 The Michigan Public Policy Survey has been tracking local government fiscal health since 2009. Our latest survey in 2013 finds a continuing trend of gradual improvement in fiscal health. So, as of today, about 29% of jurisdictions are better off than they were a year ago. These percentages may not sound particularly good, but when we compare it to the low point in 2010, there is significant improvement. Back in 2010, 9% of jurisdictions were better off and 61% were worse off. Looking ahead, local leaders are not particularly optimistic. About 28% think they'll be better off a year from now, but 30% think they'll be worse off than they are today. We think these concerns are tied to a few different things. We know that service demands are continuing to increase, in particular, demands for infrastructure. But local leaders have told us they think the system of funding local government just won't provide enough revenue in the future for them to maintain the services they provide today, much less to improve them. One of the consistent findings from five years of these surveys is that the fiscal challenges have been worse in big jurisdictions than in small jurisdictions. Big cities, more so than small cities, have had declining revenues and rising costs. At the same time, during this trend of improvement that started in 2011, what we found is that conditions are getting better, faster in big jurisdictions than small ones. So as of today, about 25% of small jurisdictions are better off than a year ago, but the same is true for 44% of the big jurisdictions. So it looks like these big jurisdictions are kind of the bellwether for local government fiscal health. They led the way into the fiscal crisis in 2009 and 2010, but since 2011 they've been leading the way back out.