League of Cities Survey: Federal Regulations & Security Still Concerns

Using a random sampling of 1,566 local officials,  the National League of Cities (NLC) Center for Research and Municipal Programs, compiled this year’s The State of America’s Cities, 2006: The Annual Opinion Survey of Municipal Officials to better understand how local officials view issues and problems they face daily while governing our nation’s cities and towns.

The results of the survey highlight both optimistic attitudes and pessimistic concerns from municipal officials throughout the country on various topics including: 1) the direction the country is heading, 2) economic and fiscal conditions, 3) health care costs and availability, 4) traffic, 5) Affordable Housing and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), 6) equity, fairness, and citizen engagement, 7) franchise fees, 8) eminent domain, 9) hurricanes and municipal emergency planning, and 10) survival services. Below is a list summarizing this year’s survey’s results: 

• City officials were split about the general direction in which the country is heading. Forty-six percent of city officials report felling pessimistic about the general direction of the country while 52% report feeling optimistic. Since 2000, the year when city officials claimed to be the most optimistic (92%) in the last twenty years, responses on this topic have been increasingly pessimistic.  
  
  
• Most city officials reported improved economic and fiscal conditions in 2006. Forty-three percent of officials, compared to 32% in 2005, cited improvement in city fiscal conditions. Overall, economic conditions also improved with a 10% increase from last year’s survey, with forty-seven 47% of city officials noted economic improvement as well. Forty-three percent of officials indicated economic health and vitality had improved as well, an 8% increase from last year.  
  
  
• Over half of city officials agree that the cost and availability of health services has worsened since last year.  
  
  
• Since 2001, traffic has topped the list of most deteriorated conditions in communities, with 51% of municipal officials believing that traffic congestion has worsened over the last year.  
  
  
• City officials from cities that receive Community Development Block Grant funding report that cuts to these federal funds are having the broadest affect on the provision of affordable housing (39%).  
  
  
• Two out of three city officials agree that their cities and cities in their region could do more to promote equal opportunity, fairness, and citizen engagement.  
  
• Seven in ten officials say that federal legislation limiting the use of franchise fees would affect their city’s budget.  
  
  
• Most city officials (76%) report that they have not used eminent domain in the past three years in connection with an economic redevelopment project.  
  
  
• While only 4% of cities were directly hit by these hurricanes, nearly 80% of city officials report that their city has been either directly or indirectly affected by hurricanes Rita and Katrina.  Nearly half of city officials reported giving aid to affected cities and/or receiving displaced citizens from those affected cities.  
  
  
• Forty-one percent of municipal leaders report an increasing need for survival services, perhaps reflecting local responses to security issues, natural disasters, and economic conditions. Since 9/11, this number has been steadily increasing from its 2001 score with 28% of city officials requesting an increase in these resources. 
  

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