From city halls, the plea for COVID-19 aid is bipartisan
ATLANTA — In Dayton, Ohio, annual training classes for new police officers and firefighters are slated for cancellation. City agencies in Arlington, Texas, have been cut by up to 8%, with officials bracing for more later this year.
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed many city budgets and prompted mayors and local leaders — both Republicans and Democrats — to look to Washington for help.
But Republicans in Washington have stood in the way of sending federal aid to cities, leaving local leaders and public employee unions worried they’ll get shortchanged as Congress negotiates the next COVID-19 response package.
The GOP posture comes with political risks. In rejecting a bill with help for lower governments, Republican lawmakers may soon find themselves voting against high-profile allies and forcing those constituents to depend on President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.
“There’s no more time for political maneuvering or holding it hostage,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, whose members have increasingly opted for GOP endorsements, including then-President Donald Trump over Biden last year. “We’re looking right down the throat of a disaster . ... We are no longer at a point where we can afford to be cute.”
Republican leaders say they are opposed to Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion response plan, citing the overall price tag. The largest slice of that pie goes to individuals through $1,400 relief checks. The bill also includes a provision to more than double the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, an proposal that has near-universal GOP, and possibly some Democratic, opposition. The proposal also would send about $350 billion to state, local and tribal governments, with about $140 billion of that set aside for cities and counties.
A bipartisan group of mayors notes that aid should be the easy part. City politics is sometimes presumed to be Democrats’ territory because the nation’s large metro areas and even many midsize cities lean strongly Democratic. But there are more than 3,000 counties and 19,000 municipalities across the country. Most of them are in the small-town and rural congressional districts that send Republicans to Washington.
“This really should not be a red or blue issue,” said Mayor Jeff Williams of Arlington, Texas.
A Republican, Williams has joined Democratic Mayor Nan Whaley, of Dayton, Ohio, to lead the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ lobbying effort for local aid.
Whaley said the mayors’ group spent months organizing virtual meetings in which Republican members of Congress heard from local elected officials from GOP-dominated areas.
Williams and Whaley said mayors rarely heard lawmakers publicly oppose the idea of state and local support. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, deputy to GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is among those who have been supportive privately, Williams said. “But you start adding it all up and it causes concerns,” the mayor added.
Asked about his conversations with Williams and his position on local aid, Cornyn’s office pointed to the senator’s statements raising concerns about the bill’s overall cost and Democrats’ decision to use a legislative process called budget reconciliation that would allow them to pass the plan without Republican support.
“Another $2 trillion. It was just in December when we passed another $900 billion, almost a trillion-dollar bill,” Cornyn said of the last aid package. “Now we’re finding this sort of partisan dysfunction begin to creep back in.”