America's Cities Need Direct Aid
Americans are eager to turn the page on what’s been a painful period in our history. While we have reasons for hope (including vaccines and new leadership in Washington), we have to be clear-eyed about the scale of the challenges we face and the critical role that state and local governments play in helping America overcome those challenges.
Across our country, for example, local public health departments are administering lifesaving vaccines in collaboration with state, federal, and private-sector partners. Local governments are also working to meet the immediate needs of Americans who’ve lost jobs and are struggling to stay in their homes and feed their families, working to help small businesses stay open, all while maintaining public safety, collecting trash, responding to severe weather and performing all the other services Americans expect and deserve.
This work is complicated by the fact that cities and towns across the country are facing severe budget deficits. Over a million state and local public service jobs have been lost to date. Many local governments are being forced to consider additional layoffs, furloughs, and cuts to critical services including public safety, public health and much more. These budget cuts will hinder our economic recovery and jeopardize our ability to fight COVID-19 when our residents need more resources, not fewer.
Take Detroit, which is projecting a revenue loss of $434 million over two fiscal years. Or Pittsburgh, which fell $57 million short on their budget last year and is expecting to be down $55 million this year. In Tulsa, sales tax revenue has declined for 11 straight months and the city has cut salaries by 10% through furloughs. And in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently announced the city will have a budget shortfall of $1.2 billion for 2021. Every one of these cities will have to make tough choices about how to address these shortfalls: cut jobs? Eliminate services?
And while the federal CARES Act and the federal stimulus package passed in December helped municipalities address specific COVID-related challenges, across the country, in city after city, county after county, local governments’ — and their residents’ — needs are still unmet.
Mayors know that this is not a red or blue city problem. More than 420 mayors — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents — have come together to urge Congress to support President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which would provide a total of $350 billion in direct fiscal assistance for state and local governments.
Our nation’s pandemic response must utilize state and local infrastructure to deliver resources, including vaccinations. Recently, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Winter Meeting, Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Biden’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, emphasized that Mayors will need to build on the existing critical coordinating function between state and local government as we ramp up the delivery, storage, and administration of vaccines.
We’re grateful that the president has already begun working closely with mayors and prioritizing state and local collaboration, but for this to be implemented effectively we need the resources to support it. Without direct, flexible financial aid, cities will continue to eliminate jobs and cut services to keep their budgets balanced, a unique challenge that faces local leaders every year. This will hamper vaccine distribution, limit critical support of local residents and prolong the economic pain of this pandemic.
But even as we work to contain the spread of COVID-19 and look ahead to economic recovery, we can’t lose track of other critical challenges and opportunities that need to be addressed at the local level.
Mayors are poised to continue leading on climate change with investments in sustainable infrastructure and innovative technologies that can be brought to scale, even after four years of an administration that abandoned America’s role on the global stage. Cities are looking to make reforms in local policy to address the impact of decades of systemic racism in policing, healthcare and education. We’re looking to make progress on immigration, gun violence prevention, infrastructure, and so much more.
But we can’t do any of those things if the immediate need for financial assistance isn’t met.
We must work together — with the Biden-Harris Administration, across both sides of the aisle in Congress, alongside local leaders, the private sector and everyday Americans — to emerge from this pandemic stronger.
Americans are ready to move away from the breakdowns we saw in 2020 towards a breakthrough in 2021. The way to deliver that for them is to ensure cities have the necessary resources to do the work the American people demand and deserve.
Greg Fischer is the Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky and President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more.
