Search Results for: Fiscal Health

Presentation by IMFG Director Enid Slack on On October 4, 2012, sponsored by the Cities Centre, University of Toronto.
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In 2011, the City of Toronto initiated a service review and multi-year budgeting process to achieve long term fiscal sustainability. Toronto City Manager, Joe Pennachetti discusses the various transformational changes taken over the last year to stabilize the City's fiscal position, and future strategic directions the City can take to build an economically vibrant and inclusive Toronto.
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The Nordic countries are small, unitary, and have largely homogeneous populations. Municipalities are the most important agents in the decentralized public sector. There are lessons to be learned from country to country in the field of local government financing, but comparisons need to be made with care.
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This book examines the broad reform of the Ontario property tax in 1998. The objectives of this reform included introducing a full market value assessment, establishing a property tax system that would be widely accepted, and removing property tax reform from the provincial political agenda. Although the reform effort was lauded by experts at the time, its overall objectives were not achieved. In fact, the new assessment system may have ultimately weakened the role of the local property tax. Good property tax design needs to recognize the important differences between taxing housing and taxing business property.
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Since municipal sector spending represents almost 14% of Hungarian GDP, imbalances in municipal finance have a measurable effect at the macroeconomic level. The current government is setting new rules on local borrowing. With the rare two-thirds majority in parliament, it has the chance to introduce long awaited reforms, although they are likely to be met by intense opposition at the local level.
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There is little evidence of regional, let alone worldwide, trends in local finances. In analyzing and comparing country experiences, it is important to be clear about the different (implicit or explicit) normative models to be found in the literature and exemplified in practice in different countries.
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This paper explores the financing of services and infrastructure in large cities and metropolitan areas. Do large cities spend more than smaller cities? Do larger cities have greater fiscal capacity? Are large cities treated differently from other cities? What are the appropriate revenue sources for large cities?
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This paper identifies some key reforms needed to ensure more citizen participation and greater accountability in urban governance, and to augment and strengthen the capacity of Indian cities to deliver more adequate services and provide needed urban infrastructure.
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