With many Americans already set to receive $600 federal stimulus checks, Congress is now considering upping it to $2,000 at the urging of President Trump. House Democrats have jumped on the idea, and swiftly passed a measure approving the larger checks. Now it’s in the hands of the Senate.

As the details of the $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill emerge, city and other local leaders are slamming Congress for not including direct financial aid to state and local governments.

After months of lobbying Congress for budget help, state and local governments will likely have to wait a little longer. Top Congressional leaders are racing to finalize a $900 billion federal aid bill before the holidays and it won’t include a dedicated funding stream for states and cities that are facing fiscal calamity.

As the COVID-19 virus surges across the country and Congress considers a bipartisan proposal for a new round of relief, county governments are making a final push for direct federal aid. America’s counties are on the front lines of the nation’s response to the pandemic, operating over 1,900 public health departments, nearly 1,000 hospitals and employ thousands of law enforcement, doctors and nurses, coroners and medical examiners.

As most major cities grapple with lost revenue due to the pandemic, some are turning toward the property tax as a way of filling the gap. Perhaps nowhere has this decision been more controversial than in Nashville, where the largest tax increase in the city’s history has already survived one attempt to overturn it.

Like other cities that rely on tourism, Nashville has suffered in the wake of the pandemic—most notably in entertainment and retail tax revenue. More than half of the city’s estimated $280 million in reduced revenue for the fiscal year that started July 1 is due to the sales tax. The city finance department attributes nearly all the lower-than-expected revenue to COVID-19, but a tornado that ripped through the area earlier this year also played a role.

The pandemic has allowed more people to work from home and surveys show that many want to make their remote worker status permanent. That creates an opportunity for some folks living in higher tax states because of their jobs to move to lower-tax areas.

Wall Street reacted positively to President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen for Treasury secretary. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high of more than 30,000 points, and the S&P 500 came close to one.

But Yellen’s abundance of experience — particularly as head of the Federal Reserve during the previous recession recovery — isn’t just a plus for business and financial markets. State and local governments have reason to be optimistic as well.

As the Covid-19 crisis wears on, it’s clear that those with means are recovering much faster from the recession than others. This K-shaped recovery, a term coined by economist Peter Atwater, also plays out in the taxes we pay.

To be sure, the recession is hurting state tax revenues across the board. But just as it has affected workers unevenly, it has not treated all tax streams equally and it’s creating some weird data. For example, according to the latest analysis from the Urban Institute, personal income tax revenue in September actually increased by 6.2% compared with September 2019. And that’s in the face of a 6.4% decline in total employme

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a swift and crippling effect on our national economy, dramatically changing the way we live, work, and play. Perhaps, nowhere is that more extreme than in America’s major cities, which up until March were the epicenters of jobs, culture, and population. The shutdown and muted reopening of entertainment, hospitality, and restaurant venues has changed bustling downtown blocks full of life into eerily quiet corridors marked by darkened windows and passersby crossing the street to avoid one another. The flood of commuters that used to pack trains, swell daytime population, and spend money at restaurants, dry cleaners, and after-work happy hours are staying home.

But the key question is not how long this particular recession will last, although that is obviously a factor weighing on every budget officer’s mind. What city policymakers are struggling to contemplate is how much of this shift will be permanent? And what changes should they make in their approach to downtown planning to adapt to this uncertain future? Amid all of these unanswered questions, however, is one certainty. The turbulent times have created an opportunity for change.

As states and cities face massive budget shortfalls from the Coronavirus recession, taxing streaming services is getting more appealing.

Earlier this year, a handful of cities took steps that would allow them to tax streaming services. Four cities in Indiana, including Indianapolis, as well as New Boston, Texas, have sued streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, claiming they’re owed municipal franchise fee payments. The localities claim that the services should be required to pay a 5% franchise fee of gross revenue because they use internet equipment in the public right-of-way to transmit programming.

As the pandemic wears on and unemployment remains in the high single digits, nearly 10 million Americans are now either behind on their housing payments or have little confidence they will be able to make their next payment on time. Federal and state moratoriums stopped evictions and foreclosures temporarily, but simply hitting a pause button won’t keep people in their homes—and many worry that a housing crisis is looming as these protections expire.

As cities and states work to keep people from losing their homes, they could learn from some of the lesser-known responses to the Great Recession. The experience of two states that invested in mortgage relief can offer guidance for places that may be wondering how to implement this kind of assistance effectively—and how to keep it going when the immediate public health emergency winds down and federal funds dry up. Their experience indicates the investment can pay huge dividends, not only to the homeowner but also to society at large.

Election 2020 is less than two weeks away and between expanded mail-in voting, early voting and the cost of retrofitting voting centers, the presidential election is likely to be one of the most expensive yet. And who’s responsible for it? Hint: not the feds.

The federal government and states do set aside funding to help pay for elections. But it’s our nation’s 3,069 counties, parishes and boroughs that are instrumental in providing key funding, overseeing polling places and coordinating poll workers. During the 2016 general election, counties oversaw more than 100,000 polling places and coordinated more than 700,000 poll workers.

The global pandemic has so far cost U.S. state governments a collective $31 billion in lost tax revenues and it’s expected to get worse with no additional federal stimulus in sight.

The new numbers come from an Urban Institute analysis of state tax revenues collected during the first six months of the pandemic (between March and August), compared to the same period a year earlier. The loss represents a 6.4% revenue drop across the 44 states with data available through August.

Revenue declines could be even steeper in the months ahead, warns the report’s author Lucy Dadayan. She notes that federal $1,200-per-adult stimulus checks and the $600-a-week federal supplemental unemployment insurance contained in March’s CARES Act helped buoy income tax revenues to a degree this summer. But those benefits have largely expired.

In a few weeks, California voters will decide whether to overhaul a state property tax system that has stood for decades.

The proposal on the Nov. 3 ballot is estimated to generate up to $12 billion in new revenue amid a fiscal crisis brought on by a global pandemic. But business groups warn it will result in the largest property tax increase in state history at a time when small businesses can ill afford it.

“Small businesses, which are already struggling to keep their doors open during the pandemic, will be left with few options if Prop. 15 is not defeated – reduce employee hours, lay off employees, or pass on higher costs to consumers,” notes the group No on Prop 15.

Covid-19 and the social distancing it requires has pushed more of our purchasing online. In fact, since March an extra $107 billion has been spent online, according to Adobe Analytics.

For small business owners forced to close their doors for months and now still seeing dramatic drops in walk-in traffic, that online shift and exposure to new customers has likely been a lifeline. But it also may mean they aren’t charging the necessary sales tax on those purchases. According to a recent survey by Avalara, only about half of businesses are familiar with the sales tax rules for online transactions with customers in other states.

As state and local governments are grappling with major budget deficits over the coming year, they’re going to be diligent about collecting all the tax they’re due. That means online sales taxes could potentially be a big area of focus for state tax collectors.

Perhaps no place demonstrates the difficulties of staffing up for both traditional classroom teaching and remote learning as the nation’s largest school system.

Last week, as New York City again pushed off the first day of in-person for most public school students, the Independent Budget Office (IBO) concluded it would cost an extra $32 million a week to safely reopen under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hybrid model. The IBO report attributed most of the cost increase to the $19 million a week needed for hiring an additional 11,900 teachers and substitutes.

New Jersey has amassed a whopping $189.6 billion in state debt, a total that equals $57,900 for each taxpayer in the state. It’s the highest taxpayer debt burden in the country, according to the Financial State of the States report released Tuesday by the watchdog group Truth in Accounting.

What’s more, this tally was done before the global pandemic sunk its teeth into state revenue. New Jersey is facing a projected $10 billion drop in revenues amid the worst economic crisis in decades. That means it’s likely the taxpayer burden in the state will increase over the next year, according to the report’s author Bill Bergman.

New Jersey has approved a millionaire’s tax, making it the fourth state (including Washington, D.C.) to do so. The agreement reached Thursday between Gov. Phil Murphy and his fellow Democrats in the legislature increases the state taxes on income over $1 million by nearly 2 percentage points.

The new tax rate in the nation’s second wealthiest state, is expected to generate an estimated $390 million this fiscal year, according to state officials. It comes as New Jersey is facing a projected $10 billion drop in revenues amid the worst economic crisis in decades.

This week’s $1.5 billion bipartisan stimulus proposal from the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus offers another round of $1,200 stimulus checks and other cash assistance for those in need as the Covid-19 recession wears on.

But it’s unlikely the proposal would stop a potential wave of evictions and foreclosures next year if the economy doesn’t rapidly improve.

Straight cash for people who are behind on their mortgage or on rent is obviously a welcome help. But it’s a short-term fix unless jobs recover. So is the idea of extending just by one month the CDC’s current eviction moratorium. This all buys time.

Here’s what’s building up in the meantime.

President Trump is threatening to keep federal funding from New York City, Portland, Oregon; Seattle, and Washington, D.C. — and potentially others — where racial justice protests have sometimes turned violent.

In the executive order issued just before the holiday weekend, Trump blamed local government policies for “persistent and outrageous acts of violence and destruction have continued unabated in many of America’s cities.” He wants each federal agency to submit a report to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) detailing all federal funds to the four cities.

“My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” he wrote.