Is the Stimulus Passing over Cities in Favor of Exurbs and Rurburbs?

ProPublica's Amanda Michel writes that, despite appearances to the contrary, metropolitan stimulus money may still be in the pipeline:

States had a June 29 deadline to obligate, or decide how to spend, 50 percent of their transportation money. But my colleagues here at ProPublica discovered that there’s more than one way to meet the deadline. By June 30, they found, “13 (states) still hadn’t obligated 50 percent of their total highway funds ....” It turns out that states had to obligate only the money controlled by the state governments, not the funds transferred to big cities and urban areas. So cities may not have fully reported their spending projects yet; we’ve put in a call to the U.S. Conference of Mayors to ask about it.

Mayors' Conference Committee Passes Resolution on ICE

Santa Fe, NM Mayor David Coss, who has had bad experiences in his community with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "collateral captures," is shepherding a resolution through the U.S. Conference of Mayors calling for a halt to all ICE raids. It has passed the Criminal and Social Justice standing committee, and Monday it is scheduled for a conference vote.