By Larry Jones
June 23, 2003

During the June 7 morning plenary session, former Conference President and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley urged mayors and the Conference as an organization to pay closer attention to the rising cost of unfunded mandates. Unless mayors and other state and local leaders act now to educate their constituents and members of Congress, Daley warns that an increasing number of federal and state unfunded mandates will continue to consume an increasing share of local government budgets.

Daley pointed out the earlier success mayors experienced when he and other mayors worked through the Conference with former Senator Dirk Kempthorne (ID) to enact unfunded mandates legislation. He explained "this organization brought together other organizations that represent state and local governments and went to Congress in 1995 and urged them to pass the federal unfunded mandates act. It received bipartisan support and it was signed by a Democratic President."

But in recent years, Daley warns that both the federal and state government are passing an increasing number of popular laws and sending them on to their bureaucrats who write the rules and regulations which translate into costly unfunded mandates that local governments must comply with. In many cases he pointed out that these mandates are "supported by bureaucracy in your own city government or your special districts — your fire district, your school district, your library district or your water district. They like these because they can in turn tax the local taxpayer." Daley mentioned several popular mandates such as the no child left behind act, individuals with disabilities in education act and homeland security which enjoy wide spread support.

Not only are local governments being hit with an increasing number of unfunded mandates, Daley told mayors that "in this day and age our budgets are being cut both by the federal and state governments due to the economy." And he told them "as you try to go to Washington or to your state capitols to ask for more money..., they will not listen to you." He pointed out that local governments lost $4 billion in fiscal relief that was dropped from the tax bill that was recently signed into law. He also said "the issue for us, especially with the federal government, is we have to balance our budgets. The federal government doesn't."

In closing, Daley warned mayors "if we don't look at this again right now in order to forge bipartisan support and bring more allies into this, it is going to cost us more and more money, especially your local taxpayers in many of the special districts."