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Writer's pictureTom Cochran

Covid Relief Includes a Few Band-Aids for States and Localities, But...

...essentially the Senate GOP has bought off the state and local sector's advocates in Congress and beyond incredibly cheaply in this $900 Billion Covid relief package now apparently about to be enacted with e.g.:


- a demonstrably inadequate (I think the technical public finance term is "measly") $18Billiin for state and local public transit agencies, including $4 Billion for the NYS MTA, thanks to what was reputedly well-focused and intensive lobbying by the New York Congressional delegations;

- $57 Billion in direct aid to K-12 schools of which 90% is supposed to of to local public school districts, according to Education Week's latest reporting; and

- more flexibility for states and localities to spend thus-far unspent CARES act money (which has got to be a relief to states like New Jersey, which as of July 23 had spent a mere 10% of the nearly $2.4 billion it had received from the federal government's Corona Virus Relief Fund according to NJ Spotlight Reporter Colleen O'Dea's story published at that time).


My own time on Capitol Hill (1977-1982) looks in the rear view mirror of federal fiscal policy history to have been a period of unusually effective coalescence by Governors, County Executives and Mayors and their legislative branches in dealing with Congress, the federal judiciary and executive branch agencies, with the fruit of their combined efforts having included General Revenue Sharing, consolidation of disparate grant programs into more flexibly useful block grants, etc.


This coalescence of state and local interests into a force for a more equitable balance in the federal 'partnership' system was aided greatly by the work of the dearly departed ACIR and state and local policy research powerhouse Academy for Contemporary Problems, other still-surviving intellectual centers like the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute and the willingness of both houses of Congress and both parties to listen to and often be responsive to the state and local sector's thought leaders and policy researchers.


The willingness of both parties' leadership in both Congressional houses to keep putting off and - for now - dropping comprehensive general fiscal relief for the state and local sector along the lines of the SMART Act demonstrates how far back that bygone coalescence of muscular state and local interests really is in the rear view mirror. And how much coalition re-building the Governors county executives and mayors are likely to have to do in order to get anywhere near whole for their jurisdictions' tax and fee revenue losses caused by the federally mis-managed war on the 100 year pandemic, (which will claim in about a year as many - 407,000 - US lives as the number of soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in all four years of WWII).

Maybe the courageous bi-partisan state and local effort - largely successful - in defending the recent general election from both foreign attack and domestic sedition, will encourage the Governors, County Execs, Mayors, et al that they really can get their combined federal relations acts more effectively together than they have been for a long time. Fingers crossed....





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