BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 24, 2019 AT 4:13 PM

An important issue for the future of marijuana businesses won crucial support this week on Capitol Hill. Several U.S. senators expressed support for giving banking access to the billion-dollar marijuana industry, which deals almost exclusively in cash.

Marijuana is legal in 33 states but still illegal under federal law, so any bank that handles marijuana money can be charged with money laundering. That threat makes it difficult for most growers and sellers to get a bank account for their business.

BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 19, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

Over the past decade, public retirement costs have spiked while governments' unfunded liabilities --now totaling more than $1.2 trillion -- have continued to grow.

But according to research that debuted this week, lawmakers shouldn’t worry too much about accumulating pension debt. “There’s an assumption that fully funding pensions is the right thing to do,” said the Brookings Institution’s Louise Sheiner at the paper’s presentation. "Most of the work in this area has been about calculating how unfunded these plans are [and] that’s led to a lot of concern that these plans are in a huge crisis.”

BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 17, 2019 AT 5:00 PM

Three states and a coalition of local governments are suing the IRS and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over new regulations that block them from circumventing limits on tax deductions imposed by the 2017 federal tax overhaul.

BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 17, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

SPEED READ:

• Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon still haven't passed budgets for fiscal year 2020.

• Moody's Investors Service has warned that the delay could hurt local governments, school districts and hospitals.

• Late budgets are unusual in Ohio, but that isn't the story in Massachusetts and Oregon where they've become pretty common.

More than two weeks after the start of the fiscal year in most states, five still don’t have a budget. In most cases, policy debates have held things up -- and that's causing instability in a few places.

BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 12, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

Nevada hopes to be the first state to create its own banking system for the booming marijuana industry, which has generated more than $150 million in tax revenue since 2017, according to Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine’s office.

Since the drug is still illegal under federal law, most banks won’t accept cannabis businesses as clients. As a result, the multimillion-dollar industry is mainly a cash business -- at least for now.

BY LIZ FARMER | JULY 3, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

While the most direct effects of the 2017 federal tax overhaul have been on tax revenue, the law has also impacted the way governments borrow money.

With banks making fewer direct loans to governments, many expected them to turn to the municipal bond market. But that hasn't happened.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 28, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

SPEED READ:

• Since President Trump ended the so-called safe release program last fall, local governments have been picking up the costs of handling asylum seekers.

• The expenses have cost San Diego County, Calif., an estimated $2.3 million so far.

• The problem isn't just along the southern border.

As Congress enters a standoff over a $4.6 billion border aid bill, scores of local governments say financial relief can’t come fast enough.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 21, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

One year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a decades-old ban on states collecting sales taxes from online sellers, nearly every state has instituted a tax.

The swift and relatively painless transition has been a strong rebuke to the argument that requiring online sellers to remit sales taxes to 40-some states would be too cumbersome for states and sellers. “It’s absolutely amazing that just one year in, we’ve seen that kind of widespread geographic coverage,” says Charles Maniace, vice president of regulatory analysis for the consulting firm Sovos.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 19, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

SPEED READ:

• More states have passed or are close to passing a budget compared to this time two years ago.

• The rise of one-party states and of state revenues has eased the budget process.

• Some states may pass their budgets late, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

With less than two weeks before the new fiscal year starts for most states, there has been relatively little of the last-minute drama that’s dominated budget debates in recent years.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 13, 2019 AT 4:20 PM

The IRS has officially blocked one of the ways that high-tax, Democratic states are letting residents circumvent limits on tax deductions.

The 2017 federal tax overhaul imposed a $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, which can increase what some owe in federal taxes. In response, some states changed their rules to let people "pay" some of their state and local taxes into a state or local charitable trust because federal tax reform did not cap the deductiblity of charitable contributions

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 6, 2019 AT 4:34 PM

After years of passing late budgets -- or no budget at all -- in the era of bitter partisanship under former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois this week finalized one of its most comprehensive spending plans in recent memory.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 5, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

When a government defaults on debt, it’s usually because it can’t afford the payment -- not because it doesn’t want to make the payment.

But that’s changing.

BY LIZ FARMER | JUNE 4, 2019 AT 1:10 PM

After months of delay, Congress passed a $19 billion aid bill on Monday to help places recover from natural disasters that have struck over the last two years -- and to help cover costs of the ones yet to come.

As the political infighting wore on this year, more natural disasters -- such as flooding in the Midwest and tornadoes in the South -- bumped up the price of the legislation by roughly $5 billion. It’s now one of the most sweeping disaster aid packages ever passed and heads to President Trump for his expected signature.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 31, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

In the tech world, most believe that the key to success is quickly adapting to change. Some cities are applying that idea to the tax incentives they give technology companies.

This week, Washington, D.C., drastically cut a tech tax break that has been in place since 2000. Earlier this month, San Francisco -- home to some of the world's biggest tech companies -- let its eight-year-old "Twitter tax incentive" expire.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 30, 2019 AT 5:21 PM

Cyberattacks on local governments are on the rise -- and they’re becoming more sophisticated. The latest case in Baltimore, where the city is still struggling to restore critical networks more than three weeks after being hacked, could be a harbinger of things to come.     

Already this year, at least 24 municipalities have reported ransomware attacks, including Amarillo, Texas; Augusta, Maine; Imperial County, Calif.; Garfield County, Utah; Greenville, N.C.; and Albany, N.Y. That’s on pace to surpass last year’s total of 53, according to data collected by the tech company Recorded Future.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 22, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

Is it better to be born rich or smart? According to recent research on equity and education, for most kids, wealth trumps knowledge.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 20, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

A year ago, the new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes prompted dire predictions for the real estate market, especially in expensive areas like New York and San Francisco.

In these and other high-tax places, local property taxes alone can cost more than $10,000 a year. Many finance experts warned that limiting what these residents could deduct from their local taxes would lower home values and hurt governments' property tax revenue along with it.

As it turns out, those predictions were wrong -- at least on a large scale.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 17, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

In recent weeks, drug companies have reached their first settlements in lawsuits related to their role in the opioid crisis. They will pay Oklahoma and West Virginia a total of nearly $300 million.

With hundreds of similar cases still pending, many wonder, what will governments do with the money?

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 10, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

Houston’s standoff over pay parity between firefighters and police officers is coming to a crescendo after more than a year of legal battles and political posturing.

This week, thousands of firefighters received pay raises thanks to a voter-approved law to give them equal pay compared with police officers of the same rank.

But no one’s celebrating.

BY LIZ FARMER | MAY 8, 2019 AT 4:00 AM

Public pensions are more invested than ever before in high-risk and expensive assets like real estate and hedge funds. Yet research continues to show that this tactic is unlikely to improve their earnings.

According to Fitch Ratings, in the span of a decade, pensions tripled their average investment in these so-called alternative investments. In 2007, they averaged 9 percent of state and local public pension investment portfolios. By 2017, that number had risen to 27 percent.