Should cats be treated like dogs, when it comes to licensing and immunization requirements?

The San Diego city auditor’s office recommends doing just that — for the sake of health, safety and “cost recovery” for taxpayers.

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The small city of Central Falls, R.I., appears to be headed for a rare municipal bankruptcy filing, and state officials are rushing to keep its woes from overwhelming the struggling state.

The impoverished city, operating under a receiver for a year, has promised $80 million worth of retirement benefits to 214 police officers and firefighters, far more than it can afford. Those workers’ pension fund will probably run out of money in October, giving Central Falls the distinction of becoming the second municipality in the United States to exhaust its pension fund, after Prichard, Ala.

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In a potential blow to the proposed San Francisco circumcision ban, the city’s top lawyer has concluded it is unconstitutional to ban the practice as a religious ritual, but allow it as a medical procedure.

The measure, now headed toward the Nov. 8 ballot, would ban nearly all infant circumcisions.

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On trash day in San Francisco, bins in three colors line the streets, each with a different purpose.

The city requires residents to put recyclable materials into a blue bin, compostables into a green one and regular old garbarge into a black one.

“We even recycle batteries,” says Johanna Partin, the mayor’s director of climate protection initiatives, adding they can be placed in a clear bag on top of any bin.

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With cries of “Rebuild now! Rebuild Now!” parishioners and supporters of a Greek Orthodox church that was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks rallied at Ground Zero on Sunday (June 26) in hopes of resuming negotiations to rebuild the church.

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have been at odds for several years over the cost and exact location of the rebuilt church.

“Shame on the Port Authority to take this long to rebuild our church,” Nicholas A. Karacostas, supreme president of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, a national Greek-American group, at a rally that drew about 100 people to the site of the former World Trade Center.

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Confronting stereotypes is nothing new to Muslims at the Islamic Center of Eastside. It’s the very reason they have an open house every few months ”” to invite in neighbors and “demystify” themselves.

Saturday’s scheduled open house came just two days after two Muslim men were arrested in Seattle and accused of planning a terrorist attack on a Seattle military building. Disheartened but expecting questions, presenters at the Islamic Center in Bellevue worked up an extra PowerPoint slide to address terrorism.

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I’m hosting this month’s CGI America meeting on the assumption that there will be no federal stimulus and no further tax incentives targeted directly toward creating new jobs. Going on these assumptions, we want to analyze America’s economy: What are our assets? What are our liabilities? What are our options? There must be opportunities to be tapped, given all the cash in banks and corporate treasuries. If we have some success, we might be able to influence the debate in Washington in a nonpartisan way because we’ll have economic evidence to show them. I don’t have any problem at all if Congress wants to give tax credits to companies that actually hire people. But I think we have to pay for them, so I’d be happy to go back to the tax rates people at my income level paid when I was president in order to pay for the tax incentives to put more people to work.

The whole purpose of CGI America is to highlight good ideas because not everyone is aware of what’s out there. I’m going to try to get enough commitments that are representative enough of the circumstances facing diverse industries and different cities and states to persuade people across America to try their own version of them in a discussion of our economic stagnation. There’s been a remarkable lack of attention to “microeconomics,” the untapped growth potential of American corporations, entrepreneurs, and workers.

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Opponents of a measure that would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise male children in San Francisco filed a lawsuit Wednesday to get the initiative stricken from the November ballot.

The plaintiffs called the measure anti-Semitic, a threat to the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims, and an infringement on parental and medical rights. But during a news conference on the steps of City Hall, attorney Michael Jacobs said the group is suing on the grounds that state law prohibits local governments from restricting medical procedures.

That’s the job of the state Legislature, said Jacobs, flanked by two Muslim women in head scarves and a doctor in a white coat….

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Two years into a fitful recovery, unemployed Americans are getting painfully accustomed to the notion that it will take years to bring back the jobs eviscerated by the financial crisis.

In some regions, those years are in danger of turning into a decade. According to a report to be released Monday, nearly 50 metropolitan regions ”” or more than one out of seven ”” are unlikely to bring back all the jobs lost in the recession until after 2020.

Among those areas are Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio; Detroit; Reno, Nev.; and Atlantic City, according to the report commissioned by the United States Conference of Mayors.

Detroit, which lost 323,400 jobs during the recession, and Reno, which lost 36,000 jobs, are not expected to regain all of those positions until after 2021.

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Dozens of U.S. cities and towns are being bruised by the deepening Greek debt crisis even though they are thousands of miles away and don’t own any of the country’s bonds.

From a skating rink in Everett, Wash., to New York City’s schools to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, interest rates on some bonds have soared since late May and could rise even further because money-market investors are less willing to buy some of the $17 billion in municipal bond deals backed by Dexia SA, a Belgian-French bank shaken by its exposure to government debts in Greece.

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No doubt about it, a growing number of modern Americans are convinced that it’s time for government officials to do some cutting and snipping in the pages of the holy books that define some of the world’s major religions.

“What you have here is an assault, by a popular referendum, on a central ritual in a recognized ancient religion,” said Marc Stern, associate general counsel for legal advocacy at the American Jewish Committee. While the current initiative may seem brazen, “it’s really nothing new. It’s easy for historians to find sources showing how the Greeks and Romans mocked the Jews for practicing circumcision.”

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An unexpectedly huge $3 million budget shortfall for the Columbia area’s bus system is likely to cut the number of routes in half and cost as many as 40 jobs in the company that operates the buses, transit officials disclosed Wednesday.

The figures were released at a specially called meeting of the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority board attended by fewer than the required seven-member quorum. The board took no action but asked chairwoman Joyce Dickerson to make an appeal to Columbia City Council to offset $618,000 of the red ink.

That still would leave a $2.5 million shortage for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

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Home values in Snohomish County continued a prolonged slide this year, according to assessment notices that should arrive soon.

Assessment notices being mailed this week show a dip of nearly 13 percent in value for residential properties. That’s the largest falloff since 2008, when housing declines began to show up in county assessments….

You might think then that the taxes on real estate would therefore be less. You would be wrong–they could be, but they may not be. Why?

Because of Washington’s budget-based taxing system, taxes can go up even when property values decline.

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The National Association of Evangelicals is siding with Jews and Muslims in opposition of a proposed ban on infant male circumcision in San Francisco.

“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” NAE President Leith Anderson said in a statement. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

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Over the last half-century, the number of Catholic schools has fallen to 7,000 from about 13,000, and their enrollment to barely two million children from more than five million. A disproportionate share of the damage has come in big cities.

So when a landmark topples as Rice [High School in Harlem] did ”” and as Cardinal Dougherty High School did in Philadelphia last year, and as Daniel Murphy High School did in Los Angeles two years before that ”” it ought to provoke more than sentimentality or tears. It ought to sound an alarm about a slow-motion crisis in American education.

To grasp what is being lost, one needed only to look through the roster in the graduation program for Rice. With a student body that is 98 percent black or Hispanic, with 80 percent of its students requiring financial aid, virtually every graduating senior was bound for college: Penn, Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Fairfield, Iona. Four of the Rice men had received scholarships in excess of $150,000.

I absolutely love the picture–check it out and read it all.

New York City may again block religious groups from using school facilities outside of regular school hours for “religious worship services,” a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Thursday.

Deciding 2 to 1, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the city had “a strong basis to believe” that allowing the religious services to be conducted in schools could be seen as the kind of endorsement of religion that violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

“When worship services are performed in a place,” Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote for the majority, “the nature of the site changes. The site is no longer simply a room in a school being used temporarily for some activity.”

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Take a careful look–ugh.

After several months of strong job growth, hiring slowed sharply in May, raising concerns once again about the underlying strength of the economic recovery.

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the United States added 54,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, following an increase of 232,000 jobs in April. May’s job gain was about a third of what economists had been forecasting.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent in April.

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Almost 4 million homes have been lost to foreclosures the past five years, turning many former owner-occupied homes into rentals.

The shift to rental housing is potentially long-lasting and portends changes for neighborhood stability and how people build wealth, economists say.

“The changes are big but glacial,” says Mark Zandi, economist at Moody’s Analytics.

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The Charleston County School District’s proposed budget for next school year won’t raise taxes or furlough teachers, but it does include cuts that will affect employees.

With the exception of teachers, every district employee will be furloughed next year, and no employee will receive a cost-of-living increase or salary hike for additional years of experience.

The school board approved on Thursday the first reading of its proposed $332.1 million operating budget, which is about $2.6 million more than this year. That budget covers classroom expenses, and the board voted 7-2 for it.

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Karen Dombi was thrilled when her three oldest children were picked for student government this year””not because she envisioned careers in politics, but because it was one of the few programs at their public high school that didn’t charge kids to participate.

Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family’s total tab for a year of public education: [ ].

“I’m wondering, am I going to be paying for my parking spot at the school? Because you’re making me pay for just about everything else,” says Ms. Dombi, a parent in this middle-class community in northern Ohio.

You need to guess how much it cost them for 3 children for one year; then read it all.

Mr. [John] Garcia survived two of the most dreadful fires any New York City firefighter has ever faced ”” the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, and the fire at the 41-story former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged on 9/11 and was being dismantled. Mr. Garcia was on a hose line alongside the two firefighters who died in the Deutsche Bank fire ”” Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino ”” and as a lieutenant and the officer on duty for Ladder 5, he was their immediate superior.

In the months and years following the Deutsche Bank fire, Mr. Garcia struggled to cope with the deaths of the two men. He told friends that he felt responsible, and by the time he retired in July 2009, he was found to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“One of the toughest things is when an officer loses a firefighter who’s under him,” said Frank McCutchen, 53, a retired firefighter and friend of Mr. Garcia’s who worked with him at Engine 24 and Ladder 5 in SoHo. “There’s nothing worse on the job. It’s like a parent losing a kid. You can’t get in his head to say, ”˜Hey, it’s not your fault.’ ”

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The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.

Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors ”” Brazil, China and India, the institute said.

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Charleston County was told today it has 60 days to pay back the $11.6 million it accepted to build the Interstate 526 expansion or the State Infrastructure Bank will take legal action.

Council Chairman Teddie Pryor has said that up to 200 staff members could be laid off and services cut to make up for a $10 million shortfall in its new budget because it decided not to build the expansion.

Police, emergency medical and other vital services will not be axed, but libraries, drainage-ditch cleaning and mosquito control could suffer, Pryor said.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

As recession-racked cities struggle to balance their budgets with everything short of feeling behind sofa cushions for loose change, a growing number are seeking more money ”” just don’t use the word taxes ”” from nonprofit institutions that occupy valuable land but by law do not pay property taxes.

Boston has been sending letters to its largest nonprofit institutions this year, telling them the value of their land and asking them to begin making annual payments that would eventually rise to a quarter of what they would owe if they paid property taxes. Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel of Chicago wants the city to begin charging water fees to nonprofits, which have been spared them in the past. And the mayor of Providence, R.I., Angel Taveras, cited Boston’s example this month when he called on nonprofits to pay more money to the city.
“Every citizen, every city worker, every taxpayer, every business and every organization ”” including tax-exempt institutions ”” must share part of the burden of saving our city,” Mr. Taveras said in his budget address. He proposed closing Providence’s $109 million budget gap by shutting schools, laying off workers, cutting the Police and Fire Department budgets and raising taxes on homeowners as well as seeking larger payments from the city’s prestigious universities and other nonprofit institutions.

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Guess first please and then read it all.

(Really sharp blog readers may remember I asked this question in November 2010 but the percentage has changed since then–KSH).

Every first and third Monday of the month for as long as anyone can remember, this city’s elected commissioners have gathered in their musty second-floor chambers to contend with issues large and small ”” reports of gaping potholes, proposals to sell city land, an annual budget plan.

But as of this month, they are literally powerless, and hold no authority to make any decisions. Not even on potholes.

The city is now run by Joseph L. Harris, an accountant and auditor from miles away, one of a small cadre of “emergency managers” dispatched like firefighters by the state to put out financial blazes in Michigan’s most troubled cities.

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Last Friday we reported that the Philadelphia Orchestra was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. On Saturday, the orchestra’s board indeed voted in favor of the measure ”” the first major American orchestra to do so. Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are expected to continue as scheduled for the foreseeable future.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin covered many of the details in this article yesterday. Orchestra officials ”” chairman Richard Worley and CEO Allison Vulgamore ”” have published a letter to patrons on the organization’s web site, explaining why the board voted the way it did. They also announced a new fundraising campaign.

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Check it out–it is on the front page of the local paper.

If you want to understand better why so many states””from New York to Wisconsin to California””are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two””Indiana and Wisconsin””has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods.

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