Editorial: For local governments large and small, distress is universal

The coronavirus pandemic has been a lot of things to a lot of people.

It has been a medical emergency. It has been a financial boondoggle. It has been a planning nightmare, an educational upheaval and an employment catastrophe.

But it’s also been something else. A great equalizer.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors sent a letter to the leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives pleading for more help with funding covid response efforts.

“Despite immense fiscal pressure, your local government partners oversaw those efforts, while trying to maintain essential services and increase our internal capacity to provide support for residents and businesses who have been crippled by a tanking economy,” the letter stated.

It went on to ask the legislators to take immediate action on President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, a proposal that would funnel $350 billion to state and local governments.

The support isn’t surprising. Municipalities and states have been drowning in need for months as they deal with escalating costs. At the same time, revenues have fallen off as companies close and people and businesses grapple with unemployment.

This does something that little else has been able to do. It puts our biggest cities and our smallest towns on the same footing. They are all facing the same kind of budget uncertainty that residents with unsteady jobs are facing.

Among the 280 signatories to the mayors’ letter is Bill Peduto, mayor of Pittsburgh, the second-largest city in the fifth-largest state in the country. But he isn’t the only Pennsylvania presence.

In addition to the mayor of the biggest city, Philadelphia, there are the mayors of northeastern cities Bethlehem, Easton and Scranton, which have all been hard-hit by the pandemic.

And there is one more, a small voice in a big crowd. Monessen Mayor Matthew Shorraw leads a Westmoreland County municipality with a population of less than 8,000.

Shorraw and Peduto have little in common with the daily duties of their offices. The size of Pittsburgh dwarfs Monessen. Peduto has been part of major international policy conversations and is followed on Twitter by 100,000 more people than live in Shorraw’s jurisdiction. Monessen has watched its population drop to a third of what it was 90 years ago.

They both are crying out for help in the same voice.

It isn’t known yet whether they will get it. Biden’s request is not a guarantee that it will get through Congress. The state doesn’t have bottomless pockets and neither does the federal government. The municipalities might want help, but they are going to have to make plans in case they don’t get it.

But while it is easy to look for greener grass, the fact that Monessen and Pittsburgh are in the same boat says that they — and their neighbors — all need to approach the pandemic with better planning as it enters its second year.