Catastrophe and the Public Service: A Case Study of the Government Response to the Destruction of the World Trade Center

The destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, resulted in a rapid response by government to evacuate the area and, in subsequent days, to bring the city back to a semblance of normalcy. This article provides a case study of government action in New York City during and after the World Trade Center catastrophe. What is most striking is the skill and intensity of government's response to the emergency and the hard work, dedication, and bravery of New York City's government officials. This article presents government and public service at its finest, under some of the most difficult conditions one can imagine.     

Roadblocks in Reforming Corrupt Agencies: The Case of the New York City School Custodians

Reformers have traditionally assumed that agencies can combat corruption through controls such as tighter oversight, increased regulation, internal audits, reorganizations, and performance accountability mechanisms. But this case study of the New York City school custodial system shows how a corrupt agency can derail these devices. New York City's $500,000,000 custodial system, responsible for maintaining its 1,200 schools, has been unleashing scandals since the 1920s despite decades of regulations, multiple reorganizations, and layers of oversight. Its history shows that a deviant culture—a management "captured" by special interests—and an infrastructure enmeshed in abusive policies will resist controls, no matter how well-crafted. True reform requires tackling institutionalized corruption through strategies like overhauling management, eradicating special interests, and aggressively punishing misconduct.     

On protectionism

Whose Congress?

John C. Berg, UNEQUAL STRUGGLE: CLASS, GENDER, RACE AND POWER IN THE U.S. CONGRESS (Boulder, CO: Westview Press (Harper Collins), 1994).

Karl Mannheim's Liberalism

David Kettler and Volker Meja, KARL MANNHEIM AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM: THE SECRET OF THESE NEW TIMES (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995).

Red Not Dead

Constance Coiner, BETTER RED: THE WRITING AND RESISTANCE OF TILLIE OLSEN AND MERIDEL LE SUEUR, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

For further reading

Mendel LeSueur. Corn Village. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Stanton and Lee, 1970.

The Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: West End Press, 1978.

Tillie Olsen. Tell Me a Riddle. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1989.

Silences. New York: Dell, 1978.

My Mother The Teacher

Ruth Jacknow Markowitz, MY DAUGHTER, THE TEACHER: JEWISH TEACHERS IN THE NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993).

A Personal Response     

Reflections on theories of market efficiency

Market efficiency is determined by how efficiently markets capture the information. Efficient markets can capture and incorporate all the available information into stock prices within no time. It means market prices traded are the actual prices of shares. There have been many theories trying to debate about how to determine market efficiency. If markets are efficient, there is no scope for investors to earn abnormal returns on the investments. In that case, investments in markets would not provide any additional returns. There have been many debates and theories on the topic of market efficiency. Postmodern portfolio theory (PMPT) came into existence after almost 40 years of the modern theory of portfolio given by Henry Markowitz. Both the theories give a risk–return framework for decision making and there are many conflicting aspects of market efficiency. I try to address this issue in this paper that raises concerns for the investor as to which markets are called efficient and what contributes to market efficiency, as denoted in modern portfolio theory (MPT) and post modern portfolio theory (PMPT).     

Measuring Street Cleanliness: A Comparison of New York City's Scorecard and Results from a Citizen Survey

Public administrators at the local level often rely on citizen surveys to measure the outcomes or accomplishments of their service delivery efforts. However, many remain skeptical about the value of survey-based measures of local government performance, in large part because of the low empirical correlation between objective and subjective performance measures reported in the literature. Using data from New York City's street cleanliness scorecard, a well-established outcome measure, combined with responses from more than 4,000 respondents to a citizen survey, the authors find a clear and consistent correlation between the scorecard and citizen ratings of street cleanliness in their neighborhoods. Moreover, the street cleanliness scorecard is a much stronger predictor of citizen ratings than demographic factors, trust in government, or contextual effects. These results demonstrate that citizen judgments about government performance can correspond closely with more objectively measured outcomes—and that citizen surveys can provide valid and useful performance measures, at least for some local government services.     

Budget Deficits in the States: New York

New York faces large projected budget shortfalls. Although the recession has contributed, a large part of the shortfalls are due to long standing structural imbalances. The structural imbalances result from high spending levels, particularly on Medicaid and education, a volatile revenue structure, and political forces that make it difficult to achieve recurring spending reductions. In the most recent budget session, federal stimulus money allowed legislators to avoid the tough decisions needed to move the state toward long-run fiscal balance, and the adoption of increased income tax rates for high earners is likely to increase revenue volatility moving forward.     

A Strategic Framework for Devolving Responsibility and Functions from Government to the Private Sector

Whether a function should be performed within or outside government is a very broad issue that relates to personal values and views concerning the relationship between individual and state, as well as a complex set of management issues. Without trying to answer those questions here, this article begins from the premise that a particular function has been judged by the political process to be the responsibility of government. The article seeks to develop an approach for government managers to use when deciding whether to perform the function directly in-house or to perform the function indirectly through the use of a non-governmental organization. The first part of this article begins by delineating distinguishing characteristics of government, nonprofit, and private organizations, and then assesses the degree to which those characteristics impede or facilitate the performance of public functions. The article then develops a framework and a method for making privatization decisions. The decision to privatize requires strategic thinking; this article provides an example of how a strategic framework might be applied by analyzing the issues that would be faced in privatizing a key element of New York City's homeless program.     

Tax Base Composition and Revenue Volatility: Evidence from the U.S. States

This study examines the effect of tax base composition on revenue volatility, with focus on state general sales tax and individual income tax. In doing so, extensive historical data (1992–2007) are presented on state taxation of various categories of sales and incomes that exhibit wide cross‐state variations in taxable status, and revenue volatility is measured using the deviation‐from‐trend approach. Models of sales and income tax volatility are estimated using pooled OLS, and the analyses reveal that revenue volatility is significantly affected by how the tax base is composed. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of the results.     

On political connectedness and the arrest of Ivan Boesky

The bombshell arrest of Ivan Boesky on November 14, 1986 signaled the intention of then-US attorney for the southern district of New York, Rudy Giuliani, to increase enforcement of laws against insider trading. Looking at concurrent stock price changes, we find that New York companies were affected especially. More interestingly, New York firms with active political arms fared better than those without them; and New York firms connected to Mr. Giuliani’s Republican Party fared better still. We find no such effects for non-New York firms. These findings suggest that political connectedness was valuable in the era of more rigorous legal enforcement associated with Mr. Giuliani’s attack on insider trading.     

Budget Balancing in Difficult Times: The Case of the Two New Yorks

The objective of governments is to efficiently provide essential services and infrastructure to their jurisdictions at a competitive tax rate within the constraint of a balanced budget. In recent years, several states have found it difficult to maintain this standard. This article examines the nature of the problem in the overlapping jurisdictions of New York City and New York State. Specifically, it explains the nature of projected budget gaps that have emerged in New York, and describes how the two New Yorks' political leaders have managed their budgets in recent years. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that expenditures significantly exceed revenues, thus leading to inevitable budget gaps, and that policies designed to close the gap have harmful consequences.     

The changing association between prenatal participation in WIC and birth outcomes in New York City.

We analyze the relationship between prenatal WIC participation and birth outcomes in New York City from 1988-2001. The analysis is unique for several reasons. First, we have over 800,000 births to women on Medicaid, the largest sample ever used to analyze prenatal participation in WIC. Second, we focus on measures of fetal growth distinct from preterm birth, since there is little clinical support for a link between nutritional supplementation and premature delivery. Third, we restrict the primary analysis to women on Medicaid who have no previous live births and who initiate prenatal care within the first four months of pregnancy. Our goal is to lessen heterogeneity between WIC and non-WIC participants by limiting the sample to highly motivated women who have no experience with WIC from a previous pregnancy. Fourth, we analyze a large sub-sample of twin deliveries. Multifetal pregnancies increase the risk of anemia and fetal growth retardation and thus may benefit more than singletons from nutritional supplementation. We find no relationship between prenatal WIC participation and measures of fetal growth among singletons. We find a modest pattern of association between WIC and fetal growth among U.S.-born Black twins. Our findings suggest that prenatal participation in WIC has had a minimal effect on adverse birth outcomes in New York City.     

When is Growth Not Growth? The Curious Case of Mental Health Budgeting in New York

This article argues that the adverse impact of Medicaid on state budgets alleged in various public debates has been overstated, in some measure because of the inaccurate and misleading manner in which Medicaid expenditures are appropriated in state budgeting systems. Data on Medicaid and mental health spending in the state of New York is used for analysis. The first section provides a Medicaid spending and budgeting background. The second section discusses Medicaid and mental health in New York. The third section describes actual budgeted spending for mental health in New York, and the final section provides a discussion and concluding comments.     

because they are forbidden but forbidden because they are

Carolyn Merchant: Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World. New York/London: Routledge, 1992.

David Pepper: Eco‐Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice. New York/London: Routledge, 1993.

Kirkpatrick Sale: The Green Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Paul Hawken: The Ecology of Commerce. New York: Harper and Row, 1993

Vincente Navarro: Dangerous to Your Health. Capitalism in Health Care. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993     

Revisiting the Income Tax Effects of Legalizing Same‐Sex Marriages

In this paper we estimate the impacts on income tax collections of legalizing same‐sex marriage. We utilize new individual‐level data sources to estimate the federal income tax consequences of legalizing same‐sex marriages. These data sources also allow us to estimate the impact of legalization on state income tax collections. We find that 23 states would realize a net fiscal benefit from legalization, while 21 states would experience a decline in revenue. The potential (annual) changes in state tax revenue range from negative $29 million in California to positive $16 million in New York. At the federal level, our estimates suggest an overall reduction in revenues, ranging from a potential loss of $187 million to $580 million. Overall, we find that the federal and state impacts are quite modest. We also find that our estimates are only marginally affected by alternative assumptions about how many same‐sex couples will choose to marry and which partner will claim any children for tax deduction purposes.     

Do State‐Funded Property Tax Exemptions Increase Local Government Inefficiency? An Analysis of New York State's STAR Program

This study tests the effects of a growing form of indirect state aid—state‐supported property tax exemptions—on local government efficiency. We hypothesize that larger exemptions, by lowering the effective tax price paid by local homeowners and thus their incentive to monitor efficiency, will reduce local government efficiency. We test this hypothesis by examining the introduction of New York State's large state‐subsidized property tax exemption program, which began in 1999. We find evidence that, all else constant, the exemptions have reduced efficiency in districts with larger exemptions, but the effects appear to diminish as taxpayers become accustomed to the exemptions.     

Institutional Differences and Local Government Performance: Evidence from Property Tax Assessment Quality

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between institutional differences embedded in local governance structures and government performance in the specific context of property assessment. In order to provide deeper insight into why certain governance structures perform better than others, we focus on the impact of nested levels of institutions—constitutional-level and substantive-level rules of governance—beyond the conventional perspective of the form of government. Based on panel data of cities and towns in New York State between 1993 and 2010, our analysis indicates that, among other institutional arrangements, municipalities employing the council–manager form with appointed assessors are most likely to achieve higher levels of assessment quality (uniformity) of the residential property. This indicates that having politically independent (more career-oriented), low-powered appointed governance structures rather than politically risk-averse (more voter-oriented), high-powered elected counterparts are more likely to be effective at reducing risk in tax equity issues, thus providing better financial performance.     

Growing Grassroots Democracy: Dynamic Outcomes in Building New York City’s Participatory Budgeting Program

Within five years of its launch, Participatory Budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) spread from four to thirty-one of New York’s fifty-one council districts, enabling city residents to directly allocate thirty-eight million dollars in public funds. During this period, PBNYC’s neighborhood-level forums remained largely unchanged, but, in order to sustain growth, administrative shifts altered the institution’s basic design. This article examines how and why this transition affected the degree of popular control afforded by PBNYC, specifically within its cross-district Steering Committee. Analysis of original interviews and organizational documents indicates that the transition brought important, if modest, gains but impeded aspects of community empowerment through bureaucratic resistance and imbalanced governmental-civil society roles. Key players responded by reforming PBNYC’s internal governance. This case sheds light on the factors that shape participatory institutions and their impacts, emphasizing the dynamic interactions between actors and the resulting gains and losses that aggregate toward longer term outcomes.     

Reviews and notes

Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post‐Industrial Socialism by Andre Gorz, Boston: South End Press, 1982, $7.50, 152 pp.

Robert Lekachman. Greed Is Not Enough. (New York: Pantheon, 1982).

Debunking is not Enough

Frank Ackerman, Reaganomics: Rhetoric vs. Reality. (Boston: South End, 1982).

Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. The New Class War. (New York: Pantheon, 1982).

Power and the Intellectuals

Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims (New York, Oxford University Press, 1981)

Regis Debray, Teachers, Writers, Celebrities (London, New Left Books, 1981)

Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and The Rise of the New Class (New York, Seabury Press, 1979 (Note — Oxford University Press has picked up the imprint and published this work in paperback in 1982)

Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

Doreen Massey and Richard Meegan, The Anatomy of Job Loss: The How, Why, and Where of Employment Decline (London and New York: Methuen, 1982).     

The Path Not Taken: Leonard White and the Macrodynamics of Administrative Development

Leonard White , The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History ( New York: Macmillan , 1948).
Leonard White , The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 ( New York: Macmillan , 1951).
Leonard White , The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861 ( New York: Macmillan , 1954).
Leonard White , The Republican Era, 1869–1901: A Study in Administrative History ( New York, Macmillan , 1958).
This is a review of four books by Leonard White: The Federalists (1948), The Jeffersonians (1951), The Jacksonians (1954), and The Republican Era (1958). In these books, White develops an approach to the study of administrative development that accounts for a broad range of considerations, including political and economic structure, the organization of the international order, popular culture, the stock of available communication and organizational technologies, and executive talent. White also offers an early argument about the significance of path dependence in institutional evolution. White's approach is largely concerned with the macrodynamics of administrative development. It has been neglected within the field of public administration over the last half century. A literature that builds on White's work would improve the field's ability to explain and anticipate failures in state building and administrative reform.     

Analysis and urban government: Experience of the New York City—Rand institute

For almost four years New York City and the Rand Corporation have been engaged in an enterprise distinctive if not unique: the subjection of a wide variety of the City's problems to the scrutiny of independent analysts. This paper* is the attempt of a participant in that enterprise to describe the background of that effort and the novel arrangements made to institutionalize it, to outline the nature and effect of the analyses produced, and then to reflect on some of the lessons this effort has taught some of its participants.