The University of Michigan has published an experts guide to the 2024 elections. Ford School faculty are available to offer insights on relevant issues impacting the elections, including the following:
Economics
Betsey Stevenson, professor of...
Michigan local officials are reporting alarm at the lack of housing options across the state. Those concerns include single-family homes and multi-family units, and cut across affordable, entry-level and mid-level housing availability.
The results...
As the city of Detroit marked the 10th anniversary of its declaration of bankruptcy, publications took stock of the progress the city has made.
Bloomberg quoted the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy’s (CLOSUP) Stephanie Leiser, who leads the...
Stephanie Leiser, Accounting Today: "There's an enormous amount of municipal government financial data locked up in PDF documents. Unlocking that data has the potential to radically improve transparency and dramatically enhance our ability to...
CLOSUP, The Bond Buyer: "Flint is also at the forefront of the development of XBRL for financial reporting. Flint participated in a pilot project with the University of Michigan's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the school's Ford School...
The number of Michigan local government leaders reporting problems retaining their jurisdictions’ workers nearly doubled in 2022 compared with five years earlier. In addition, jurisdictions of all types and sizes have faced increased difficulty...
Elected officials from local, county, and state government came to the Ford School to hear about the potential for collaborations with their offices and the School’s faculty, research centers, and students.
Fifteen members of the Michigan State...
The Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) has been partnering with XBRL US, to work with the City of Flint to explore whether a new fiscal reporting mechanism for governmental entities can help create transparency—and prevent future...
With the guidance and support of the Ford School’s research centers, graduate and undergraduate students are creating a real-life impact in a range of areas by working with external partners. The Ford School is deeply integrated with a wide range of...
Stephanie Leiser, XBRL US: "Making government financial data open and accessible to all is the right thing to do, and it is long overdue. Financial transparency is absolutely essential to maintaining trust between governments and the public. Equally...
Increasing transparency in how local government works got a boost when the U.S. Congress passed the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) on December 15, 2022. The act requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt data standards related...
The Ford School is pleased to announce an exciting lineup for the fall 2022 Policy Talks @ the Ford School series and other special public events hosted with partners from across campus. We are hosting distinguished policymakers, scholars,...
A survey of Michigan local government leaders on the federal American Rescue Plan Act funding and uses finds the top spending priorities are on capital improvements, infrastructure and public safety.
Further, the state's largest jurisdictions are...
Governments, standard setters, regulators and analysts encouraged to provide input
A pilot project involving the University of Michigan and others is exploring whether a new fiscal reporting mechanism for governmental entities can help create...
“There’s a lot to learn from what’s happened in Michigan. We’ve experienced … state takeovers of minority communities,” said Tom Ivacko, executive director of the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, on Tennessee’s takeover of a predominantly...
Many Americans use the analogy of a pie to think about the government budget. But, Sarah Leiser, lecturer of public policy and leader of the Michigan Local Government Fiscal Health Project at CLOSUP, says there's another way to think about it.
"It...
Local leaders from across the state have reported lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report, and worsening outlooks for how much longer some of those impacts will last. While the numbers of local communities reporting on...
Michigan's local economies are still struggling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic but at a much lower rate than at the start of the crisis in spring 2020, according to a University of Michigan statewide survey of local government...
Many of Michigan's business, political and academic movers and shakers are gathering this week for the annual Mackinac Policy Conference after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of last year's event.
While the number of people...
As the state of Michigan could receive as much as $10 billion from the Biden administration stimulus package, officials are planning how to allocate the resources in the best way. “It’s hard to exaggerate how big of a deal it is,” Brideg Michigan...
In a recent opinion for The Conversation, tax policy expert Stephanie Leiser provides evidence to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% to pay for President Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan. This increase would still be below levels...
As Pennsylvania considers legislation to cut the state's property taxes, which are some of the highest in the country, Stephanie Leiser commented that people need to consider property taxes when moving: "Every family will have different preferences...
Stephanie Leiser discusses the importance of property taxes for personal financial decision-making and implications for policy. "Most economists agree that property taxes are the best tax base for local governments. Compared to other types of taxes,...
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
5th Floor Seminar Room
11th Annual Lent Upson Lecture at Wayne State University – Spring 2010 MPPS fiscal data findings The Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) is a program of state-wide surveys of local government leaders in Michigan. The MPPS is designed to fill an important information gap in the policymaking process. While there are ongoing surveys of the business community and of the citizens of Michigan, before the MPPS there were no ongoing surveys of local government officials that were representative of all general purpose local governments in the state.
