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Chris Goodman

@cbgoodman.co
1.7K followers 559 following 5.8K posts

Professor & MPA Director @ NIU. Public finance & local govts. Special districts, mostly. 🚴 📍 Chicagoland 🌐 hello.cgoodman.com

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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 9h
Realistically, there are likely large systems that can't handle this. It's important, but the cost is going to be high.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 9h
Whether the legislature realizes it or not, this is a water district consolidation bill. Small districts will be unable to do much of this.
bondbuyer.com
Illinois bill would strengthen cybersecurity rules for water utilities
Illinois lawmakers are hammering out legislation to raise cybersecurity protections for local water utilities, a timely effort after cyberattacks this summer.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
I'm gonna be mad if I go out of town for a week and miss Fall in Chicago. Pretty much happened last year and it was a huge bummer.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
It does seem to be more or less plug and play (minus the charging bit). Perhaps easier to drop into an existing setup with UP or BNSF or whatever.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
Putting any property tax increases off the table is completely nuts (the others are actually good, no head tax, no counting "new" money from the state). Chicago underuses the PT relative to most places in the state.
chicago.suntimes.com
City Council faction draws line in sand in preelection budget battle with Mayor Brandon Johnson
One year after rejecting the mayor's corporate head tax, 29 opposition alderpersons tried to establish boundaries for the budget debate. At the top of the list — no property tax hike.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
Metra has said they're going to (eventually) spend $500M on electrification, seemingly entirely via battery. How much more capacity could we get if we spent that $500M on overhead lines and electric train sets? (I don't know, but I'm sure someone does.)
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
We're doing literally everything except putting up overhead lines.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
I am at a conference for all of this week. For maybe the first time in my career, I set an out-of-office responder. I'm working on boundaries.
media1.giphy.com
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
I loathe Microsoft 365, but at least our implementation of single sign-on has made it better. YMMV.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/09/2026
America's Best Idea
terragalleria.com
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 28/09/2026
If you use @obsidian.md and Zotero, the integrations are getting good. You can now annotate PDFs inside of Obsidian and have those annotations sync back to Zotero using ZotLit.
zotlit-beta.aidenlx.site
v2.2.0-beta.1
Zotero PDF reading and annotation in Obsidian, multi-select in the annotation view, exports in the note's own style
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 28/09/2026
From the abstract, this sounds like the paper I wished someone would write about AI in govt. Artificial Intelligence, Bureaucratic Discretion, and Democratic Administration
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 27/09/2026
🦅🦅🦅
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 27/09/2026
Ok, the new Apple Watch Ultra 4 battery life is for real. 3 day work trip, zero charges, 30% battery left when I got home. Huge change from even the 3. Garmin is reducing battery life to get a better screen and Apple has a better screen and is making the battery better. Convergence!
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Reposted by Chris Goodman
Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You wrote a brilliant article in 3,850 words; your editor wants 2,500. What counts as a word? How to count them? My #rstats wordcount() function counts the rendered .docx by section: body text vs. headings, footnotes, captions, tables, refs. Mine: body 2,484. Whew! 👨‍💻https://tinyurl.com/252q6f3z
tinyurl.com
What counts as a word? Count a .docx by section and category (body, headings, footnotes, captions, tables, references) the way your editor sees it — R
What counts as a word? Count a .docx by section and category (body, headings, footnotes, captions, tables, references) the way your editor sees it — R - README.md
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 24/09/2026
👀
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 24/09/2026
There’s no way you can convince me that AI capex is justified. Is AI going to fundamentally change society like railroads did? Absolutely not.
wsj.com
The AI Build-Out Is Becoming the Biggest Economic Bet in U.S. History
Data-center spending is greater than that for canals, railroads and grid combined—creating jobs and stock-market wealth, while boosting inflation and crowding out housing.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 24/09/2026
Ah
bloomberg.com
Warning Signs Are Flashing at America’s Overheating Landfills
Hot waste piles can become environmental disasters. A Bloomberg Businessweek analysis finds that many landfill operators and regulators aren’t intervening at the level experts say is needed.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 24/09/2026
Nothing quite like almost missing a 6 am flight because security is totally slammed.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 24/09/2026
Ah.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 23/09/2026
Oh!
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 23/09/2026
Taxes are too low for the upper end of the income distribution (or cap gains).
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 22/09/2026
planetizen.com
Maryland local governments examine if they should have more power to raise property taxes
Maryland’s housing market is out of reach for the majority of moderate-income residents.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 22/09/2026
I don't like spending my evenings reviewing Robert Rules…just in case.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 22/09/2026
Caroline Hoxby suggests otherwise. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10...
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
I can almost universally explain publication gaps in my early career to those exact comments. It took a bit to find the right angle.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
Oh, so you've seen my reviews!
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
I often hesitate to post stuff from Governing because they've taken a very unfortunate turn away from real journalism. And here's an example of it.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
Perhaps the OG work was poorly implemented. I've made a career out of re-examining old papers with footnotes that say something like, "theoretically, individual fixed effects would be great here, but we cannot include them without using all the currently existing processing power in the US."
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
governing.com
Some Localities Still Depend on Police Fines to Cover Budget Gaps
States have long tried to tamp down on speed traps and other operations where local law enforcement raise revenue via heavy use of citations.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
Not to be confused with Yard House (a Darden brand), which I do all the time.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
It's going to be wild if iOS 27.2 makes it out before iOS 27.1 ( specifically for the iPhone Duo).
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
I suspect this code section will become particularly important. Seemingly, Cook Co (only county larger than 3M) pays itself the penalty!
Sec. 20-145. 
		Penalty for failure to make a timely distribution. 
		Any county
collector who wilfully fails to pay over the amount of taxes due and payable at
the time or times required by Section 20-140, shall be subject to a penalty at
the rate of 0.1% per day on the amount unpaid, from the time the
amount becomes due and payable until it is paid. The sureties on the official
bond of the collector shall be liable for the payment of the penalty. The
penalty may be recovered in a civil action against the collector and his or her
sureties, in the name of the People of the State of Illinois, in any court of
competent jurisdiction. The amount of the penalty, when recovered, shall be
paid (i) in counties with less than 3,000,000 inhabitants, to the proper
authorities for whom the tax was collected and (ii) in counties with 3,000,000
or more  inhabitants, into the county treasury.
		
(Source: P.A. 87-1119; 88-455; incorporates 88-45; 88-670, eff. 12-2-94.)
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
One interesting thing that I need to do some confirmation on is that typically every month the county (any county in IL) is late on dispersing property tax payments comes with an interest penalty that grows over time. How much extra is Cook Co going to owe?
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
Mhmm. h/t @techdirt.com
xkcd.com
Security
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 21/09/2026
Payout gap: The county messed up property tax collections, this has extreme consequences for the levying govts (who cannot collect their own taxes, by law), and this is the minimum the county could do.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 18/09/2026
Banning NDA for all economic development projects should be an easy thing to do. Transparency should be required. The ones that want to keep them are often local govts (they think the agreements are vital to success)!
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Reposted by Chris Goodman
kottke.org @kottke.org · 18/09/2026
The History of Concrete, a new documentary film by John Wilson, who one review called “the Werner Herzog of the mundane”. This looks great! [youtube.com]
youtube.com
The History of Concrete - Official Trailer | Directed by John Wilson | In Theaters September 18
After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, he decides to use the industry-approved Hallmark formula to tell this seemingly drab story and increase his movie’s appeal. But his foundation soon begins to crumble—literally and figuratively—as he struggles to balance artistic freedom with the realities of the modern film industry.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 18/09/2026
IL doesn't exercise much oversight over local governments, example 472637.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 17/09/2026
This is coming to many communities, whether they like it or not.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 17/09/2026
Something missing from this is whether East Dundee has increased water rates at all in recent memory. I suspect not (or very minimally).
dailyherald.com
East Dundee weighing 30% hike in water rates to fund projects
East Dundee may hike its water rate by 20% in 2027 to help the village pay for $19 million in capital improvement projects over the next five years. The current rate is $10.42 per 1,000 gallons, but w...
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
Less than optimal.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
Undoubtedly, my students are the main lasting legacy of all my work.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
What are we here to do is a fantastic question to constantly ask yourself when in academia. aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/
In a listening session with instructors, we learned that some were considering using AI agents as research assistants instead of hiring undergraduates as UROPs. One can see the case for speed and efficient use of resources (especially now, when research resources are so constrained). But if those criteria come to dominate our decisions, we all have to ask, “What is it that we are here together to do?”

As a community, we need to keep in mind that although research is central to MIT’s mission, it’s more than an end in itself; on our campus, research is also an apprenticeship, a means of training the next generation of researchers to continue our work and drive our fields of inquiry forward. Using research as an opportunity for learning-by-doing may produce seeming “inefficiencies,” but that’s a feature, not a bug.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
I did not know that the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement existed before reading this (and what powers it has), but I suspect this is a relatively uncommonly exercised state power. There's no reason that other states could not exercise similar oversight.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
The cloud is not a backup strategy.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
And Exocet missiles, which I guess is offense but a particular kind.
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
media2.giphy.com
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 16/09/2026
Time everyone learns how much of the economy, directly or indirectly, runs on diesel. (A lot).
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Reposted by Chris Goodman
Dan Immergluck @danimmergluck.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A major failing of this country is the vilification of property taxes by opportunistic pols & affluent homeowners. Yes, property taxes often exhibit major racial & class inequities (Kahrl's The Black Tax). But it is our only real form of wealth tax & folks who can afford to pay it, should. 🧵1/2
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