One More Job Lost in the Recession: The Mayor’s (Central Falls, RI)

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CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — These are trying times for the people of Central Falls, a city so close to fiscal collapse that the state seized control of City Hall last summer. Taxes have risen nearly 20 percent to help solve the immediate crisis, unions have agreed to givebacks and the city of 19,000 — all 1.29 square miles of it — seems tinged with defeat.

But to hear Mayor Charles D. Moreau tell it, his suffering may be worst of all.

Mr. Moreau, a Democrat serving his fourth term, has not set foot in City Hall since July 19, the day that a state-appointed receiver took control. The state police knocked on his door that morning, he said, demanded his city-owned car and cellphone and keys to City Hall and handed him a letter announcing that his salary of $71,736 was being cut to $26,000. His role was now advisory, he was informed.

“I was told they’d call if they needed me,” Mr. Moreau said recently in a rare interview. “They haven’t called since.”

Across the nation, cities and states are trying myriad ways of righting their fiscal ships as the recession plods on. But locking the mayor out of City Hall is generally not one of them.

A number of local governments are so financially distressed that states have assumed an oversight role. Several cities in Michigan have emergency financial managers appointed by the state, for example, and in New York, a state board seized control of Nassau County’s finances last month. But in those cases and others, local elected officials have retained some role.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22mayor.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all