STATES' ROLES MAY BE CHANGING

Good question, and hard to answer. Right now the state gov'ts may be in worse shape than the feds, in terms of having the revenue to fulfill needs. Under the Bush administration, the feds make demands on the states, e.g., educational standards, then expect the states to come up with the money to make good on them. But if a state passes legislation that the feds disapprove of (e.g., medical marijuana in California), the feds make trouble.

Considering all that, if anything progressive is to happen, it will be on the local or state level. Bush et al. have no interest in any of that. It's about war with Iraq and tax cuts...

The governors association maintains a website (under that name) that keeps you up to date on what's happening in the states. Seems a lot of governors are not happy, and taxes are already in the making. Most state budgets are in awful shape, and it's not all the states' fault. Programs had been mandated, with promise of funding, but the funding didn't arrive - just the mandates.

A lot of this has to do with regulated control vs privatization. For instance, in NJ the MVD (motor vehichle division), under Whitman, was privatized, and is now in such terrible shape that the citizens are asking for regulated control. Which means the money for this will have to come from somewhere. Some states do not want all the control the federal government wants them to have, and now the mayors of the cities have joined with the governors. It may turn out that all this talk about too much government was made without too much thought about what it means.

These effects don't stop at the state level. State governments are really quite good at passing these unfunded mandates on to county and/or city governments. I don't know about other states, but Idaho legislators rarely have a background in local government before becoming elected at the state level. Since most members of Congress were previously state legislators, they also have no concept of trying to run a government that is in close contact with its constituents. When you put this into perspective, the attitudes of our lawmakers toward our citizens makes a lot more sense.

I'd rather have mistakes made closer to home :wink: , where corrections of course can be made sooner and solutions can be better tailored for our realities, rather than a one-size-fits-all-equally-poorly solution out of Washington.

I sometimes get the impression that we are now at war. No not the war on terrorism but a war between the Federal government and the States. The federal government takes your money, issues unfunded mandates, distributes money in any way it sees fit and ignores the fact that the States are in serious financial difficulty. Someone has to remind, No, tell Bush that we are all one nation.

Mistakes made closer to home where they can be more easily hidden without media scrutiny. Nice dreaming but it's likely to develop into a nightmare. Local politicians are more skilled, are routinely ousted from office when inept, are more ethical and always have everyone's interest in the neighborhood at heart. Not. County goverments are especially stealthy -- the typical citizen has absolutely no idea what they are doing. How they are spending money is just one instance. This just happened in the bastion of conservative politics, Orange County, where millions of dollars of county money were being stoked away into an investment scheme which went bad and the county filed bankruptcy.

FULL ARTICLE

The end effects on each state/locality will be dependent on how they actually operate. Many states will end up raising their taxes. Most of them are quickly figuring out that the idea of tying their state level Income Tax laws to the Federal laws was a bad idea and they are n a rush to break the tie between them.

Unfunded Federal mandates are hardly new. There have been several attempts to curb the practice (the latest being the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995) but all of the attempts have pretty much been ignored all along.

I, for one, like the return of greater levels of responsibilty to the states. Wether it is easier to hide monies is a matter of opinion. Local levels may be able to hide a few hunderd thousand $$ but the Federal government has been hiding billions for decades. Is there really a difference?