State and local aid will be contested under a Joe Biden presidency, too
As the president-elect's stimulus plans emerge, local leaders shouldn't get too excited for direct, flexible aid to bolster their flagging revenues.
Government / Budgets
Budgets
How Paris’s participatory budget is reinvigorating democracy
Participatory budgeting allows residents to propose projects and vote on how they want to allocate a significant amount of municipal spending.
What the election of two senators from Georgia means for US cities
The results of Tuesday's run-off races have major implications for the fiscal future of local governments across the country.
Even with stimulus, US mass transit faces a death spiral
The fear is that service cuts today could reduce the constituency for public transportation later. In this looming disaster, the US is an outlier among the world’s wealthy nations.
China’s Gilded Age shows how corruption infects bureaucracies and economies
The professor and author Yuen Yuen Ang outlines four types of government corruption and the ways they can harm or assist economic growth.
Reality will temper Biden’s grand ambitions for passenger rail
Staggering construction costs, the prioritisation of job creation and Republican obstruction may clobber the aspirations of "Amtrak Joe".
How Los Angeles County voters secured a budget for prison alternatives
Proponents see Measure J as a means of achieving racial and economic justice through fiscal policy and hope the model can be replicated in other cities.
Cleveland is still suffering from the last recession. It can’t afford another
Austerity feeds on the US's unique form of urban decline. To understand how, just look to Northeast Ohio.
Is innovation really making cities better?
For all the emphasis on world-changing advances, the fact remains that most city governments lack even 1990s-level technology. It doesn't have to be that way.
What power do US mayors really have?
Author and legal scholar Richard Schragger says the US's big-city mayors focus on policies far outside their control and lose sight of the ways they can actually effect change.
This time could be different: Governments have alternatives to austerity
State and local officials in the US are faced with a lot of bad options, but they don't have to cut jobs and services.
Cities now have less money to drive the green transition
The financial fallout from Covid-19 is starting to affect local governments' renewable-energy transition plans and climate action efforts.
The pandemic is flipping the script on funding local government
Relying on targeted taxes and fees has proved troublesome this year, while property taxes look like a relatively safe bet.
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