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... ... @@ -1,19 +1,0 @@ 1 -Municipal budgets are on the brink in the status-quo. 2 -LILP 16. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is an independent, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to help solve global economic, social, and environmental challenges to improve the quality of life through creative approaches to the use, taxation, and stewardship of land. As a private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute seeks to inform public dialogue and decisions about land policy through research, training, and effective communication. By bringing together scholars, practitioners, public officials, policy makers, journalists, and involved citizens, the Lincoln Institute integrates theory and practice and provides a forum for multidisciplinary perspectives on public policy concerning land, both in the United States and internationally. The Lincoln Institute's work is organized in five major areas: Planning and Urban Form, Valuation and Taxation, International and Institute-Wide Initiatives, the People's Republic of China, and Latin America and the Caribbean., 1-15-2016, "Cities on the brink: monitoring municipal fiscal health," LILP, http://www.lincolninst.edu/news/lincoln-house-blog/cities-brink-monitoring-municipal-fiscal-health //RS 3 - 4 -Northeastern University political science professor Benedict S. Jimenez shared the results of an ambitious customized survey of cities on their strategies for dealing with fiscal stress, at Lincoln House just before the holidays. Results show an emphasis on cutting expenditures over revenue-raising approaches – and that most cities say they are on the brink of crisis. Research on fiscal retrenchment at the local government level has been severely hampered by limited data on city finances after the Great Recession of 2007-09, he said. Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) require a Freedom of Information Act request, and one third of states do not require local governments to file them. Census of Governments and the Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances provide limited information. The Lincoln Institute database Fiscally Standardized Cities allows the comparison of budgets for 112 municipalities. Jimenez thus started his own survey, targeting appointed managers and budget or finance directors in cities with a population of 50,000 or more, and got 268 of the 674 queried cities to respond. The results provide a new window into the state of local public finance, and showed that most cities were relying on piecemeal strategies to stay away from insolvency year after year. The conditions are harsh: 42 reported that spending is growing faster than revenues; 36 reported increasing spending for current benefits; 35 cited dependence on fewer resources; 34 noted the further constraint of tax limits; and 29 were dealing with increased spending on post-employment benefits. In the area of personnel, almost two-thirds of respondents said they were leaving vacant positions unfilled, freezing hiring or salaries, and cutting professional development. Fewer were engaged in layoffs, moving employees part-time, revising union contracts, or reducing salaries for current employees. In services, almost one-third reported deferring capital projects and maintenance projects, rather than eliminating services outright, closing facilities, or cutting key services such as public safety. In striving for efficiency, many cities were asking more state aid or changes in aid formulas, or shifting the responsibility of functions and services to another level of government. More than half reported making better use of technology. On the revenue side, cities are relying on increased user fees – something the Lincoln Institute researchers have also found. Much less common was trying to increase the property tax rate and expand the property tax base, or increase the sales tax. While economic cycles, and the Great Recession in particular, have great impact, cities report long-term structural issues that make fiscal stress the “new normal” for most. Overall, 7 out of 10 cities reported that they are on the precipice of another budget crisis – and don’t expect that feeling to change in the next five years. This lecture was the first in the 2015-2016 series as part of the campaign of the Lincoln Institute to promote municipal fiscal health. The video can be viewed in its entirety here. 5 - 6 -Indemnification tanks municipal budgets and wrecks accountability – turns case, Ferguson proves. 7 -Prall 14. Derek Prall is a professional journalist who has held numerous positions with a variety of print and online publications including the New Jersey Herald. He is a 2008 graduate of Furman University holding bachelor's degrees in both English Literature and Communications Studies., 12-10-2014, "Who pays for police misconduct?," No Publication, http://americancityandcounty.com/law-enforcement/who-pays-police-misconduct //RS 8 - 9 -Cases like those of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have communities abuzz about police misconduct and possible punitive damages, but, when the police are convicted of misconduct, more often than not, it's taxpayers – not the offending officers or agencies – who foot the bill. In a recent paper published in the New York University Law Review, Joanna Schwartz, an assistant law professor at UCLA and expert in police misconduct cases, says that “taxpayers almost always satisfy both compensatory and punitive damages awards entered against their sworn servants.” Meaning: It’s the city’s taxpayers – not the offending officer or the department – that pays when officers are found to be at fault. “My study reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98 percent of the dollars that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement,” Schwartz wrote. “Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied a punitive damages award entered against them and almost never contributed anything to settlements or judgments — even when indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers were disciplined, terminated or prosecuted for their conduct.” To reach these conclusions, Schwartz looked at misconduct cases in 44 large and 37 small or mid-sized police departments from 2006 to 2011. City Lab reports that together, these departments made up about 20 percent of the nation’s police officers. The data showed officers rarely pay out of their own pockets for civil-rights violations. In 9,225 cases from large cities that were settled or judged for the victim, $735 million in damages was awarded, with officers paying .02 percent of that figure - $171,300. In small to mid-sized cities, officers paid no part of the $9.4 million awarded. Schwartz told City Lab there is no reason to expect suits in Ferguson, Mo., or New York City will play out any differently. According to the Associated Press, Eric Garner’s family has filed suit against the city, the NYPD and the six officers involved for $75 million dollars. ThinkProgress reports six protesters in Ferguson are suing for $40 million in the first of many federal lawsuits expected to be filed. It is unclear how Ferguson will handle the financial burden – the figure dwarfs the city’s revenues for the fiscal year, and ThinkProgress reports the city is already budgeting for the fallout. Solutions for the problem are unclear. Schwartz told City Lab municipalities don’t necessarily need to eliminate indemnification, but suggests that holding more officers financially accountable for their actions would be a step in the right direction. 10 - 11 -Cities make police more aggressive, they’re forced to issue more tickets to make up for budget deficits – turns case. 12 -Vibes 14. John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com. , 12-15-2014, "Ferguson to Solve Budget Crisis by Ordering Their Police to be More Aggressive," Free Thought Project, http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ferguson-police-ordered-start-writing-tickets-solve-citys-budget-crisis/#D9HXDXvtpXzikWDF.99. //RS 13 - 14 -While controversy about the police killing of teenager Michael Brown has been the primary focus in Ferguson this year, the city’s government is also facing a massive budget crisis, which they are hoping to solve by ordering their police officers to write more tickets. Many residents in Ferguson have already pointed out that once this policy is implemented, it will strain the already high tensions between the community and the police. In a telephone interview with Bloomberg News this week, Ferguson’s finance director, Jeffrey Blume explained that in order for the city’s government to stay above their budget, the police would have to write millions of dollars in tickets for small, non-violent infractions. “There are a number of things going on in 2014 and one is a revenue shortfall that we anticipate making up in 2015. There’s about a million-dollar increase in public-safety fines to make up the difference,” Blume said. Police generated revenue from writing tickets is already the city’s second larges source of revenue after sales taxes, and the money brought in through the police departments is expected to grow with these new guidelines. “They said they weren’t going to go after poor people, so to speak, to fund their budget, but I guess that’s changed,” Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis Municipal League told Bloomberg. Some state politicians are worried that this could contribute to further unrest so they are seeking to limit how much money the local government can draw from police generated revenue. A number of state senators have filed two bills that would put these types of limits on the local government in Ferguson. “For Ferguson to respond to all of this and say that increasing ticketing was a good idea is outrageous,” one of the bill’s sponsors, Scott Sifton said. According to Sifton, the bills will be voted on sometime after January 7th, and if approved the limits would not go into effect until at least August. Missouri State Treasurer Clint Zweifel, also spoke in opposition of the new policies, saying that a strong focus on revenue generating does not make communities any safer. “Increasing reliance on such fines is the wrong way to go, period. Residents and neighborhoods are safer when police can focus on public safety, not a municipality’s need to protect a revenue stream,” Zweifel said. 15 - 16 -Tickets perpetuate structural inequalities – turns case. 17 -Solon 14. Sarah Solon: Communications Strategist, ACLU, 6-18-2014, "Preying on the Poor: For-Profit Probation Edition," American Civil Liberties Union, https://www.aclu.org/blog/preying-poor-profit-probation-edition //RS 18 - 19 -Welcome to Alabama, the state of the never-ending seat belt ticket. Hali Wood is 17. She's applied to work at several grocery stores in her home town of Columbiana, but none are hiring. A few months back, cops ticketed Hali for not wearing a seat belt. The fine: $41. Hali has paid $41 and then some, but she's still hundreds of dollars in debt. Why? Because the court contracts with JCS, a for-profit probation company that forces Hali to choose between paying their exorbitant fees and going to jail. Here's how the scheme works: Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com Borrowing from the payday lender playbook, companies like JCS often sign contracts in cities and counties strapped for cash. For the county, the deal seems like a sweet one: The company will collect outstanding court debts for free and make all their profits from charging probationers fees. But the problem is that many of these people were put on probation because they were too poor to pay their fine in the first place and for them, the additional fees are huge. People find themselves scrambling for money they don't have and forgoing basic necessities to avoid being thrown behind bars for missing a payment. The impact on communities, especially low-income communities of color, is devastating. Sadly, the for-profit probation business is booming. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are sentenced to probation, often for misdemeanors including unpaid parking tickets. Instead of being able to just pay those fines and move on with their lives, many get sucked into spiraling debt traps they cannot escape. There are hundreds of thousands of people like Hali out there, for whom small court fines have ballooned into hundreds of dollars of debt. The for-profit probation racket isn't benefiting society; it's only benefiting these companies' bottom line. We need to remember two things: 1) If probationers miss a payment and end up behind bars, taxpayers foot the bill for this imprisonment; and 2) Our communities are not better off when we force people in poverty to choose between their liberty and putting food on their table —and needlessly lining the pockets of for-profit probation companies in the process. Counties and courts do not need to contract with these debt collectors on steroids. Publicly run probation exists, and it works while doing much less damage to communities. It's time to urge courts to cut their ties with the for-profit probation industry. - EntryDate
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,23 @@ 1 +CP text: The United States federal government should subject police officers to ex ante democratic authorization regulation. 2 +This includes: 3 +- Creating a democratically elected board made up of community members to authorize police procedure 4 +- The courts retain authority unless proper authorization is given by the democratic authorization board. 5 +- Rejecting ex-post regulation 6 +Ponomarenko and Friedman 15. ***BRACKETED FOR GRAMMAR*** 7 + 8 +The central point is this: It is both unacceptable and unwise for policing to remain aloof from the democratic processes that apply to the rest of agency government. Rather than attempting to regulate policing primarily post hoc through episodic exclusion motions or the occasional action for money damages, policing policies and practices should be governed through transparent democratic processes such as legislative authorization and public rulemaking. Rather than simply declaring various policing methods in or out of bounds after the fact, judicial review ought to be directed at ensuring that policing is based ante on democratically founded rules. The fact that policing has been in the news the last year or more, and that the whiff of reform is in the air, should neither excuse consideration of the central claim here nor confuse what is at stake. As we explain below, policing has long operated without democratic governance, and this is not the first time in history that policing has proven salient. Each time policing breaks into the public consciousness, some new approach or measure is adopted, some adjustment made. Most often the change is either philosophical—policing should be more“professional”or the police should engage in “community policing”—or it involves some form of ex post “oversight,” such as court-ordered monitors, inspectors general, or civilian complaint review boards. What we have not done as a nation is insist that those who police us be treated as the executive officials they are, subject to the same basic requisites of democracy—namely, transparent, publicly accountable, ex ante regulation. We are hardly the first to suggest that policing is in need of exalted democratic authorization. This drum has been beat, periodically, for at least the last fifty years. The authors of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society—the Presidents’ Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice—did much the same in the 1960s.Noteworthy scholars and judges argued similarly during the 1970s.At that time, a number of academic and professional organizations partnered with law enforcement groups to draft model rules. Today, some scholars have again begun calling for administrative processes, or at least some reasonable facsimile, to govern the police. Much of this scholarship is aimed solely at intelligence gathering, and it too, once again, tends to describe various workarounds to address the accountability deficit. A very few scholars actually suggest some-thing akin to traditional legislative or administrative processes to govern policing, but that scholarship tends to call for change without paying sufficient attention to the reasons why policing has heretofore remained ungoverned, and without addressing the details of how this should happen. Yet, obviously, both are essential. The claim here is that policing agencies may only act pursuant to sufficient democratic authorization. Such authorization can come through specific legislation. It can be the product of administrative notice-and-comment rulemaking, in which public participation is welcomed. Or, given what is unique about policing—not the least of which is the fact that the vast majority of police forces have twenty-five officers or fewer and operate in equally small communities—new means of soliciting democratic engagement may be required. But, in one form or another, democratic authorization is vital. Authorization should be required in any instance in which it is not plausible to infer that age-old, blanket delegations to enforce the criminal law cover current police actions. Courts should superintend the requirement of authorization by engaging in a variety of interpretive techniques, including withholding any sort of deference from policing not so authorized and denying authority to proceed until proper authorization is obtained. Policing should be rationalized, as is the rest of administrative practice, to avoid arbitrary and ill-advised decisions. As is true elsewhere in administrative law, after-the-fact justifications for policing practices that were not adopted pursuant to democratic authorization should not be accepted. The veil of secrecy over policing should be lifted except where operationally essential, because without transparency there is no hope of democratic governance. Although that is our prescription, this Article does much more than simply prescribe. It fills substantial gaps in the extant scholarship by diagnosing why policing has remained under regulated for so longlist documents the costs of this neglect. And, importantly, it explains how—within the framework of constitutional and administrative law—we can motivate change. This comprehensive approach is essential because progress toward democratic policing will not be made until scholars and policymakers come to grips with why prior efforts to accomplish this have come to naught 9 + 10 +Police departments are not subject to any external democratic checks, meaning they can pass completely unjustified rules whenever they want – failure to subject department policy to public rulemaking means judicial policy can never occur. 11 +Ponomarenko and Friedman 2. 12 + 13 +Although legislatures rarely govern police methods, policing also escapes regulation under any sort of administrative or rulemaking model. Policing agencies assuredly do have rules. There are internal policy manuals or General Orders. But even these manuals are often silent on critical aspects of policing. There may be rules to govern the use of force, the storage and disposition of confiscated property, and strip searches of arrestees, but none on informants, drones, consent searches, or other investigative tactics. And critically, even when police have rules in place, these rules are virtually never made pursuant to some sort of democratic process. There is no opportunity for formal public comment—and certainly no requirement that police officials respond to public input on the record and justify the choices they’ve made. Indeed, the rules often are not even available to the public. As a result, there typically is no contemporaneous record to show why police officials thought particular rule was necessary or prudent—or that officials even considered less intrusive alternatives and had good reasons to reject them. Failure to subject police rules to the back-and-forth of public rulemaking not only deprives the public of an opportunity to shape policing policy before it goes into effect, it forestalls any sort of meaningful judicial review. At best, courts ask whether a practice is constitutional. There is no “hard look review” of agency action, and no way of knowing whether the rationale offered for an officer’s actions reflects reasoned department policy or simply the creative efforts of a state’s attorney attempting to justify the decision after the fact. Is these of a SWAT team really necessary to ensure officer safety in effectuating a misdemeanor search warrant or administrative inspection? How likely is it that an arrestee’s confederates might try to “wipe” his cellphone remotely following arrest? These are empirical, fact-bound questions, ones that in the administrative law context would have been answered before the policy at issue went into effect. Instead, courts are forced to take judicial notice of academic studies, rely on the testimony of paid experts, or simply accept what attorneys say in their briefs. 14 + 15 +The 1AC’s reliance on the judiciary kills solvency as most people don’t file suits and the system is structurally skewed against plaintiffs – even if they win, governments indemnify officers and the Supreme Court refuses to implement rulings, means police behavior doesn’t change, their ruse of solvency turns case. 16 +Ponomarenko and Friedman 3. 17 + 18 +The obvious alternative to the problem of biased adjudication in exclusionary rule cases is for victims of police misconduct to bring civil claims for injunctive relief or money damages under § 1983.Thiswould mirror the former common law remedy, and many scholars argue this sort of ex post relief is preferable to the exclusionary rule. In reality, though, suing the government is a costly and time-consuming endeavor, hardly worth it or within the ken of most people. It’s a serious matter to be tossed against a wall and frisked, to have one’s Internet or email data collected in bulk, or to be detained by the roadside while the police wait for a K-9 to appear or officers wrangle consent from a driver. Still, when that happens to most people they try to shrug it off and live their lives. A further problem is that even when there are plaintiffs inclined to bring cases, a host of judicial doctrines limit the efficaciousness of damages actions in regulating police misconduct. Aggregate litigation, which could solve the problem of the individual plaintiff, faces high justiciability barriers. Clapper v. Amnesty International Saddened standing to plaintiffs who sought to challenge NSA data collection under the “702” program, on the ground that they could not say for certain the NSA was collecting or would collect their communications. City of Los Angeles v. Lyons held that Lyons lacked standing to challenge the LAPD’s use of chokeholds—which had previously killed or injured a number of arrestees—because he could not show with sufficient certainty that he would be subjected to the practice in the future. That the NSA had been spying on all of us, and that Lyons had himself already been the victim of a chokehold, only under-scores the extent to which justiciability rules bar legitimate constitutional complaints. Even when individual or aggregate suits are allowed, immunity doctrines preclude relief. They immunize states entirely, make it extremely difficult to sue municipalities, and leave officers individually responsible only for “clearly established” violations. Even when money damages are imposed, most officers are indemnified for virtually anything they do. And studies show that—as theory predicts—governments are content to pay damages awards without requiring policing agencies to alter behavior, let alone even informing them they lost in court. Civil plaintiffs also face staggering problems of proof that leave rights violations remedied. To take one example, police use of racial profiling is widespread, yet under existing equal protection doctrines plaintiffs cannot prevail absent pattern-and-practice evidence specific to each jurisdiction that can only be accumulated at extraordinary cost. It required a laborious social science study in New Jersey and Maryland to prove that state troopers engaged in widespread racial profiling, subjecting minorities to disproportionate numbers of traffic stops and automobile searches. Stop-and-frisk litigation in New York similarly revealed profound racial bias in policing, yet it has taken years and years of litigation to obtain a judgment. Even when petitioners prevail in judicial proceedings—be it exclusionary rule cases or civil actions—the Supreme Court eschews the development of judicial rules that would serve to deter future violations and thus regulate policing. The Court rejects “rigid rules, bright-line tests, and mechanistic inquiries in favor of a more flexible, all-things-considered approach,” one that proceeds case by case looking at the totality of the circumstances. For example, in Florida v. Harris, the Supreme Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court’s attempt to establish standards for determining if a canine is sufficiently well-trained that its alert should provide probable cause to search, insisting that litigants must instead fight it out case by case, sniff by sniff. This, despite the fact that studies show drug dogs are notoriously unreliable, in no small part because of trainers rescuing them. Thus, thousands of people are subjected to unnecessary searches, unsupported by probable cause. The same is true of consent searches, for which the Court has refused to adopt clear rules requiring police to inform suspects that they have the right to refuse consent, or restricting the circumstances in which consent may be sought, leaving police free to conduct thousands of searches annually. 19 + 20 +Democratic authorization enables productive usages of courts. 21 +Ponomarenko and Friedman 4. 22 + 23 +What if, though, instead of saying “aye” or “nay” to specific policing tactics, courts could simply prod governmental actors— including the police themselves—to adopt their own rules regulating policing in a democratically accountable way? If they did this, they would sidestep problems of competence, and likely backlash as well. Courts need not judge the police, at least in the first instance. They need only assure that someone is filling the regulatory void. (It remains the case, of course, that judicial review will be available to evaluate constitutional challenges to rules that are put in place.) 341 Commentators regularly look to courts to be “deliberation- forcing” or “representation-reinforcing,” or to engage in “dialogue” with the political branches—and courts regularly play this role. 342 The ordinary rules of administrative judicial review, forsaken in the criminal justice context, are directed at precisely this end. Doctrines like Chevron are built on a foundation of deference—but unlike in the realm of policing, deference in administrative law is structured. 343 Deference is the norm only when legislatures make explicit choices or clearly delegate authority, or when agencies make decisions pursuant to notice-and-comment rulemaking. 344 Likewise, courts ought to defer to police decisions about enforcement methods only to the extent that those decisions represent considered, fact-based judgments formulated with democratic input. This sort of channeled deference is nothing new. Under governing doctrine, courts defer more to probable cause determinations if officers obtain warrants in advance. 345 Similarly, courts are more likely to extend qualified immunity to police officers when their decisions are the product of a deliberative internal process as opposed to an ad hoc determination made by an officer on the beat. 346 Judges may find it difficult to second-guess society’s policy decisions. But they surely are in the position to know when policing agencies are acting pursuant to democratically accountable law. - EntryDate
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,19 @@ 1 +Municipal budgets are on the brink in the status-quo. 2 +LILP 16. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is an independent, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to help solve global economic, social, and environmental challenges to improve the quality of life through creative approaches to the use, taxation, and stewardship of land. As a private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute seeks to inform public dialogue and decisions about land policy through research, training, and effective communication. By bringing together scholars, practitioners, public officials, policy makers, journalists, and involved citizens, the Lincoln Institute integrates theory and practice and provides a forum for multidisciplinary perspectives on public policy concerning land, both in the United States and internationally. The Lincoln Institute's work is organized in five major areas: Planning and Urban Form, Valuation and Taxation, International and Institute-Wide Initiatives, the People's Republic of China, and Latin America and the Caribbean., 1-15-2016, "Cities on the brink: monitoring municipal fiscal health," LILP, http://www.lincolninst.edu/news/lincoln-house-blog/cities-brink-monitoring-municipal-fiscal-health //RS 3 + 4 +Northeastern University political science professor Benedict S. Jimenez shared the results of an ambitious customized survey of cities on their strategies for dealing with fiscal stress, at Lincoln House just before the holidays. Results show an emphasis on cutting expenditures over revenue-raising approaches – and that most cities say they are on the brink of crisis. Research on fiscal retrenchment at the local government level has been severely hampered by limited data on city finances after the Great Recession of 2007-09, he said. Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) require a Freedom of Information Act request, and one third of states do not require local governments to file them. Census of Governments and the Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances provide limited information. The Lincoln Institute database Fiscally Standardized Cities allows the comparison of budgets for 112 municipalities. Jimenez thus started his own survey, targeting appointed managers and budget or finance directors in cities with a population of 50,000 or more, and got 268 of the 674 queried cities to respond. The results provide a new window into the state of local public finance, and showed that most cities were relying on piecemeal strategies to stay away from insolvency year after year. The conditions are harsh: 42 reported that spending is growing faster than revenues; 36 reported increasing spending for current benefits; 35 cited dependence on fewer resources; 34 noted the further constraint of tax limits; and 29 were dealing with increased spending on post-employment benefits. In the area of personnel, almost two-thirds of respondents said they were leaving vacant positions unfilled, freezing hiring or salaries, and cutting professional development. Fewer were engaged in layoffs, moving employees part-time, revising union contracts, or reducing salaries for current employees. In services, almost one-third reported deferring capital projects and maintenance projects, rather than eliminating services outright, closing facilities, or cutting key services such as public safety. In striving for efficiency, many cities were asking more state aid or changes in aid formulas, or shifting the responsibility of functions and services to another level of government. More than half reported making better use of technology. On the revenue side, cities are relying on increased user fees – something the Lincoln Institute researchers have also found. Much less common was trying to increase the property tax rate and expand the property tax base, or increase the sales tax. While economic cycles, and the Great Recession in particular, have great impact, cities report long-term structural issues that make fiscal stress the “new normal” for most. Overall, 7 out of 10 cities reported that they are on the precipice of another budget crisis – and don’t expect that feeling to change in the next five years. This lecture was the first in the 2015-2016 series as part of the campaign of the Lincoln Institute to promote municipal fiscal health. The video can be viewed in its entirety here. 5 + 6 +Indemnification tanks municipal budgets and wrecks accountability – turns case, Ferguson proves. 7 +Prall 14. Derek Prall is a professional journalist who has held numerous positions with a variety of print and online publications including the New Jersey Herald. He is a 2008 graduate of Furman University holding bachelor's degrees in both English Literature and Communications Studies., 12-10-2014, "Who pays for police misconduct?," No Publication, http://americancityandcounty.com/law-enforcement/who-pays-police-misconduct //RS 8 + 9 +Cases like those of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have communities abuzz about police misconduct and possible punitive damages, but, when the police are convicted of misconduct, more often than not, it's taxpayers – not the offending officers or agencies – who foot the bill. In a recent paper published in the New York University Law Review, Joanna Schwartz, an assistant law professor at UCLA and expert in police misconduct cases, says that “taxpayers almost always satisfy both compensatory and punitive damages awards entered against their sworn servants.” Meaning: It’s the city’s taxpayers – not the offending officer or the department – that pays when officers are found to be at fault. “My study reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98 percent of the dollars that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement,” Schwartz wrote. “Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied a punitive damages award entered against them and almost never contributed anything to settlements or judgments — even when indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers were disciplined, terminated or prosecuted for their conduct.” To reach these conclusions, Schwartz looked at misconduct cases in 44 large and 37 small or mid-sized police departments from 2006 to 2011. City Lab reports that together, these departments made up about 20 percent of the nation’s police officers. The data showed officers rarely pay out of their own pockets for civil-rights violations. In 9,225 cases from large cities that were settled or judged for the victim, $735 million in damages was awarded, with officers paying .02 percent of that figure - $171,300. In small to mid-sized cities, officers paid no part of the $9.4 million awarded. Schwartz told City Lab there is no reason to expect suits in Ferguson, Mo., or New York City will play out any differently. According to the Associated Press, Eric Garner’s family has filed suit against the city, the NYPD and the six officers involved for $75 million dollars. ThinkProgress reports six protesters in Ferguson are suing for $40 million in the first of many federal lawsuits expected to be filed. It is unclear how Ferguson will handle the financial burden – the figure dwarfs the city’s revenues for the fiscal year, and ThinkProgress reports the city is already budgeting for the fallout. Solutions for the problem are unclear. Schwartz told City Lab municipalities don’t necessarily need to eliminate indemnification, but suggests that holding more officers financially accountable for their actions would be a step in the right direction. 10 + 11 +Cities make police more aggressive, they’re forced to issue more tickets to make up for budget deficits – turns case. 12 +Vibes 14. John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com. , 12-15-2014, "Ferguson to Solve Budget Crisis by Ordering Their Police to be More Aggressive," Free Thought Project, http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ferguson-police-ordered-start-writing-tickets-solve-citys-budget-crisis/#D9HXDXvtpXzikWDF.99. //RS 13 + 14 +While controversy about the police killing of teenager Michael Brown has been the primary focus in Ferguson this year, the city’s government is also facing a massive budget crisis, which they are hoping to solve by ordering their police officers to write more tickets. Many residents in Ferguson have already pointed out that once this policy is implemented, it will strain the already high tensions between the community and the police. In a telephone interview with Bloomberg News this week, Ferguson’s finance director, Jeffrey Blume explained that in order for the city’s government to stay above their budget, the police would have to write millions of dollars in tickets for small, non-violent infractions. “There are a number of things going on in 2014 and one is a revenue shortfall that we anticipate making up in 2015. There’s about a million-dollar increase in public-safety fines to make up the difference,” Blume said. Police generated revenue from writing tickets is already the city’s second larges source of revenue after sales taxes, and the money brought in through the police departments is expected to grow with these new guidelines. “They said they weren’t going to go after poor people, so to speak, to fund their budget, but I guess that’s changed,” Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis Municipal League told Bloomberg. Some state politicians are worried that this could contribute to further unrest so they are seeking to limit how much money the local government can draw from police generated revenue. A number of state senators have filed two bills that would put these types of limits on the local government in Ferguson. “For Ferguson to respond to all of this and say that increasing ticketing was a good idea is outrageous,” one of the bill’s sponsors, Scott Sifton said. According to Sifton, the bills will be voted on sometime after January 7th, and if approved the limits would not go into effect until at least August. Missouri State Treasurer Clint Zweifel, also spoke in opposition of the new policies, saying that a strong focus on revenue generating does not make communities any safer. “Increasing reliance on such fines is the wrong way to go, period. Residents and neighborhoods are safer when police can focus on public safety, not a municipality’s need to protect a revenue stream,” Zweifel said. 15 + 16 +Tickets perpetuate structural inequalities – turns case. 17 +Solon 14. Sarah Solon: Communications Strategist, ACLU, 6-18-2014, "Preying on the Poor: For-Profit Probation Edition," American Civil Liberties Union, https://www.aclu.org/blog/preying-poor-profit-probation-edition //RS 18 + 19 +Welcome to Alabama, the state of the never-ending seat belt ticket. Hali Wood is 17. She's applied to work at several grocery stores in her home town of Columbiana, but none are hiring. A few months back, cops ticketed Hali for not wearing a seat belt. The fine: $41. Hali has paid $41 and then some, but she's still hundreds of dollars in debt. Why? Because the court contracts with JCS, a for-profit probation company that forces Hali to choose between paying their exorbitant fees and going to jail. Here's how the scheme works: Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com Borrowing from the payday lender playbook, companies like JCS often sign contracts in cities and counties strapped for cash. For the county, the deal seems like a sweet one: The company will collect outstanding court debts for free and make all their profits from charging probationers fees. But the problem is that many of these people were put on probation because they were too poor to pay their fine in the first place and for them, the additional fees are huge. People find themselves scrambling for money they don't have and forgoing basic necessities to avoid being thrown behind bars for missing a payment. The impact on communities, especially low-income communities of color, is devastating. Sadly, the for-profit probation business is booming. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are sentenced to probation, often for misdemeanors including unpaid parking tickets. Instead of being able to just pay those fines and move on with their lives, many get sucked into spiraling debt traps they cannot escape. There are hundreds of thousands of people like Hali out there, for whom small court fines have ballooned into hundreds of dollars of debt. The for-profit probation racket isn't benefiting society; it's only benefiting these companies' bottom line. We need to remember two things: 1) If probationers miss a payment and end up behind bars, taxpayers foot the bill for this imprisonment; and 2) Our communities are not better off when we force people in poverty to choose between their liberty and putting food on their table —and needlessly lining the pockets of for-profit probation companies in the process. Counties and courts do not need to contract with these debt collectors on steroids. Publicly run probation exists, and it works while doing much less damage to communities. It's time to urge courts to cut their ties with the for-profit probation industry. - EntryDate
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