Rethinking Revenue Reports

Rethinking Revenue Reports

The Rethinking Revenue project focuses on innovative ideas for retooling local systems to align with modern economic realities and treat citizens more fairly. 

The reports below highlight ideas and guidance to help state and local policy makers think through modernizing outmoded revenue systems. The objective is to provide local governments with tools to help them raise enough revenue for the services their communities need, and to raise that revenue fairly, in ways that are consistent with community values.

The Root of Local Government Revenues

This new research focuses on the importance of land use decisions for revenue: It may be obvious that there is a relationship between revenue and land uses, but the nature and size of the relationship may not be obvious. We will suggest actions that local governments can take to better manage their land uses for positive revenue impacts, including examples of local governments that have already taken some of these steps.

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Urban Wealth Funds

Are local governments are sitting on a "gold mine"? Just as a private individual or corporation uses assets (like machinery and buildings) to generate income, governments can generate income from their assets. Urban Wealth Funds (UWF) are assigned government assets with commercial value under unified, professional management who own and manage these assets for the betterment of the local community. UWFs have been used by governments in Europe and East Asia to generate billions of dollars to fund local infrastructure while maintaining public control of these local assets. A few local governments in North America have also begun to explore UWFs, as a complement to taxes as a source of revenues

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Segmented Pricing for Fines and Fees

Cities and counties across the U.S. increasingly rely on fines and fees to balance their budgets. However, fines and fees disproportionally fall on low-income residents who often are strained to pay.  Therefore, local governments must become savvier about how they manage fines and fees. This paper contends that a pricing strategy called “segmented pricing” actually increase the revenues local  governments can raise from fines and fees while also reducing the hardships that fines and fees can place on low-income citizens.

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Fees, Fines, and Forfeitures

A local government’s revenue system needs to treat people fairly to maintain the public’s trust. Trust is needed for local government to help communities become better places to live, work, and play over the long term for all citizens. In this paper, we will describe how you can create a financial policy for imposed fees, fines, and asset forfeitures. The next section provides a rationale for a policy for these revenue sources, and the remaining sections describe the elements of such a policy.

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Entrepreneurial Thinking in Local Government

Local governments have opportunities to pursue entrepreneurial activities that take advantage of the assets they have to create more value for the community and financially strengthen the local government. Innovation, along with efficient execution of the idea to create new value for the public, is what we refer to as entrepreneurialism in local government.

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Boston's Pilot (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) Project

In this paper, we use the Financial Foundations framework to describe how Boston addressed a common-pool resource problem and gained about $17 million in new cash payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) from tax-exempt properties annually and $50 million in new in-kind contributions annually.

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Starting the Rethinking Revenue Conversation

This report shows how to start the conversation about rethinking revenue in your community, illustrated by the Region of Peel, in Ontario. In Peel’s case, the property tax was becoming obsolete, but the lessons from Peel’s experience are applicable to any local government.

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Legal Financing

Legal action is an important lever for local governments to achieve policy goals, enjoin harmful activity, and receive monetary compensation for damages suffered. However, the cost of litigation and greater legal resources available to well-funded defendants means that many local governments cannot realize the full potential of litigation. This report explores the potential of legal financing by asking and answering questions about this new-to-government tool.

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We will be adding many more ideas in the coming months. Join GFOA's Test Kitchen Community to stay informed. This community is for those interested in developing and testing new ideas and practices.