Local Governments Continue to Suffer….”Stimulus” Little Help
Bob Latta says:
As the U.S. unemployment rate continues to hover around 10.2%, Ohio’s unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in October, up from 10.1 percent in September, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reported today.
The number of workers unemployed in Ohio in October was 618,000, up from 594,000 in September. The number of unemployed has increased by 209,000 in the past 12 months from 409,000. The October 2009 unemployment rate for Ohio was up from 6.9 percent from the same time just one year ago.
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS are what we need to help our economy grow and ensure that the most basic of services that are provided by local governments are not interrupted. Yet, the Administration and the Democrat majority in Congress continue to spend us into an economic black hole and find new ways to tax anything that moves. Cutting taxes, decreasing regulation, and lowering government spending are the principals behind the House GOP’s solutions (http://bit.ly/1K3YIx) for our country’s recovery.
Mayors Sound Alarm Over Drop in City Revenues
WASHINGTON — Mayors from four U.S. cities said they are facing a once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis and that federal stimulus funds have, so far, been largely unhelpful in helping them balance budgets hit by steep drops in nearly every source of municipal revenue.
Even as economists declare the recession over, local revenues continue to fall. That’s because the lion’s share of their receipts — sales, income and property taxes — are connected to the job market and real-estate prices. Jobs and real-estate prices are expected to lag the broader economic recovery, reducing city revenues for months or years after the technical end of the recession.
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