By Eugene T. Lowe
February 14, 2011

Leaders from The U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, and the National Association of Counties were told in a late afternoon White House conference call on February 5 that the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program would be cut by 7.5 percent in the President’s FY2012 Budget, which will be released on February 14. Conference of Mayors President Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth B. Kautz and Conference of Mayors 2nd Vice President Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter were on the call. Both of them expressed disappointment with the announced cut.

The conference call did answer what many thought could have been a 25 percent cut in CDBG that was an earlier (late December) Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommendation. But with a strong push back from mayors and other locally elected officials, the final cut of 7.5 percent did bring some relief. Meetings were held with OMB and other White House officials and finally with President Barack Obama during the month of January, where mayors delivered the clear message that a 25 percent cut was unacceptable.

The day after the conference call, however, an Op-Ed written by OMB Director Jacob Lew ran in the New York Times with the title, “The Easy Cuts are Behind Us.” In the piece, Lew singled out the 7.5 percent ($300 million) cut in the CDBG program along with two other programs that would also be cut in the next fiscal year budget. Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran in a memo to mayors described CDBG as being on a chopping block. He said, “I find the decision of the OMB Director to publish an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times singling out the very successful CDBG program, the number one priority of the Conference of Mayors since 1974, for a cut during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression to be ill advised.”

Cochran said further in the memo to mayors that he could not “overstate the risks we face this year regarding CDBG.” He referenced the Republican Study Committee, with 175 congressional members, which has proposed the “TOTAL ELIMINATION OF CDBG.” Cochran added, “In that we will soon face a fight on both the current year funding level (FY2011) and funding for next year (FY2012), the threat to CDBG is more serious than at any time in my history with the Conference of Mayors.”