Washington, DC
March 4, 2005

CDBG: FULL FUND IT AND DON'T MOVE IT

In Key West at our Winter Leadership Meeting, mayors expressed strong bipartisan support to fully fund the Community Development Block Grant program and to keep the CDBG at HUD. "Full Fund It; Don't Move It" is the message they charged the staff and mayor members to use as we continue to build support in the Senate and House to kill the OMB proposal to eliminate CDBG.

As US Mayor goes to press we have official headcount of 55 Senators signing a letter to the Senate Budget Committee supporting our position. Unofficially, we probably have 60 Senators supporting our effort.

This week a "Dear Colleague" letter moves forth in the House and our grassroots coalition will move to press the House Members to send the message to the House Budget Committee to full fund CDBG and keep it at HUD.

This week the National Association of Counties is in D.C. and next week the National League of Cities with city officials representing cities and towns across America to join in our coalition efforts to defend and protect our flagship federal program that has been in place — keeping our cities and counties strong and thus the nation — for over 30 years.

As thousands of county delegates come to D.C. this weekend, we are most fortunate to have their help in this effort. Conference President Don Plusquellic, Mayor of Akron, will address their Washington D.C. Legislative Conference here next Monday. Mayor Plusquellic will also address the NLC delegates. And then on March 15 mayors will join the NLC and other allied groups for continued pressure on key House and Senate on Capitol Hill. We thank those Senators and Members of Congress who are with us and raise serious political questions to those who are not supporting their cities, counties and states in this campaign.

On page 7 is the "Dear Colleague" letter listing the Senators who have signed on. If your Senator is not on this letter — then questions have to be asked.

Governors get big bucks from the CDBG program. That's the way we designed it in 1973-74. We have a chart on page 6 showing you how much governors receive for the balance of states' portion of the a approximately 4 billion dollars. Governors passed a resolution here at their Annual Winter Meeting this past week supporting full funding of CDBG at HUD. Governors need to be more active on this issue with their House and Senate delegations. Mayors — especially those with population under 50,000, receiving funds from the "balance of state" funds need to ask their governors to register in with their entire state delegation — both House and Senate.

The Senators, both Democratic and Republican, are with us. And those that are not must be pushed to our side.

Over the next few days, as you have helped us to get Senate support, we must be equally fierce on the House side as we gather the House votes to instruct the House Budget Committee to fully fund CDBG at HUD.

In addition to the "Dear Colleague" letter, we are focusing our grassroots campaign on all Members of the House and Senate Budget Committees as they convene now to set funding levels for the coming year. Please be responsive to our telephone calls and messages as we move in a targeted fashion to secure the votes we need within the House and Senate Budget Committee to fully fund CDBG at HUD for the coming year.

We can win this pro CDBG campaign if every mayor follows through with political action and a political demand and command to — Full fund it and Don't move it. This will be our clarion call as we now move with our allies representing our people from cities, counties and states across this nation to stand up and be proud of all the good work we've done with CDBG friends now for over 30 years. Let us continue to be active with our "Full Fund It; Don't Move It" campaign. The future is too important for us to falter and lose this initiative that continues to keep our cities, counties, and states and our nation — and above all our people — economically strong.