After attending last week's National League of Cities conference and receiving an update on congressional activities (see legislative briefing document below), one thing remains clear - the focus for the remainder of this year will continue to be on health care reform and climate change. If and when these issues are finalized, there will be hopefully be positive changes for local officials and communities. For instance, health care reform will hopefully address continually rising health care costs that eat up on average, 20% of a local budget. And climate change legislation will contain a source of permanent funding for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program so communities can move forward with projects at home. There are of course other issues of importance to local officials just kind of "hanging" out there. Discussions on a new transportation funding bill continue to be stalemated with a series of seemingly endless one month extensions in sight for the near future. And, we continue to keep an eye on legislation that would put in a place a national collective bargaininng mandate for public safety employees. One area of very positive news is funding for programs of interest to communities. Where in prior years the fight has been on for simply retaining such areas in the budget, this Congress is calling for increased or flat funding levels for many of these programs. A funding chart is below.
2009 COC SML Legislative Briefing.pdf (62.93 kb)
FY 2010 Federal Funding Chart.1009.pdf (13.77 kb)
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