Greg Shill

I’m thrilled to be joining the next edition of Local Government Law as a co-author. Very much looking forward to working with Lynn Baker, Clay Gillette, David Schleicher, and (also new to this edition) Nadav Shoked, all of whose work has shaped how so many of us think about the field.

Those of us old enough to remember the 2012 campaign and Romney 47% comment know these figures are essentially the same in the US. Currently, about 40% of US households pay no federal income tax and the top 20% of the income distribution pays about 80-85% of federal individual income tax.

Jevons update: The AI-use anecdotes I hear from medicine are the same as law: it’s juicing demand (for tests, interrogatories, etc.) by generating more ideas, which is then expressed in higher spending. I don’t know that we have good, global evidence yet but this is consistent with what we do know.

Pall Mall, great place to hire a flat for a coronation.

I love taking robotaxis personally, but in the big picture this is a far more promising form of automated vehicle.

We may soon find out whether states that have a proposition process are a risk to business formation and retention.

This is basic good government stuff. If moderates don’t do it, socialists eventually will—and get the credit.

It’s going to be option 4, I don’t see much in recent experience to suggest otherwise. Whether or not the gas tax is formally abolished we have in practice moved road funding over to the general fund.

Unironically, this is because the transit isn't good enough. I have spent many days in NYC running around two or three boroughs, doing tons of stuff.

Another great book that I assign a lot of in my transportation law class.

I somehow missed that Simpson Thacher (leading white-shoe law firm) has opened a Chicago office. They've taken 94k sq ft of Class A+ space in Fulton Market, which has to be one of the hottest commercial RE submarkets in the nation. www.chicagobusiness.com/real-estate/...

"Here, there, and everywhere: Remote work and the employment of disabled and older workers in the UK" via @voxeu cepr.org/voxeu/column... "A one percentage point increase in working from home raises full-time employment of people with a physical disability by about 0.9%"

“Use an app on your phone to bet on football powerhouse Indiana University or Big Ten rival USC” is not a sentence that would have made sense to me just a few years ago.

Architect vs. city planner, a classic debate. I presume schools that teach both make all their students watch this on the first day. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCF-...

This is a *great* book, btw. I assign more and more of it in my transportation law class. It's sort of organized as a textbook but it's also a good read. I recommend (and one day may just assign) the whole thing.

This phenomenon combines two forces: the choice to fund so much of state and local services via property rather than income taxes, and demographics—namely, a population aging out of the work force (and thus some income tax) but not property taxes.

The sea was angry that day, my friends.

Seat belts save lives. Wear one always.

Escape from New York (for tax purposes)

"SafeWalkr has features that other mapping programs don’t have, the students said. Their program tells users which streets have sidewalks, for instance, and it recommends which side of the road to walk on." Their principal "considers the practice [of walking to school] to be a 'lost art'"

Recent work suggests scope for more road pricing interventions. In a forthcoming article (2nd screenshot), Jonathan Levine and I argue that before widening highways, DOTs should be required to conduct an evaluation of the costs and benefits of road pricing instead. www.nber.org/papers/w35887

The UK's Personal Independence Payment (PIP) program is possibly the closest-ever attempt at socialism for car ownership, now accounting for 1 in 7 new car sales in the country. I look forward to the papers studying the impacts. Gift link to WSJ article: www.wsj.com/world/uk/uni...

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Historian: That page was burned in the Library of Alexandria, and no modern copies survive.

🚨 Updated version of Transportation for the Abundant Society (with Jonathan Levine) now posted. It’s our answer to the question, what does “abundance” mean in the context of transportation policy? We think it’s distinct from domains like housing. Feedback welcome. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

It was a pleasure presenting last week at the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Northwestern. I learned a lot, both from other people's work and their feedback on my paper (on shocks to firm location). A warm and welcoming community as well. It was my first CELS; looking forward to next time.

The placement of lots of local govt capital assets (schools, fire stations, etc) assumes that the local development landscape is more or less fixed in time—demand for those services will always exist nearby. However, we know this isn't true. We don't think enough about decline in local govt.

Lake forever, part 1 for now. infrastory.substack.com/p/the-great-...

Speed cameras are unlawful in New Jersey but the state does allow local police to use photos from these 'Safety Sticks' to identify drivers who park illegally in crosswalks. They then get a parking ticket in the mail... www.nj.com/traffic/2026...