Don’t Punish Local Government for State Challenges
California’s latest budget squabbles and eventual precariously balanced deal once again painfully highlight something that’s been apparent for years: the basic structure of our state and local government funding and budgetary decision-making is torturously complex and fundamentally broken.
I won’t dwell here on how to fix the state budget process; plenty of people have already voiced their opinions about that, and will continue to do so. But the current state funding system has repeatedly caused collateral damage to local government operations in ways too few people understand.
As chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s 100,000-strong caucus of local elected officials, I have to say that cities, counties, school districts and other local government agencies deserve better than they have gotten from the state in recent years, and so do their constituents. However we fix the state, it can’t be at the expense of cities, counties, special districts and schools and the vital local services they provide every day to our shared constituents.
When people think of what government does to make their lives better, they tend to think of the things local governments do, such as police and fire, K-12 education, ambulances, health clinics, traffic lights, street repairs, parks, beaches and pools, water, sewers and trash pickup. These are the vital direct services that affect every town’s and every person’s quality of life, and affect it every day.
Yet it is exactly those services that will be hit and hurt yet again as the state takes money from local governments to balance its own budget needs. The latest raids on local funding sources include:
· $2 billion from city, county and special district budgets that now will be “loaned” to the state for the next three years. Local governments that already had made painful cuts, in a timely manner, to balance their budgets now must go back and cut again.
· $1.7 billion in redevelopment funds. Redevelopment revenues are used to stimulate investment and job growth in our most economically challenged neighborhoods. These funds are important to our recovery efforts.
· $4.3 billion from local schools, and the deferral of another $1.7 billion.
If California’s budget process eventually does undergo much-needed reform, we must protect cities, counties, schools and special districts from further state raids that undercut their ability to provide the basic, everyday services that every resident of the state depends on. Local governments need more control over and protection for their funding sources. Let us be able to make vital decisions on how best to provide everyday local services without fear that headaches at another level of government will suddenly land in our laps.
