Share
With vast federal budget cuts looming, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx told a cable news audience Thursday that the city “may have to” consider raising taxes to recoup lost money.
Foxx and Mayor Robert Cluck of Arlington, Tex., appeared on the MSNBC show “The Daily Rundown” with host Chuck Todd.
Todd, NBC’s chief White House correspondent, asked both mayors if they’re pondering tax hikes to replace the lost federal money.
“We may have to, it depends,” Foxx said. “Obviously we’ll have to think about it.”
The mayor said the so-called “sequestration” could mean a $4 million cut in funds to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
He also said he was concerned about the impact of the cuts on extending the Lynx Blue Line light rail to UNC Charlotte, a project dear to the city and UNCC officials.
Foxx called the project “very critical to the city’s success. It is going to be swept into these automatic cuts.”
He said the cuts would likely mean furloughs of air traffic controllers at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. “When that happens, there will airport delays,” he said. “We’re the sixth busiest airport in the world and that would be a damaging blow to the city of Charlotte.”
At the end of the interview, Foxx had this message for lawmakers in Washington: “The problem we have as mayors is when this decision doesn’t get made in Washington, people come to our doors looking for help. The cities are the last backstops. So for us, this is very, very critical and we need Washington to get to work.”
