In the U.S., Crisis in the Statehouses

Schools, health services, libraries — and the salaries that go with them — are all on the chopping block as states and cities face their worst cash squeeze since the Great Depression

  • Ellen Weinstein for TIME

    (2 of 3)

    Or you can picture the crisis through the other end of the telescope, through the eyes of one young lover of books. Not long ago, 9-year-old Campbell Jenkins of Charlotte, N.C., heard from his mom that two-thirds of the library branches in Mecklenburg County might be closed for lack of funds. "We were completely freaked out," says Campbell's mother Jessica. So the next day, young Campbell organized a letter-writing protest among his third-grade classmates. Not content with words, the kids also sold lemonade and donated the proceeds — $595 in an empty pretzel jar — to their branch-library manager. "It was really heartwarming," says Heather Gwaltney, whose son Gavin, also 9, joined the effort.

    This all comes as a shock to the folks of Charlotte, who long ago grew accustomed to seemingly endless prosperity. The seeds of Bank of America, among other empires, were sown there. "People are asking, 'We're Charlotte, North Carolina. We're big banks. How did we get like this?' " says county budget director Hyong Yi. The answer is rooted in that once booming economy. As Charlotte burgeoned, the county approved $1.5 billion in bonds to build a new courthouse and new schools, expand its jails, improve its parks and — irony alert — open state-of-the-art libraries. Then the recession hit. Local unemployment rose to 11.7% in January — twice what it was two years earlier. Homes and commercial real estate lost value, which dried up the county's chief revenue source, property taxes. The result: a 5% reduction in the upcoming budget, $71 million in cuts on top of $76 million in cuts the year before. Losing nearly $150 million in two years — an eternity of lemonade stands won't fill that hole.

    At the last minute, county commissioners allocated an additional $3.5 million for libraries, sparing at least some of those facing closure. Campbell Jenkins' branch is safe — for now — but budget woes in the Tar Heel State look like an ongoing problem. A spokesperson for North Carolina governor Bev Perdue said the outlook remains grim: "Next year will not be pretty."

    When Main Street Acted Like Wall Street

    The collapse of a Wall Street institution like Lehman Brothers looks nothing like the threatened closing of a branch library in the Charlotte suburbs. But whether the characters are mighty or meek, this unfolding economic disaster story is in fact a series of variations on a single theme. When times were good and the future seemed bulletproof, all sorts of grand ventures were floated on waves of debt. No one cared, because everyone planned to be richer when the bills came due. The arbitrageurs of leveraged derivatives, the cash-strapped subprime home buyers, the government grandees issuing bonds and boosting pensions — all were versions of the same doom-shadowed figure. Only if the bubble burst would the bills become unpayable. How did so many people forget all at once that the bubble always bursts?

    Strapped for cash, state and local governments so far have taken mostly predictable steps. They've depleted their rainy-day funds; of all the cash expected to be on hand in state treasuries by the end of the 2010 fiscal year, two-thirds of it will be held by just two states, Alaska and Texas, which enjoy income from vast energy deposits. By comparison, 14 states are expected to have reserves of less than 1% of their annual spending — basically they're living hand to mouth, hoping their checks don't bounce. And a majority of states will have reserves well below safe levels recommended by the National Association of State Budget Officers. Leery of broad tax hikes in a bad economy, governments have instead chosen to shake the sofa cushions and punish the naughty, closing loopholes, cracking down on tax evaders and raising levies on tobacco, alcohol, gambling, soda pop and candy — even bottled water in Washington State. Nearly half the states have hiked fees for higher education, court services, park access, business licenses — or all of the above.

    These are the tried-and-true responses to dips in the business cycle, but as the woes drag on from year to year, the job of closing budget gaps grows more difficult. Now larger issues and harder choices are being laid bare, beginning with the sprawling mess that is Medicaid. Created by Congress, administered by the states and paid for by a patchwork of federal, state and local governments, the health care system for America's poor is a jumble in the best of times. With enrollments growing rapidly, that jumble is becoming a train wreck.

    According to the NGA, the number of people covered by Medicaid will grow again next year by an estimated 5.4% on average. Meanwhile, anticipated funding is expected to grow hardly at all. That might not spell disaster for a state like Nebraska, which anticipates just 2% enrollment growth. But in foreclosure-racked Arizona, officials are planning for a jump of more than 17%, and the budgetary pressure is enormous. As Governor Jan Brewer put it in her state-of-the-state address this year, government revenues have sagged to 2004 levels, and "some people ... say we should just adopt the 2004 budget." But Arizona's Medicaid rolls have grown by 475,000 patients since then.

    What's going to give? Prepare for a free-for-all. The states are pressing Washington to maintain the emergency Medicaid supplement that was part of the stimulus package. So far, congressional moderates are blanching at the price tag. If the Beltway budget hawks win that battle, states plan to squeeze the patients, who are currently protected by strings attached to the stimulus money. No federal supplement means no more strings. Already various states are contemplating tighter eligibility rules, lower benefits, higher co-pays and other restrictions. And then there's the ongoing fight between the states and the medical system. Governments are wringing money from doctors and hospitals coming and going: first they are cutting payments for Medicaid services, and then they are raising fees on Medicaid providers.

    Just as ugly is the issue of public-employee pay and benefits. The mess in New Jersey is just an extreme example of a widespread problem: many state and local governments have made the mistake of courting the votes of public employees by fattening salaries and benefits, all the time imagining that pension-fund investments could only go up. Tales of lavish retirements for relatively youthful public servants have been making a lot of headlines lately. The New York Times reported that some 3,700 retired New York State public employees earn more than $100,000 a year in pension payments, including a former policeman in Yonkers at the ripe old age of 47. California's pension poster boy is a Bay Area fire chief who, at 51, was collecting more than $241,000 a year in retirement pay. The Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, estimates that states are at least $1 trillion short of what it will take to keep their retirement promises to public workers. Two Chicago-area professors recently calculated the shortfall at $3 trillion. According to Pew, half the states ran fully funded pension plans in 2000, but by 2008 that number had dwindled to four.

    1. 1
    2. 2
    3. 3