The Fiscal Impact Handbook is a unique manual detailing practical methods for determining the full range of revenues and costs associated with residential and nonresidential growth. Planners, economists, businessmen, administrators, financial officers, assessors, community groups, private organizations, and those interested in the fiscal consequences of growth and non-growth will find The Fiscal Impact Handbook indispensable. Fiscal impact methods are presented in a clear, step-by-step format and are capable of being carried out by the practicing planner with minimal procedural problems.The manual is designed as a basic tool to be used for projections of direct, current public (and private) costs and revenues resulting from population or employment change to the local jurisdiction in which change is taking place. Standardized methods are presented with attention paid to the underlying assumptions, limitations, and applicability of these methods. Necessary factors affecting the planning and legal framework and documentation of key data input are covered for proper utilization of fiscal impact methods.Detailed examples are given to the six flexible methods, presented with suggestions on how they can be modified by the user to meet requirements. In addition, current computer models of analysis are evaluated for operational needs and benefits. Included also is a comprehensive bibliography of the cost-revenue field and an index for quick, easy reference. This is an invaluable work for urban analysts, planners, and developers written by two of the top minds in the field of urban policy.

The death penalty has largely disappeared as a national legislative issue and the Supreme Court has mainly bowed out, leaving the states at the cutting edge of abolition politics. This essential guide presents and explains the changing political and cultural challenges to capital punishment at the state level. As with their previous volume, America Without the Death Penalty (Northeastern, 2002), the authors of this completely new volume concentrate on the local and regional relationships between death penalty abolition and numerous empirical factors, such as economic conditions; public sentiment; the roles of social, political, and economic elites; the mass media; and population diversity. They highlight the recent abolition of the practice in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Illinois; the near misses in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maryland, and Nebraska; the Kansas rollercoaster rides; and the surprising recent decline of the death penalty even in the deep South. Abolition of the death penalty in the United States is a piecemeal process, with one state after another peeling off from the pack until none is left and the tragic institution finally is no more. This book tells you how, and why, that will likely happen.