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Parks are inequitably distributed in many U.S. cities, and policies and planning initiatives around the country have sought to rectify these inequities. In this study, we examined whether one such initiative, a policy change in development fees for parks in Los Angeles (CA), achieved its equity goals. Specifically, the changed Park Fees Ordinance loosened the distance requirements between developments where fees are collected and parks where fees can be invested to create opportunities to spend funds in disadvantaged neighborhoods with little development. We examined whether disadvantaged communities received more park fees after the policy change in 2017. We found no significant equity gains based on socioeconomic status, some gains for non-Hispanic Black people, but some losses for Latinx people. We attribute these findings to a lack of equity criteria in the policy, political pressures, capital renovations to address deferred maintenance, and geographic limitations in where funds can be spent. We also found that Los Angeles seemed to have taken advantage of the increased geographic flexibility in the changed policy, although a lack of data linking fee-generating developments to fee-receiving parks limited the certainty of this finding. Park fees are not a panacea to advance park equity. Yet park fee policies could include measurable equity criteria to help direct some funds to disadvantaged park-poor communities while leaving some funds to the discretion of elected officials. Also, cities should have transparent data about the generation and distribution of park fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the United States continues to grow and urbanize, local governments have tried to manage this growth to mitigate the external impacts that new developments can cause. One method by which state and local governments seek to control growth within their borders is by imposing conditions on the issuance of building permits--otherwise known as exactions. Exactions, however, face federal constitutional limits under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, the U.S. Supreme Court restricted exactions in certain situations by requiring that, prior to imposing the exaction, the government make an individualized determination that the condition has an "essential nexus" and is "roughly proportionate" to the foreseen harm from the development. The Nollan/Dolan test is primarily grounded in a fear of government overreach and coercion of property owners. The courts agree that the Nollan/Dolan test applies when a government agency, such as a zoning board, imposes an exaction on a discretionary and ad hoc basis. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has not yet determined whether exactions that are generally imposed on property owners through a legislative action, such as an ordinance, must comply with the Nollan/Dolan test. On the one hand, a legislatively imposed exaction is like a typical land use regulation, to which the Court has granted broad deference. But on the other hand, such exactions still carry the risk of government overreach by unfairly targeting a small, politically unpopular group: developers. This Note evaluates the debate over whether the Nollan/Dolan test should apply to legislatively imposed exactions and ultimately concludes that it should not. Legislatively imposed exactions are fundamentally different from administrative exactions because of their greater democratic legitimacy. Indeed, courts already recognize and are hardening this line between legislative and administrative actions, as evidenced by the nondelegation doctrine. Thus, the Nollan/Dolan test should not apply to legislatively imposed exactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This white paper assesses how cities are modifying transportation impact fees in response to Senate Bill (SB) 743, adopted in 2013 to orient environmental review of transportation impacts of development projects and plans in California to support sustainable development. SB 743 and its implementing guidelines eliminated “level of service” (LOS) standards for automobile traffic delay as an environmental impact to be addressed under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), recommending instead that localities and other lead agencies responsible for CEQA review analyze, and if possible, mitigate impacts on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead. As cities proceed to implement SB 743, some are going further than the minimum required to analyze and mitigate for VMT at the development project level. Instead, they are also pursuing “programmatic” approaches, including altering citywide impact fees imposed on developers, to support more systematic analysis and mitigation than is possible at the project level alone. Based on public documents research and interviews with consultants and planners, this paper identifies three basic approaches that cities are taking to design impact fees in conjunction with their policy approaches for addressing SB 743: first, to design impact fee programs that fund VMT-reducing projects, but without employing a VMT “nexus” (the nexus is the basis for identifying impacts to be addressed by the program); second, to employ a VMT nexus for identifying facilities need and cost allocation; and third, to design a fee program that links to systematic CEQA-reviewed VMT analysis in the General Plan and/or other related CEQA-reviewed city wide policy documents. In this latter approach, cities may or may not design their fee program to fund VMT-reducing projects; indeed, this approach may help facilitate a more traditional, LOS-based fee program. This outcome can happen if a city analyzes VMT systematically for the General Plan, and then adopts a “statement of overriding considerations” under CEQA, which allows for development projects to “tier” off the programmatic environmental review so as to avoid the need for conducting cumulative VMT impacts analysis. This approach may facilitate more systematic integration of VMT and LOS analysis at the citywide level, but it does not support SB 743 goals for supporting VMT-reducing projects and programs.View the NCST Project Webpage

In the article, the author discusses the issue of stategraft or the illegal use by governments of their regulatory power to raise money from the politically powerless and poor citizens by examining the U.S. Supreme Court case Sheetz v. County of El Dorado and the concept of stategraft by Professor Bernadette Atuahene. Other topics include whether constitutional rules that are used in ad hoc development exactions can also be applied to legislated exactions.

We study fragmentation of equity trading using a model of imperfect competition among exchanges. In the model, increased competition drives down trading fees. However, additional arbitrage opportunities arise in fragmented markets, intensifying adverse selection. Due to these opposing forces, the effects of fragmentation are context dependent. To empirically investigate the ambiguity in a single context, we estimate key parameters of the model with order-level data for an Australian security. According to the estimates, the benefits of increased competition are outweighed by the costs of multi-venue arbitrage. Compared with the prevailing duopoly, we predict the counterfactual monopoly spread to be 23% lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stock exchange operators compete for order flow by setting "make" fees for limit orders and "take" fees for market orders. When traders can quote continuous prices, exchange operators compete on total fee, because traders can choose prices that perfectly neutralize any fee division. The 1-cent minimum tick size, however, prevents traders from neutralizing fee division. The nonneutrality of division between make and take fees (1) allows an exchange operator to establish exchanges that differ in fee structure to engage in second-degree price discrimination and (2) destroys the Bertrand equilibrium, leads to frequent fee changes, and encourages entries of new exchanges. Received May 29, 2016; editorial decision April 19, 2018 by Editor Robin Greenwood. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1772, the colonists of Weare, New Hampshire, were given a choice: cede all white pine trees grown on their lands to the King of England or pay a hefty fine. It was an odious decree--one that struck at the very ideal of the American colonies. Imbued as they were with a sense of divine right to property, the colonists refused, taking up arms to lead a gallant revolt. In a burst of righteous fury, they sheared the King's horses, flogged his enforcement officials, and paraded both through the streets and out of town. Known as the "Pine Tree Riots," these events bled into the American Revolution and became immortalized in the "Appeal to Heaven Flag"--an enduring if little known tribute to liberty, natural rights, and the American spirit. Their staunch Lockean convictions matched only by their fervor for freedom, the early colonists were unwilling to yield even a stick of pine to the throes of regulatory tyranny. With events like those in Weare County no doubt in the back of mind, the drafters of our Constitution were determined to forge a protection against government overreach. They did so with the Fifth Amendment's "Takings" Clause, which guarantees that private property shall not be taken except for public use--and not without just compensation. As tyrannical tree taxes faded in the rearview mirror, Fifth-Amendment Takings doctrine appeared poised to protect landowners from abuse, and takings jurisprudence was able to keep pace with increasingly inventive governmental attempts to "take" property. But in the two-hundred and fifty years since the Pine Tree Riots, the nemesis of the property owner has become, not the tyrant across the sea, but the tyrant in city hall. The enforcement of modern exactions has placed modern landowners in a position little-better than their eighteenth-century counterparts; as city planners find more ways to take property from landowners, the need to evolve commensurate protections for privateproperty rights has grown desperate. Two seminal Supreme Court cases, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 371 (1994), have provided a test that would do much to solve this problem, but a refusal to extend them has left property owners helpless to respond against municipal encroachment. The situation is dire: if property owners are to be protected, Fifth Amendment takings jurisprudence must adapt. In response, this Article proceeds in seven parts to plead for an extension of Nollan/Dolan protections to the sphere of legislative exactions: a solution that would benefit cities and property owners alike. Such a move would give cities the clarification they need to craft proper regulatory measures; at the same time, it would protect property owners by ensuring that valid ordinances do not overstep their authority. A refusal to extend, however, will prevent landowner protections from keeping pace with the steady march of regulatory creep--leaving the modern landowner hardly better off than those New Hampshire colonists forced to surrender their white pines over two centuries ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and state governments use impact fees to pay for the costs of development. Impact fees improve economic efficiency by internalizing external costs such as the loss of open space and the increased truck traffic that compromises local public infrastructure. Colorado recently expanded the use of impact fees to cover the reasonably foreseeable direct and indirect costs of oil and gas development. Impact fees provide revenue to pay for fiscal costs not covered by severance taxes, property taxes, royalty payments, and mill levy revenues. Economists examining net fiscal impacts from oil and gas development have focused on two fiscal costs: increased staff time and road maintenance costs. We investigate two additional fiscal costs: (1) legacy costs from inadequate bonding for abandoned wells; and (2) loss of property tax revenue. We also examine the adequacy of bonding policies to prevent future legacy costs. As more state and local governments examine net fiscal impacts, we recommend: (1) accounting for all fiscal costs when estimating net fiscal impacts; (2) expanding the scope of fiscal costs covered by impact fees; (3) applying per-well impact fees to pay for legacy costs; (4) reforming bonding policies; and (5) keeping the legal concept of the rational nexus test in mind when estimating economically and legally defensible impact fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkland dedication and park impact fees are governmental exactions that are imposed as a condition for permitting development. They are manifestations of the Benefit Principle of government. This recognizes that if taxes are not to be raised and quality of life is not to be reduced, then those who benefit from services should be required to pay for them. In many communities, the political mantra is dominated by fiscal conservatism. Operationally, this generally means elected officials will not support increases in taxation. Hence, exactions designed to ensure growth pays for itself are consistent with this prevailing political mantra. Despite this "goodness of fit," they remain underutilized. The paper examines the reasons for this and suggests strategies for surmounting these challenges. The evolution of parkland dedication and park impact fees is described, and their complementarity is explained. Often, they are mistakenly regarded as operational synonyms, but different operational implications spring from their different geneses and these are highlighted. Reluctance to utilize the full potential of exactions stems primarily from the beguiling myth that population growth in a community expands the tax base which keeps taxes low. This myth frequently stems from the "urban growth machine," which has a strong self-interest in perpetuating it and the loudest megaphones through which to disseminate this message. Evidence that exposes this shibboleth is presented. Rationales for imposing maximum exactions are presented. In sum, those of us who are elected officials can address problems of growth in three ways: Raising taxes on existing residents, allowing the level of service to decline by doing nothing, or using parkland dedications and park impact fees to make new residents pay for the new parks demand they have created. An analysis is offered as to who ultimately pays for parkland dedications and park impact fees. There are three sets of stakeholders: New homeowners, developers, and landowners. The popular belief that the fees are passed forward to new homeowners is challenged. It is pointed out that the most likely scenarios are that (i) the costs are passed back to landowners, since developers will respond to higher dedications or fees by paying less for the land; or (ii) the costs of building a dwelling are mitigated by reducing its size and/or the quality of its fittings, finishing or landscaping. The concluding section examines why they are underused and suggests a viable strategy for surmounting opposition is to point out the opportunity cost to a community's taxpayers of not implementing maximum dedications and/or impact fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Local governments can secure valuable public benefits from private real estate development through negotiations or schedule-based exaction programs. Nevertheless, few studies have empirically examined their relative strengths and weaknesses. In this study I compare the experiences of two major U.S. cities, Boston (MA)—where exactions are heavily negotiated—and Seattle (WA)—where public benefits are secured through statutory exaction programs with pre-established schedules. I analyze the entitlement processes of large-scale projects approved in 2016 in each city and show that both approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses. Boston was able to extract substantial public benefit packages, but uncertainty was high, and projects were subject to inconsistent decision making at times. By contrast, Seattle's schedule-based approach was found to be fair and certain while yielding moderate public benefit packages. Despite the commonly held belief that negotiating land uses on a project-by-project basis is associated with significant process delays and a lack of transparency, the case of Boston offers a different perspective. Boston's projects were approved in a shorter time frame and were subjected to more public meetings per project than Seattle's. Takeaway for practice: U.S. local governments are likely to rely on both negotiations and schedules to extract public benefits from real estate developments. Though schedule-based exaction programs ensure overall fairness and certainty of the entitlement process, project-by-project negotiation could potentially yield significant public benefits. However, uncertainty can be high in a negotiation-heavy system, which may disadvantage small-scale developers. Moreover, negotiations may open up room for poor and inconsistent decision making, which must be mitigated by establishing clear policies and standards to guide the negotiation process. Both negotiation and schedule-based processes can be designed to ensure a transparent process with multiple public participation opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the Supreme Court slightly expanded the range of land use permitting situations in which heightened judicial scrutiny is appropriate in a constitutional "exaction" takings case. In crafting a vision of regulators as strategic extortionists of private property interests, though, Koontz prompted many takings observers to predict that the case would provide momentum for a more significant expansion of such scrutiny in takings cases involving land use permit conditions moving forward, and perhaps even an extension into other regulatory contexts, as well. Five years on, this Article evaluates the extent to which those predictions have come to pass via a review of the approximately 130 lower court cases to have cited Koontz to date. Based on this review, the Article offers two claims. First, on doctrinal grounds, it contends that Koontz's footprint thus far is rather light, in the sense that the decision has not prompted lower courts to extend the application of heightened scrutiny to a broad class of regulatory measures and, in those select instances where such scrutiny does apply, has not led lower courts to craft a far-reaching array of remedies. Second, on normative grounds, it asserts that the restraint evident in the lower court opinions that have wrestled with Koontz is appealing in the sense that this course acknowledges that property necessarily involves context-driven allocative choices by the state, and focuses-- as best these courts can, given the constraints explicit in prior doctrine--on whether those allocative choices are fair and just absent compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exactions are demands levied on residential or commercial developers to force them, rather than a municipality, to bear the costs of new infrastructure. Local governments commonly use them to address the burdens that growth places on schools, transportation, water, and sewers. But exactions almost never address energy needs, even though local land use decisions can create significant externalities for the power grid and for energy resources. This Article proposes a novel reform to land use and energy law: "energy exactions"--understood as local fees or timing limits aimed at addressing the energy impacts of new residential or commercial development. Energy exactions would force individual developers to internalize the costs of growth on the energy grid, generate important information about community energy needs and their externalities, decentralize risk-taking, promote technological change in new sources of power supply, and stimulate useful forms of regulatory competition between local communities and state utility regulators. In the process, they would induce greater energy conservation as new residential and commercial buildings are approved for development. This Article defends the implementation of energy exactions by local governments. It then analyzes the potential legal hurdles energy exactions face, including their authorization, preemption by state utility laws, and implications under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Energy exactions provide local governments a unique, pragmatic, and valuable tool to integrate community values into energy grid planning, promote demand reduction, and enable new investments in low-carbon energy infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We utilise a quasi-natural experiment in local property tax reform arising from a compulsory amalgamation of several local councils in 2010 in Auckland, New Zealand, to form a unitary local authority. The reform involved changes in property taxes (known as 'Rates' in New Zealand) including a shift in the local tax base from land-value to capital-value in some of the former councils; changes in relative levels of Rates across former councils; and changes in levels of a separate tax (Development Contributions) levied on new building. These exogenously imposed reforms enable us to test several hypotheses related to the effects on property development of these tax switches using a difference-in-difference approach, controlling for other influences. We find support for tax effects on building alterations but no evidence of effects on new building development after amalgamation. Our dataset covers only two post-amalgamation years, and we speculate that this apparent difference may arise from greater flexibility of building alterations to respond quickly compared with new developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time and costs are often the most critical constraints in implementing a development impact fee (DIF) for local infrastructure installation planning in South Korea. For this reason, drafting quality plan alternatives and calculating precise DIFs for improvement remain challenging. This study proposes an application of a procedural modeling method using CityEngine as an alternative to traditional methods, which rely on AutoCAD. A virtual low-density suburban development project in Jeju, South Korea was used to compare the workability of the two methods. The findings suggest that procedural modeling outperforms the other approach by significantly reducing the number of steps and commands required in the planning process. This paper also argues that procedural modeling provides real-time 2- and 3-dimensional modeling and design evaluation and allows for a more efficient assessment of plan quality and calculation of DIF. We also argue for the need to diffuse procedural modeling to better support local planning practices.

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Conversion of land to more intensive uses often comes with charges known as impact fees, or developer charges (DCs). Town planning practitioners typically view these charges as economically benign but there remains an academic debate about whether they can increase prices and depress sales volumes. Existing empirical studies of the price and quantity effects of DCs are limited by a lack of naturally occurring variation in the DC size. It is therefore difficult to isolate behavioural effects from the mechanical relationship of DC and price arising from larger dwellings being levied with higher DCs. To overcome this identification problem we use data that incorporates a surprise policy change in Queensland, Australia, that introduced a cap on DCs. Councils responded by changing DCs, both upwards and downwards, for different dwelling types in different local council areas. Our model estimation shows that there are no measurable effects on price or quantity of new dwellings from DCs, supporting the planning practitioner's view of the charge being economically benign and fully incident on the landowner, even when the landowner is a property developer. When we instead include the baseline DC for each sale prior to the policy change, the problem of capturing only the mechanical effect arises once again. Model results using this baseline DC are similar to previous studies that claimed large behavioural price effects from DCs. The results are consistent with a real options view of the developer's economic situation, a view that also predicts that increases in DCs can increase the quantity of new dwelling sales, a pattern also found in the Queensland data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusess various court cases on property exactions and impact fees in the U.S. Topics include Bowman v. California Coastal Commission case on coastal development permit; County of El Paso v. Navar case on certifications that utility services meet minimum state standards for land sale or lease; and Golf Course Assoc, LLC v. New Castle County case on rejection of plan for development of single-family homes and former Delaware National golf course.

When an owner applies for a permit to use property in a certain way, the government body with jurisdiction can either deny the permit, grant the permit outright, or grant the permit subject to conditions. These conditions--known as "exactions"--must meet two constitutional thresholds. First, there must be a close linkage between a problem the owner's project will create or exacerbate, such as increased traffic caused by a proposed new shopping mall, and the exaction the government proposes, such as the dedication of land for a new right-turn lane. Second, the condition the government suggests must be proportional in magnitude to the problem. The exaction must meet this two-part test even if the applicant rejects the government's proposal and decides not to proceed. The Supreme Court's goal in adopting these rules was to ensure that the government does not obtain for free property rights that it otherwise would have to pay for. In other words, the test presupposes that the government is obtaining a benefit from imposing the exaction. That presupposition is wrong for two reasons. First, a properly designed exaction does not create a benefit for anyone. Instead, it mitigates the negative effects the applicant is imposing on its neighbors. Second, the mitigating effects of the exaction inure to those neighbors and not to the government itself: the government typically gains nothing, because the government is not acting in an enterprise capacity. Rather, the government is serving as a referee, mediating between the competing property rights of an applicant that seeks to develop its land and members of the broader community who do not want their own property rights impaired by a neighbor's intensified use. If a government agency fears takings liability under this stringent test and decides to grant the permit unconditionally or to impose conditions that are too weak, it is striking an unfair balance between these competing property rights and allowing the applicant to impose external costs on its neighbors. The current test, in short, tips the scales in favor of applicants by pushing government bodies toward proposing weak or no conditions. This Article argues that members of the broader community should be permitted to counter this inequity by bringing reverse exaction claims, challenging particular government impositions as insufficient to offset the negative effects of an applicant's proposed development. Like traditional exaction claims brought by permit applicants, these reverse claims would succeed or fail based on the Court's two existing criteria, namely (1) the degree of linkage between the problem and the condition the government exacted and (2) the magnitude of the condition. This claim, however, would be viewed from the opposite perspective. The neighbors would argue that the government's granting of consent with inadequate conditions attached effects a compensable taking of their own property rights. In a traditional exaction claim, the wronged landowner receives compensation that is ultimately paid by the beneficiaries of the government's over-exaction, typically taxpayers; here, the wronged neighbors would be compensated from funds the government would raise from the applicant that received a permit without initially paying the full cost of its own externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developer paid infrastructure charges are a commonly used mechanism for Australian municipalities to shift the funding of new urban infrastructure to private sector property developers. In a climate where housing affordability is a policy objective for many governments, a clear understanding of the impacts these charges have on the price of housing is imperative. This paper empirically examines the effect of infrastructure charges on housing affordability in Brisbane, Australia, applying a hedonic house price model to 4699 new and 25,053 existing house sales in Brisbane from 2005 to 2011. The findings of this research are consistent with international studies that support the proposition that infrastructure charges are over passed to home buyers. This study provides evidence of infrastructure charges being over passed to both new and existing home buyers in the order of around 400 %. These findings suggest that infrastructure charges are thus a significant contributor to increasing house prices and reduced housing affordability in Australia. By testing this flow-on effect to both new and existing homes, this research provides evidence in support of the proposition that not only are infrastructure charges over passed to new home buyers, but also to buyers of existing homes. Thus the price inflationary effect of infrastructure charges are being felt by all home buyers across the community, resulting in increased mortgage repayments of close to $1000 per month in Australia. These results are important as they inform governments on the outcomes of current infrastructure funding policies on housing affordability, providing the first empirical evidence of its kind in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities in exurban areas increasingly rely on land preservation as a strategy to balance sprawling land development with maintaining environmental amenities. Based on a review of existing approaches for preserving land, we consider a conceptual model of environmental impact fees (EIFs) coupled with conservation payments for managing private land of ecosystem value. In this framework, conservation payments are intended to cost-effectively target fair market value compensation for heterogeneous land for preservation that sustains ecosystem health. EIFs serve as a financial instrument to augment conservation payments and to allow flexibility for landowners with private information to pursue development opportunities while accounting for environmental impacts. Using a bioeconomic model of nature-reserve design, we develop an empirical illustration of how to estimate the EIF of development damage to critical habitat in southern Rhode Island in an effort to preserve land as an environmental infrastructure that maintains ecosystem health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development impact fee is one growth management tool that is often adopted to reduce externalities associated with development on the urban fringe. But it is also used as a revenue generator that offsets property taxes. While graduated impact fees are a potential means to reduce sprawling development, it is unclear which public constituencies favor their adoption. Using an adjacent category logit model, there is limited evidence for exclusion based on race or class and, surprisingly, homeownership is not a major determinant of support. The model results indicate differences in policy preferences among longtime Phoenix residents, newcomers, city dwellers, and sub/exurbanites, which may suggest a desire to maintain the status quo and shift the burden of new development to developers and homebuyers. This article contributes to local government literature through an empirical examination of how sociodemographic factors drive public support for graduated development impact fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews three impact fee programs spread across three continents (North America, Australia, and Asia) in a search for those impact fee design features that meet the nexus and rough proportionality principles and promote vertical equity. To meet the nexus and rough proportionality principles, we assert that the impact fee should vary by use, intensity of use, and type of infrastructure or service funded by the fee, and that the fee should be based on clearly articulated service standards. Finally, specific policies that may be used to increase vertical equity include (a) allowing developers to pay the fee in installments and/or at a later stage of project development, (b) granting impact fee waivers for affordable housing, and (c) exempting smaller properties from paying the fee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the developments in exactions and impact fees for land or funding facilities in the U.S. Topics discussed include public infrastructure aid by the local government; U.S. Supreme Court case Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard which deals with doctrine of unconstitutional conditions; and developments in the areas of exactions and impact fee jurisprudence.

This Article considers the U.S. Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, which extended the application of the Court's framework for evaluating the constitutionality of land use exactions (known as the Nollan/Dolan test). The majority of the Court relied heavily on the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, explaining that this doctrine formed the basis not only for the Nollan/Dolan framework but also for the extension of that framework to Koontz's new factual setting. Four members of the Court dissented. Although the dissenting justices seemingly agreed with several of the majority's propositions, they vigorously opposed the manner in which the majority applied those propositions. Although Koontz might be viewed as just another in a long line of cases that make up the messy jurisprudence of regulatory takings and unconstitutional conditions, the primary thesis of this Article is that Koontz in fact provides a key to unlocking the Court's exactions framework. Relying on my prior work with Brannon Denning, this Article posits that both regulatory takings and the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions constitute anti-evasion doctrines by which the Court seeks to fill enforcement gaps left open by its prior constitutional decision rules. Inasmuch as land use exactions lie at the intersection of these two doctrinal areas, one would expect to find that anti-evasion notions play a large role in the Court's exactions decisions. And indeed, both the majority and the dissent in Koontz invoked the antievasion characteristics of the Nollan/Dolan test in support of their analytical positions in that case. Viewing Koontz (and its jurisprudential antecedents) through the prism of anti-evasion helps both to explain the majority's decision in that case and to bring the differences between the majority and dissent into sharper focus. Additionally, the anti-evasion concept suggests some guidelines for how future exactions issues might be resolved--both at the micro level (dealing with future decision rules that will have to be developed in light of Koontz) and at the macro level (addressing larger questions about the Court's takings jurisprudence and the place of the exactions cases within it). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the use of exactions to address climate concerns with the U.S. Supreme Court's constitutional takings framework. Topics discussed include Court's exactions decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District case, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions focus on the power sector and use of zoning by local governments in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. case.

An essay is presented on the case Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District on land use. Topics discussed include ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that land-use agencies imposing conditions on the issuance of development permits must comply with standards of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard cases, entry of municipalities and project applicants enter into development agreements, and use of state legislation for addressing government exactions.

The analysis in this paper uses a circular model to compare four alternatives for funding infrastructure necessitated by commercial development: a mileage tax, a sales tax, and development impact fees, to a traditional property tax. The results suggest that infrastructure funding mechanisms may influence household travel distance due to policy induced firm entry. This result complements the existing literature which finds policies affect travel costs through changes in city size while the fixed size model presented here suggests travel costs are still important. Because firms capture transport costs, in the form of higher prices, in the model, a mileage tax increases the number of firms exceeding the socially optimal number. Through a system of impact-fee financing, firms internalize infrastructure costs which reduces the number of firms and approaches the socially optimal number. Sales taxes provide an intermediate case between fees and property taxes. The model of homogeneous households and monopolistic competition between firms provides results most applicable to policy for suburban jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local jurisdictions across the country continue to adopt alternative financing options, although the effects of these remain uncertain. There are two views of impact fees: (a) an old view, that fees are a tax on development increasing prices and reducing quantity and (b) a new view, that fees provide services and reduce future taxes, thus increasing demand and prices. The research presented in this study, based on data from Florida counties, finds that the relationship between fees on commercial development and fees on employment differs across different categories of economic activity. The use of fees is positively related to service-sector employment growth and negatively related to manufacturing employment growth. This result suggests that different sectors realize different levels of benefits from infrastructure provided through fee revenue and that policy decisions based on total employment may suffer from overaggregations and lead to unintended consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although development impact fees have been used by local governments for decades, it is still not well understood how this tool serves its fundamental policy goal of growth management. Previous studies have shown that impact fees can serve as either a vehicle or restraint for land development. By using panel data from Florida counties in the U.S., this study shows that the use of impact fees precipitates local development by increasing the value of developable parcels. Impact fees allow developers to pursue more development activities as they bear the imposed fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the link between individual attitudes toward uncertainty on the one hand, and preferences over, as well as behavior within, various public goods institutions on the other hand. We incentive-compatibly elicit preferences over voluntary contribution mechanisms with and without reward and punishment options and then randomly assign subjects to play in one of the four institutions. We find that payoffs are significantly greater when punishment is allowed but that only a small minority of participants prefers such an environment. Somewhat surprisingly, preferences over institutions are generally independent of individual characteristics. Conversely, individual characteristics, including institutional preferences, are significantly predictive of behavior in the public goods game. For instance, risk-averse individuals preemptively punish more often. This suggests that when studying sanctions and rewards, it is important to consider individual attitudes toward risk and uncertainty-although they may not affect the original selection into institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should the aid financial burden be distributed across donor governments? This article discusses the “distributive justice” of the current aid-financing pattern, and advocates a progressive modality in which citizens from donor countries with higher living standards contribute proportionally more than citizens from countries with lower living standards. For this purpose, we conceive public foreign aid as a tax mechanism for redistributing income on a worldwide scale. The progressivity analysis for 45 bilateral donors (28 DAC countries and 17 non-DAC donors) using concentration curves and Suits indexes between 2000 and 2012 shows that the current distribution of the aid burden is insufficiently progressive (mainly due to the limited contributions of the richer donors). Finally, we argue that a progressive exaction scheme will improve the distributive justice of the aid system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past few decades, many counties have adopted development impact fees as an alternative to traditional tax funding for infrastructure required to support new development. In a theoretical model of firm entry using fixed costs and increasing returns to scale, additional fees, modeled as an increase in fixed costs, reduces the number of entrants and increases a firm's size. Using county level data on homogenous, small draw area firms in Florida, the research presented in this paper suggests that fees reduce the number of firms per capita in a jurisdiction. While population and market size are the main drivers of firms' location decisions, the results presented in this paper suggest that fees may have a negative effect on firm location decisions at the margin. Policy makers concerned about employment and commercial tax base should give pause before implementing a fee system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study which analyses the post-privatization economic scenario called the development fee (DF) in relation to Supreme Court of India's decision on the issue. Topics discussed include legal and regulatory issues connected with levy in relation to guidelines regarding airport charges including International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) documents, and privatization of airports owned by the Airport Authority of India (AAI).

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to investigate the degree of corporate financial distress (DOFD) and relationship between ownership structure and the DOFD in China. Design/methodology/approach -- The authors estimate the DOFD across a sample of 378 Chinese-listed companies that got into financial distress between 2000 and 2008. The DOFD reflects long-term solvency capability, short-term liquidity capability, development capability, risk level, profitability capability, operating capacity, and cash flow capability. The authors analyze the relationship between ownership structure and the DOFD in these companies, using the panel data analysis method. Findings - The authors find that a concentrated ownership structure is negatively related to the DOFD. Further, the results indicate that a state-owned status helps firms in decreasing their DOFD and that the separation of cash-flow rights and control rights is positively related to the DOFD. The authors also found that the Chinese special treatment (ST) system needs further improvement. The reason is that ST firms can be classified into "value" ST firms and "garbage" ST firms. They have different DOFD and change trend, so they should not be treated equally. Originality/value - This paper find that Chinese ST system and previous research are not helpful for risk-seeking investor to distinguish and evaluate "value" ST firms and "garbage" ST firms. It is unfair to warn and punish this two kinds of firms equally, so ST system should be improved. The authors also suggest that risk-seeking investor can choose ST firms that have a concentrated ownership structure and are controlled by the state or local government. These findings are not observed in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developer paid charges or contributions are a commonly used infrastructure funding mechanism for local governments. However, developers claim that these costs are merely passed on to home buyers, with adverse effects to housing affordability. Despite a plethora of government reports and industry advocacy, there remains no empirical evidence in Australia to confirm or quantify this passing on effect to home buyers and hence no data for which governments to base policy decision upon. This paper examines the question of who really pays for urban infrastructure and the impact of infrastructure charges on housing affordability. It presents the findings of a number of international empirical studies that provide evidence that infrastructure charges do increase house prices. Based on international findings, and in the absence of any Australian research, then these findings suggest that if the international findings are transferrable, then there is empirical evidence to support the proposition that developer paid infrastructure charges are a significant contributor to increasing house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the laws related to exactions use to develop land, to aid local government in providing public infrastructure in the U.S. Topics discussed include the U.S Supreme Court decision in the "Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District" case, the U.S. Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937; and laws related to private property under Fifth Amendment jurisprudence in the country.

The article focuses on the judicial review of the U.S. Supreme Court on the case Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District based on approval of a land use permit. Topics discussed include laws made for the regulation of land use permits and monetary exactions, judicial opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court on the case Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel related to monetary confiscations and impact of decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on the Takings Clause jurisprudence and the environment.

The author discusses the matter of urban sprawl across the world. Topics discussed include expansion of human population from urban to rural areas in the U.S., France and China, smart growth that deals with urban planning for promotion of pedestrian friendly communities, tax policies and payment of impact fees by developers as reasons for the sprawl and its impact in Las Vegas, Nevada.