Chart: State aid to cities still nowhere near pre-recession level
February 13th, 2013 at 4:54 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The House Fiscal Office crunched the numbers on how much state aid Governor Chafee wants to give the cities and towns in his proposed 2013-14 budget: $80.3 million, up from a proposed $71.4 million this year (excluding K-12). That’s a healthy bump, but it’s still way less than municipalities were getting in 2006-07:
In theory the cities and towns could have made up for all the money they lost when the General Assembly axed the car tax reimbursement by immediately hiking drivers’ tax bills, but in practice that probably would have caused a mass revolt, so this was where the rubber met the road when a huge economic downturn collided with a requirement that governments balance their budgets.
In nominal dollars, House Fiscal says lawmakers hiked non-school aid to municipalities from $35 million in 1989-90 to $106 million in 1999-2000 and $202 million in 2004-05, then slashed it to $60 million in 2010-11. What the General Assembly giveth, the General Assembly taketh away.
Update: State aid to school districts, on the other hand, has climbed steadily over the past two decades except for a dip during 2008-09 and 2009-10 (with the much-discussed new funding formula taking effect in 2011-12):
Tags: budgets, car tax, city government, general assembly, local aid, municipal, state government, taxes
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
The denominator that would be interesting on each post is the total revenue by city.
How has the proportion of revenue sources in each area changed over time?
EVERY CITY AND TOWN WAS TOLD AT LEAST A YEAR IN ADVANCE THAT THEY WOULD BE LOSING STATE AID.
AND WHAT DID MOST OF THEM DO?
GIVE OUT RAISES , NO INCREASE IN COPAYS FOR HEALTH INSURANCE. NOBODY MADE CUTS LKEK THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO DO AND WARNED ABOUT.
JUST PROCEED LIKE IT WAS BUSIENSS AS USUAL.
THEN THE MONEY GOT CUT AND THEY WERE IN A JAM. AND WHO WAS THE WORST OF THE WORST? DAVID CICCLINI.
WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?
This year the state will be paying 10% more to fund the teachers and state retirement funds. This is the main reason the state has not increased funds to the towns to past levels. when the private sector taxpayers are faced wth higher taxes every year to maintain the public workers union contracts, stagnant or reduced wages, unemployment, poor infrastructure, it in no wonder that we are the only state that has lost population for the psst two years.
Most of this loss was middle class taxpayers. Obama has done a good job spreading the wealth soon the goverment employees will be expected to live on
the same income and benefits as the private sector because most of the private sector will have left the state, similiar to what happened in detroit cleveland, gary, pittsburg and on…thats where RI is headed