The Best of Times,the Worst of Times: An Unconventional Conclusion

Equity

Alarm bells should be ringing. We will face continuing economic and humanitarian crises if we do not address the growing inequity in America. The Pew Research Center (2020) writes:

As with the distribution of aggregate income, the share of U.S. aggregate wealth held by upper-income families is on the rise. From 1983 to 2016, the share of aggregate wealth going to upper-income families increased from 60% to 79%. Meanwhile, the share held by middle-income families has been cut nearly in half, falling from 32% to 17%. Lower-income families had only 4% of aggregate wealth in 2016, down from 7% in 1983.

The many studies cited by John Accordino in his introduction to this issue of State and Local Government Review make clear the inequalities are often reflected in the political divide in American politics today. It is not just the issue of rural inequities, but also it is increasingly about the extraordinary concentration of growth, income, and opportunity based on the expanding knowledge-based economy in the mega metropolitan areas leaving the smaller metros, suburbs, and rural areas far behind with growing political bitterness.

In a speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Senator John Edwards used the phrase “two Americas” to describe the great wealth divisions between what he called the “privileged and the wealthy” versus “those who live pay check to pay check.” Today, the “two Americas” is much more likely to include a major difference based on where you live. The difference is not only about social economic statistics and the pain felt by entire families, often for generations, but also now about location. This has led to the concentration of intense political views. Futurist Florida (2018) writes “…growing spatial inequality has registered itself in a deepening political divide.”

The Brookings Institution notes the political implications of “a dramatic gap between two Americas—one based in large, diverse, thriving metropolitan regions; the other found in more homogeneous small towns and rural areas struggling under the weight of economic stagnation and social decline” (Hendrickson, Muro, and Galston 2018).

The twin crises of 2020—the coronavirus and collapse of the economy—have placed these inequities and geographic differences in the public spotlight for all to see. As one major illustration, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC 2020) reports “death rates among Black/African American persons (92.3 deaths per 100,000 population) and Hispanic/Latino persons (74.3) that were substantially higher than that of white (45.2) or Asian (34.5) persons.” The identified likely causes are the core of the inequity discussion: communities far from grocery stores or medical facilities, types of employment, no insurance coverage or paid sick leave, and stigma and systemic inequalities that may “undermine prevention efforts, increase levels of chronic and toxic stress and ultimately sustain health and health care disparities” (CDC 2020).

The overlap of growing inequities and political ideologies has led to a repeated paralysis at the national level. The states and their local governments increasingly are the front line in the battle against coronavirus and economic collapse (Balz 2020). The stories of innovation, cooperation, and coordination among local governments covered by most of the contributors to this volume suggest strongly that counties and municipalities, not the national government, will be at the forefront of reducing inequalities in their communities. The same conclusion seems clear in the close coordination and cooperation by the states. Witness the collaborative work of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, District of Columbia, or of California, Oregon, and Washington or of the Northeastern states working together under the leadership of New York Governor Cuomo.

A Collapsing Infrastructure

America’s roads, bridges, and tunnels are in very poor shape and often dangerous, even deadly. Major bridge collapses such as I-35 West in Minneapolis in 2017 killing 13 and injuring 145 are visible testament to the state of our infrastructure. Similar examples are found across the country (e.g., California, Michigan, or Washington).

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives this country an overall rating of D+ for the condition of our infrastructure. Lowest rating goes to transit with a D− (ASCE 2019). More damming, perhaps, are the daily headlines in the ASCE Press Clips (e.g., “LA’s Crumbling Infrastructure: An Ounce of Good News and a Ton of Bad News”; ASCE 2020).

The big challenge facing discussion of infrastructure needs is that most people and certainly much of the debate focus primarily on roads—new roads, widening roads with additional lanes, and some repairs and bridge replacement. In fact, infrastructure is about so much more. First among the additional components of infrastructure is transit. The operation, repair, and building of new lines are so underfunded by all levels of government that transit systems seem to live in a constant state of crisis. Those in the Washington, District of Columbia, area know well the repeated shutdowns of the metro transit system as stations, whole lines, or the entire system are repeatedly shut down for emergency repairs. In New York City, it is not just general repair crises but also the consistent blockage of one of the most important transit projects on the East Coast–Hudson River Tunnel, also known as the Gateway Project (Shear and McGeehan 2018).

Roads and transit are just one part of the infrastructure that impacts us on a daily basis. Think of broadband (accessibility and quality), drinking water (treatment plants and distribution systems), the electric grid (reliability and carrying capacity), the development of alternate energy resources (solar and wind), and sewage systems (treatment plants and sewer lines). Many other areas of our infrastructure are facing equal challenges but are often less visible unless a major crisis occurs (e.g., airports, dams and levees, parks, and ports). Most state and local leaders place other infrastructural requirements high on their community’s list of needed investments including schools, hospitals, and even housing, especially for the elderly, low income, and homeless.

There is a direct connection between our crumbling infrastructure and equity. We all know of the simple desire to have clean, safe water in communities like Flint, Michigan, the poorest city of its size in the nation (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020). The lead contamination throughout much of the water system was first discovered in 2014. About 75 percent of the pipes were replaced by 2020. Local news reports that further repairs are being delayed because of the coronavirus. The city with over half of its children living in poverty will continue to have many of its citizens endure neurological damage from lead in the water.

Flint stands as one of the more striking illustrations of inequity. Similar dangers exist over much of America. Other than Flint, Newark, New Jersey, is perhaps one of the better-known cities facing lead in the drinking water. Most estimates show a little over 6 million lead service lines still in use in America today, including cities as diverse as Portland, Oregon; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Providence, Rhode Island (Khazan 2019).

Sewage systems are the other side of the drinking water infrastructure shortfalls. Most communities in the country have separate systems for sewage and another for storm water collection. Storm water goes directly to rivers, lakes, oceans, and so on. Sewage goes directly to a sewage treatment plant. Over 40 million people in almost eighty communities have combined sewer systems that transport storm water, industrial waste, and raw sewage in the same pipes. Even our nation’s capital has a system that is about one-third combined waste water/sewage, regularly sending millions of gallons of untreated waste directly into the Potomac River.

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) occur during times of excessive rainfall. Recently, CSOs have become more common in many areas because of climate change–induced frequent rain and micro bursts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2011) writes:

These overflows…contain not only storm water but also pollutants such as untreated human and industrial waste, toxic materials and debris. Storm water may also contain pollutants, including oil, grease and toxic substances, picked up as rain washes across roads or fields. These pathogens, solids and toxic pollutants may be discharged directly to local waters…They pose risks to human health, threaten aquatic habitats and life, and impair the use and enjoyment of the nation’s waterways.

Small farms and poorer rural communities are often forced to use septic tanks in the absence of a public sewer system. Older septic tanks using a more primitive technology are often too expensive to maintain or upgrade. Instead sewage pollution seeps into the ground water and nearby streams or rivers, and into yards, often leading to deadly disease such as hookworm infection and causing sewage back-ups in the home. Replacement of older septic systems can easily cost US$6,000–US$30,000, creating more inequality as poorer residents and small farmers are less likely to be able to upgrade their systems than those increasingly used in wealthier sprawl suburbs (Vock 2019).

The connection between infrastructure and inequities is very pronounced also in the disparity of broadband access. Several of the contributors to this Special Issue gave important insights into this disparity and offer some solutions. Roberto Gallardo shows the link between income and digital access noting that several states and localities are providing workable programs even though there is a real lack of federal actions in this area.

Harold Feld offers ideas to reduce the cost of Internet access and also shows state and local successes in doing so. Ann Bagchi gives a very timely review of the inequities in the expansion of telehealth in rural and urban communities. She notes that it is not just about access to the Internet but also about the level of human and equipment support systems.

Space limitations prevent much further elaboration on those studies and on the very important role broadband access plays in offering equal opportunity and removing some of the inequities. The pandemic and economic crises offer an almost unlimited demonstration of what the Internet disparities mean. Some employees work from home and maintain their incomes. Others are in jobs that cannot be done online, or if they can, they often find they do not have sufficient broadband capacity in their neighborhood or they lack the home equipment and/or training to do so. They lose their incomes.

Across the country, schools closed in response to the coronavirus. After some hesitancy and timing differences, almost all schools shifted to an online finish of the school year. The economic disparities that we know to exist in so many of our schools now showed up in a major way as school district after school district tried to shift to online instruction. Great differences in teacher training and technological skills as well as the levels of Internet access and equipment in different homes and whole neighborhoods became immediately obvious.

Many solutions were offered. Some districts encouraged parents to park outside of schools, libraries, or other public building that boosted their Internet range as much as possible. Some private companies even offered the same assistance. While this may have worked for some students, it ignores the fact that many families do not have a car. Even more, is there an equal education and opportunity if one child works online from the comfort of a home with strong Internet access and a good computer while another is forced to sit in a car hoping to pick up a sufficient connection? One study noted:

A nationwide pivot to distance learning amid the coronavirus pandemic threw into stark relief existing inequities in broadband access, a known issue that has for years hampered many students’ ability to do research and complete assignments at home. An Associated Press review of census data found that 17% of U.S. students—or 3 million kids—do not have a computer at home and 18% don’t have access to the Internet. (Queram 2020)

The Collapse of a Functioning Federalism/Intergovernmental System

One of the great barriers to solving the equity issues and the infrastructure challenges is the practical disappearance of a functioning federal and intergovernmental system. In many, many instances, the federal partner that had been key to solving prior crises is now “Missing in Action” (Benton 2020). More than two years ago, I raised the issue of the role of the national government in times of growing challenges:

It is hard to imagine resolution of the major challenges, conflicts, and crises facing the country without having a flexible, innovative, and effective intergovernmental system. Think about the following: Growing income inequality and inequity with unacceptable numbers of citizens in real poverty at a time wealth continues to be concentrated at an unprecedented rate; racism and the explosive conflicts between authority and community; and a continuing deterioration of the environment with the certainty of increasingly violent and frequent climate change-produced disasters necessitating unprecedented mitigation and resiliency efforts. To this list could easily be added: the concerns about an immigration system that neither protects fully the security of the country nor insures the future of our newest arrivals; a revenue system that is so dysfunctional it cannot produce the funds to meet the most basic services and instead finds solutions in passing on costs to other levels of government and future generations; and the alarming lack of investment in infrastructure to the point that the nation’s roads and transit, water and waste water treatment, etc. are rapidly falling behind much of the developed world. (Glendening 2018, 256; see also Benton 2018, 15-36)

In the early years of the Republic, we were largely a state-centric system with occasional swings toward centralization e.g., Lincoln and the Civil War and Wilson and World War 1, when the United States emerged as a world power. But for the most part, the Republic’s early history was clearly one of states’ rights and limited involvement of the national government. The one big exception was infrastructure.

There was an early consensus strongly supported by presidents that the national government must be involved in building the infrastructure that the young nation needed. Early focus was on ports, lighthouses, canals, and roads (especially the “post roads” for mail delivery). By the 1830s, the expansion to the West, especially via railroads, became a priority. But the really dramatic, historic advances of the national government partnering with the state and local governments to build our infrastructure occurred during the twentieth century under four presidents, two Republican and two Democratic.

President Theodore Roosevelt moved aggressively to greatly expand what would later be known as our National Park System. Two decades later, his cousin President Franklin Roosevelt used a massive public works approach to help end the Great Depression. The Work Progress Administration (WPA) employed over 8 million Americans to build the country’s infrastructure at a scope not seen before or since. These programs were not only about employment, they were also about many of the equity issues facing the country at that time: access to jobs for rural poor, electricity for every home, and new schools and hospitals in often forgotten communities.

President Eisenhower, the national hero of World War II, started the interstate highway system. Over the next fifty years, this massive program would build almost 50,000 miles of highway. ¹ The Interstate Highway Program stands as a model for a working intergovernmental system. Billions of dollars were invested to build interstate highways, bridges, tunnels, and related projects in partnership with state and local governments.

The fourth president to focus on the use of massive infrastructure programs to not only help build the country but also to achieve other goals was President Obama. In response to the Great Recession of 2008, the President proposed and Congress quickly passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). About half of the US$831 billion investment went to help state and local governments fund health care, education, aid to the unemployed, and so forth. The other half went to infrastructure projects designed to get people back to work. Significant funds went to traditional road construction, as well as to new transit projects, such as Amtrak and intercity passenger rail. Similar to the broad-based programs and goals of the Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal, the ARRA funded investments in rural drinking water and waste disposal programs, government buildings including child development centers, electric grid updates, and renewable energy programs. The extraordinary infrastructure investments of these four presidents illustrate the connection between infrastructure, equity, and our intergovernmental system.

Concluding Thoughts and Vision

The contributors to this volume have done excellent work advancing insights into the rural–urban divide. It is important to understand the gradients as we move from the mega metropolitan areas to the smallest rural communities. Examples of cooperation, collaboration, and innovation are discussed and offer encouragement. Continued progress, however, will be very difficult unless we understand and fix three major systemic failings: the growing inequities in our nation, our states, and our communities; our failing infrastructure; and the lack of a functioning federal system, especially the lack of a national partner.

While I remain an eternal optimist, I fear that the national government will not make progress in any of these areas in the near future. Despite dozens of daily news accounts of growing inequities in fighting the coronavirus (e.g., Washington Post headline “Covid-19 Killing Black Americans at Alarming Rate”; Thebault et al., 2020), the national response continues to be measures that make inequality greater. One example is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which provided US$60 billion to keep airlines and airports operational and paid for job protections for pilots, flight attendants, and airport administration officials but did not give protection to airport food workers or to retail sales, cleaning, and maintenance workers (Aratani 2020). Likewise for infrastructure responses, initial Trump administration proposals focused on road building with no funding for transit or Amtrak. Notwithstanding the crucial equity link to transit, only after a fierce struggle by transit and equity advocates was funding included.

Unfortunately, the current Trump administration appears to lack an understanding of how federalism should work and the proper role for the states and their local governments. In fact, the President’s view of the proper role of the states in the fight against the coronavirus seemed to change several times in one 24-hour news cycle.

There are alternatives. A brief list would include the following:

Much more of a state-centric, “go-it-alone” model of federalism. Very difficult but may be an essential reality especially if joined by the next alternative.

Most important we need a vision, one that unites us and offers direction and hope. Perhaps something like the following:

We see a multicentered metropolitan region where communities large and small are linked by quality, universal broadband. People are linked physically by transit, bike paths, and walkability. We see a metropolitan community with diverse neighborhoods and local governments, each keeping its own character united by a goal of shared prosperity.