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…
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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…
Let the austerity begin
One of the first lines of cuts at the bottom of the “fiscal cliff” (or one of the first victims of the austerity bomb) will be local public education. Schools that serve poor and English-language learning children receive more federal money, so will be hit the hardest. The cuts would follow efforts in many school…
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…