Kelo v. City of New London is one of the worst modern U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The 2005 high court case may not mean a lot to non-lawyers or to those not in a public policy field, but the 5-4 decision allowed for private property to be seized and transferred to another private party in...
RALEIGH — Protection of private property rights plays a big role in explaining the difference between inner cities that have thrived and those that have declined in recent decades. A Baltimore-based economist made that argument Monday to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society.
Turning decisions about “public use” over to courts, rather than legislators or administrative agencies, might offer the best protection.
N.C. governments collected $8.1 billion in property taxes last year. It’s the largest source of revenue for counties.
RALEIGH — We’ve all heard about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those inalienable rights described in the Declaration of Independence. Sometimes those basic rights are expressed as life, liberty, and property. Is any one of those rights more important than the others? Kyle Scott, who teaches political theory and constitutional law at the University of Houston, addressed that question during an interview with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio.
RALEIGH — Home foreclosure and unemployment rates are on the rise in North Carolina, but a new batch of property revaluations, and the tax hikes that often accompany them, could make life even more difficult for some residents.
One glance at a property tax bill leads to a series of questions about how local government spends our tax dollars.
Going into the 2008 session of the General Assembly, there were two major opportunities for property-rights protection and one major danger.
Transferring surplus assets from the public sector to the private sector to generate cash for other uses is a policy that just about everyone accepts in theory.
It's time for North Carolina to reconsider its most engimatic, confusing, illogical, bizarre tax.
Dozens of North Carolina counties are being knocked by fiscal conservatives for raising property taxes this year. But not all deserve the criticism — given that it wrongly demands a “revenue-neutral” rate after revaluations.
