Hacker News Reader

Comment by calgarymicro | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, this is becoming less and less true as GOP-run states strip autonomy from cities and steadily increase state control over them. Take Texas as an example,[0] where they've banned cities from

  -enacting paid sick leave

  -enacting mandatory heat and water breaks for manual labor jobs

  -modifying their police budgets

  -restricting fracking within city limits

  -restricting greenhouse gas-intense products

Among other things.

[0]https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2023/04/18/texas-house-appro...

View on HN

Wow - apparently a 10 minute cooling break every 4 hours is too much to ask.

There's an argument that you want consistency across the state. Having snowflake jurisdictions is a headache for businesses.

Cities can compete against each other to attract businesses - no? If businesses can deal with a patchwork of sales taxes and building codes, they can handle other bylaws just fine. These laws have the hallmark signs of a partisan power-grab as they are limited to a number of on red-meat issues.

> Cities can compete against each other to attract businesses - no?

We've seen this with Walmarts. They get cities to compete for their stores. Amazon did it for HQ2. The problem is the winner's curse. The winning city will often bid so low they take a net loss.

I mostly agree with you, but let's be honest: this is not the motivating factor for republican state legislatures grabbing power from cities. If it were, the legislatures would be getting rid of tax rebates and tax holidays cities offer to attract businesses, and instead have a uniform tax structure across the whole state for "uniformity"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com