When Congress authorized December’s $868 billion COVID aid package without including relief for struggling state and local governments, we feared for places like New York, which saw the bottom fall out of sales tax and other revenues vital to balancing our budget after the pandemic arrived. So it was a great relief when, as part of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March, state and local governments got $350 billion in virtually unrestricted cash, to help fill in COVID-caused revenue gaps.