Small City Autonomy in the Federal System: A Study of Local Constraint and Opportunity in California

How severe have been the restrictions on the autonomy of localgovernments, as state and federal mandates and grant programsproliferated in the 1970s? This study of mandate and grant impactsin nine, small California cities suggests that local controlhas not been reduced as much as the recent literature of federalismargues. Municipal officials in these communities perceived arange of effects according to program areas. Clean water standardswere negatively viewed, while state planning mandates actuallyserved to further local goals. Most of the cities did not hesitateto compete for grants, despite their many strings. Based onthe "hard case" of small cities—which are relative newcomersto grant and mandate programs, and generally change-resistantin attitude—this study points out some positive localgovernment impacts of federal-and state-local entanglements. ¹ As associate investigator of the project on which this paperis based, Joan Hogan of the Institute of Governmental Affairs,University of California at Davis, contributed significantlyto the research.     

Unfunded Mandates and Fiscal Structure: Empirical Evidence from a Synthetic Control Model

An unfunded expenditure mandate occurs when governments are required to provide a good or service by a higher level of government without an accompanying revenue source. There are no empirical studies providing causal evidence on the fiscal influence of intergovernmental mandates. This article examines Florida's 1990 constitutional Amendment 3, which sought to limit unfunded state mandates on municipal and county governments. The synthetic control method, an empirical technique for drawing causal inferences from case studies, estimates the effect of Amendment 3 on state expenditures and total transfers to local governments. The results indicate that state expenditures increased by an annual average of 9.5 percent, while state transfers to all local governments were unaffected. However, the municipalities protected by Amendment 3 saw intergovernmental revenue from the state decrease by 10 percent annually, which suggests that remaining mandates likely targeted special districts, encouraging the fragmentation of local public service delivery.     

Has the Shift to Managed Care Reduced Medicaid Expenditures? Evidence from State and Local‐Level Mandates

From 1991 to 2009, the fraction of Medicaid recipients enrolled in HMOs and other forms of Medicaid managed care (MMC) increased from 11 percent to 71 percent. This increase was largely driven by state and local mandates that required most Medicaid recipients to enroll in an MMC plan. Theoretically, it is ambiguous whether the shift from fee‐for‐service into managed care would lead to an increase or a reduction in Medicaid spending. This paper investigates this effect using a data set on state‐ and local‐level MMC mandates and detailed data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on state Medicaid expenditures. The findings suggest that shifting Medicaid recipients from fee‐for‐service into MMC did not on average reduce Medicaid spending. If anything, our results suggest that the shift to MMC increased Medicaid spending and that this effect was especially present for risk‐based HMOs. However, the effects of the shift to MMC on Medicaid spending varied significantly across states as a function of the generosity of the state's baseline Medicaid provider reimbursement rates.     

State health reform: Effects on labor markets and economic activity

Individual states are actively weighing health care reform proposals and their potential impacts on many levels, including states' own economies. This article considers the effects on state economies of two instruments of health reform: employer mandates and cost containment. The literature suggests that an employer mandate will reduce employees' wages in the long run. In the short run, however, to compensate for the costs associated with mandated health care insurance for their employees, firms may raise their prices to consumers, reduce the number of employees or allow a drop in profit margins. By increasing health care spending and the number of insured persons, mandates would also increase states' levels of economic activity. Though cost containment may dampen the stimulative effects of expanded coverage, resources not spent on health care as a result of effective cost containment might be redistributed to other sectors in a state's economy.     

The Role of Federal Budget and Trust Fund Institutions in Measuring the Effect of Federal Highway Grants on State and Local Government Highway Expenditure

Federal highway financing institutions affect the response of state and local government spending to federal highway aid. Most previous studies of the spending effects of federal highway grants consider federal highway expenditure as the highway grant variable, disregarding the reimbursement nature of this expenditure and the multiyear availability of highway aid. This article argues that obligations of federal highway aid to states rather than actual federal expenditure should be used in models assessing the spending effects of federal highway grants. Considering federal obligations rather than expenditure results in a greater effect of highway grants on spending than reported in previous studies.     

A Reevaluation of the Effects of State and ACA Dependent Coverage Mandates on Health Insurance Coverage

We study state and federal health insurance coverage mandates for young adults. Despite consistent findings that the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) federal mandate was effective, research has disagreed on whether preexisting, state-level mandates were successful in increasing coverage. We reconsider the issue with a new analytical perspective and newly available accurate data on state mandates. We show that the impact of the state mandates was substantive and concentrated among young adults between ages 19 and 23. Our estimates indicate that dependent coverage rose by 3.9 percentage points and overall coverage rose by 3.3 percentage points. Crowd-out of coverage through young adults’ own jobs was negligible. For those above 23, we find little evidence of changes in coverage. We incorporate these insights into analysis of the ACA's mandate, showing its effects were focused among those who were not eligible for state mandates, or were eligible but older than 23. Our results suggest that eligibility restrictions played important roles in limiting the scope of the state mandates, but they can be practical and effective tools for policymakers looking to ensure or expand coverage for young adults in the face of uncertainty about the ACA.     

"Mad" About Mandates: The Issue of Who Should Pay for What Resurfaces in the 1990s

In 1990, constitutional amendment proposals were put beforethe voters in Florida and Wisconsin (nonbinding) to limit unfundedstate mandates. This brought the number of states with constitutionallybased mandate-reimbursement requirements to fifteen. Voter supportwas garnered by attributing local property-tax increasesandloss oflocalcontrol over spending priorities to unfundedstatemandates. The Florida and Wisconsin efforts came close on theheels of stale mandate studies by the U.S. General AccountingOffice, National Conference of State Legislatures, Urban Institute,and U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.Fifty-two hypotheses are generatedfrom these studies and theFlorida and Wisconsin cases to help structure future research.As the mandate limitation movement spreads, larger data baseswill be available with which to test these propositions. Inthe states that already have limits on unfunded state mandates,research will shift to the policy consequences of these restrictions.     

Fiscal Federalism in 1986: The spotlight Continues To Swing Toward the States and Local Governments

The year in Washington saw the president and the Congress atloggerheads on the budget but in agreement on important taxlegislation. A prominent casualty of the battle to slash thefederal deficit was Revenue Sharing. "Sequestration" and therhetoric of austerity that doomed Revenue Sharing notwithstanding,total federal grants (adjusted for inflation and populationgrowth) rose in 1986 for the second year in a row, continuinga recovery from the six-year decline that had begun in 1979.The net effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 will vary substantiallyamong the states, but the federal legislation guarantees thattax reform will be a central issue in many state legislaturesin 1987. Federal mandates continued to be promulgated in 1986with little regard for the costs to states and localities. Anotable exception was the outcome of the struggle over fundingfor grants for the treatment facilities needed to comply withthe standards prescribed by the Clean Water Act of 1972: muchmore generous funding than was sought by the president.     

County Compliance with North Carolina's Solid-Waste Mandate: A Conflict-Based Model

This article presents the findings of research on the implementationof intergovernmental mandates. A framework is developed fromempirical and theoretical work in conflict management to assessthe response of government actors in the implementation of aspecific mandate—North Carolina's Solid Waste ManagementAct of 1989. Our expectation is that the imposition of a mandateby the state on local governments would produce conflict andcontention, especially if the mandate is not accompanied byfunding. However, this study indicates that state and localgovernments may be able to overcome a single-minded concernfor their own interests and take on a problem-solving attitudeduring the implementation process. In addition, evidence indicatesthat county governments that take a problem solving approachare more likely to achieve the intended policy outcomes, producingthe potential for win-win results for the state and its counties.     

The Fly Ball Effect: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Impacts of Short‐Term Seed Grants

The federal government has long used grants‐in‐aid to encourage state and local governments to carry out federal policies. Little research has been done that examines how short‐term seed grants affect program continuation. We propose the “fly ball effect” as a theoretical framework for understanding how seed money should impact program maintenance. Our theory suggests that short‐term seed grants by themselves should result in considerable funding uncertainty and program eliminations or stagnation once the initial grant money expires. We use data from drug court start‐ups in four states to provide empirical support for our theory. We argue that understanding the logic of the fly ball effect can help granting governments to improve the effectiveness of their grant funding systems, at least as measured by strong program continuation and expansion.     

Comparing Competing Theories on the Causes of Mandate Perceptions

The discussion of presidential mandates is as certain as a presidential election itself. Journalists inevitably discuss whether the president-elect has a popular mandate. Because they see elections as too complex to allow the public to send a unitary signal, political scientists are more skeptical of mandates. Mandates, however, have received new attention by scholars asking whether perceptions of mandate arise and lead representatives to act as if voters sent a policy directive. Two explanations have emerged to account for why elected officials might react to such perceptions. One focuses on the president's strategic decision to declare a mandate, the second on how members of Congress read signals of changing preferences in the electorate from their own election results. We test these competing views to see which more accurately explains how members of Congress act in support of a perceived mandate. The results indicate that members respond more to messages about changing preferences than to the president's mandate declaration .     

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AS IMPLEMENTORS OF PUBLIC POLICY

This study expands the growing literature in comparative public policy that examines welfare services. By now, it is accepted that a combination of economic, social, and political factors are influential in the delivery of these services by the 60 states. This paper finds that similar factors are also operating at the county level in New York state. Most notably, political factors affect the distribution of welfare benefits–despite federal and state mandates that require distribution to be based solely on need. This raises a number of issues. concerning the nature of political influence and the autonomy of local bureaucracies, which require further exploration.     

Decentralization and local public finance in Tunisia

The Tunisian government has long admitted that its excessively centralized administrative and political systems have generated heavy costs in terms of inefficiency and citizen alienation. A major decentralizing reform effort was launched in the mid-1970s, the most important parts of which dealt with changes in local taxation powers, and in the sources and size of grants and loans which Tunisian communes receive from national sources. The result to date has been a modest increase in communal revenues from the new or increased taxes, and a more significant increase in central government grants to local governments. Smaller and more rural communes are heavily dependent on grants to undertake development actions, their tax base being negligible. The revised systefn generates more revenue, and distributes resources more equitably, than the previous arrangements. In theory, it gives a greatly increased latitude to elected communal councils. Nonetheless, the local governments-and the communes in particular-remain severely constrained by central government authorities. The conclusion is that the decentralization reform has been partial and halting, and will in all probability continue in the same manner.     

Urban Local Governments and the Flypaper Effect: Evidence from Maharashtra, India

This article examines decentralization in the state of Maharashtrain India, especially with respect to the functioning of itsurban local governments. Using panel data, the article specificallyinvestigates the flypaper effect of grants from the state governmentto urban local bodies. It also addresses the asymmetry hypothesis,which states that subnational governments respond differentlyto a reduction in grants than to an increase. Our results demonstratethe presence of the flypaper effect, but evidence regardingthe asymmetric response to a reduction in grants is ambiguous.     

Inter‐level Trust in a Multilevel Political System

The aim of this article is to study political representatives in a multilevel government system and their level of political trust in relation to institutions in their own and other tiers of government. The results show that two factors are essential for understanding variations in their trust: Representatives tend to trust institutions in other tiers less than those in their own tier (the tier‐association effect), and they trust institutions more where their own party is in a governing position (the home‐team effect). Of the two, the home‐team effect is by far the most dominant factor. Multiple mandates serve to increase inter‐level trust, but divided loyalties possibly make representatives with multiple mandates less trusting towards political institutions in their own tiers than more partisan single mandate representatives. The study builds on data from surveys conducted among all elected representatives in Sweden in 2012 (local and regional councillors) and 2014 (national MPs).     

A Prospect Theory Analysis of California's Initiatives in Implementation of its Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) Mandate1

In 1990, the state of California passed the pioneering mandate on zero emission vehicles (ZEV). This technology‐forcing regulation is aimed at improvement of air quality and protection of public health from the adverse effects of air pollutants from automobiles. Facing severe opposition from the auto industry, the mandate has been revised a number of times, most recently in 2003, whereby the requirement for ZEVs have been made to align with the pace of technology development. Review of strategies used in implementation of the mandate has revealed greater emphasis on the economic incentives for rather than on environmental merits of ZEVs. Using prospect theory as the framework for analysis, the reasons have been explored. The findings of the study help us to understand how decisions are made with respect with to deviations from a mental anchor point and through the process of evaluation of losses and gains.     

Why Quotas Are Needed to Improve Women's Access to Services in Clientelistic Regimes

Using data from a survey of 200 Moroccan and Algerian parliamentarians, this article assesses the relationship between parliamentarian gender, quotas, and constituency service provision to females. The findings suggest that while electing women increases service provision to females, quotas are needed to create mandates in clientelistic, patriarchal settings, where serving women is a less effective electoral strategy than serving men. Deputies elected through quotas are more responsive to women than members of either sex elected without quotas. The article extends a theory of homosocial capital to explain gender gaps in parliamentarians' supply of and citizens' demand for services. By demonstrating a novel mandate effect and framing mandates in a positive light, the article extends the literature on gender, representation, and clientelism; urges scholars to examine service representation; and supports quotas to promote women's access to services, political participation, and electability.     

STRATEGIC PLANNING AND ENTERPRISE ZONES

State policy makers are concerned about costs of past policies whose benefits are often difficult to determine. Some have recommended a strategic approach to state economic policy making in order to eliminate ad hoc incentives. Lessons derived from the literature on state enterprise zones are used to assess the 1993 Federal Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community initiative. States can expand policy alternatives by fostering the growth of a marketplace of economic development ideas at the local level. Strategic plans should focus on development of competing, bottom-up solutions, rather than packages of specific incentives.