Some Shrinking U.S. Cities Thriving

Conventional wisdom holds that cities need population growth to be economically healthy. But between 2000 and 2016 per-capita income in Pittsburgh rose 24 percent - well over the national average of 18 percent - while the city’s population shrunk by 4 percent, roughly 95,000 people. Similar trends have been seen in Davenport, Iowa; Springfield, Massachusetts; Buffalo, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Beaumont, Texas; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

One of the keys to these cities’ successful decoupling of population and income is high-paying jobs in energy, health care and education. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs make up about 7 percent of all jobs available in Pittsburgh and about 5 percent of the job markets in Davenport, Buffalo and Providence.

 

But Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, cautions that some of those jobs could disappear if the population shrinks too much.

 

“If you go through small towns, you’ll always see that the one with the hospital has some good jobs,” he said. “But if the population is too elderly and rural — that’s just one generation burying the last. It’s not sustainable. There’s going to be some consolidation of health care, I think, into more urban areas.” (STATELINE)

Congress Passes $867B Farm Bill

Congress has passed and President Trump is expected to sign an $867 billion farm bill that, among other things, will expand subsidies for farmers, provide permanent funding for local farmers markets and legalize hemp. The bill had bipartisan support in both chambers, due in part to pressure from farmers who have faced sharp declines in commodities prices as a result of President Trump’s trade dispute with China.

 

“The passage of the 2019 Farm Bill is good news because it provides a strong safety net for farmers and ranchers, who need the dependability and certainty this legislation affords,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement.

 

The bill had some critics, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), one of two farmers in the Senate and a member of that chamber’s Agriculture Committee, who voted against the legislation because of its expansion of subsidies to more-distant relatives of farmers, like cousins, nephews and nieces.

 

“I’m very disappointed the conferees decided to expand the loopholes on farm subsidies,” he said before the vote. “I’ve been trying to make sure the people who get the subsidies are real farmers.... I’ve been trying for three years, and it gets worse and worse and worse.” (WASHINGTON POST)

Budgets in Brief - December 17 2018

WILDFIRE CLEANUP COULD COST CA $3B

Clearing away the debris from the 19,000 homes and businesses destroyed by last month’s wildfires could cost CALIFORNIA at least $3 billion, according to state and federal authorities. That sum is more than double the state’s record wildfire cleanup expense last year of $1.3 billion. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

 

RI SUES GOOGLE OVER DATA BREACH

RHODE ISLAND is suing Alphabet, the parent company of Google, for failing to disclose a security breach affecting 52.5 million Google users, which was made public by whistleblowers in October. “Google executives decided to hide the breaches from its users and continued to mislead investors and federal regulators. This is an unconscionable violation of public trust by Google,” state General Treasurer Seth Magaziner said in a press release. (PROVIDENCE JOURNAL)

 

MD GOV PROPOSES USE OF CASINO REVENUE FOR SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

MARYLAND Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has proposed using $1.9 billion in casino gambling revenue over the next five years for school construction. The state’s voters authorized that action with the approval of a ballot measure (Question 1) on Nov. 6. (WASHINGTON POST)

 

IA KIDS’ HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM ABOUT TO BE MUCH MORE COSTLY

The cost of IOWA’s HAWK-I program, which provides health insurance to 70,000 children from moderate-income families, will balloon from $7 million to $37 million over the next two years. The impending increase is due to a phase-out of additional federal funding for such programs. (DES MOINES REGISTER)

 

MT SUPREME COURT INVALIDATES SCHOLARSHIP TAX CREDIT PROGRAM

The MONTANA Supreme Court struck down a program that provides tax credits to those who donate to private-school scholarships. The justices ruled 5-2 that those contributions amount to state aid to religious institutions, which is prohibited by the state’s Constitution. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

 

MI SPENDS $100M PER YEAR ON JAILING THOSE AWAITING TRIAL

MISSISSIPPI counties pay about $100 million a year to jail those who haven’t been convicted of crimes but are instead awaiting trial, nearly half of whom have been incarcerated for over 90 days, according to a database compiled by the MacArthur Justice Center. That sum is more than the $98 million the state spends annually on child protective services. (CLARION LEDGER [JACKSON])

 

-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK

CA Voters Raise Bar for Qualifying Ballot Measures

It’s going to be considerably harder to qualify initiatives and referendums for California’s ballot next year, thanks to the high voter turnout in the state for the Nov. 6 election.

 

Signature requirements for ballot measures in California are adjusted every four years, based on the total number of votes cast in each gubernatorial election. Backers of proposed measures have to submit enough valid signatures to equal 5 percent of the most recent gubernatorial vote tally for statutory changes and 8 percent for constitutional ones.

 

As a result of the record low turnout in the state’s 2014 governor’s race, in which Gov. Jerry Brown (D) was reelected, the signature thresholds for the last four years have been at their lowest point in decades, 365,880 for statutory measures and 585,407 for constitutional amendments. But with more than 12.4 million votes having been cast last month in electing Democrat Gavin Newsom as the state’s next governor, those thresholds will jump to 620,439 and 992,702, respectively.

 

Given those higher limits, and the fact that far more signatures will actually have to be collected to ensure enough valid ones are submitted, the price tag for ballot measures will also go up significantly next year, according to Gale Kaufman, a veteran Democratic strategist based in Sacramento.

 

The “rule of thumb is to collect approximately 75 percent over what you need,” Kaufman said. “So, if you are on any kind of tight budget, the new numbers will add close to a million [dollars], if not more, to initiatives.”

 

“Generally speaking, 2016 and 2018 were seen as sort of opportunities in California for initiatives because of the low 2014 turnout,” said Josh Altic, who researches ballot measures for the website Ballotpedia. “2020 and 2022 will be seen as the opposite of that.” (LOS ANGELES TIMES, HILL)

Janus Ruling Not Hurting Union Membership

In June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that unions could no longer require public workers who choose not to join a union to pay union fees even if they benefit from union efforts.

 

That ruling has adversely impacted union finances. For example, in Pennsylvania, unions had to refund about 15 percent of the $42.5 million in union fees they collected from nonmembers and executive branch members last year.

 

But the Janus ruling hasn’t led to the mass defections some had predicted. And in some unions, membership has actually increased since the verdict.

 

At the time of the ruling, 50,072 state executive branch employees in Pennsylvania were union members. Now 51,127 are members. New union memberships have outnumbered defections in Oregon’s Local 503 chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by a margin of three to two. And membership in the Chicago chapter of SEIU has increased from 23,800 members to 26,000 since August 2017.

 

“I think the right wing thought this would decimate public-sector unions, and they were clearly wrong,” said Kim Cook of the Cornell University Worker Institute, which supports union and worker rights.

 

One reason union membership hasn’t dropped is because unions stepped up their efforts to attract new members even before the Janus decision. Democratically controlled states have also recently taken actions to bolster union membership. For instance, New Jersey, limited the period of time during which public workers can leave their union. And New Jersey, California and Washington have prohibited public employers from discouraging union membership.

 

But Ken Girardin, an analyst for the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy in New York, said significant membership declines will be coming in the next few years.

 

“Based on what we’ve observed, you will likely see a multi-year drop in membership, driven chiefly by the fact that people aren’t going to join in the first place,” he said. “The next cohorts of employees won’t join at the same rate as the retirees they are replacing.” (GOVERNING)