America's Municipal Meltdown: It's Tough Times for Troubled Towns

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted February 23, 2009.

Troubled Towns and Troubled Times

Stories about the economic woes facing individual cities and towns are already a staple of national newspapers, even as the bad news, experts believe, is only beginning to flow in. Spikes in unemployment already reaching double-digit levels in some cases, municipal governments deep in the red, essential cutbacks in local services, increasing lines at food pantries, towns facing bankruptcy or even contemplating municipal suicide are increasingly common nationwide.

Towns like Elkhart, Lehigh Acres, and Mendota may now be media poster-towns for tough times nationwide, but most distressed small towns are still suffering in silence and, as a group, they may only be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. It isn't surprising that towns which relied heavily on the collapsing auto industry and the building trades are going belly-up first, but what about the rest of America's towns and even big cities? The same economic forces are battering them, and while they may have been able to withstand immediate collapse, there's no guarantee that town after town won't be deep in the red, drowning in joblessness, and facing catastrophe as the American depression drags on.

See more stories tagged with: economy, bankruptcy, main street, municipal government

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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