 |
Update August 2011
In this issue:
-- Talking About the Middle Class
-- A Double-Dip Recession?
-- The Rich Stay Put
-- Let's Level with Vermonters
-- Your Tax Dollars at Work
Talking About the Middle Class
Public Assets just wound up its fourth annual summer speaking tour with a series of presentations and meetings in Colchester. "Rebuilding Vermont's Middle Class" was the theme of this summer's tour, which also included visits to South Burlington, Northfield, Bellows Falls, and Shelburne. Since 2008, we have spent a day in each of five Vermont towns every summer, speaking to the Rotary and meeting with local school officials, legislators, media, and other community and business leaders. The tour provides the opportunity for Public Assets and Vermont's communities to get to know each other better. Take a look at the speaking notes and charts from this summer's tour.
A Double-Dip Recession?
We hope not. But as we pointed out in our latest Monthly Jobs Report, three straight months of rising unemployment in Vermont after two years of slow, steady decline in those rates starts to be worrisome. Even an encouraging July increase in private sector jobs, including 400 in manufacturing, was more than cancelled out by a decrease in public sector jobs. If we're not double dipping, we have a long way to go before we're out of this trough. Vermont had fewer non-farm payroll jobs in June 2011 than it had a decade earlier.
The Rich Stay Put
Despite myths to the contrary, the research repeatedly shows that states are not at risk of losing money if they ask wealthy residents to pay more to support schools, care for the elderly, and help children get the nutrition they need. In a recent op-ed carried by the Rutland Herald, Burlington Free Press, Bennington Banner, and vtdigger.com, Public Assets reviewed the mounting evidence against claims that the rich will flee to escape higher taxes.
Let's Level with Vermonters
Were you relieved to hear that Gov. Shumlin was planning to "level fund" the budget? Sorry: Don't stop worrying. Unfortunately, level funding rarely means, well, level funding. It usually means cuts to essential services. Paul Cillo explains.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
After nearly three years of discussions with the Department of Finance and Management, Vermont Transparency has an interactive webpage where citizens can find payments for goods and services made by the state. These vendor payments currently cover fiscal 2011. Records from other years will be posted when they become available.
Vermont Transparency is a joint venture of Ethan Allen Institute of Kirby and Public Assets Institute. The site is a reliable source for Vermont fiscal data, including more than 20 years of appropriations, budget information for the current year, revenue collections, tax statistics, state employee salaries, and more.
Public Assets Institute is funded by grants and donations. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to support our work.
|
|
Fact: For the second year in a row, statewide K-12 education spending is declining: 2011-12 spending is .2% percent below last year's.
Data source: Joint Fiscal Office
town2town
bringing fiscal data home
Where Vermonters are Working, Where They're Not
Statewide, Vermont's annual average unemployment rate in 2010 was 6.2 percent. That was the second-lowest rate in New England—just behind New Hampshire—and 3.4 percentage points below the national average last year.
But not all Vermont towns are doing as well as the state average. According to data from the Vermont Department of Labor, the average annual unemployment rates for Vermont towns ranged from none (Averill) to 20.5 percent (Norton). In 23 towns the unemployment rate averaged 10 percent or more in 2010.
See the unemployment rate for your town.
RSS Feed
Subscribe to our feed and get
up-to-the-minute news from Public Assets Institute. Just copy this url into your RSS reader.
More about RSS here
Receive this from a friend?
Sign up to get our future Updates.
|
|
