The coronavirus pandemic has wrecked state finances – ballooning its spending, decimating its tax collections, requiring a federal rescue to keep it afloat. Similar stresses, though not as severe, are faced by local governments.
“What they have in common primarily is uncertainty,” said Marc Pfeiffer, assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University. “There is an enormous amount of uncertainty on the revenue side that municipalities and state government are facing over the next year.”