City, State Budgets Crippled Nationwide

Five fires broke out in Flint, Mich., this week on the same day the city began laying off 20 of its 94 firemen. Running an $8 million deficit, Flint has no money to pay those 20 firefighters, or 46 of its 193 police officers who are also receiving pink slips. It's a tough thing for the city with the second highest crime rate in the state.

"They didn't just trim a little bit," says Flint Police Officers Association president Keith Speer. "They cut our throats."

CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports Flint is hardly alone. Some much bigger towns are deeply in the red and facing painful choices. Los Angeles and San Francisco have $400 million shortfalls; Dallas $190 million; Boston $130 million, and Baltimore $120 million. Over all, at least 41 states have mid-year budget gaps.

"It's ironic because as people's needs are rising dramatically, the resources available to the state to meet those needs have collapsed," says Jon Shure of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The forced austerity comes as states and cities total up tax receipts and plan for the next fiscal year starting in July. Revenues in the recession are down and the federal stimulus is phasing out. So in Charlotte, N.C., the budget ax is falling on 600 teachers.

In Boston, protests erupted over news that schools will lose 83 janitors, with teacher layoffs to follow.

In Illinois more than 450 state troopers could lose their jobs. In Chicago that means city policemen could be pulled from the sidewalks and forced to patrol the expressways here for the first time in 30 years.

Among the many cost-cutting steps in California is one to loosen rules for parolees: no more random drug tests or required meetings with an officer.

Budget woes mean the Dallas light rail expansion may stall and the street lights in Richmond, Ky., may dim.

But it's too late to save the park where George Washington crossed the Delaware River. Pennsylvania's cost-cutting has closed its doors.

[formrusmcsgt]

Los Angeles and San Francisco have $400 million shortfalls; Dallas $190 million; Boston $130 million, and Baltimore $120 million. Over all, at least 41 states have mid-year budget gaps.
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Yet $7.7 billion each year is spent arresting and incarcerating people for possession of marijuana.

Absurd.

[tmittelstaed]

I see nothing at all wrong with this. Cities have way too many cops anyway, so many cops that there are plenty left over to pull traffic all day long on the expressways.

If the cities would put their cops on chasing thieves and robbers and let the traffic congestion set the speed on the roads, they would have plenty of cops even after the layoffs.

[berlinfoto-2009]

As a individual that had my business destroyed by the "Magical Thinking Police of America", my heart bleeds for all of the fine public servants, who are losing their jobs.
The government has been deciding for years who is successful and who is not, If you are willing to support a corrupt, and magical thinking government you stand a greater chance of success in America. What does this do to something call competitiveness? Why is America losing its standing in the world?
Hubris arrogance, are all part of this thing called "SUPER POWER SYNDROME" this is also the title of a book by Robert Jay Lifton, I recommend this book highly.

[ClownsOnLeft_Jokers2Right]

This all happened because low-income people were allowed to get home loans they couldn't afford and then, they were allowed to cash-in on the fake equity and walk away.

[wyodutch]

The soultion to the mess our politicians have created has always been in our own hands.
.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
.

[brianbwb2011]

And so every four years the government is abolished, and a new government is instituted. But until 1009, most of you kept voting for the rich, "white", racist, ASPD-afflicted, corrupt, "manifest destiny" fascist types, especially those deluded sociopaths who call themselves "conservatives".

You can complain until the 12th of forever, but a part of the fault lies also upon you.

[culturechang]

State legislatures just keep passing unnecessary laws and packing'em away into prison. Who is going to pay for it all?

[erichsh]

It's a common trick for municipalities to make the most painful in-your-face cuts first, to shock taxpayers into ponying up even more in taxes, fines, fees, etc. Meanwhile nowhere in this article are the costs of entitlement programs, union contracts and stifling union work rules designed to pad union membership at the expense of productivity, bloated benefits costs for current employees, paid medical benefits and monthly checks for the vast army of public employee retirees, pension fraud caused by "double-dipping" and overtime to drive up the last year's salary on which pension benefits are based, excessive overtime the rest of the time, waste, fraud, inefficiencies caused by all the mini-bureaucracies in every town rather than consolidate school districts and public works departments across towns, and on and on.

[brianbwb2011]

Probably because that cost is nothing compared to the money wasted on unnecessary military misdeeds and excessive capability far beyond what is necessary to do the job of protecting "American" land, corporate welfare, foreign aid to rich countries, maintaining marked-up military bases in countries like Germany Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Cuba, England, and other places where they are not needed.

The ASPD-afflicted right is resolute on the principle that there is no expense too great for killing "those people", but a penny is too much to heal our own people.

Did you support the wars back when Bush was lying about the need to start them?

For the record, I did not, and have been proven correct in my reasoning.

[RobAla]

Wait until the states are clobbered with having to add more to the Medicaid roles, because of this health care bill. They will have no choice but to raise state taxes through the roof. That will really relieve a struggling public, won't it?

[ajapierce]

They should cut the executive salaries in all levels of governemt. 5% of the government staff make 40% of the budget. While the other 95% make the ramainder 60%. We should be asking the town administrators and school superindentants to take a pay cut to keep more people employeed.

[ajapierce]

They should cut the executive salaries in all levels of governemt. 5% of the government staff make 40% of the budget. While the other 95% make the ramainder 60%. We should be asking the town administrators and school superindentants to take a pay cut to keep more people employeed.