0w2010 01 RESUM EJECUTIVO 03 DEFcarta ang
26/10/10
19:49
PĂĄgina 66
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 66
United Cities and Local Governments
feasible since the prices provide an effective means of financing service production, providing service delivery to those who most value the services, and helping determine how much service to produce. North American local governments rely on pricing for many services, but should continue to seek cases where tax financing can be replaced with user fee financing. Cities should also expand pricing in new and innovative ways, such as with congestion pricing. •
Cities need the revenue authority to finance delivery of their responsibilities. Cities need to be empowered with adequate and appropriate revenue sources to meet their expenditure responsibilities. Only in this way can they be responsible for their own actions. To get to this point, cities (at least in Canada) likely need more fiscal power than they
now have. Federal and provincial/state governments also have an important role to play in cities because they are involved in policy areas that have a direct impact on cities. In Canada, for example, the federal government is responsible f o r i m m i g ra t i o n s e t t l e m e n t , u r b a n Aboriginals, and payments in lieu of taxes on government properties. If the federal and provincial/state governments provide adequate funding in the areas under their own jurisdiction, local governments would be relieved of responsibilities that are not rightly theirs and local revenues would be released for truly local functions. Regardless of the tax sources made available to local governments, federal, and provincial/state, transfers will continue to provide an important source of revenue to local governments in Canada and the U.S.