INSIDE WASHINGTON/Congress is back
City and county leaders say they are going to carefully pick their battles with Congress in the upcoming year, noting that the 2004 legislative agenda will be influenced greatly by election year politics. “We are going to focus our legislative priorities on reality, on those things that make fiscal sense,” says Jeff Arnold, deputy legislative director of the National Association of Counties (NACo). “There is no point in pursuing an aggressive agenda in an election year where politics are going to affect the appropriations agenda.”
Local officials are expected to focus their attention on big-ticket items, such as the unfinished 2004 appropriations bills as well as the 2005 appropriations bills and the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (TEA-21).
Arlington, Mass., Selectman Charlie Lyons says he hopes federal lawmakers will work with local leaders when decisions about the 2004 and 2005 budgets are being finalized. “We need to [ensure] that we don’t cut programs so much that it hurts the most vulnerable of our citizens,” says Lyons, who also is president of the National League of Cities (NLC).
A struggle over how to fund the transportation bill delayed its reauthorization in 2003, forcing Congress to approve a five-month extension that expires Feb. 29. A final spending estimate for the highway bill is not set, but it likely will be between $255 million and $375 million over the next six years. There has been talk about raising the federal gasoline tax to pay for the bill. “They will find a way to pass TEA-21,” says Boone County, Mo., Commissioner Karen Miller, who is NACo’s president. “I just don’t know where the funding will come from.”
Local leaders also will try to reverse cuts to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG). Congress is poised to slash the COPS program from its current funding level of $639 million to $487 million, and LLEBG would be slashed from $400 million to $225 million. The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) notes that local governments will only be eligible to receive $132 million of the LLEBG funding if the measure is approved. “With cities facing the added responsibility of providing homeland security locally, as well as budget shortfalls, the nation’s mayors urge Congress not to cut funding for law enforcement programs which have proven effective in reducing crime,” says Hempstead, N.Y., Mayor and USCM President James Garner.
City and county officials also will be watching how Congress addresses two Internet-related bills that would curtail their ability to generate revenue through tax authority. Local officials won a major battle last year by lobbying against the Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act, a proposed law the NLC describes as preventing local governments from collecting “taxes on telecommunications services, including gross receipts, rights-of-way and franchise fees.” City and county leaders also say they will continue to fight for the right to tax goods sold over the Internet.
As for the upcoming political year, Lyons says local leaders might be able to use the elections to their communities’ benefit. “[Congressmen and the president’s] ears are open a lot more in an election year,” he says.
The author is Washington correspondent for American City & County.