The Nation - News from Jan. 20, 1989

The nation’s mayors, declaring their readiness to cooperate with the Bush Administration, urged the incoming President to add $10.7 billion to President Reagan’s budget for urban aid. “The last Reagan budget recommended additional cuts in urban programs which, over the last 10 years, have shouldered an overwhelming burden in the battle to reduce the deficit,” the mayors said in a statement issued at the close of their annual winter meeting in Washington. The mayors said that during Reagan’s eight years in office, the cumulative budget for key urban programs was cut by nearly 82%. Mayor Arthur J. Holland of Trenton, N.J., president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said a delegation of mayors met with Bush a few weeks ago and left with the impression that “the President-elect was sensitive to our needs and would do everything he could to help meet those needs.”