Volume #48, Report #206, Article #11--Thursday, October 22, 2009
SURVEY SAYS LOCAL GOVERNMENTS PLANNING ON SERVICE CUTS
Hundreds of local governments anticipate they will have to cut services during the next year, and hundreds more are seeking cooperative ways between themselves to manage and hold off on service cuts, according to a survey issued by the University of Michigan.
The survey of officials from some 1,200 local governments indicated those officials trust state government even less than does the general public.
The survey was conducted by the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at U-M in cooperation with the Michigan Municipal League, the Michigan Association of Counties and the Michigan Townships Association.
Officials in all of the state's 1,858 local governments were contacted and officials in 1,204 responded to the survey.
According to the center, 47 percent of the counties responding said they anticipated cutting services in the next year, though the survey did not say how. Another 41 percent of city officials said they also planned service cuts, as did officials of 33 percent of the village officials.
But 55 percent of the county officials and 50 percent of the city officials, however, said they expected increasing the number of interlocal agreements to help stave off the need to cut services.
Though not cited as an effort to preserve services, many of those interviewed said they felt they still had to do more to expand regional land use planning. Nearly half those polled felt they did not do enough in terms of regional land planning.
But astonishingly (and especially so since so many state officials got their start in local government), 49 percent of the respondents said they seldom or never trust state government.
Where other polls done by the center show that 18 percent of the general public feels state government tries to "do the right thing," just 9 percent of the local officials felt the same way.