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.