Public Finance

Stratos' Promise of Free Food During the Government Shutdown Cost It 387 Gyros

I can't help but to fantasize that like many other scandals involving our pedigreed leaders, the government shutdown will lead to some sort of hearing. And that the wasted money, disrupted lives and other indirect costs of the budget standoff that accomplished nothing will force some sort of non-par ... More >>

The Dallas Fed is Refusing to Adopt Transgender Workplace Protections

Less than two weeks after winning the fight to have DART offer domestic partner benefits, Resource Center Dallas is shifting its focus on a new target: the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The bank, one of dozen independently run regional reserve banks, does not currently include transgender protect ... More >>

A Republican State Senator is Pushing For an Increase in the Texas' Gas Tax

Texas' 20-cent-per-gallon gas tax hasn't changed since 1991. That's despite the erosion of the tax's purchasing power -- the Wall Street Journal estimates that the gas tax buys half as much concrete, steel, and other materials as they did 20 years ago -- and a glaring need -- the state comptroller's ... More >>

The 10 Most Corrupt Tax Loopholes

If Mitt Romney won't tell you which need to be closed, we will

City to Pay State $400,000 For Not Taxing Golf Course Green Fees

If you've played a round of golf at one of Dallas' half dozen municipal golf courses, you may have skipped out on the state-mandated 8.25 percent sales tax on your green fee. The city contracts with independent golf pros who collect green fees but haven't traditionally collected sales tax. It's a lo ... More >>

Your Property Taxes Are Probably Going Up. So Is Community College Tuition.

Dallas, both city and county, has held the line on property taxes in recent years despite dwindling revenues and shrinking budgets. Still, your property tax bill is probably going to increase after September 1, when Dallas County Community College District's new budget goes into effect. DCCCD spoke ... More >>

Class Wafare? Fine, Let's Get This Party Started.

The Republican presidential candidates all agree on one thing -- the same mantra between all their lines. They all want us to believe that the extreme polarity of rich and poor in this country is an expression of natural law. The super-rich just have to get super-richer. Everybody else, sadly, must ... More >>

Infowars Host Alex Jones and His Followers Occupy the Dallas Fed Friday

Friday evening, two groups of protesters, Occupy Dallas and Occupy the Federal Reserve, lined opposite side of N. Pearl Street at Woodall Rodgers in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "We got sold out, Feds got bailed out!" Occupy Dallas protesters shouted in unison on the west side of Pea ... More >>

Dallas Fed Head Attempts to "Separate Fact from Fiction" When It Comes to Texas Jobs

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas​Several Friends of Unfair Park, including a grumpy one below, have asked if we'll make mention of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Fisher's speech given in Midland yesterday. Sure, absolutely, happy to. Because, first, I'm ... More >>

Tom Leppert May Forget His Past. We Don't.

​Did anybody else have a serious gag reflex reading our former mayor's what-a-good-boy-am-I essay on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News yesterday? Does Tom Leppert just assume people don't remember a single thing about him? Or does he not remember a single thing about himself? His op-e ... More >>

We Need a Mayor Who'll Cut Up City Hall's Credit Card.

Tom Leppert Gets Virtuous.

Tom Leppert Rediscovers His Virginity

​The Gromer Jeffers story in The Dallas Morning News Saturday reporting that Tom Leppert now opposes federal earmark money for the Trinity River project put me in mind of an old newspaper friend. He had struggled mightily with temptation during his younger married years. I should say, he stru ... More >>

Stick It In Your Earmark Redux, or: Surprise, News Views Ban as a Bad Thing for Trinity

​O.K., I promise not to go on about it, but there's an interesting little two-step today on Page One of Dallas's Only Daily Newspaper. I just wanted to call it to your attention. It's about congressional earmarks and us. For a week or so we have been going on and on about how the Republican ban o ... More >>

Send us Your Earmark: Could Congress Turn off the Tap on Trinity Money?

Kosher Pork? One In a Series of Items About Flushing Money Down the Trinity River.

​Last week Friend of Unfair Park Shaggy predicted that the Tea Party will get over its aversion to congressional earmarks in however long it takes for the Triple R's (Really Really Rich People) to get Dick Armey to convey the new post-election marching orders down to the tri-cornered-hat persons: ... More >>

What Two Sentences in The WSJ Suggest About the Future of the Trinity River Project

U.S. Army Corps of EngineersFrom the Dallas Floodway Extension Project Description, this 1989 photo: "US175 blocked by water backed up into White Rock Creek. Normally, this is a busy traffic artery leading to the central business district."​Wilonsky sent me an interesting Wall Street Journal artic ... More >>

Stick It In Your Earmark, or: You Don't Have to Look Far To See When Good Money Goes Bad

The Trinity Parkway Toll Road, looking south from Hampton Road, from the master plan​Not to be cranky or anything, but it's really irritating to read all this crap about congressional earmarks and realize nobody knows what the hell they're talking about. Stories in both The Dallas Morning News and ... More >>

If You Don't Want to Raise Taxes, Better Look At The Kind of City You Do Want.

Doing the Math After Today's Tax Rate Vote

City of Dallas Facebook pageFrom yesterday's Pavaho Pump Station groundbreaking, though feel free to write your own caption​Didn't even get my print-edition column out the door this week before I got a major correction, and this one from a person who would know -- city council member Angela Hunt. ... More >>

Leppert: Tax Hike Is "A Very Risky Gamble"

​Mayor Tom Leppert has said it time and again: No tax hike. No way, no how. But in case you missed it the first 29 times, his e-vite to tomorrow morning's council budget briefing serves as yet another just-say-no note in which he takes aim at Angela Hunt and the other seven council members support ... More >>

Leppert on Tax Hike: "I Don't Want it Coming on the Shoulders of the People Who Live Here."

Sam Merten​While I had Mayor Tom Leppert on the phone Monday evening, to discuss the walkout by six council members before the tax-rate hike briefing even got going, we talked for a few minuts about his opposition to a property tax hike. He acknowledged: Yes, some council members are leaning that ... More >>

The More Things Change: Yesterday's Council Walkout Brings Back Fond (?) Memories

​Fine print alert! When Mayor Tom Leppert tells you that yesterday's agenda item vote on the city tax rate didn't mean anything, he's got his hand deep in your pocket. It may be fine print, but ask Leppert why the vote was required by state law if it didn't mean anything. Yesterday's council walko ... More >>

Despite draconian budget cuts, DART continues to put on a happy face.

Four Months After Hubbie Pleaded Guilty to Tax Evasion, Realtor Eleanor Sheets Joins In

Eleanor Mowery Sheets and husband Nicky​Again, this is Candy Evans's beat -- why, just today she noted over on D's DallasDirt that the former manse of Eleanor and Nicky Sheets is selling at half off the original asking price after it failed to move at an IRS auction in February. Nevertheless, this ... More >>

Two Months After Taking Guilty Plea, Terri Hodge Sentenced to Year in Prison

Sam MertenTerri Hodge​The staff was all tied up today and couldn't make it to the Earle Cabell for Terri Hodge's sentencing. But the guilty-plea-taking ex-state represenative got a year in federal prison, because U.S. District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn didn't really buy her story that, look, it was ... More >>

The Feds' Local Tax Busts Best-Of: The Chart-Topping Hits From 2009

​There's magic in these hits hot off the charts, all charged with original star power -- pure power! New, from K-Tel and the U.S. Attorney's Office, this hit parade of local tax preparers, investment advisers and other no-filing nogoodniks currently serving five to Top 10! The original hits of '09 ... More >>

Let's Be Business Brief

Don't mince words, Richard Fisher, what do you really think?​Some Tuesday morning odds and sods:First, from The Wall Street Journal, this op-ed from Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who tells the Senate to lay off his boy Ben Bernanke as he tries to re-up his positi ... More >>

Haunted House, or: The Dead Occasionally Qualify for Property Tax Exemptions

Flickr photo: numberstumper​Here's the latest report from Craig Kinton's office: Audit Report on Inappropriate Tax Exemptions and Delinquent Property Taxes, which the mayor and the Dallas City Council were given on Friday. But the short version: The City Auditor's Office went through the Dallas Ce ... More >>

Several Council Members Say That, You Know, a Teensy-Tiny Tax Hike Ain't a Bad Idea

​Speaking of the council and the budget and fees versus taxes ...As we mentioned yesterday, Tennell Atkins's budget amendment called for a 1-cent property tax increase -- which I didn't think would get terribly far, given council members, the mayor and the city manager's oft-repeated vows not to r ... More >>

"Who Do You Trust? | "Dirty Dozen,"

Dallas Fed Head Richard Fisher Tells Japan: "The Data from the United States are Grim."

Richard Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, just delivered a speech to the Japan Center for Economic Research in Tokyo, where he didn't quote Bob Dylan or compare the economy to the contraptions of Rube Goldberg -- though he did open with a joke about ... More >>

Dallas Fed Head Richard Fisher May Be the Best Economics Professor in the Country

As noted here several times in the past, Richard Fisher, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, gives mighty good speech -- full of literary references, song lyrics and the assorted accumulated detritus collected in a bright mind. He was down in Houston last night, talking about so ... More >>

I Had a Fake I.D. Once. Bought Beer With It. These Folks? A Little Busier With Theirs.

Sixty-six-year-old Levander Carlton McLean and his wife Rita Murphy McLean, who's 21 years his junior, are gonna be spending a little time apart -- five years or so, give or take, thanks to U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade, who yesterday sentenced the Garland couple to federal prison for using fake d ... More >>

No, Really, Will This Get Me Audited?

I hope Dallas' Lennon Madzima did not prepare your income tax returns. Because the feds allege today that Madzima falsified some 1,100 returns since tax year 2004, with the amounts in question somewhere in excess of one ... million ...dollars. Like this, from the Justice Department this afternoon: A ... More >>

Angela Hunt on DCAD's New Downtown Appraisals: Finally, a Level Playing Field

Angela Hunt Yesterday, Sam Merten broke the news that the Dallas Central Appraisal District has drastically increased the value of the land the city's eying for the new convention center hotel, from $7.3 million to $36.5 million. (And, really, Dallas Morning News, you're so welcome. Any time.) Short ... More >>

Judge 'Droid

Wake him up and he votes

Hotels Not Taxing Dallas

Dallas hotel property taxes are up. Waaaay up. Just sayin'. Interesting story in today's USA Today about the rise in hotel property taxes across the country--and how Dallas is way above the national average. That's what PKF Consulting, an Atlanta-based company that keeps tabs on the hospitality biz, ... More >>

TIF for Tat

A Friend of Unfair Park with a extensive working knowledge of tax increment financing districts--or TIFs--sends this missive to set straight all those who think folks like Ross Perot Jr. and Tom Hicks and, well, just about every wealthy developer in town are getting free rides for turning sinkholes ... More >>

A Taxing Sports Equation

Really, by the time you get to the end of this, you'll feel much better about the Dallas Mavericks' loss last night. Really. If nothing else, you will be so confused you'll forget there even was a basketball game last night. But try. I is not very good at the maths, so I can't say for sure whether t ... More >>

Al Strikes Back

Lipscomb appeal finds a receptive audience in New Orleans

Road Rage

Homeowners in a Denton County neighborhood wage battle against "taxation without representation"

New Model Army

Can the big-brain boys of the defense community change the way America fights?

Bad break

An arena foe sets her sights on what she claims are unlawful tax exemptions

Busted

Even in these boom times, Dallas is broke, thanks to a city council that has been giving away the store

Nothing ventured

The end of the 1999 legislative session proves that, for Gov. Bush at least, it's better to look good than to do good

Bush's free ride

With a little help from his Democratic pals, George W. Bush has become the GOP front-runner for president. But it's a cold world beyond Texas' borders, and it may take more than charm and luck to carry a good ol' boy to the White House.

Nasty and negative

Colin Powell's decision reveals distasteful state of American politics

Copping out

Dallas turns down federal millions that would put more cops on the street