Tag: Alan Greenblatt

What We’ve Learned — and Failed to Learn — from a Million COVID Deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/now/what-weve-learned-and-failed-to-learn-from-a-million-covid-deaths

Excerpt:

The pandemic is not done. The number of new infections — surely an undercount due to unreported home tests — again tops 75,000 per day. The number of hospitalizations has climbed 20 percent over the past two weeks. The Biden administration has warned there could be 100 million more Americans infected by early next year. Yet Congress seems unwilling to provide more money for basic responses such as tests and vaccines, even as it becomes increasingly clear that even mild cases can lead to dangerous long-term damage.

Yet there are positive developments to consider as well. Vaccinations and certainly boosters are not where they should be, but three out of four Americans have received at least a single dose and two-thirds are fully vaccinated. The Commonwealth Fund has estimated that, absent vaccines, an additional 2.3 million Americans would have died, and 17 million more would have been hospitalized. Public health measures such as masking have largely fallen out of favor, but they helped prevent a death toll that could have been even more terrible.

“A million is way too many people, but as a result of the work that has been done, through public health and vaccination, it’s a number that’s a lot lower than it might have been,” says David Fleming, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Trust for America’s Health. “If we did not do those things, we would not be looking at the 1 million death threshold, we’d be looking at the 3 million death threshold.”

Author(s): Alan Greenblatt

Publication Date: 12 May 2022

Publication Site: Governing

Sagging Stocks Aren’t the Only Threat to Pension Plans

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.governing.com/finance/sagging-stocks-arent-the-only-threat-to-pension-plans

Excerpt:

You need money to make money, and the programs long in trouble didn’t have enough assets on hand to take full advantage of a banner year. Say your plan started 2021 with a funding level of 80 percent (meaning you had enough assets to cover 80 percent of your anticipated liabilities). With a 30 percent return, your plan would then be 104 percent funded. But if you only started with a 30 percent funding level, the same percentage gain would bump you up only to 39 percent funded.

“The problem of a deeply underfunded plan is that they don’t have a lot of assets, so big returns aren’t as helpful to them,” says Donald Boyd, co-director of the Project on State and Local Government Finance at the University at Albany. “They’ve still got a huge way to go.”

….

Maintaining discipline has been hard. When pension plans have a good year, as in 2021, there’s a temptation for legislators to skip contributions. This would be akin to an individual seeing her retirement account gain $10,000 and figuring she can skip that year’s $5,000 contribution.

The problem is that you have to maximize your gains in good years, not fritter them away, because inevitably you’re going to have to make up for bad years at some point. “When politicians have a lot of money around, they tend not to put it in the fund,” says the Urban Institute’s Johnson. “When things are bad, they kick the burden down the road and let future taxpayers worry about it.”

Author(s): Alan Greenblatt

Publication Date: 25 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Governing

So, Can States Cut Taxes or Not?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/finance/So-Can-States-Cut-Taxes-or-Not.html

Excerpt:

Most observers believe that the Treasury will interpret the law narrowly. Rather than seeking to claw back funds from any states passing tax cuts or credits, the feds are considered likely to challenge only those states that clearly use federal dollars to pay for them. “Nothing in the act prevents states from enacting a broad variety of tax cuts,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote in a response to the AGs. “It simply provides that funding received under the act may not be used to offset a reduction in net tax revenue resulting from certain changes in state law.”

But the fact that the law blocks federal money from being used even indirectly to pay for tax cuts has state officials not just worried but angry. “Democrats in Washington and in the White House are not going to tell me, or the Georgia General Assembly, that we can’t cut taxes for hard-working Georgians,” Gov. Brian Kemp complained at a news conference last month.

….

That prohibition lasts as long as the stimulus dollars are spent, which will be into 2024. And there are limits, Walczak notes, on where and how states can spend federal aid. They can use the money to address pandemic and health needs, for example. While those are clearly ongoing, much of the cost of vaccine supply and distribution has been underwritten by the feds. Other costs in these areas have already been addressed by last year’s federal CARES Act, which some states struggled to spend.

Author(s): Alan Greenblatt

Publication Date: 7 April 2021

Publication Site: Governing

Will States Resist Fresh Billions for Medicaid Expansion?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/now/Will-States-Be-Able-to-Resist-Billions-for-Medicaid-Expansion.html

Excerpt:

As part of the most recent federal stimulus, states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act can receive additional matching funds. Rather than paying 10 percent of the cost for new recipients, they’d only have to pay 5 percent over the next two years. Additional subsidies mean they would actually cost themselves money by refusing to expand. Florida, for instance, would come out ahead by $1.25 billion, even after paying its share of expanded coverage. Still, Gov. Ron DeSantis and legislative leaders remain opposed.

….

It’s true that the 95 percent match rate will only last for two years. But plenty of states have put in place triggers that would end their expansion programs if the federal share ever dipped below 90 percent, notes Trish Riley, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Author(s): Alan Greenblatt

Publication Date: 31 March 2021

Publication Site: Governing

The Supreme Court Decision That Saved States Billions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/finance/The-Supreme-Court-Decision-That-Saved-States-Billions.html

Excerpt:

The 2018 Supreme Court decision, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, overturned prior decisions that had made it impossible for states to collect sales taxes from remote sellers. They certainly tried in different ways, but were shot down by various courts. It was the long-sought Wayfair decision, as it’s known, that opened the door for states to collect taxes on most online sales.

“Prior to the Wayfair decision, although some ecommerce sellers were going down the path of starting to collect sales tax on their sales, online sales was still a potential avenue to avoid the sales tax,” says Chuck Maniace, vice president of regulatory analysis at Sovos, a tax compliance firm.

Wayfair allows states to demand that businesses without a physical presence collect and remit taxes, assuming they make at least $100,000 worth of in-state sales. Following the decision, large states such as California and Texas have set the threshold higher, at $500,000. States differ in terms of how many in-state transactions can take place before a seller has to collect taxes (generally, about 200).

Author(s): ALAN GREENBLATT

Publication Date: 22 January 2021

Publication Site: Governing