Professor John Plecnik was quoted in Tax Notes twice during March 2016, once in an article which was published on March 11 and the second time in an article published on March 17.  Professor Plecnik’s quotes are available below:

WAYS AND MEANS BILLS TARGET TAX CREDIT FRAUD, ACA OVERPAYMENTS, March 11:

The proposed change in H.R. 4722 may not be the most effective approach to stopping fraud, according to John T. Plecnik of Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, who said the approach is only “a half measure.”
 
“The earned income tax credit already requires a valid Social Security number, and its error rate remains unacceptably high and the subject of great controversy,” Plecnik told Tax Analysts. “In response, Congress and the IRS have created new tax penalties, increased the severity of those penalties, and applied those penalties more frequently.”
 
But Plecnik said those penalties wouldn’t be necessary if the IRS were to verify fully the eligibility of taxpayers claiming refundable credits before paying them out. “Although it would inevitably delay tax refunds, verification before payment would save the public billions of dollars and discourage fraud without imposing draconian bans or penalties on taxpayers,” he said.

WAYS AND MEANS FAVORABLY REPORTS CONTROVERSIAL CHILD CREDIT BILL, March 17:

To John T. Plecnik of Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, the child credit bill is “a half measure” because the earned income tax credit, which already requires a valid SSN, remains subject to erroneous claims and fraud that have led to new and more severe penalties created by Congress and the IRS.

The two article are available here:

Tax Notes Today, Plecnik, 3.11.16

Tax Notes Today, Plecnik, 3.17.16

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio has been named Director on the Board of Directors of the Public International Law and Policy Group, a Washington, D.C.-based non-governmental organization whose mission is to provide free legal assistance to states and governments involved in peace negotiations, to draft post-conflict constitutions, and to assist in prosecuting war criminals. Professor Sterio had previously served as a consultant to the PILPG, on various projects related to maritime piracy prosecutions, and on a project related to the documentation of human rights abuses in South Sudan.

Professor Geier was quoted extensively in a March 2016 article published in The Bottom Line, a Canadian accounting journal (Jeff Buckstein, U.S. Top Court Rejects “Jock Tax” Appeal). The article explored the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of Cleveland’s certiorari petition in two Ohio Supreme Court cases: Hillenmeyer v. Cleveland Board of Revenue and Saturday v. Cleveland Board of Revenue. Hillenmeyer held that the “games played” method that Cleveland used to allocate the income of professional football players playing the Browns in Cleveland for purposes of Cleveland’s 2% income tax was unconstitutional because that method effectively taxed players on income earned outside Cleveland. Virtually all other municipalities use the “duty days” method, under which a smaller portion of each player’s annual football salaries could be taxed by Cleveland. Without a split in the circuits, Geier thought it not surprising that the U.S. Supreme Court did not grant cert. The article quoted her as saying, “I do think that Cleveland overreached and, in particular, that this illustrates a problem when we don’t have a uniform method among various taxing jurisdictions to tax the same slice of income.” Geier also noted that individuals generally are not taxed by Cleveland unless they spend at least 12 days (increased to 20 in 2016) in Cleveland. “For example, if a CEO comes to Cleveland and closes a deal and spends only a week here, Cleveland cannot tax any portion of the CEO’s wages for that year, even though some of it was earned in Cleveland.” But professional athletes and entertainers cannot benefit from this threshold and can be taxed on income earned in Cleveland from even a single game or concert.

The article is available below:

Jock Tax article

(This article originally appeared in the March 2016 issue of The Bottom Line.  Any other use requires further permission requests.)

Professor John Plecnik was featured on Cleveland.com as part of an article on Millennials who serve Northeast Ohio in public office.  Entitled “Millennials in office:  A new generation of politics and public service,” this article highlights sixteen officeholders under the age of thirty-five and asks them about their generation’s perspective on public service.  As Vice President of Council and Councilman-at-Large for the City of Willoughby Hills, Professor Plecnik expressed hope that Millennials will bring a “fresh approach” to public service with “more focus on balancing our budget, dealing with the national debt, and creating a sustainable plan for America’s future.”  The article is available here.

Professor Alan Weinstein presented at three sessions during the American Planning Association’s (APA) National Planning Conference in Phoenix, April 2-5.  On Sunday, April 3, he presented “Recent Changes to FCC Rules Governing Local Government Telecommunications Regulations” as part of an Alfred Bettman Law Symposium session titled “Federal Regulations Affecting Land-Use Decisions” that he organized. That same day he also presented “The Effect of Reed v. Town of Gilbert on First Amendment Rulings in the Lower Courts” as part of a session titled “Local Sign Regulation” organized by the Arizona Chapter of the APA. On Monday, April 4, he presented “What Can (and Should) Local Governments Do About Racial and Income Segregation in Housing,” as part of an Alfred Bettman Law Symposium session titled “Planning as if ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ” that he organized.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio published a blog post entitled “Radovan Karadzic Convicted by ICTY Trial Chamber” on Intlawgrrls.  Professor Sterio’s blog post, available here, discusses the Karadzic verdict, delivered on March 24, 2016.  Radovan Karadzic was the Bosnian Serb leader during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  He spent several years in hiding, after the end of the conflict, and was ultimately found and arrested in Belgrade in 2008.  He was then transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia at the Hague, where he faced trial on multiple charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.  Karadzic was convicted of most counts and sentenced to 40 years in prison, which, in light of his current age (70), most likely amounts to life imprisonment.

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, attended the 10th International Academic Association for Planning, Law, and Property Rights conference at the University of Bern, Switzerland.  On a February 17, 2016, panel with Prof. Daniel Tarlock (Chicago-Kent) and Deborah Musiker (Northwestern), she presented Seeking Local Control: When a State’s Legislation and Constitution Collides with Local Government’s Quest to Influence Shale Development.

For the second month in a row, Professor Mickey Davis’ scholarship on legal issues related to pharmaceutical pricing, has garnered the highest number of views among Cleveland-Marshall College of Law professors on ResearchGate.  Congratulations to Professor Davis!

Professor Brian Ray

ICONnect, the blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law, recently featured Professor Brian Ray’s new book, Engaging with Social Rights: Procedure, Participation and Democracy in South Africa’s Second Wave (Cambridge forthcoming 2016), in a virtual book review roundtable discussion.  The virtual roundtable, available here, was introduced by Professor Richard Albert of the Boston College Law School, and the participants included Professor Ray himself, as well as Professor Bernadette Atuahene from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and Professor Richard Stacey from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

Here is a brief description of Professor Ray’s book:

With a new and comprehensive account of the South African Constitutional Court’s social rights decisions, Brian Ray argues that the Court’s procedural enforcement approach has had significant but underappreciated effects on law and policy and challenges the view that a stronger substantive standard of review is necessary to realize these rights. Drawing connections between the Court’s widely acclaimed early decisions and the more recent second-wave cases, Ray explains that the Court has responded to the democratic legitimacy and institutional competence concerns that consistently constrain it by developing doctrines and remedial techniques that enable activists, civil society and local communities to press directly for rights-protective policies through structured, court-managed engagement processes. Engaging with Social Rights shows how those tools could be developed to make state institutions responsive to the needs of poor communities by giving those communities and their advocates consistent access to policy-making and planning processes.

In an op-ed recently released on Cleveland.com, http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/03/akron_can_start_its_own_crimin.html, Professor Mead calls on the City of Akron to change its anti-homeless policies.  In the op-ed, Professor Mead urges the City to reconsider its anti-panhandling law and the City’s alleged practice of destroying homeless encampments, arguing that there are cheaper, more productive ways to alleviate homelessness.  Professor Mead is also working with Professor Doron Kalir and students from the Cleveland-Marshall Civil Litigation Clinic on litigation related to these issues.