Daily Archive
Stories Posted on August 7, 2008
Tax rates proposal may go to ballot
Category: Taxes · State: Michigan · Source: Detroit Free Press
Residents in Troy may get to decide during the November election whether the city would need to get voter approval for future tax increases. Advertisement The Troy City Council is considering a citizen-initiated petition, signed by more than 2,700 residents, that proposes freezing the city's tax rate for operating and capital costs at 8.1 mills, costing a resident with a home that has a $124,885 taxable value -- the average in Troy -- $1,012 a year. The council discussed the issue Monday but postponed making a decision until the Aug. 11 meeting. "I am 100% for the people and putting it on the ballot," Troy resident Audre Zembrzuski, who signed the petition, told the council Monday. "I think it's about time we got down to brass tacks."
Judge: Redo wording on 1-cent tax plan
Category: Taxes · State: Arizona · Source: Arizona Daily Star
The group backing an initiative on the November ballot to raise the state sales tax to fund transportation won a battle to get the proposal's description rewritten in the voter information pamphlet. The initiative would add a penny tax on each dollar spent to pay for 30 years' worth of road and transit projects statewide. Supporters went to court over the wording in a state voter information pamphlet approved by a legislative committee, saying it would sway voters to say no.
ND worker comp agency revamp may be on fall ballot
Category: State · State: North Dakota · Source: Forbes
North Dakota's fall lineup of ballot initiatives may include proposals to discourage smoking, cut income taxes, ban fenced hunting and revamp the administration of North Dakota's workers compensation agency. Supporters of the workers compensation and hunting measures turned in their petitions Tuesday, hours before a midnight deadline arrived. The measures had to be submitted before the deadline to have a chance for a spot on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
T. Boone Pickens' motives in energy plan questioned
Category: Corruption · State: California · Source: Dallas Morning News
Railing against the "club" of Big Oil and promising to shake up "management entrenchment," T. Boone Pickens once turned his epic takeover battles with oil companies into a national effort to make public companies more accountable to shareholders. He modeled his effort on a political campaign - complete with lobbyists, grass-roots supporters and his own money. A corporate raider whose duels with incumbent managers earned him millions, Mr. Pickens became the public advocate of shareholders betrayed by dull corporate bosses. Now 80, Mr. Pickens is again casting business as a "crusade," as a Democratic senator once put it. On commercials and in testimony before Congress, he is urging the country to use more wind power and natural gas - the focus of his own investments - to wean itself off foreign oil.