Rhode Island is increasing its public investment in housing

Rhode Island voters approved a $120 million housing bond to address affordability problems.

Last month, voters approved a $120 million housing bond, the largest in state history, to be allocated for planning, land acquisition, construction, and preservation of housing for low- and moderate-income people. Included in the referendum was a phrase indicating that as much as $10 million “may be used to support a new program for public housing development.” While it’s not clear exactly how the program will work, or even whether it will happen, advocates have been pushing for the state to create a public development entity similar to one used in Montgomery County, Maryland. There, the county invests directly in mixed-income housing projects, and instead of profiting off the market-rate units, it uses the income to subsidize reduced rents for lower-income people and reinvests its equity in other projects.

It’s a model for a type of social housing — broadly defined as publicly developed housing for people with different incomes — that has been slowly percolating in other cities as well. Atlanta uses a nonprofit entity to build mixed-income housing on public land. Chicago has a revolving fund for developing “green social housing.” Seattle created the framework for a social housing developer last year. Unlike traditional public housing, which provides federally subsidized apartments for low-income people, the new programs are meant to increase the supply of both market-rate and reduced-rate housing without massive ongoing operating subsidies. And given the uncertainty around federal housing policy under the second Trump administration, state and local governments may have more incentive to use their own money and power to address their housing challenges.

President-elect Donald Trump made few specific housing commitments during his campaign. But he has vowed to cut government spending, and Republicans in recent years have cut from Section 8 housing vouchers and and other Department of Housing and Urban Development programs. During his first term, Trump proposed cuts to housing assistance programs in all of his budget requests.

— Governing

Audit accuses the University of South Carolina of misusing COVID aid

COLUMBIA — The University of South Carolina’s economic development office misspent $1.7 million in federal COVID relief funds, according to findings by the Legislature’s auditors, which the college president disputes.

The review requested by a bipartisan group of state legislators also found the university’s Office of Economic Engagement likely violated ethical standards and sent employees to golf tournaments and football bowl games at taxpayers’ expense, according to the 165-page report released last Thursday.

The economic office is tasked with forming partnerships between industry and the college, as well as licensing and commercializing patents for university research. The review by the Legislative Audit Council covered six years — July 2017 through June 2023. During that period, the university went through three separate presidents, including the return of one in an interim role.

What auditors found was mismanagement and a lack of oversight, said legislators who asked for the audit in response to concerns they were hearing.

“This is a damning report,” said former Sen. Dick Harpootlian, whose district used to include the USC campus. “I’d say this program was a total failure.”

“Now the challenge to USC is to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the Columbia Democrat added.

According to the university, steps were taken to improve the office’s operations even before the audit’s completion.

— South Carolina Daily Gazette

Despite forecast of declining state revenue, Kentucky lawmakers prepare another income tax cut

 A projected dip in state tax collections appears not to have dimmed Republican leaders’ eagerness to again cut Kentucky’s income tax.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers on Saturday said continuing to reduce the individual income tax rate — this time from  4% to 3.5% — remains the Republican supermajority’s No. 1 priority in the upcoming legislative session, reports WHAS11 News in Louisville, where Stivers spoke to the Kentucky Farm Bureau’s annual meeting.Recently revised forecasts predict that Kentucky’s general fund revenue will decline by $213 million or 1.4% in fiscal year 2025. The projections were released Nov. 21 by the state budget director’s office in its quarterly report to state officials.

This would be only the fourth time in 50 years that general fund revenue has declined year over year, said Jason Bailey,  executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. The other times were in 2001 and twice during the post-2008 Great Recession.

The turnaround follows several years of booming state revenues across the country fueled by the federal government’s pandemic aid. Kentucky is among many states that have cut taxes or are experiencing declines in revenue as the stimulus spending ends.

The surge in state revenues began to reverse a couple of years ago, according to a Pew research brief. “Annual inflation-adjusted state tax revenue fell in fiscal year 2023 from the prior year — the only time in at least 40 years that real revenue has declined outside of a recession. More than three dozen states saw their revenue shrink, including a steep decline in California that drove the breaking of the (revenue) wave, and in fiscal 2024, at least five states reported shortfalls.”

— Kentucky Lantern

N.C. hospitals push back against advocacy group’s price transparency report

When was the last time you knew the full cost of a medical procedure before going under? Hospital price transparency has been enforced by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare since 2021, but whether the law is functioning as intended is a topic of heated debate. 

A new report from the nonprofit Patient Rights Advocate claimed that only 33% of North Carolina’s hospitals are in compliance with the rule, which requires hospitals to post clear, accessible pricing information for at least 300 “shoppable” health services. 

In the last six months, CMS has taken enforcement actions against six North Carolina hospitals, half of which are in the Novant Health system. 

“The purpose of the price transparency rule is to force accountability and integrity, to drive down the cost of care, and to ensure consumers are well-informed and benefiting from competition and choice,” Cynthia Fisher, chairman of Patient Rights Advocate, told Carolina Public Press.

“Health care is the only place in our economy where prices are hidden and bills come in pieces by mail, weeks or months later. Often, those bills don’t reflect what we actually received, and we are overcharged.”

— Carolina Public Press