Municipal budgets: “Worst is yet to come”, “Time bomb”.
“The worst probably is yet to come,” warned Gov. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., chairman of the National Governors Association, at the group’s meeting Saturday. He called the situation “fairly poor” in most states, adding that it “doesn’t look too good.” States face budget holes totaling $134 billion over the next three years, according to the governors, who explained that tax collections keep declining as Medicaid costs soar. High unemployment persists. States cut 18,000 jobs in January alone and more job losses are anticipated. Because states are required to balance their budgets, shortfalls will be made up by raising taxes or fees or cutting services.”
A Palm Beach Post survey of 26 local pensions reveals a $431 million gap between expected payouts and how much money is on hand for area firefighters, police officers and city and town retirees. For towns and cities that pledged to get retirees their money, the current shortfalls remain “a ticking time bomb,” said West Palm Beach City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell. That’s because the city’s share of pension funding will have to come from somewhere, and under Florida law, that somewhere is the cities, towns, and sometimes counties and special districts that offered pensions. Taxpayers are squarely on the hook, said Dominic Calabro, president of Florida TaxWatch, a Tallahassee watchdog group. ”Frankly, citizens don’t understand it until they are faced with tax increases,” he said. “But even some city officials don’t fully appreciate it.”
For years, the town of Hanna, Wyo., only had one grocery store. Late last month, that store closed its doors. It was one more casualty of the bad economy, and it’s a blow to a town where jobs are scarce and a snowstorm can close roads for days at a time. A few days before his store shut down, Andy Jones surveyed the aisles at the Hanna Food Mart. He’d stocked and swept and managed the place for a decade, but now the store was emptying out. ”There’s not much left on the shelves right now,” he said.
With the Hanna Food Mart gone, there will be nowhere in town to buy bread or milk. There’s not even a regular gas station in Hanna — just a couple of credit-card-only gas pumps. A simple mini-mart is 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store is an 80-mile drive, round-trip, but a lot of people in Hanna can’t get around that easily.
“It’s bad,” says 82-year-old June Webster. “I walk to the store maybe two to three times a day.”
