Well, here is the memo from Auditor of State Keith Faber indicating just how badly the budget situation is going for the public sector in Ohio: https://web.archive.org/web/20200506224418/http://ohioauditor.gov/publications/Advisory_Memo_Economic_Impacts.pdf

Essentially everything is on fire. There are consequences to shutting down an economy. The "budget stabilization" the Ohio Municipal League talks about is where local governments are running out of operating cash and are going to potentially collapse this calendar year: https://web.archive.org/web/20200506224557/http://omlohio.org/DocumentCenter/View/1363/OML-Policy-Requests-to-DeWine-Administration--Correct

I understand the desire of folks who want to keep the world shut down as long as possible so as to conquer COVID-19. I have relatives who were impacted by coronavirus so I know I am not immune. However as a former tax collector I am mindful that tax revenue doesn't come into existence out of thin air. If there is no economic activity to tax then governmental operations below the federal level simply don't happen. State and local governments are not like J.R.R. Tolkien's dragon Smaug sitting on huge reserves of cash. Since they operate front-line public health authorities instead of the federal government we'll ultimately lose in the COVID-19 crisis if state and local governments go bankrupt.

There is no amount of printing of money that the Federal Reserve can do to prop up state and local governments. There is also no political will in the Congress to try. The only legal way any state could seek "bankruptcy" protection is to surrender its statehood, revert to territorial status, follow the procedures in Public Law 114-187 which were drafted generally rather than specifically for just Puerto Rico, and pray it is allowed to be readmitted to the Union at a later date. Of course, it depends upon whose law review article you read as to the specifics but roughly it still boils down to that very broad outline.

Prior to Mike DeWine announcing massive cuts to the state's Local Government Fund the City of Ashtabula was going to merely cut 50% of the police force and do some cuts they wouldn't describe to the fire department. Now that plan isn't any good since they essentially lost their state funding. I shudder to think what they're going to come up with now. State law prevents them seeking a Chapter 9 bankruptcy restructuring and it isn't even runaway debt harming them. They're simply running out of cash and right now they're too small to get a loan from banks that are terrified of the risk.

Second-order effects from the COVID-19 crisis may end up causing more havoc than the disease itself. When I see the morning financial news and see the names of the companies going under that day I know many, many lives are going to be shattered. Norwegian Cruise Lines announced on Tuesday it was bordering on financial collapse and by Wednesday morning saw it surviving only due to a major private equity infusion. AMC Theatres was going to collapse in July but essentially took out a massive loan hoping it could make enough money in the second half of the summer so as to survive. The list of businesses that have been killed off by this keeps growing. Too many people think about the businesses as entities that perhaps deserved their fates but they fail to think about the workers who are being tossed into a hellish economy. What'll happen to those people?

I have living under my roof a licensed massage therapist who cannot practice her profession until further notice by order of the Governor of Ohio and the Director of the Ohio Department of Health. She has no other sources of income and her reserves are gone. The discussion earlier today was if she was ever going to be able to go back and if so what would that even look like. She has no clue and nobody will tell my sister a thing when she inquires of official channels. The Medical Board of Ohio hasn't determined if she can be slotted into other roles based upon her licensing so she is stuck and really, really, really cannot afford to go back to school a second time.

The economic carnage of this whole situation matters. My city will soon be having to choose if it wants to dispense with having a police department or dispense with having a fire department because it can't afford to operate both. My sister is out of work in her licensed profession after 12 years. Right now the coronavirus doesn't scare me nearly as much as what will be happening when the economic crunch hits harder later this month and in early June. The band is playing on while we look at a very big iceberg...