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Public spending must support everyone, not just the rich
Americans occupy increasingly separate economic spheres. Each year, more Americans struggle to afford housing, access quality education, pay for health care, and retire above poverty. A majority of Americans lack enough savings to weather a short spell of unemployment or a costly car repair. Our schools are more economically and racially segregated now than in…
How is this recession different from all other recessions?
I spoke with an sfgate.com reporter recently about how the COVID-19 crisis could impact Bay Area local governments. As always, there is a lot I said that didn’t make it into the article so here’s a bit longer ramble. I’m working on updating the numbers and data underlying these thoughts, so this is just some…
Beyond austerity
I started this blog—and chose the name—several years ago while finishing my dissertation. My intent was to write about my research on the shrinking public sphere and the persistent narrative of scarcity that characterizes governance in the U.S. I called it "beyond austerity" because I thought most scholarship on austerity was simplistic and that we…Participatory Budgeting: not just for regular budgets
The Participatory Budgeting Project has a guide for communities that want to participate in decisions about the use of funds from Tax Increment Financing districts. The governance structure associated with Tax Increment Financing varies by state (and not all states have TIF), but there are potentially significant amounts of funding at stake. TIF districts capture the…
Why is recovery taking so long—and who’s to blame?
We are enduring one of the slowest economic recoveries in recent history, and the pace can be entirely explained by the fiscal austerity imposed by Republican members of Congress and also legislators and governors at the state level. EPI’s Josh Bivens examines the reasons beyond our slow economic recovery (one that has progressively slowed with…
From the annals of state austerity budgets…
To the Editor: Thank you for your editorial about Illinois and Kansas as examples of states where policy makers do more harm than good (“Sorry Tales From Two Statehouses,” April 25). Illinois’ record 10-month budget impasse is eroding much of its educational and social service systems. According to a poll of 444 Illinois social service…
Welfare and the politics of poverty
Great recap of the welfare reform travesty – in which Clinton admits that the poorest families in the U.S. are worse off after welfare reform. Also describes how state control, combined with fiscal downturns, pulled money away from the poor.
Water woes could sink Flint’s property values even more
The situation in Flint only gets worse: not surprisingly, residents are now worried about their property values, which have already fallen significantly over the past decade. The inability of many residents to sell their homes will only get worse as the reputation of the city’s water supply plummets. This means not only an ongoing crisis…
Defending public pensions
I’ve written a lot about how public pensions came to be blamed for the fiscal crisis looming (or already “crippling”) many cities and states. The National Public Pension Project has been working since 2007 to change the narrative about the value of public pension plans, and has an interesting website and blog. NPPC believes every…
Crowdfunding for the Public Good Is Evil | WIRED
Important article about the slippery slope from an underpaid teacher crowdfunding for classroom supplies to a bankruptcy city crowdfunding to clean up its parks. Crowdfunding is great when it funds new products that aren’t getting supported by more conventional forms of investment: Public necessities, by contrast, are not awesome; they’re essential. Roads, health care, education:…
BART gets real
Infrastructure may not be sexy, but you tend to notice when it crumbles around you. BART has been having all kinds of problems lately, and its twitter account manager isn’t pulling any punches. @tquad64 Planners in 1996 had no way of predicting the tech boom – track redundancy, new tunnels & transbay tubes are decades-long…
When universities go bankrupt…
LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn’t soon take a turn for the better. Louisiana’s flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on…
The Glitch in Colorado’s Weed Experiment – NYTimes.com
To be filed under the “be careful what you wish for” category of fiscal policy. Colorado scrambles to avoid having to refund all of the revenue from marijuana sales, because, well because SMALL GOVERNMENT! As an April 1 report in The Times explained, Colorado’s tax revenues have recently surged, thanks in part to the booming…
The federal budget, battleground
So much to say about Obama’s budget, the geek in me actually wants to read the entire plan, but I have this pesky dissertation to finish instead. Budgets are inherently redistributive documents, in one direction or another. Obama’s proposal is being characterized as a bold effort to redistribute the benefits of the recovery to the…
Greek voters reject austerity
The Syriza party wins a major victory in Greece, forming an alliance with right-wing opponents to austerity (or, more specifically, to following the orders of Germany and the EU). I wish I had time to read much more about what’s happening in Europe, so I’ll just have to save it for summer beachside reading, post-dissertation….
Informal Economy Budget Analysis
I just stumbled across this concept today (during the San Francisco Bay Area superstorm!): Informal Economy Budget Analysis. Pioneered by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). In their words: Informal Economy Budget Analysis (IEBA) examines how government budgets address the needs and interests of different groups of informal workers. It also investigates what…
Watchdog: Borrowing Trouble – Chicago Tribune series
A great series finished last month on the Chicago Public Schools district’s engagement in complex bond deals, the lack of public oversight, and the high costs of many of those deals. I’ve been researching interest rate swaps for over a year, and I’m impressed with the thoroughness of the reporting here. THIS is why we…
Detroit loses power, literally.
Detroit — A widespread power outage Tuesday that caused evacuations of buildings throughout downtown is “another reminder of how much work we still have to do to rebuild the city,” Mayor Mike Duggan said. Duggan, speaking at an afternoon press conference, said Detroit is in the early stages of a four-year, $200 million plan to…
News of the unsurprising: tax cuts lead to budget deficits
November 18, 2014 – RALEIGH, N.C. North Carolina lawmakers are likely enjoying some downtime after the legislative session and midterm election, but experts predict a tough session waiting for them on their return to Raleigh. A report from the Office of the State Controller indicates tax revenues are down by almost $400 million compared with this same…
Kansas cuts taxes, guess what happens next?
There may be even bigger challenges coming. In addition to the likelihood the state will face another unpleasant revenue surprise in the spring, a pending court decision could obligate the legislature to add hundreds of millions of dollars a year to state aid to school districts. And bond rating agencies, which already downgraded the state’s…
IMF critiqued internally for austerity response
BY ANNA YUKHANANOVWASHINGTON Tue Nov 4, 2014 Reuters – The International Monetary Fund ignored its own research and pushed too early for richer countries to trim budgets after the global financial crisis, the IMFs internal auditor said on Tuesday. The Washington-based multilateral lender, concerned about high debt levels and large fiscal deficits, urged countries like…
We’re not in Kansas anymore – or are we?
Great clip from the Daily Show about tax cut strategies gone wrong, prompting Kansas Republicans to endorse the Democratic opponent of Sam Brownback, the current Republican Governor. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook
“The Social Geographies of Recession and Austerity”
I just stumbled on this great list of resources from early this year, on a blog by Alison Stenning: Some really great blogs have emerged over the past few years as people have tried to document their own, and others’, struggles with austerity. There’s an article about some of these blogs here. These are some of the most interesting…
The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills
Subtitle: Recessions, Budget Battles and the Politics of Life and Death. By David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu —thebodyeconomic.com This book came out in 2013, and is frequently cited in discussions of austerity and the damage – short- and long-term – resulting from budget cuts, particularly at the national level. The book is organized in three…
Suburban austerity
Five decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty, the nation’s poor are more likely to be found in suburbs like this one than in cities or rural areas, and poverty in suburbs is rising faster than in any other setting in the country. By 2011, there were three million more people…
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest – NYTimes.com
More and more coverage of American inequality, but I’m curious about how it’s often framed as the disappearance, or decline of the middle class. This article paints an interesting picture of American middle class decline relative to its counterpart in other countries, and paints a picture of economic crisis fueling the relative decline of Americans…
Bailing on Detroit – Jamie Peck
Jamie Peck, Geography professor at The University of British Columbia, has written quite a bit about neoliberalism, what he calls “austerity urbanism” and the ongoing saga of Detroit’s finances. He has an insightful blog post on how terms like bailout, responsibility, and federalism are serving to seal Detroit’s fate as a sinking ship, forced to…
Chicago’s Credit Rating Downgraded by Moody’s – NYTimes.com
The pension battle in Chicago and Illinois will be fueled by Moody’s latest announcement: Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Chicago’s credit rating, citing the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. The agency announced Tuesday it was lowering the rating on $8.3 billion in debt to Baa1, from A3, putting it only three notches above junk status. Moody’s gave Chicago a negative…
To Pay for Infrastructure Repairs, Obama Seeks Tax Changes
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Caught between a gridlocked Congress and a Highway Trust Fund that will soon be broke, President Obama on Wednesday urged lawmakers to overhaul corporate and business taxes to pay for repairing and replacing the nation’s aging roads, rails, bridges and tunnels. … New legislation to pay for transportation projects is an urgent priority for both…
Woops!
The New York Times gets transcripts of conversations between the economists responsible for guiding the U.S. economy past the financial crisis, and failing. The hundreds of pages of transcripts, based on recordings made at the time, reveal the ignorance of Fed officials about economic conditions during the climactic months of the financial crisis. Officials repeatedly…
Michigan has nearly $1B more than expected for budget | Crains Detroit Business
State budgets have been rebounding much faster than most city budgets (for many reasons: spending cuts achieved through attrition are finally appearing on the balance sheet, income taxes have begun to recover faster than housing values, etc.). Accordingly, states that were experiencing “fiscal emergencies” just a few months ago are now facing surpluses as they…
Pensions for city workers can’t be cut, but pay can, judge rules in major San Jose case – San Jose Mercury News
The fate of San Jose’s pension reforms remains unclear after a recent court decision. SAN JOSE — In a landmark ruling that could help shape city budgets around the state, a judge invalidated key parts of San Jose’s voter-approved pension cuts but upheld other elements that could still save huge taxpayer costs. Santa Clara County…
Police Salaries and Pensions Push California City to Brink – NYTimes.com
A California city that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after a developer secured a $10 million judgment against it, Desert Hot Springs was featured in the NYT for its fiscal troubles. The city, Desert Hot Springs, population 27,000, is slowly edging toward bankruptcy, largely because of police salaries and skyrocketing pension costs, but also because…
What Washington Gives New York – Added Strain on the Social Safety Net – NYTimes.com
New York City’s commitment to preserving a social safety net is quietly heroic. When the federal government began slashing last March, officials with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development drained their reserves to keep building housing. They also preserved the rental vouchers that stand between tens of thousands of Lucy Delgados and homelessness. But…
More than one way for a city to die
There has been a lot of press lately, nationally and locally, about the skyrocketing cost of living and doing business in San Francisco. While all that money keeps the city in better fiscal shape than most places in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of life for San Franciscans. In fact, it kills…
Report: Detroit bankruptcy caused by state cuts, shrinking tax base, not long-term debt | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
While we wait for the federal judge to rule on Detroit’s petition for bankruptcy, a Demos report enters the fray: WASHINGTON — A New York-based think tank released a report today questioning Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s assertion that the city’s long-term debt is responsible for its fiscal problems, or that pension contributions are at…
Peter Marcuse on Participatory Budgeting
I’ve just discovered Peter Marcuse’s blog on critical planning, and the post at the top is on participatory budgeting. Marcuse’s 1981 article “The targeted crisis: on the ideology of the urban fiscal crisis and its uses” has been instrumental in framing my dissertation, so I’m excited to see that he’s turning his attention to city…
How Austerity Kills
Over a year ago I saved an article that caught my eye – Businessweek, of all sources, reporting on a study connecting austerity and a spike in HIV in Greece: HIV infections among drug users in Greece jumped more than 20-fold in fewer than two years, fueled by a lack of needle exchange and methadone…
Reparations From Banks – NYTimes.com
After five years, the banks are starting to be held to account. Last week, JP Morgan: The government’s attempts to hold banks accountable for their mortgage practices may finally be paying off. On Friday, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $5.1 billion to the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to resolve charges related to…
Bankruptcy for Ailing Detroit, but Prosperity for Its Teams – NYTimes.com
The Detroit slide into bankruptcy is like describing an elephant: hard to know where to start. The narratives circulating about Detroit are all fascinating, sometimes irritatingly (but predictably) simplistic but I think the reporting has improved with time, as reporters are forced to look for new angles. Here’s the New York Times’ latest piece: Detroit’s…
Here Is Every Foreign Country That Gets More Federal Aid Than Detroit – Next City
There’s a lot to say about these kind of comparisons (do we really want to get people to pit struggling cities against (in some cases) struggling countries?) but the raw numbers are interesting. Even more interesting would be a historical comparison of federal aid to Detroit and other U.S. cities (spoiler alert!). I Here Is…
The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.
Just for good old mapping fun. The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S..
Rich people, poor people
Mayor Bloomberg’s interesting framing of how rich people bring more money to the city’s budget, which helps the many poor people living in the city (yes, despite all the frenzy about hipsters in NY, 46% of New Yorkers’s live under 150% of the federal poverty threshold, or less than $35,775 for a family of four)….
The Radicalism of Today’s Austerity in One Chart | Economic Policy Institute
The Radicalism of Today’s Austerity in One Chart | Economic Policy Institute.
Left with nothing | The Washington Post
Cities struggling with vacant properties can use their ability to place liens on properties that fall behind on their taxes, a terrific way for cities to reclaim properties not being used by their owners (usually property speculators). Flint and Cleveland have used this, as have other so-called ‘shrinking’ cities. But in this terrible twist, Washington…
Daily Reminder of Texas State Budget Cuts – NYTimes.com
Texas’ hostility to public investment is starting to come home to roost in tangible ways. Great piece in the New York Times about how falling transportation funding manifests itself in gravel roads, one of the few places where spending cuts are felt by nearly everyone. Transportation is not the state’s only underfinanced program, but it…
Rich Man’s Recovery – NYTimes.com
I’m too jet-lagged to write much about this, and am coming late to the lively discussion over Saez & Piketty’s latest piece about rising income inequality. The dramatic rise in earnings and wealth inequality between the 1% and the rest of the country is important, and as Krugman says, demoralizing for most Americans. But there’s…
Thousands of Marylanders are losing homes in second wave of foreclosures – The Washington Post
Cities have been devastated by falling property taxes, fueled by both falling property values and a growing number of properties for which no property taxes are being paid. Property taxes continue to fall as the valuations catch up to the new market values, and now a long-predicted “second wave” of foreclosures is likely to damage…
Detroit, bankruptcy, and the national pension fixation
The post I wish I had time to write: how easily people can imagine taking away a retiree’s pension, how small those pensions usually are, and how controversial the assessment of Detroit’s (and everyone else’s) actual pension problem is (for starters, Morningstar says Detroit followed industry practice for its pension plan right up until the…
More than one million join Brazil protests – Americas – Al Jazeera English
Brazil, afire with urban protests: More than one million join Brazil protests – Americas – Al Jazeera English.
Local journalism: Las Vegas
I’ve been thinking recently about how broadly I conceive the term “urban austerity.” Austerity conjures up not just scarcity, cutbacks, severity, but also the people who are outside that scarcity; the people who impose it, who argue for its necessity and who decide which parts of the city need to be well-funded, shored-up, and which…
What the end looks like
The New York Times is stepping up its coverage of Detroit once again, as the city’s emergency manager issues dire warnings to creditors and seems to be paving the way to bankruptcy. There was a flurry of stories about the possibility of the Detroit Institute of Art perhaps being liquidated to help pay off Detroit’s…
Whole Foods opens in Detroit, threatening stereotypes everywhere | Grist
What is the opposite of urban austerity, or the institution that puts a landscape of abandonment and neglect in stark relief…Whole Foods? Recipient of $5.8 million in public money (I guess when you’re about to go bankrupt, what’s a few million?), opening on the same week as the city’s impending bankruptcy starts to take shape….
In Embattled Detroit, No Talk of Sharing Pain – NYTimes.com
Detroit, currently under the governance of an emergency manager, seems destined for bankruptcy or mass default (it has already begun to default on some of its credit payments. Either scenario will be groundbreaking in municipal finance and in the power relationships between bankers, retirees, cities, and states. The impending battle between people living on fixed…
China state auditor warns over local government debt levels | Reuters
China’s state auditor warned on Monday that debt levels among local governments are rising and the financial burdens and risks are not being properly managed, adding to concerns over the health of the country’s financial system. Sounds familiar. Read: China state auditor warns over local government debt levels | Reuters.
San Francisco throws good money after bad
After wading through article after article about cities that can barely afford to pave their roads and keep libraries open, this is the kind of piece that makes me cringe. A sailing race for billionaires convinces the city to play host and pour all kinds of money into piers, advertising, you name it. Surprise, surprise,…
Report says poor are moving to nation’s suburbs – SFGate
Some of my colleagues have been talking about this for years, but it takes time for the data to reflect what people intuitively perceive: that the return to the city by wealthier residents, driven by many factors, has driven out poorer residents to the suburbs. Suburbs are in many cases less equipped to deal with…
New York City’s libraries: open less than Detroit’s!
It’s no secret that libraries are getting squeezed by repeated budget crises (threatened cuts, then partially restored funding, over several years adds up to libraries that spend more and more time closed). New York City’s proposed budget is yet again threatening big cuts to library funding, in a city where already 30% of libraries are…
Bill Seeks to Tie Municipal Borrowing to Public Pension Disclosure – NYTimes.com
There are many policies floating around to reform the muck that is municipal finance these days. A group of U.S. representatives from California are pushing a bill in Congress that would require states and cities to disclose the “true cost” of their pension plans, and whether they can pay those costs. California, of course, is…
Austerity never works: Deficit hawks are amoral — and wrong – Salon.com
I’m finally getting around to reading Robert Kuttner’s great article on austerity and, more specifically, risk and moral hazard. The idea that government (and individuals) must be punished in order to shock them into “living within their means” is so ingrained in our national discourse that its proponents hardly need to articulate it any longer….
Court to Decide on Pensions in Stockton, Calif., Bankruptcy – NYTimes.com
Wall Street is taking America’s biggest pension fund to court this week, for a long-awaited battle over who takes the losses when a city goes bust — workers and retirees, municipal bondholders, or both. California is being closely watched as battles in San Bernardino and Stockton look to reshape how pensions are treated…
Transparency and budget cuts: a winning combination?
There has been a lot of talk about making public data more readily available, and of involving the public (most obviously in the participatory budgeting movement). These two strategies sit in curious counterpoint to the equally popular trend of treating municipal finances as increasingly complex and needing expert (i.e. private sector) intervention. Anyway, here’s a…
Sports stadiums: an inevitable drain on city budgets?
Behind the rhetoric about public employees bankrupting cities, there are a few silent drains on city budgets (and now London faces the likelihood that its hopes for a post-Olympics windfall, like nearly every other city in history, won’t materialize.) Sports stadiums are perhaps the biggest single subsidy packages doled out, and nearly every study shoes…
States budget cuts leave poor in a fix – SFGate
California has apparently “fixed” its budget deficit, but at what cost? One of the fallouts from the unfolding budget crises in cities and states has of course been cuts to social programs. But the scale of those cuts often gets masked by the noise of political fighting. One could be forgiven for not being able…
It’s Official: Austerity Economics Doesn’t Work : The New Yorker
The sheen is starting to fade from the idea of austerity, and the U.K. is explicitly admitting as much. Cassidy claims that the U.S. has served as a “control” case, with the Obama Administration pursuing a Keynesian approach to Britain’s neoliberal one. I think that’s a debatable characterization of what the U.S. federal government has…
Los Angeles: doing less with less
The deep local budget cuts made over the past few years are starting to take a toll on local services, although . Los Angeles fire chief was called to the carpet to explain slow response times in Los Angeles (only 61% of emergency calls meet national standards for response times), and he put the issue…
NYT series on subsidies, part 2 (Texas)
The New York Times is running part two of its series on state and local corporate welfare. Today’s piece focuses on Texas, the biggest grantor of such subsidies, and a state at the forefront of both radical cuts to education spending and aggressive state tax cuts that have left both the state and local budgets…
Economic development, or blackmail?
The New York Times is running a terrific series on tax breaks and other subsidies given by governments, especially local and state governments, to corporations that promise jobs and revenue, despite the patent failure of such subsidies to improve the economic situation of communities. This first part of the series features GM, among other companies,…
Following the money
It’s no secret that local governments give billions of dollars to companies in the form of tax breaks and other benefits, in both good times and bad. But policymakers are loathe to tally up the real costs of this approach to economic development. Today the New York Times launched a series of articles on such…
Detroit: urban austerity as art form
Life at the outer limits of urban austerity: Burn, a new documentary about Detroit’s fire department, tells a story that could perhaps echo throughout many U.S. cities: At a certain point in a city’s decline its financial resources are so diminished that life-or-death services like policing and firefighting have to be cut back at the…
The Myth of the Exploding Welfare State
A great piece from Martin Eiermann in the Huffington Post last month about the assumption (“myth”) that the welfare state (public spending, entitlements, etc.) is blamed for fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The same narrative prevails in U.S. politics, especially as we teeter over the “fiscal cliff.” Five years have passed since the…
Mayors go to Capital Hill to urge action on the “fiscal cliff”
Mayors from Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and other cities visited Washington, D.C. to talk with lawmakers about the effects of “sequestration” on cities. “Too often,” says Mayor Rybak of Minneapolis, “a line-item cut in Washington one year will lead to an expense in a city the years after.” Scott Smith, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., is…
Economists urge “Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity”
Campaign for America’s Future is circulating a petition against austerity measures: About 350 economists and experts have signed a statement calling for “presidential leadership — and congressional action — to spur jobs and growth, not dangerous austerity.” The statement warns Washington leaders to heed the lessons of European countries that have tried to cut their…
The Austerity Bomb
The “fiscal cliff” is definitely the worst term for a constructed policy impasse, but I’m not sure how I feel about “austerity bomb.” Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo used the term in an article earlier this week: Automatic, across-the-board reductions to domestic and defense spending, combined with the looming expiration of the Bush tax…
What I’m doing this month
November is a month of heavy focused writing for me, which is all about public accountability so I thought I’d post it on here: Six key rules: • Decide on a goal that’s word, time or task based (and stretches you) • Publicly declare said goal (this gives you a push from the start) •…
Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law: Good for banks, not so good for people
Michigan’s Emergency Manager law is a big part of my dissertation, so I haven’t written about it much here. But after wading through the overwhelming media support for Proposition 1, which will affirm the Emergency Manager law passed by Republicans in 2011, a rare piece on the underlying issues caught my eye: Those who like…
Disasters and governments: all politics is local
Mitchell L. Moss writes for CNN.com about the relationship between urban policy and disasters. Much has been made of how the disaster will affect the national election, but as Moss points out it’s Mayor Bloomberg, Governors Cuomo and Christie, and other mayors who will deal with the fallout from Sandy. And he also points out…
Off the deep end
The “fiscal cliff” is one of my least favorite metaphors for an actual policy-making disaster. As the precipice nears, state governments are, naturally, starting to panic (California has its very own fiscal cliff also coming in January 2013, if a key ballot measure fails). NBCNews.com has a story on this panic: “States are closely linked to…
Austerity, then and now
I saved this article almost a year ago, but I came back to it while thinking of how things in Europe have unfolded over that year, and how austerity has become a more loaded term across the Atlantic, even as it . Cowell begins by lamenting (I think, his tone is hard to gauge) that…
“The Municipal Sandwich”
The municipal bond market’s view of city budget woes, via Goodwin Procter’s take on the Pew report about struggling cities (which is worth reading): A recent report issued by The Pew Charitable Trusts American Cities Project describes how the Great Recession has sandwiched municipalities between an increased demand for services and an inability to raise…
Analysis: Aid recipients welcome IMF’s shift on austerity | Reuters
I think this one’s worth including in its entirety: (Reuters) – Graduates of IMF emergency loan programs accepted the Fund’s admission that it miscalculated the cost of austerity with a mix of schadenfreude and frustration that the change came too late to spare them economic pain.
IMF changes its tune on austerity
For many, the word austerity is inextricably linked to the international development community: IMF and World Bank policies that required austerity policies – often draconian in their social impacts – in exchange for development financing and other aid. The IMF is now grappling with a different part of the globe: the withering crises of the…
Sprawl and fiscal crisis
The recent bankruptcies of Stockton and San Bernardino have again highlighted the fragility of many California cities’ finances. In each case, the burden of public pensions has been blamed for the financial problems. However true that may be in the short run, the pension blame game masks another, deeper problem for the state’s taxpayers: the…
The euro zone crisis: The tightest purses | The Economist
Not urban, but a look at national degrees of “austerity” by the numbers. The Economist looks All the numbers are as a per cent of GDP and all represent tighter policy. 2012 2013 France 1.1 2.1 Germany…
Nuances of crime in a time of austerity and fear
First Recession, Then Crime and Fear – NYTimes.com.
Fitch weighs in on Michigan’s Emergency Manager law
Fitch Ratings issued a press release on the situation with Michigan’s Emergency Manager law (right now the court is weighing whether to put on the fall ballot a measure to repeal the current version of the emergency manager law, under which Detroit’s consent agreement with the state). Ratings agencies have been vocal about Detroit’s troubles,…
Local Finances in New York State
New York’s State Comptroller has issued a report on local government finances that sounds a strong alarm. Local governments across New York State are collecting less in taxes, burning through their cash reserves and running up deficits. Differing visions emerge of where this leaves local governments, and the state: As he has in the past,…
Muni Bond legislation
As the Libor scandal unfolds, scrutiny turns to other bond markets, including the municipal bond industry’s price-setting institutions. The Municipal Market Data index (MMD) sets rates that “influence a much smaller market than Libor, but it is one that is crucial to how cities and states across America borrow money to maintain roads and bridges…
Thousands of towns face budget squeeze in downturns wake – Economy Watch
Sean Mulvey, the newly appointed finance director for the town of East Greenbush, N.Y., is trying to solve a riddle facing cities and towns across the country. Though property tax revenues in the Albany suburb have yet to recover from the worst housing collapse since the Great Depression, fixed expenses like long-term contracts, debt interest…
Scranton, Pa., slashes workers pay to minimum wage – Bottom Line
Unions representing civil servants in the city of Scranton, Pa., are girding for battle after the mayor announced recently that he would be cutting pay for police, firefighters, garbage collectors and other public workers to minimum wage. … The lawsuit will be among several legal actions the unions may take after Doherty made the announcement…
Public Workers Face Continued Layoffs, and Recovery Is Hurt – NYTimes.com
With the economy expanding, albeit slowly, state tax revenues have started to recover and are estimated to exceed prerecession levels next year. Yet governors and legislatures are keeping a tight rein on spending, whether to refill depleted rainy-day funds or because of political inclination. At the same time, costs for health care, social services, pensions…
“Cities Facing Worst Fiscal Situation Since 1980”
The Pew Charitable Trust report, outlining the bleak context in which I’m trying to devise a dissertation research strategy. 2012 looks to be one of the worst years in the cities I’m studying since the early 2000s. City officials and the vast majority of workers are deeply entrenched in an ongoing recession, despite the fact that…
The Austerity Agenda – NYTimes.com
Another Krugman article about austerity, mostly in Britain, where austerity continues to hold sway even as much of continental Europe is embroiled in debates over it: Unlike the governments of, say, Spain or California, the British government can borrow freely, at historically low interest rates. So why is that government sharply reducing investment and eliminating…
Vallejo, California, austerity model
Vallejo becomes the model for post-bankruptcy urbanism – is this the future some people would like to see in American cities?: VALLEJO, CALIF. — The first couple of years were ugly. After this working-class port city became the largest in America to declare bankruptcy in 2008, crime and prostitution surged as the police force was…
Foreclosure Relief Money Diverted by Governors
Hundreds of millions of dollars meant to provide a little relief to the nation’s struggling homeowners is being diverted to plug state budget gaps. In a budget proposed this week, California joined more than a dozen states that want to help close gaping shortfalls using money paid by the nation’s biggest banks and earmarked for…
And meanwhile in Greece…
Rising to the fore as the country’s second-most popular party was Syriza, a coalition of left-leaning parties that promised to keep Greece in the euro and, among other things, increase wages, halt public sector layoffs and repudiate Greece’s debt. For the guardians of the monetary union in Europe — not to mention Greece’s political establishment…
Tens of Thousands Protest Austerity in Spain – NYTimes.com
European cities continue to see huge protests over austerity, perhaps now bolstered by political gains in France and elsewhere. U.S. media coverage of Greece and Spain continues to be sparse, and there has been little follow-up after the French election. Tens of Thousands Protest Austerity in Spain – NYTimes.com.
Budget cuts hamper Washington State’s battle against whooping cough epidemic
The response to the epidemic has been hampered by the recession, which has left state and local health departments on the front lines of defense weakened by years of sustained budget cuts. Here in Skagit County, about an hour’s drive north of Seattle — the hardest-hit corner of the state, based on pertussis cases per…
Montclair, New Jersey: small town battle over the budget
Montclair, NJ is a small (37,000+), fairly affluent and diverse town in New Jersey, with views of the Manhattan skyline. The town has a three-way mayoral race underway that seems to hinge on debates over whether the town needs to trim spending on social programs, such as preschool and libraries. A “liberal” town, having the same…
The French Electorate rejects austerity?
While the language of austerity isn’t widely used to talk about the U.S., the New York Times has framed the political developments in Europe around the debate between stimulus and austerity: PARIS — Hours after voters in France and Greece delivered sharp rebuttals to advocates of austerity as the antidote to Europe’s financial crisis, Chancellor…