Miliband has said that there would need to be a different way of doing things given the fiscal climate from the beginning of his leadership.

However, in the current fiscal and economic climate, there are vast new challenges for the Civil Service.

Local government officials defend the wider use of fees, which they say is the only way to raise additional revenue in the current fiscal climate.

Wholesale borrowing is never a good option, certainly not in this risky fiscal climate, and there's only so much to cut.

But with the current fiscal climate, that may have to wait.

"We understand the fiscal climate of the state, but that caught us off guard," he said.

The fiscal climate makes that a particular challenge.

These letters helped to maintain funding in a difficult fiscal climate.

And those projects, in turn, depend on the political and fiscal climate of the moment - a dependence that has city leaders worried.

This was a $9.6 billion program to fix subways that was hard to do in the fiscal climate.