former President Trump's broad immunity claims

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The urban-rural death divide is widening for working-age Americans, many home internet connections established for rural students during COVID have been broken, and a new federal rule aims to put the "public" back in public lands.

Report: Measure 2 Doesn't Measure Up

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Friday, September 19, 2008   

Bismarck, ND – A proposal on the ballot in North Dakota this November to cut the personal income tax in half and the corporate tax rate by 15 percent could be trouble down the road. That's the claim in a new report just out from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It finds Measure 2 will create budget problems in the long run.

Janis Cheney with AARP North Dakota says the finding is in line with other comments she hears from many North Dakotans.

"The income tax is not what folks complain about. What concerns them are other kinds of taxes. Passing this measure means that any meaningful relief in any other tax category is simply not available."

Backers of the ballot proposal say it will guarantee tax relief by requiring lawmakers to reduce taxes. Cheney says passing the measure would actually hurt the state's ability to address or reduce sales and property taxes, which have a greater impact on middle-income families, and she says seniors and others on fixed incomes would see little gain.

"When you look at the amount of income tax people pay, particularly those on fixed incomes, it's very small. The smaller your income tax payment, the less you will realize any gain from this so-called 'benefit."

Nick Johnson, vice president of research for the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan economic thinktank, wrote the report and came to North Dakota to release it. He calculates that the measure will cost the state treasury 400 million dollars in the first two years, and much more in following years if oil revenues don't meet expectations.

Johnson says a close analysis of Measure 2 shows it's not what North Dakota needs, "It's expensive, it's risky, it leaves a lot of North Dakota taxpayers out and it will prevent North Dakota from doing many of the kinds of things that the state needs to do to secure its economic future."

The full report is available online at www.cbpp.org.


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