New Taipei City ranks at the bottom in per capita centrally allotted tax revenues for next year, and the blue and green camps have traded long-distance barbs over it — bad news for New Taipei residents, and an early start to the year-end mayoral race.

• Lee Si-chuan, the Kuomintang's candidate for New Taipei mayor, accused the central government of handing out money with one hand while cutting subsidies with the other, and called on his opponent Su Chiao-hui to join him in holding it to account.
• Su Chiao-hui's campaign office hit back, saying the current allocation formula is the version amended under Kuomintang legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi.
• At the time, Democratic Progressive Party legislators protested, but Lee Si-chuan, then serving as Taipei deputy mayor, raised no objection to Fu Kun-chi.
• Taipei City has 1.6 million fewer residents than New Taipei and only one-seventh of its area, yet its per capita allocation is twice New Taipei's.
• Su Chiao-hui's camp also criticised Lee Si-chuan for spending heavily on shade structures that have yet to be delivered and on rusting bus shelters.

Outlook: The inequity in the allocation of centrally allotted tax revenues will become the main line of attack in the New Taipei mayoral race, and the pace at which the two sides expose each other's weak points is expected only to intensify.