Michael Lissack ahead of tax increases and spending cuts themselves, not to mention layoffs of public employees, tax revolts, and community protests over threatened programs. These governments, which to gather employ seven times as many workers as the federal government, compete hungrily for new business in- vestment by offering competitive tax abatements and other benefits, which local tax payers must then make up through higher tax rates or reduced ser- vices. But states and cities have little choice. They need business to generate jobs, wages, and taxes. Desperate for scarce labor-intensive capital, many jurisdictions steal existing businesses from one another. Among the states and cities, economic policy has become a war of each against all, thus increasing fiscal isolation, or autonomization, of state and local governments. The prevailing theme of intergovernmental relations is now go-it-alone-federalism. In the face of slow growth, hyper-mobile corpo- rate capital, and diminishing financial support from Washington, every unit in the sub-national government system must preserve, protect, and expand its own tax base, if necessary, at the expense of every other unit. The law of fiscal federalism is “every jurisdiction for itself.” And America has many jurisdictions. Most large cites are surrounded by dozens and dozens, sometimes by hundreds, of suburban governments, each of which maintains autonomous control of their taxing, spending, and service policies. Chicago has more than 1,200 governments around it; New York City more than 500 surrounding governments just within the bound- aries of New York State alone; Philadelphia, more than 800; Pittsburgh, almost 700. The list of urban fracture and fragmentation could go on and on; suffice it to say that the average U.S. metropolitan area has no fewer than eighty-four separate governmental jurisdictions that function to carve and divide its potential area-wide majority. All of this means, simply, that the clashing class and group interests of the nation’s huge metropolitan popula- tions do not have to make political peace with one another. Without a need for political peace.... well. Any suggestion of true regional governance, even involving limited operating functions, raises many difficult questions: Who would exercise such powers? Who could authorize such decision making? What factors would regional authorities have to control? Would such control
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