Citiwire.net

Welcome to Citiwire.net! Please check the top blog on our Citistates.com site this week–We’re anxious to get feedback on a major international city news project we’re working on. … And about this week’s columns: Barack Obama may be an urban man but the administration’s economic recovery steps to date have done a lot more for states than cities forced into major budget cutbacks in our Great Recession. And now, say the experts, the recession itself may well be prolonged, even deepened, by upcoming big new hits as downwardly adjusted tax assessments shrink property taxes, cities’ revenue mainstay. My Brookings Institution friends have made a big point of how central city and metro area budgets are to the entire national economy, but the White House economists seem to brush past the point. … There’s brighter news in the Citiwire column this week by Scott Polikov as he reports on a turnaround to recognize community values by the Texas Department of Transportation, historically the bastion of big highway orthodoxy. Scott himself deserves significant credit for the switch he describes.