{"id":4576,"date":"2011-08-05T08:19:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T12:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4576"},"modified":"2011-08-08T13:28:35","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:28:35","slug":"north-country-loses-its-biggest-industry-local-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/08\/05\/north-country-loses-its-biggest-industry-local-government\/","title":{"rendered":"North Country loses its biggest industry: local government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two big political events this summer bring home the magnitude of the economic change now hurtling at the North Country.<\/p>\n

The first of those changes was the debt-ceiling battle in Washington DC.\u00a0 If nothing else, the final “austerity” deal made it abundantly clear that the Federal government won’t be offering any more stimulus money any time soon.<\/p>\n

That means no more checks written to prop up state and local governments and the services they provide.<\/p>\n

The second landmark was Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signing into law the 2% property tax cap, a measure specifically designed to stifle budget growth in counties, towns, and school districts.<\/p>\n

Even before those events, the North Country was already part of a massive wave of government downsizing that has swept the US.<\/p>\n

Local government employment across the country peaked in 2008. <\/a>Since then, nearly half a million local government workers have lost their jobs.<\/p>\n

To put that in context, that’s nearly the equivalent of all lay-offs in the automotive industry since the 1980s.\u00a0 And in local government, the blood-letting happened in just a few years, not a few decades.<\/p>\n

And the pain continues.\u00a0 In June, another 18,000 local government workers got their pink slips nationwide.\u00a0 Those numbers, by the way, don’t include public school layoffs.<\/p>\n

Because rural America relies disproportionately on government jobs to drive small town economies, the cuts have hit places like the North Country particularly hard.\u00a0\u00a0 And we don’t appear to be anywhere near the bottom.<\/p>\n

Despite a couple of years of belt tighthening, Essex County currently faces a $7 million shortfall.\u00a0 St. Lawrence County’s deficit stands at $13 million.<\/p>\n

With the tax cap in place, more deep and painful job cuts are all but certain.<\/p>\n

So far, the reductions have happened (mostly) in dribs and drabs.\u00a0 A few teachers let go here.\u00a0 A DPW position left unfilled there.\u00a0 But these tend to be the best paying jobs in our communities and it all adds up.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t help that this is a time when state and Federal officials are also curtailing the money that they ship our way. Subsidies for rural airports, for farms, and for hospitals are all on the line, in Washington and Albany.<\/p>\n

Taken together, it may be time to start thinking about this moment in our region’s\u00a0 history as a similar event to the loss of the timber industry, or the rapid decline of the manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n

As government steps back as the prime mover of the North Country’s economy, what’s next?\u00a0 And which communities — Elizabethtown?\u00a0 Malone? — are most vulnerable?<\/p>\n

I’d also like to see better long-term plans from local government leaders that outline what their long-term structures will look\u00a0 like.<\/p>\n

I know a lot of county executives and town supervisors are still in crisis-mode, trying to keep their heads above water.\u00a0 But we now know that this isn’t a temporary crisis.\u00a0 It’s the new reality.<\/p>\n

We need to know what the landscape is likely to look like when the shake-up is over.\u00a0 How many jobs will remain?\u00a0 What services will citizens still be able to rely on?\u00a0 When the dust settles, what will the new ‘normal’ look like?<\/p>\n

As always, your thoughts welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two big political events this summer bring home the magnitude of the economic change now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4577,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions\/4577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}