Faculty Accolades
Gunderson in the News
State's fiscal alternatives examinedThe Arizona Daily Sun
By TRACIE HANSEN and RONALD GUNDERSON
COCONINO VOICES
Friday, April 17, 2009
Ronald Gunderson, professor of economics at NAU, served on the Fiscal Alternative Choices Team, or FACT. The team of experts on state-local finance from Arizona's universities and the Arizona Board of Regents addressed both the short-term deficit and also long-term structural issues.
FACT recently presented its 16 budget-balancing options to Gov. Jan Brewer and state legislators. Tracie Hansen of the NAU Office of Public Affairs asked Gunderson to highlight some of the ideas the task force generated.
“The question that should be addressed does not revolve around whether or not to raise taxes, or whether tax rates are too high, or not high enough. Instead, the more important question is whether or not the proposed uses of the tax dollars are "worth it" in the minds of Arizona residents and taxpayers. An uncomfortable notion has arisen that higher taxes are always "bad" and are something to be avoided. However, this position does not assign any positive value to the uses of the tax dollars. Arizona citizens need to assign values to the levels of education, transportation, social services and other public goods that they are willing to pay for, and establish a tax policy that generates the amount of revenue needed to fund those needs that they consider to be of value. In the current environment, the amount of available revenue drives the level of expenditure. We have it exactly backward.”
For more of this story, click here:
www.azdailysun.com/articles/2009/04/17/news/opinion/guest/20090417_guest_194670.txt
To read the full interview, go to tiny.cc/WNjLK. To read the entire FACT report go to tiny.cc/3EoGs.
Flagstaff looks to second-home buyers, tourists for recovery
USA Today
By Christine Dugas
Posted 2/16/2009
"'We're heavily dominated by tourism,' says Ronald Gunderson, economics professor at Northern Arizona University. 'We are also heavily dependent on the second-home industry.
In December, home prices were down 38.9% from a year earlier.
But unlike the nearby Phoenix metro area, Flagstaff has not been hit by a dramatic decline in home sales, Gunderson says. In December, the city's home sales were down 9.3%.
'Obviously, we have been hurt like everybody else,' Gunderson says. 'Construction has been a very important sector in our community, and that sector is basically stuck right now.'
Given the gloomy economy, even the popular ski slopes may not help attract many home buyers to Flagstaff.
Gunderson says he expects a recovery with an economy uptick, but, 'it's just a matter of how long it's going to take.'"
For the full story, click here: www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/closetohome/2009-02-16-flagstaff-arizona-home-market_N.htm
