Joseph Coletti

Short-term rentals, backyard cottages, and scooters could get a reprieve with a new mayor and reconstituted city council. New member Jonathan Melton says, “I think we can lead on micromobility,” and Mayor Mary Ann Baldwin proposes holding off enforcement of short-term rental restrictions. Anna Johnson provided the play-by-play.

Keith Smith co-founded the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which describes itself as a “free market-loving, price-displaying, state-of-the-art, AAAHC accredited, doctor owned, multispecialty surgical facility in central OK.” In a recent interview, Smith advised “not to consider the poor in the aggregate.” They are individuals; and I believe that individuals…

I have been struggling to understand why Gov. Roy Cooper blamed business tax cuts as his reason to veto a bill for teacher pay raises after vetoing the bill that would have cut business taxes. His claim could have made sense in his veto of the original budget bill back…

Pensions and health benefits for retired state employees are a significantly understated obligation for state governments, but until states actually budget money for those needs, Medicaid is the biggest threat to other state spending. The National Association of State Budget Officers reminds us of that with today’s release of the…

As I hinted this morning, a few of us at the John Locke Foundation and Carolina Journal did participatory research and journalism this afternoon. We intended to compare Impossible Whoppers and regular Whoppers from Burger King. Instead we learned that orders on Uber Eats are sometimes canceled without notice after…

A new report examines how easy it is to do business in cities around North America. The  start a business, register a property, get electricity, find and keep employees, pay taxes, and get through insolvency. Charlotte ranks sixth on the index, behind Oklahoma City, Arlington (VA), Sioux Falls,…

This blog, our research updates, and Carolina Journal’s Daily Journal columns all make clear that state policies are grounded in reality, including recent budgets. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute provides yet more evidence that Washington policies are orthogonal to reality, especially in finances.

John Cawley and David Frisvold have become the leading authorities on soda taxes. In their current working paper with David Jones, they compare results in Philadelphia, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Philadelphia’s tax “decreased purchases by 27.7 percent,” but the authors “do not find impacts of the taxes in the…