Congressional Research Service Reports - 21 Matching Results
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- Mandates Information Act: Implications for Congressional Action on Legislation Containing Private Sector Mandates
- No Description Available.
- Restructuring Electricity Markets, Public Power, and Tax-Exempt Bonds: An Economic Analysis
- Tax-exempt bonds subsidize public power's cost of capital and enable it to lower price. The subsidy is economically beneficial (enables public power price to reflect the true cost of electric service) only if the private market fails to provide the correct amount of electricity. In general, the private market does provide the correct amount of electricity; in those cases when it does not, the tax-exempt bond subsidy is unlikely to correct the problem. Tax-exempt bond legislation over the last 30 years is consistent with this perspective; its focus has been to prohibit the spread of subsidized public power beyond its traditional service areas.
- National Tests: Administration Initiative
- The Clinton Administration is encouraging states and local educational agencies (LEAs) to administer new national tests to 4th-grade pupils in reading and 8th-grade pupils in mathematics each year beginning in 2000. Participation in the tests would be voluntary and would not affect a state or LEA’s eligibility for federal aid programs. These tests would be based on existing assessments that were developed with federal financial support. The federal government would oversee the development of the tests, paying the costs for this as well as technical assistance, and the initial round of test administration, using funds under the Fund for the Improvement of Education (FIE).
- PILT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes): Somewhat Simplified
- Under current federal law, local governments are compensated through various programs for losses to their tax bases due to the presence of most federally owned land. Some of these programs are run by specific agencies, and apply only to that agency's land. The most widely applicable program, while run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), applies to many types of federally owned land, and is called "Payments in Lieu of Taxes" or PILT. The level of payments is calculated under a complex formula.
- Community Services Block Grants: Background and Current Legislation
- This report provides background on the Community Services Block Grants (CSBG) and related activities, including information on funding, and tracks the progress of relevant legislation and appropriations measures.
- Managing Regional Growth: Is There a Role for Congress?
- Regional growth management is largely addressed at he local and state levels, driven by a myriad of concerns. Many of these concerns re driven by the concept of sprawl, and pit expansion of suburban development against protection of open space, agricultural activities, and amenity values. Local and state policies to these concerns are also diverse.
- Electric Utility Restructuring: Overview of Basic Policy Questions
- Proposals to increase competition in the electric utility industry involve segmenting electric functions (generation, transmission, distribution) that are currently integrated (or bundled) in most cases (both in terms of corporate and rate structures). This report identifies five basic issues this effort raises for the Congress to consider as the debate on restructuring proceeds.
- Mandates Information Act: Action in the 106th Congress
- No Description Available.
- Right to a Clean Environment Provisions in State Constitutions, and Arguments as to a Federal Counterpart
- The issue arises occasionally whether it might be desirable to amend the U.S. Constitution to add an environmental provision - such as one declaring an individual right to a clean environment. Some attention was given this issue during the 1970s, when over a dozen states adopted clean environment or other environmentally oriented provisions in their constitutions. Our focus here is solely personal right to a clean environment provisions and the questions they raise. Are they self-executing, or dependent instead on implementing legislation? Do they create private rights of action? If so, on whose behalf, for what remedies, and against what categories of defendants? What is the standard to be enforced, and the level of proof needed to show injury? And so on. All these issues would arise as well were a federal-right-to-a-clean-environment provision to be proposed. In addition, a federal provision would implicate federalism concerns if its scope exceeded that of the Commerce Clause.
- Preemption Language in Federal Environmental Statutes
- This report compiles the provisions in federal environmental statutes that explicitly state whether Congress intended to preempt state law.
- Year 2000 Computer Problem: State Government Issues
- The federal government sends and receives data from the states in support of many social service programs. Examples of such programs are: Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, and Unemployment Insurance. The federal government will not be able to deliver critical social services if data exchanges with state governments are not Y2K- compliant, yet there is no complete picture of their readiness.