Home Prices

Cities and counties also are lagging behind because they depend on property taxes for much of their revenue, and home prices are just now starting to recover, he added. Prices rose 4.3 percent in October from a year earlier, the biggest 12-month advance since May 2010, according to the most recent data from the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite 20-City Home Price Index.

Columbus, Ohio, fired more than 100 workers when the worst of the recession hit the city and successfully sought approval for higher income taxes from voters, said Dan Williamson, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Coleman. Now it is holding employment steady, he said.

It has been working on a $342 million sewer project and is planning another program to create more parkland along its riverfront.

“We faced our own fiscal cliff in 2009,” Williamson said. “Now, we’re in very good shape. There’s always stresses, there’s always worries, but we feel whatever comes our way in the near term, we can handle it.”

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