St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has lent his support to what I characterized recently as  the Great Property Tax Revolt of 2008.

Slay writes in his blog,

… I will support legislation in Jeff City this session to require local jurisdictions…

St. Louis isn’t the only Midwestern city dealing with a pension-fund shortfall. Springfield, Ill., residents face an eventual property-tax increase to pay for police and firefighter pensions, the State Journal-Register reports today.

In part, this sounds like a problem of unfunded mandates:…

I was surprised when two readers, Chris and Craig, objected to what I thought was a non-controversial statement in Sunday’s column on property taxes. I wrote:

The goal should be to share the burden of financing local government in a…

A couple of readers, Wyn and Don, responded to my column on property taxes with a suggestion: If the problem is that the elderly on fixed incomes can’t afford higher tax bills, why not let them defer those bills until they…

The property-tax reassessment process has caused plenty of outrage in St. Louis County, where total residential assesments rose 22 percent this year. It’s fast becoming a statewide issue, with House Speaker Rod Jetton recently appointing a task force to study assessment changes.…

Congress’ Joint Economic Committee  released a report this week  that puts a sort of worst-case number, or at least a very-bad-case number, on the cost of the subprime mortgage crisis. If housing prices continue to decline until the end of 2009,…