State Infrastructure Banks and Intergovernmental Subsidies for Local Transportation Investment

This study reviews State Infrastructure Banks (SIBs) as an innovative financing mechanism for federal and state governments to support transportation financing for local governments, and determines the cost savings realized by local governments from receiving SIB loans rather than financing through the municipal bond market. The study finds that SIBs provide a mechanism through which local governments receive subsidized loans for their transportation investments. With the Ohio SIB, localities realized average borrowing cost savings between 34 and 184 basis points. Under the worst‐ and best‐case scenarios, 83 and 98 percent of projects, respectively, benefited from lower borrowing costs.     

Intergovernmental Complexity in Nuclear Waste Disposal Policy: The Indeterminate Role of Local Government

Local governments play a critical, albeit often overlooked, role in nuclear waste disposal policymaking. The centrality of local governments in the policymaking process rests on the simple fact that impacts will be borne disproportionately by local jurisdictions hosting and immediately adjacent to waste disposal sites. This article focuses on the capacity of local jurisdictions in Southern and rural Nevada to absorb and support an undertaking as large and technically complex as the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. The article also examines the perceptions of local government officials concerning a number of management and policy issues related to the construction and operation of the proposed waste repository.     

Performance-Comparison Projects in Local Government: Participants' Perspectives

How do officials of participating local governments assess the value of their involvement in performance‐comparison projects, including related costs and benefits? In this article, three prominent projects involving city and county governments are examined from the perspective of the participants themselves, revealing gaps between high expectations and subsequent results, but nevertheless suggesting an array of benefits for participants.     

Policy Expansion in Local Government Environmental Policy Making

Relatively little is known about when, why, and how some jurisdictions “double down” on policy priorities, rapidly adopting multiple measures tackling the same issue. Rapid policy expansion can emerge in fast‐evolving, uncertain, and contested policy arenas in which pressures for policy making are not satisfied, and even may be strengthened, by initial policy innovation. This article analyzes local government policy making on high‐volume hydraulic fracturing by New York State municipalities from 2008 to 2012. Policy path dependence, peer influence, and policy design appear to play a critical role in determining whether public officials respond to these pressures with policy expansion. Initial policy innovations can open windows for policy participants to secure additional measures that strengthen or enlarge the scope of action. Public officials and stakeholders seeking particular policy outcomes should take a long view of the policy process while simultaneously remaining alert for opportunities afforded by pressurized policy dilemmas.     

French Center-Periphery Relations and Science Park Development: Local Policy Initiatives and Intergovernmental Policymaking

This article focuses on new patterns of territorial governance in the aftermath of the 1982 decentralization reforms in France. The traditional "cross regulation" model developed by the Crozier school is wrong to assume culturally grounded stalemate and to suggest that local political power is nothing more than the informal access of local elites to national policymaking. Analyzing the policy of technopoles or science park development, both nationally and by way of detailed local case studies of Montpellier and Rennes, we demonstrate that, on the contray, French local and regional authorities have risen progressively to independent loci of governmental power and policymaking. Local policy initiatives are, however, embedded in a multi-level institutional fabric ranging from the local to the European level. These developments in center-periphery relations need to be placed into the context of the general decline of the traditional French public policy model, which has been stiffly challenged by the norms of market, Europe and subsidiarity. In conclusion, a comparative and interorganizational perspective suggests that France is moving toward a territorial system increasingly characterized by the dynamics of intergovernmental conflict and cooperation and best described as "quasi-federalism in unitary disguise."     

Local Government Reserve Funds: Policy Alternatives and Political Strategies

Local government officials are operating in a policy void when it comes to the establishment and use of reserve funds. In part, this is due to confusion about the distinction between reserve and contingency funds. The limited research that has been conducted shows that relatively large sums of money are maintained in reserve by many local governments. Some governments refer to these sums as reserve funds and their intended use is clearly indicated in one or more local documents, such as a budget or audit/financial report. Others simply maintain an unreserved fund balance. This article identifies rationales for using reserve funds, discusses the alternative ways reserves are accumulated, and outlines key issues a local government financial plan should address when reserve funds are utilized.     

Corruption and State and Local Government Debt Expansion

Theories describing rent seeking in the public sector posit a number of negative fiscal outcomes that the choices of corrupt officials may generate. The evidence presented in this article shows that states with greater intensities of public corruption have higher aggregate levels of state and local debt. If corruption in the 10 most corrupt states were only at an average level, their public debt would be 9 percent lower, or about $249.35 per capita, all else being equal. Notably, institutional control measures may not have succeeded in restraining the expansion of state and local public debt in the presence of greater levels of corruption. State and local governments would achieve more efficient levels of fiscal discipline by curbing public sector corruption.     

State and Local Government Procurement and the Winter Commission

The Winter Commission proposed a state and local government procurement reform agenda that placed public managers at the core of a depoliticized, deregulated, and more pragmatic public sector contracting process. Drawing on the literature and data from several state and local government surveys, this article shows that between 1992 and 2003, state and local governments’ contracting practices moved in directions consistent with the commission’s reform agenda. By 2003, state and local governments had decentralized and deregulated their contracting processes, were contracting more effectively and in circumstances in which it is more likely to be successful, and had adopted several innovative technologies and management practices.     

National Competition Policy and its Implications for Local Government

Two aspects of National Competition Policy (NCP) are likely to be the catalyst of change in Australian local government (LG): competitive neutrality and the reform of public monopolies. Competitive neutrality will be achieved in LG through the imposition of tax equivalents, removal of debt guarantees and cross-subsidisation deemed not to be in the public interest. The reform of public monopolies will open more functions to competition.
But other items of the NCP are also of significance to LG. The imposition of prices oversight of LG services will make these more cost reflective. Legislative reviews at LG level will produce deregulation in some cases and greater uniformity in others while the issue of allowing private access to LG assets has competitive potential in relation to the services and provision of roads, parks and sewerage treatment.
We emphasise the importance of recognising the present benefits of current LG operations and cite the current proposal to privatise Tasmania's water and sewerage services as an example. NCP has the potential to produce further LG boundary amalgamations, or to accelerate regional cooperation as an alternative. The role of cross-border and competitive tendering in this respect are highlighted. Finally, we analyse the implications of the NCP for the Local Government Grants Commission process.     

Competition and Monopoly Power in Local Government: An Extension of Caplan (2001)

Caplan (2001) shows that because land is asource of immobile wealth, localgovernments can use the property tax toavoid competitive pressures of the Tieboutmodel, allowing them to deviate fromcitizens' preferences. In this comment Ishow that the property tax is not the onlytax local governments can use to avoidcompetitive pressure. Most taxes placed onproperty owners allow local governments toextract some rents despite perfect citizenmobility.     

Decentralization,Local Government,and the Welfare State

Despite growing interest in decentralized governance, the local government systems that comprise the most common element of decentralization around the world have received little systematic attention. This article, drawing on the first systematic index of decentralization to local government in 21 countries, demonstrates a close relation between Social Democratic welfare states and an intergovernmental infrastructure that in important respects ranks as the most decentralized among advanced industrial countries. This empowerment of local government in these countries was less an outgrowth of Social Democratic welfare state development than a preexisting condition that helped make this type of welfare state possible.     

Intergovernmental Relations and Clean-Air Policy in Southern California

In 1989, California adopted a bold and comprehensive Air QualityManagement Plan (AQMP) to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards by 2007. California's effortto control air pollution, as outlined in the AQMP, significantlyinfluenced the formulation of the 1990 federal Clean Air Act.This article analyzes the nature of this influence as well asthe way the new federal legislation bolsters specific provisionsof the AQMP. Also examined is whether the AQMP and the CleanAir Act are likely to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards.     

Intergovernmental Innovation and the Administrative State in Canada

Canadian federalism has experienced considerable pressure for change and innovation in recent years. There have been calls for more collaborative federalism and demands for public sector reforms consistent with the precepts of New Public Management. This article examines the hypothesis that these pressures might be expected to have resulted in some intergovernmental institutional innovation in the arena of federal–provincial–territorial relations. Using a conceptual distinction between federalism, intergovernmental relations, and intergovernmental management (IGM) as the basis of analyzing institutional innovation at six levels in the Canadian intergovernmental administrative state, the authors find a differentiated impact with more institutional innovation evident at the micro levels of IGM and innovation more constrained at the macro levels of the administrative state by the traditional institutional infrastructure of executive federalism.