Even as news reports indicate that employment is on the rise, the lack of money in city coffers in the form of redevelopment money has dried up with the dissolution of the state’s redevelopment agencies. As some jobs are added, others will be lost. It seems intuitive that as a result of the fiscal challenges ahead for cities that have relied on redevelopment agency revenue to cover expenditures, some municipal jobs will not survive.
There will be tough choices ahead for city officials statewide to determine which positions are essential and which are, in essence, non-essential. Further, programs that have benefitted cities – in the form of low- and moderate-income housing subsidies, cultural grants or matching funds for gentrification/beautification projects – will have to be scrutinized to figure out what’s worth keeping and what gets scrapped.
Welcome to the Titanic, hope you’ve brought your own lifeboat.
As cities struggle to find new ways of pinching pennies, it seems like a good time for those private industries that have leached public monies by way of subsidies, grants or other forms of pork, to pony up and trickle down.
That’s the way the system is supposed to work, as we’re often told. In return for a tax code that is navigable only by specially trained lawyers, providing low rates for corporations, with loop-to-loop holes and little if any taxation on accrued wealth (as opposed to income), tort reforms that limit liability – and resultantly – responsibility, and recently (in the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision), the opportunity for corporations to spend their windfall profits on campaign contributions, rather than, for instance, paying better wages or giving Christmas bonuses to their employees – as I was saying, in return for such a system, those at the top are supposed to toss down a few nickels and dimes, create American jobs and basically, be just plain decent.
And if that’s not going to be the case, then maybe it’s time to rethink the whole darn thing.
