Federal revenues and the state budget: What happens when the gravy train goes off the rails?

Wisconsin annually ranks below average when it comes to recouping our share of federal aid. In 2008, for example, the state was 38th in percentage of revenue received from the federal government.

But in 2009, the amount of federal aid available to states increased dramatically due to the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and the amount of federal revenue received by Wisconsin increased 26%. Wisconsin did relatively well in garnering our share of the ARRA gravy train--in total, federal aid to the states increased 16%.

While most of the federal aid Wisconsin receives continues to be categorical aid in the form of public welfare assistance, such as Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), we appear to have gained some ground in terms of discretionary, competitive federal grants. The increase in our public welfare grants from 2008 to 2009 was proportionately less than our overall federal revenue increase, at 20.5%.

Nationally, the total amount of federal categorical and competitive grants to states increased 13% from 2008 to 2009, much of which was attributed to $82 billion in education stimulus aids. The latest issue of Education Week has a great graphic ranking the states by receipt of federal education stimulus funds. Since the passage of the ARRA, $100 billion in federal economic stimulus funds have aided education, including $5.3 billion awarded through six competitive grants, the most noteworthy being the Race to the Top initiative.

Of the 40 states receiving competitive education stimulus funds, Wisconsin ranks 28th in total grants awarded. Our state received $4.1 million in the Investing in Innovation program, to be used to scale-up promising educational programs, and $13.8 million to implement a statewide longitudinal student data system. When our total competitive stimulus winnings are analyzed per-pupil, however, our ranking drops to 30th. The competitive stimulus aid amounts to $20.55 per Wisconsin public school student.


The education stimulus funds are arguably more impactful than the other types of stimulus monies, because over a third of Wisconsin's state budget is spent on education. Our below-average showing in the education stimulus competition means more budget pressure for us than for most other states. On the bright side, when these stimulus funds dry up, Wisconsin will feel the pinch while big winners like Florida and New York may feel a vise grip.

PPF Pearls: Mayoral takeover of schools

Last winter, at the behest of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Forum conducted an analysis of other urban school districts that had undergone governance reform such as state or mayoral takeovers. Our findings are pretty much summed up by the subtitle of the report: The Devil is in the Details. It's becoming tedious to say, but we found, again, that there are no silver bullets in education reform.

At the time our report was released, neither the mayor nor the governor had explicitly said a mayoral takeover was on the table, but that has changed now, perhaps largely because the U.S. Department of Education has made clear that this kind of governance reform can be rewarded with federal "Race to the Top" funds.

These federal funds being dangled in front of our leaders are not a sure thing, however. As part of the Race to the Top grant program, they would be competitive funds, awarded to the state only if certain criteria are met. These criteria are still in draft form, but include the state (and the district) making "assurances" that steps are being taken in four areas to improve student outcomes. The four areas include:

• Standards and assessments--adopting common standards and implementing common, high-quality assessments


• Data systems to support instruction--implementing a statewide longitudinal data system that is accessible to parents and other stakeholders and using data to improve instruction


• Improving teachers and leaders--providing alternative pathways to teaching and school leadership, measuring and rewarding teacher performance, ensuring the most effective teachers and principals are equitably distributed across schools, and measuring and reporting the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs


• Turning around struggling schools--intervening in the lowest-performing schools and districts, increasing the supply of high-quality charter schools, and turning around struggling schools.

In addition, a specific draft criterion would require the state to demonstrate that education is a funding priority by not cutting K-12 aid from 2008 levels. Other factors to be considered are the support of the teachers unions and the state's progress toward closing the racial achievement gap.

For Wisconsin and Milwaukee, meeting many of these criteria may be a stretch. Maintaining K-12 aid has been difficult in the past several budget cycles, even prior to the recession and the loss of state income tax revenue. The racial achievement gap in Wisconsin is among the worst in the nation and is not narrowing here as it is in other states. The strong teachers union has voiced opposition in the past to many of the items to be "assured," most notably the idea of tying teacher pay to student performance.

In addition, before the mayor gets a chance to try his hand at running the school district, the legislature will have to make certain statutory changes.

In the meantime, the school board will be debating significant structural changes within the district's administration and recruiting a new superintendent. Could all these forces come together in a federally-funded "perfect storm" that raises student achievement in Milwaukee? The chance seems remote, but you may want to keep an umbrella close at hand, just in case.

Regional identity could help Great Lakes cities leverage their assets

We’ve all heard of the brain drain—that powerful vacuum sucking all of the college-educated young professionals out of cities like Milwaukee. More recent reporting suggests that many who leave later return to the Milwaukee area. What do these returned brain drainers like myself have to say about their beloved but struggling Midwestern cities? Detroit’s Sarah Szurpicki and Abby Wilson of Pittsburgh have the answer. After stints in New York City and South Africa, the duo returned to their hometowns to co-found GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange), an organization seeking to bolster regional identity among older industrial cities.

GLUE just completed its second annual conference in Milwaukee, featuring an inspirational mix of post-boomer urbanites from rust-belt cities like Buffalo and Cleveland sharing ideas about urban renewal, the green economy, sustainability, transit, community journalism and more. Following tours of the Growing Power urban farm, Menomonee Valley’s sustainable redevelopment, and the Great Lakes Water Institute, I’m still on a high from hearing so many people call Milwaukee a beautiful and impressive city. One participant from St. Louis commented, only partially joking, that he was now deciding between Paris and Milwaukee for his honeymoon.

If that didn’t warm my Milwaukee-loving heart enough, there was also serious information about how the Midwest can leverage its assets to compete in the post-industrial economy (covered locally here and here). Conference speaker Richard Longworth, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, first laid out some bad news: the Midwest has in some ways lost its embrace of change and its former knack for innovation and creativity. Moreover, independent-minded Midwesterners are not accustomed to working across borders to create regional, shared solutions. No Midwestern university teaches even one course on the Midwest. Fragmented efforts, such as the fact that each state has its own separate bioscience organization, lead to duplication and competition. Longworth didn’t mince words. “The good news is this era is so new. The bad news,” he said, “is that so much of the Midwest is already behind.”

The advantages that Great Lakes cities share include having existing infrastructure and appealing street grids, a density that can support development, an intense work ethic, access to bioscience raw materials, and, of course, plentiful fresh water. Opportunities exist if the region plays its cards right, in industries of the future such as clean water technology, bioscience, nanotechnology, green industry, and transit.

But how can the Midwest and its Great Lakes cities maximize assets? Multiple speakers at the GLUE conference stressed the need for regional planning and geographic unity (as did this recent local editorial), what Longworth characterized as a need for a Midwestern Marshall Plan. Tom Wolfe of the Northeast Midwest Institute described how sustainability should be a principle criterion for the distribution of federal dollars. Kate Rube of Smart Growth America showed how current zoning and land growth laws need to be revised because they often make “smart growth” sustainable development illegal. John Austin of the New Economy Institute highlighted affirmative, targeted immigration policies as a promising strategy for bringing innovation back to the Midwest, an especially important approach for Midwestern cities that are losing population.

The winds of change blowing off the lake appear to suggest that Great Lakes cities would do well to adopt an open attitude toward regionalism, the new green economy, and the feedback of young professionals who are reversing the brain drain in their post-industrial Midwestern cities and beginning to speak with a unified voice through organizations like Great Lakes Urban Exchange.

Stimulating Awareness: When, where, and how will the $787 billion in economic stimulus funding be spent?

There's no shortage of opportunities for regular citizens seeking to track implementation of the massive federal stimulus legislation and for auditor-types looking for work associated with the package. In fact, according to a New York Times article, $350 million of stimulus funds are dedicated to the effort of stimulus oversight.

For ordinary citizens who are curious about the progress of the stimulus spending, a federal website (http://www.recovery.gov/) established by the Obama administration aims to answer questions about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (click here for the full text of the final act). The site gives background of the legislation, a simple breakdown of projected spending, a timeline for implementation, and a forum for suggestions.

Recovery.gov may prove most useful in the upcoming months as various federal agencies and state governments follow through with mandatory data reporting on actual spending of stimulus dollars and begin to gauge the impacts of those funds. Weekly agency reports will begin March 3rd but won’t include spending information until April 6th. State governments will start sending in quarterly spending reports on July 10th. As reports come in, Recovery.gov will post the information for public view.

In addition to tracking dollars and cents, the public has several tools available to determine how actual spending meets the expectations of the President and Congress. The Congressional Budget Office has released a summary of the anticipated budgetary effects of the legislation, broken down by year (2009 through 2019) and service area. Using these estimates, the New York Times has developed a detailed, interactive listing of expenditures. As spending reports come in, the public can observe whether or not actual expenditures are on pace with these projections.

It will also be possible for Wisconsinites to track how the Badger State may fare. The State of Wisconsin has created its own website (http://www.recovery.wisconsin.gov/) to display estimates of what funding the state might realize, listing anticipated expenditures by program area. Additional information on state-by-state stimulus appropriations can be seen through an interactive map established by the Center for American Progress and state-by-state fact sheets developed by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

Stimulus or no stimulus, Milwaukee County needs an infrastructure plan

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's statement (as reported in today's Journal Sentinel) that he will not request federal stimulus funds already has generated considerable reaction from other elected officials and in the blogosphere, and likely will continue to do so. While taking sides in the ideological debate over the need for and composition of a stimulus package is not the purpose of this piece (see previous Milwaukee Talkie blogs on stimulus here and here), my two cents - based on the Forum's previous research on county government - is simple: something must happen soon to address Milwaukee County's pressing infrastructure needs.

Our report last May on the county's transit funding crisis outlined how the imminent need to purchase 150 new buses (at a cost of approximately $56 million) could soon require the county to reduce transit service by up to 30%. Meanwhile, our analysis of county-owned parks and cultural institutions concluded that:

Major maintenance and basic infrastructure repair needs are significant and growing at each of the county-owned assets, with the exception of the Milwaukee County Historical Society headquarters, which is in the final stages of a major renovation. Among the more significant deferred maintenance/infrastructure needs assessment totals are $10 to $15 million for the Milwaukee Public Museum, $5.5 to $8.5 million for the Milwaukee County Zoo (plus a $130 million capital improvements wish list), and $276.6 million in the Milwaukee County Parks.

Many are quick to blame the county executive's position on tax increases for these infrastructure backlogs. A far less commonly understood and perhaps more important contributor, however, is the 2003 decision made by both the executive and county board to cap annual debt issuance for capital projects at approximately $30 million per year.

That decision was predicated on an equally important decision made that year to refinance approximately $100 million of long-term debt. The refinancing plan was structured in a manner that provided a significant near-term reduction in annual debt service payments (in order to generate operating budget relief), but that caused a spike in those payments in the out years. County policymakers prudently recognized that failure to control new debt in the interim would cause significant long-term problems, so they instituted an annual bonding cap. Today, an area of county fiscal affairs that is praised by bond rating agencies is its sound management and rapid repayment of its debt.

The catch, however, is that the policy to limit annual capital bonding did not necessarily reflect the county's infrastructure needs, was not accompanied by an analysis of those needs versus the resources available, and did not result in a plan to address the mismatch. That remains the problem today.

Are federal stimulus funds the solution to that problem? Probably not, given the depth of the county's needs and the uncertainty as to whether those needs even would be eligible for stimulus dollars.

But those who are taking options off the table that could at least help - and this goes for the county executive with regard to stimulus funds as well as supervisors who have rejected analysis of a sale or lease of General Mitchell Airport and closure of county pools - have an obligation to specify the realistic solutions they have in mind to comprehensively address the county's infrastructure needs and the legislative strategy they intend to pursue to implement those solutions.

Whether it's addressing the county's infrastructure repair backlog, solving its transit funding crisis, or figuring out how to fix or replace its aging mental health complex, it is time for less politicking and more real and honest consensus-building and planning.

Some call for investment in people, not bricks and bridges

A recent Milwaukee Talkie blog post asked, “Can’t we all get along when it comes to spending stimulus funds?” That post tackled state-vs.-local issues with regard to infrastructure spending, but not everyone is even at the point of agreeing that President-Elect Obama’s forthcoming New Deal-like plan to stimulate the economy by funding infrastructure has the right target.

In articles like “First, Repair the Human Infrastructure,” the head of a community health initiative claims that stimulus funding used to prevent chronic illness would save billions down the line in medical care and disability costs. Similarly, another blog makes a bid for human capital: “Lots of infrastructure is decaying in this country, and that includes the people and systems that comprise our social, educational, health and other kinds of human infrastructure. It isn’t just a matter of bricks and bridges.”

In the article “Don’t Forget the Human Infrastructure,” the Brookings Institute’s Isabel Sawhill presents some pragmatic arguments for making strategic investments in the nonprofit sector, which employs 10 percent of the workforce while providing a safety net for many, but is suffering in the bad economy. She notes that if such "human infrastructure" investments were made, the nonprofit sector would:

· Spend the money quickly and fully
· Employ people with a broad range of skills
· Be able to rely on a network of preexisting institutions
· Have the capacity to spread the dollars widely
· Avoid shrinkage, thus not adding to the ranks of the unemployed.

In Milwaukee, nonprofits are feeling the crunch. A Journal Sentinel article advised the sector: "Now is a time to be wary." The Nonprofit Portal of Milwaukee's most recent online newsletter links to five articles on weathering the economic crisis.

A commenter on a Seattle blog disagrees with Sawhill and others' human infrastructure arguments, cautioning against investing too heavily in recurring costs, “When you finance a building [or a road, bridge or rail line], you’re expecting to be able to use that building for maybe 50 years. You don’t need to build it again next year. . . . When we hire a teacher, however, the cost of their salary will recur each year.”

Others agree that we should be building things, but stress that short-term projects should be emphasized to stimulate the economy more quickly. An L.A. Times article describes how complex infrastructure projects like subways have a long lead time devoted to preparing engineering studies and environmental surveys, which can delay their stimulative effect. Lawrence E. Harris, a USC professor of finance counters, “But lots of tradesmen who know how to build houses can build community buildings, senior citizen centers and early childhood centers, which don’t take a long time.” Despite its emphasis on large infrastructure projects, Obama’s stimulus package is likely to highlight modernizing schools.

At least one women’s group is also concerned about Obama’s plan. Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal expressed alarm that the recovery package will emphasize construction jobs “which notoriously under-represent women workers.” She cautioned, “Although we support a physical infrastructure stimulus package, we believe it must be accompanied with a human infrastructure component that will employ a majority of women workers.”

Evidence abounds that many aspects of physical infrastructure have been neglected for too long in this country, as well as locally in Milwaukee. The number of voices pointing out that other aspects of the country’s “infrastructure” – from education to the nonprofit sector to hurricane protection – also are in disrepair speaks to the myriad challenges facing the new Obama administration. But perhaps no challenge is greater than this: while consensus seems to have emerged that we must stimulate the economy somehow, and while the battle therefore will continue over what sector or project gets the money, in the end we are still spending money we don't really have.

Can't we all get along when it comes to spending stimulus funds?

For years, state and local officials in Wisconsin and across the nation have pleaded with federal officials for more help in addressing their crumbling infrastructure. Now that it appears those pleas may be answered as part of a huge federal stimulus package, disagreement has arisen over who gets to control and spend the money.


State governments received welcome news earlier this month when President-elect Obama told the National Governors Association that the stimulus package he was planning would include substantial allocations to the states for roads, bridges, mass transit and other public works projects. That news, however, was not as well-received by local government officials.


Stateline.org reports the National League of Cities and National Association of Counties have sent a report to the Obama transition team arguing that local governments should receive the bulk of the funds, as they're better equipped than states to spend infrastructure dollars quickly and effectively. Local officials also argue they need more help than state governments because states already are hitting them with recession-induced cuts in state aids.


State officials counter that they're the appropriate recipients given the mechanisms already in place to receive and distribute federal infrastructure allocations. They also contend that states have a bigger picture view of infrastructure needs and can properly allocate stimulus dollars in a manner that will best serve the greatest number of residents.


This national dispute is being replicated in Milwaukee. After Governor Jim Doyle sent a $3.7 billion wish list of infrastructure projects to federal officials, Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman criticized the governor for failing to consult with local officials and sacrificing local road and bridge needs for state highway expansion projects. More recently, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett sent his own list of $599 million in infrastructure projects to the president-elect.

So how should this dispute be settled? One interesting idea comes from a University of Maryland professor who suggests a national commission modeled after the federal base closing commission. The commission would review potential stimulus-funded infrastructure projects and provide a list for Congress that would receive an up or down vote in its entirety. That approach certainly has potential to eliminate the intrusion of pork-barrel spending, but could a national commission be fair to localized infrastructure projects, which tend to be far less glamorous than larger state projects?

This is a very difficult issue to referee because both sides have a point. Federal transportation dollars typically are distributed to states precisely because the feds have little interest or capacity to get involved in divvying up dollars to local projects. Also, state government does have an appropriate role to play in funding and coordinating a statewide transportation network that serves residents and businesses beyond local boundaries.

It is this very dynamic, however, that often prevents local transportation needs and wants from being addressed. Projects like the Marquette Interchange always receive priority from state officials because of their statewide importance and the number of people they serve. Such prioritization arguably would be fully justified and acceptable if there were some remaining fiscal capacity to also fund high priority local road and transit projects.

Too often, however, there is not. Furthermore, in Wisconsin, the requirement that the non-federal share of transit projects must be funded at least in part with local dollars is an additional huge impediment. Consequently, localized transportation projects either fall to the local property taxpayer or simply don't get done. The City of Milwaukee's huge local street repair backlog and continued inaction on commuter rail and light rail/bus rapid transit exemplify this dynamic.

Alderman Bauman is right about the need for better consultation between state and local officials, albeit without the hyperbole that typically accompanies transportation discussions in southeast Wisconsin. In light of the certain strife that will occur between the state and local governments when it comes time to cut the state budget, it certainly would be refreshing to see consultation and cooperation regarding how to spend that rare influx of federal transportation dollars.

Local media coverage of politics impacts federal spending

A recent working paper by professors James Snyder of MIT and David Stromberg of the University of Stockholm, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that local media coverage of politics affects not only citizens' knowledge of their elected U.S. representatives, but also how hard those officials work and how much federal money they bring back to their districts.

From the paper's abstract:

Voters living in areas with less coverage of their U.S. House representative are less likely to recall their representative's name, and less able to describe and rate them. Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees (perhaps), and to vote against the party line. Finally, this congressional behavior affects policy. Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press coverage of the local members of congress

What the authors found, specifically, was that in print media markets in which most readers lived in one particular congressional district, newspapers printed more stories mentioning the elected representative of that district, while newspapers with markets covering several districts covered Congressional representatives less often. Survey work found that citizens who live in the "highly congruent" media markets covering fewer districts were more likely to know the name of at least one candidate in the last Congressional campaign in their district. The authors argue that greater knowledge among citizens leads to greater accountability for elected officials.

This argument underpins their next finding, that representatives of districts with congruent newspaper markets worked harder for their constituents than those of districts that either overlapped with many media markets or "fell through the cracks" of surrounding markets. Indeed, they found Congressmen from highly congruent districts to be "more disciplined by their constituencies." Significantly, they voted along party lines less often, they testified before congressional hearings more often, and they were more likely to serve on committees having more relevancy to their constituency than on committees with broad policy orientation.

With that finding, the authors hypothesized that these representatives would have greater ability to have policy impacts at home, as measured by the federal spending per capita in the counties in their district. They in fact found this to be the case.

Interestingly, however, they found only a weakly significant positive relationship between media market congruence and voter turnout. The elected representatives' behavior was predicable from the amount of newspaper coverage despite the fact that the media coverage did not affect voter turnout.

These findings have relevance for metro Milwaukee, where there is one large newspaper with a large market area that covers more than one Congressional district. Thus, we live in an incongruent market, where the print media's readers live in several districts. According to the findings of this research, we should each therefore expect less coverage of our own U.S. Representative. Southeast Wisconsin's Congressmen and Congresswomen, for their part, should expect less media scrutiny and less knowledgeable constituents, which may lead them to do less to ensure the region's citizens get a healthy return on their federal tax dollars. Indeed, the Forum's analysis of 2003 federal spending in the nation's 50 largest metro areas found Milwaukee ranked 40th, at $5,321 per capita.

The authors compare their findings to similar research on media competition and find that congruence may be a bigger factor than the number of newspapers covering a district. When Milwaukee's two newspapers merged in the early 1990's, readers openly and loudly worried about the quality of news coverage. When, in the early 2000's, the paper decided to focus more on the suburban readership, thereby expanding its market, readers worried about the effects on coverage of urban issues. What we should also have been worried about, perhaps, was how it would affect the quality of our political clout in Washington.

Transportation on my mind...

Before heading over to Marquette University Law School yesterday to watch Mayor Barrett and County Executive Walker debate Milwaukee's transit future, I came across three other transportation stories making news that day.

The first, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, headlined a call from the I-95 Corridor Coalition , made up of east coast transportation and police officials, for a doubling of highway spending and "drastically" increased use of transit and rail in the corridor extending from Maine to Florida. Interestingly, a coalition spokesman acknowledged that neither the states nor feds have the capacity to fund the estimated $71 billion annual cost and argued that public-private partnerships be utilized to help fund improvements. That is the direction in which the Pennsylvania Legislature may be headed in light of proposals to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike and authorize privately built toll lanes on existing highways.

The second and third articles, from the Associated Press and Wall Street Journal, detailed the "surge" in transit ridership nationwide during the second quarter and the significant challenges facing many transit agencies as they try to accommodate it. The AP story laid out the arguments for and against increased federal funding, while the Journal story reported on specific proposals in Congress to boost mass transit funding.

Armed with this context, I listened to the mayor and county executive lay out their respective transportation visions and argue again about use of the $91.5 million in federal funds authorized 17 years ago for a Milwaukee transit project. As I did so, I couldn't help but reflect on the following:

• While we continue to argue with each other on the local level, other mega-regions have formed powerful coalitions to advocate in Washington for their collective transportation needs. Who is more likely to get their fair share of an insufficient federal transportation funding pie, huge regions of the country who band together to fight for their parochial interests, or mid-sized metropolitan areas whose elected officials can't even agree on priorities among themselves?


• Not only Pennsylvania, but countless other states are acknowledging that their transportation infrastructure needs and those of the nation as a whole are so staggering that non-public funding and/or operation of parts of that infrastructure, as well as congestion pricing or other tolling mechanisms, must be contemplated as at least part of the solution. Ironically, the decrease in driving and popularity of smaller vehicles is making the problem even more acute, as gasoline tax revenue is no longer an elastic source of revenue. Is Wisconsin behind the eight ball in awakening to these realities?


• The Journal article notes that "momentum is building in Congress" to increase funding for public transportation, signaling good news for those counting on greater federal support to build and operate light rail, bus rapid transit and/or commuter rail in southeast Wisconsin. At the same time, however, both that article and the AP story describe the monumental challenges facing transit systems in paying for existing bus and rail service. That reality - combined with a depleted Federal Highway Fund that has some in Washington talking about diverting transit dollars for highway needs - reflects the challenges Milwaukee will face in attempting to obtain federal money for new transit services.

Of course, the fundamental lesson here is that transportation needs not only here in southeast Wisconsin, but across the country, are immense, and that other states and metro areas are objectively assessing those needs and developing strategic, diversified and cohesive approaches to meeting them. If indeed Washington is poised to provide more money, then it's a pretty safe bet that those with the best plans and the most unity will be first in line to get it.

Redirecting Congressional Earmarks

There's a subtle yet important connection between two seemingly unrelated items in Sunday’s Journal Sentinel. A news story by Audrey Hoffer details the annual congressional earmark report from Taxpayers for Common Sense, including an analysis of Wisconsin delegation earmarks. Meanwhile, an opinion piece by Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution urges the presidential candidates to discuss how they would help states like Wisconsin re-tool to meet the global economic challenges of the 21st century.

So what’s the connection? Well, it has to do with one’s assessment of the appropriate federal role in solving economic development problems on the state and local level.

As the Hoffer story notes, “earmark” is a dirty word to many, including the group that authored the report. As a former congressional aide who staffed a member of the House Appropriations Committee, you won’t get an argument from me. My contention, however, is not that providing federal dollars for local projects always is wasteful; rather, it’s that appropriations for such projects should be determined by the project’s ability to meet an objective set of criteria determined by the relevant federal agency, and not by the clout of an individual member of Congress or the lobbying skills of project supporters.

Which brings me back to Katz’s piece. He and Brookings have been at the forefront of a movement that is calling for federal reinvestment in struggling metropolitan areas in recognition of the critical role they will play in enhancing the nation’s economic competitiveness in the global economy. This argument was summarized in a recent op-ed he co-authored in the Chicago Sun Times:

Chicagoland simply does not have the power or resources to achieve meaningful reforms to metro-scale problems such as crushing traffic gridlock and inadequate work force housing on its own. Whether we appreciate it or not, the federal government has a powerful role to play in helping metros address these and other issues -- through smart investments, market-shaping information and environment-strengthening regulation. This potential is not being realized since for too long the federal government has been strangely adrift and unresponsive to the dynamic forces at play in our country.

A key to reinvigorating struggling metro areas could be to establish a federal agenda for metropolitan renewal that would formally prioritize investments in those areas as part of the annual appropriations process. This agenda could be funded, at least in part, by reducing the use of earmarks in individual spending bills and allowing metro areas to compete for the same dollars under a set of criteria that recognize the gravity and magnitude of their problems.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see federal resources steered toward transportation improvements, affordable housing and other solutions in metropolitan areas whose health directly impacts the national economy, and whose problems cause the biggest drain on federal, state and local social services budgets, as opposed to projects that benefit those legislators who have best mastered the game of congressional earmarks?