Insitutional spending skyrocketing at New Mexico universities

By   /  May 17, 2013  /  Education, Featured, New Mexico, News  /  No Comments

SPENDING BATTLE: A New Mexico Watchdog investigation raises questions about whether universities are spending more money on running their institutions than educating students.

By Rob Nikolewski | New Mexico Watchdog

Do universities in New Mexico spend too much money on what’s called “institutional support” compared to academic support and instruction?

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National labor union gave $180K to nonprofit for ‘political activity’ during Oct. 2012

By   /  May 17, 2013  /  Accountability, Issues, News, Pennsylvania  /  No Comments

money-limit

 
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — A nonprofit running ads attacking Gov. Tom Corbett received at least $180,000 last year from a powerful national labor union.
Pennsylvanians for Accountability, a Pittsburgh-based “social welfare nonprofit” is exploiting a loophole in state campaign finance laws to avoid filing reports on donations and expenditures. In addition to their attacks [...]

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No cost? Not quite: Self-funded PA website contract costing up to $2.6M

By   /  May 16, 2013  /  Featured, News, Other News, Pennsylvania, State Government  /  No Comments

WEB WORK: The Office of Administration says server outages may be a thing of the past once its new contract for web services with NIC is up and running.

A state lawmaker continues to raise red flags about a website redesign and management contract.

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IRS wasn’t only agency hassling True the Vote

By   /  May 16, 2013  /  Ethics, Federal Government, News, Politics & Elections, Texas  /  8 Comments

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By Jon Cassidy | Watchdog.org
HOUSTON — Since filing for tax exemption at a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2010, the founders of True the Vote, a Houston-based group that tries to prevent elections fraud, have been overwhelmed with scrutiny from a host of government agencies, in particular, by the Internal Revenue Service.
Catherine and Bryan Englebrecht have suffered through 18 [...]

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For a fee: Measure aims to protect WI taxpayers

By   /  May 16, 2013  /  Accountability, Featured, Legislature, Local Government, News, Property Taxes, Tax Reform, Taxes, Taxes versus Fees, Wisconsin  /  1 Comment

A measure put into Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget prohibits municipalities from charging fees for services previously financed with property taxes, unless there is a corresponding property tax cut.

It may be back to the drawing board for Wisconsin officials who want to exceed their local spending authority.

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