US mayors expect 'dramatic' cuts with public schools hit the worst - and the US Senate's stimulus package is unlikely to help
- A survey of 130 US mayors found that 45% expected to make or see serious cuts to public-education spending because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- A similar number expected cuts in parks and recreation, transportation budgets, and social services.
- The vast majority of mayors surveyed said the federal government's response to the pandemic was inadequate.
Nearly half of America's mayors in a recent survey said they expected to see "dramatic" cuts to public-school budgets in the coming months, with an equal number attributing their cities' economic struggles at least in part to an inadequate federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The survey was conducted by Boston University researchers, who said they invited mayors of every US city with a population of at least 75,000 to participate. Of 489 mayors who were contacted, 130 completed the survey.
Forty-five percent of those mayors said they thought the economic impact of COVID-19 would require slashing education spending, 38% said they expected severe cuts to parks and recreation funding, and another third predicted serious cuts in transportation and social services.
The vast majority of the mayors surveyed also said they thought small businesses that shuttered because of the coronavirus would not be replaced anytime soon, with 86% saying there were moderate to large gaps between the needs of those businesses and the aid provided by the federal government through the CARES Act.
Additional federal assistance is unlikely to be enough. As Vox reported this week, a bipartisan relief bill proposed in the Senate offers state, local, and tribal governments just $160 billion, even though "US cities alone are facing a $360 billion shortfall."
A counterproposal from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would offer cities far less: nothing. His offer would, however, provide $105 billion for an "Education Stabilization Fund" and $16 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing.
Graham Wilson, the director of Boston University's Initiative on Cities, said it's the most negative outlook he'd seen in seven years of conducting the survey.
"This year, while we still hear glimmers of optimism, their pessimism in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic is palpable," Wilson said. "And with the pandemic still spreading and the federal government still unable to come to an agreement on additional stimulus, we suspect mayors may actually be underestimating just how much their cities will change."
In addition to budget cuts, 80% of mayors surveyed said they expected "racial health disparities to widen in the future."
"The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a level of economic devastation that has upended many lives, and Black, Indigenous People of Color continue to face the brunt of this crisis," Otis Rolley, a senior vice president at The Rockefeller Foundation's US Equity and Economic Opportunity Initiative, said in a press release. "The country's persistent racial inequities have only become worse."
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