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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

This is a city water department that has failed, not a state facility. Those in charge should be ashamed, indeed, but that shame is at a city level as far as I can tell.

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In the US states tend to have the most power. The federal government can coax states by offering more money (for instance, funding 90% of highway projects), but can’t usually force states to take any specific action. There are exceptions but in general, if you want an action to happen the state needs to be OK with it.

Cities may have a lot of autonomy or almost no autonomy, depending on the specific state and city. It’s constitutional for a state to take over a city’s services, and it’s not uncommon for there to be a huge overlap in services provided between different political entities.

In this specific case it sounds like the state encouraged the development of suburbs for people to commute into Jackson, but did little to invest in Jackson’s infrastructure. The primary means of fixing infrastructure is through property taxes, and those taxes also pay for roads and parking for commuters who don’t pay (as they’ve moved outside the city limits). Basically from my understanding the suburban development and urban flight is causing Jackson to need to pay more for infrastructure on less income.

Ultimately, a state that allows its most important city to falter has a problem at the state level. Even if the city has problems as well, the state has the political tools to fix city issues, if it cares to. In this case the state could have taken income taxes from the suburbs and used it to invest in city infrastructure, but has consistently chosen to cut taxes instead.

In the US, cities tend to run their municipal water systems. That's why they're called municipal.

You're welcome.

Right.

Im in awe at the mental gymnastics some are doing in this comment section trying to blame “racism” and Republicans.

This was caused by incompetent city government, period. Blame Jackson’s city council, mayor or even the voters themselves for not fixing this. But it doesn’t make any sense to blame “racist”, “white supremacist” people who don’t even live in Jackson.

This is exactly the point. The goal is to take poorer people and problems (need for school funding, crime, older infrastructure) and concentrate them in a location where you can say “hey, they need to solve their own problems.” Then all the suburbs get great services and low taxes, while all the social and infrastructure problems can be ignored. The suburbs then fight like hell to make sure they don’t pay a dime for any of this stuff, while working hard to ensure that public transportation never exists to allow people to access the economic opportunities in the suburbs (AKA “bring crime into their neighborhoods.”) Cities can raise taxes to pay for their needs, but businesses and wealthier people just move across the city line. The poverty and lack of education inevitably breed local political corruption, and everyone outside the city gets another opportunity to feel righteous about writing the poorer cities off.

That might be a valid explanation for some of the more difficult and expensive problems, but providing water and sewer services to a low-6-figure population is hardly a problem requiring innovation or massive amounts of money per person.

My own city has about 28% fewer people than Jackson, yet is able to run a sewer and water department whose operation is funded overwhelmingly by water/sewer bills (averaging $115/resident last year) and capital projects funded by a Water Fund the city has banked (averaging $50/resident last year). These are not “gotta call Uncle Sam for help” figures.

This so eloquently describes the whole picture, esp in red states

In the US, states and the federal government are the legal and political actors. Counties, cities, and other sub-state levels of government only have power to the extent that the state allows for. Cities are literally creatures of their state, not independent political entities within a state.

Of course those in city government have a duty to run the city government as well as they are able, but it's worth keeping in mind that cities can be supported or hobbled in that according to the desires of the state. Even states where city and state are nominally part of the same political faction, there is often tension -- c.f. NYC and NY state.

If the city and state are run by opposing political factions, things can get pretty tough for a city. Add in race, and that gets even worse. majority black, majority Democratic city in a majority Republican, majority white state is going to have a tough time.

The city of Flint, MI didn't have a water problem until the governor took control of the budget, appointed a special administrator, who promptly switched that city over to a polluted water source.

Actually, Detroit cut them off before the new source was ready to come online.

"The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department sends Flint a letter terminating their water service contract, effective in 12 months, or April 2014, which means Flint must find an alternative source of water until the Karegnondi construction is completed" [1]

In addition, the water was not polluted. When they switched to the Flint River source, they failed to add corrosion controls, so the accumulated corrosion in Flint's existing lead pipes quickly dissolved, allowing lead from the pipes to seep into the water.

[1] https://www.freep.com/pages/interactives/flint-water-crisis-...

This gets really close to the racial and ideological divide in MS, you have a very white conservative state government and a very black liberal city government, the former isn't going to bother trying to help the latter very much. As a poor city on the economic decline (and makes Detroit look nice), I'm not sure what we would really expect when natural disaster strikes (look at what happened to New Orleans during Katrina).

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