Welcome to Axis Pro Radha, where we normally take 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

But today we're doing a special five-part series on the coronavirus pandemic, which is changing our economy, our politics, and our way of life.

I'm Dan Premak. This episode is focused on how COVID-19 is impacting cities and other local governments.

And I am pleased to be

joined by Axio City's editor Kim Hart. So Kim, let's start here. Mayors are on the front lines of this

outbreak in terms of everything from making rules about public gatherings to school cancellations.

From your reporting, are mayors, if not necessarily coordinating efforts, at least in

regular communication with one another, or are they going it

alone? I think they absolutely are not going it alone. The mayors that I've spoken with are really

relying on informal networks of mayors, but not just mayors, other city council members, other city

managers, not only within their own communities and in their neighboring communities, but other like-minded

or similarly sized cities. So a lot of mid-sized cities are looking to each other saying,

how are you making the decision about schools? How are you interacting with the hospitals?

What are your public safety needs? Because they're looking for best practices from each other,

but they're also looking for new tips, new strategies, and

seeing if there are ways that they can help each other, maybe lend resources, share EMT workers,

for example, if one community is facing a shortage and a neighboring community really hasn't been

hit hard yet. So there is a lot of communication going back and forth. A lot of it is pretty

informal, though, through text messages and voicemails and

calls, not necessarily through formal official change. Kim, cities are kind of one of the things

that's great about cities is that they kind of are businesses that never really close, or at least

don't close all that often. You know, residents need basic services met. So what are some of the

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