April 9 The revenue drop from COVID-19 is barely starting to show up in official figures, but already furloughs and major shortfalls are common in state and local governments around the country. The pain may be sudden, but it could last for years.
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On March 2, Wesley Harper started his new job as executive director of the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities. A few days later, he went to Washington to meet with members of the state’s congressional delegation, planning on discussing a dry agenda of topics such as rural broadband, 5G infrastructure, wastewater and the Census. COVID-19 was added at the last minute, almost as an afterthought.
“That’s how much we underestimated this, and that was a month ago,” Harper says. “It was in those meetings that I really started to grasp how severe this was going to be.”
Harper is now working overtime to help keep his members afloat as they try to combat a public health emergency, even as they’ve shifted to remote operations, furloughed some workers and reassigned others. As cities in Nevada and elsewhere struggle to keep from drowning in the current tsunami, they know they’re about to be pounded by another big wave — the fiscal impact from the nation’s economy all but shutting down.
Click here for the entire article by Alan Greenblatt, Senior Staff Writer
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