Local Officials’ Support for PILOTs/SILOTs: Nonprofit Engagement,Economic Stress,and Politics

Nonprofit property tax exemption has become a major policy issue as the collapse of the housing market, the Great Recession, and property tax caps have threatened local tax collections. Consequently, many local governments have sought to obtain payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) from charities that are formally exempt from property taxes. Using a 2010 survey of local government officials in Indiana, this article examines whether support for PILOT policies is related to officials’ personal involvement with nonprofits, their views on government–nonprofit relationships, the type of position they hold, the level of economic distress in the county, local political conditions, and local nonprofit wealth. The findings support most of these hypotheses but also show that attitudes toward PILOTs appear to be shaped by somewhat different concerns than attitudes toward services in lieu of taxes (SILOTs).     

Distance,services, and citizen perceptions of the state in rural Africa

In most poor countries, basic services in rural areas are less accessible and of lower quality than those in urban settings. In this article, we investigate the subnational geography of service delivery and its relationship with citizens' perceptions of their government by analyzing the relationship between service access, satisfaction with services and government, and the distance to urban centers for more than 21,000 survey respondents across 17 African countries. We confirm that access to services and service satisfaction suffer from a spatial gradient. However, distant citizens are less likely than their urban peers to translate service dissatisfaction into discontent with their government; distant citizens have more trust in government and more positive evaluations of both local and national officials. Our findings suggest that increasing responsiveness and accountability to citizens as a means of improving remote rural services may face more limits than promoters of democratic governance and citizen‐centered accountability presume.     

Revisiting Tiebout: Moving Rationales and Interjurisdictional Relocation

This article evaluates a key component of the model of localpublic expenditures put forth by Charles Tiebout and embracedby analysts in the public choice tradition. Central to thismodel is the assumption that citizens who are unhappy with localgovernment policies have an incentive to relocate to a differentjurisdiction that offers preferable taxes and services. Usingdata from a survey of actual movers in over fifty communities(including a large central city) located in the two largestcounties of a metropolitan area, we examined factors affectingboth the decision to move and the choice of a new residence.Empirical findings support the expectations of the Tiebout model,showing that tax and service factors significantly influencethe choice of a new residence for those who moved from one jurisdictionto another. The implications of the findings for central citiesare developed.     

MANUFACTURING FIRMS' VIEWS OF GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY AND COMMITMENT TO SITE: IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS RETENTION POLICY

Relationships between a variety of firm characteristics and perceptions of government are investigated. Then views about government are considered in connection with firms' commitment to their present location. One finding that is well supported is that taxes and regulations (at least for this sample and within this region) are a source of considerable dissatisfaction. Satisfaction with government services does not come near "offsetting" the displeasure with taxes and regulations. Larger firms are more likely to have unfavorable perceptions of government constraints, but more likely to have favorable views about government services. There is no evidence from this data that high tech firms differ significantly from other firms in their views about government. In regards to implications for business retention, the findings support the notion that state governments seeking to market their state to businesses located elsewhere might turn a greater proportion of attention to businesses currently residing in the state.     

Factors affecting property tax reliance: Additional evidence

This paper contributes to the understanding of the variation in property tax reliance. Factors thought to underlie the relative use of property taxes in financing local public services are examined. Because of the importance of external debt and tax limits in determining both tax policies and local government organization, particular attention is paid to local government structure and the impact on tax composition. An index from the industrial organization literature is used to study the effects of local government fragmentation. The empirical results are consistent with expectations and indicate that external tax limits may increase property tax reliance by providing incentives to change the structure of local government.     

Conservative Mobilization and Fiscal Policies

The two conservative parties in Norway, the old Conservative Party and the younger Progressive Party increased their electoral support from 23 percent in 1975 to 34 percent in the election of 1987. The electoral mobilization by these conservative parties was mainly based on an ideologically inspired rhetoric of reduced government spending and corresponding tax reductions. With the benefit of hindsight, it may be argued that these were policies to which the two parties did not live up. Whatever their political strength in the local arena, they were unable to reduce local government income taxes. But when analysing other fiscal strategies available to local governments we do find differences related to political strength, even if the findings are not always as expected. Municipalities dominated by the conservatives are run on the principle of families paying the actual costs of having children in public day-care institutions. But so are socialist-dominated municipalities. Conservative and socialist municipalities tend to subsidize fees for home-help services for the elderly. The main fiscal source of the conservatives is fees and charges on technical services used by every household and paid according to costs. The watershed between socialist and conservative parties appears as we analyse the use of property tax - a tax used much more frequently by socialist than by conservative and centrist parties.     

A Profile of Discontinuity between Citizen Demand and Willingness to Pay Taxes: Comprehensive Planning for Park and Recreation Investment

Growing alienation between citizens and government represents an important challenge to democracy. Resistance to taxation is one of the manifestations of this alienation. The issue is further complicated by citizen demands that exceed their willingness to pay taxes, referred to here as tax-demand discontinuity. This article uses a survey of over 700 citizens designed to provide an information foundation for comprehensive park and recreation planning to test for and profile tax-demand discontinuity. Using combined scores on summated measures of willingness to pay taxes and demand for public investment, citizens are typologically classified into nine groups that are then consolidated under three classifications of tax-demand discontinuity. Citizen-assignments include traditionalists, or those with continuity or balance between willingness to pay taxes and demand; philanthropists, those who are willing to pay taxes in excess of demand; and free-riders, citizens with demands that exceed willingness to pay taxes. Differences in assessments of local government performance are examined in relationship to tax-demand discontinuity classifications indicating that productivity alone will not resolve issues of tax-demand discontinuity. The results indicate differences in citizen subpopulations in tax-demand discontinuity.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

Tax Evasion Across Italy: Rational Noncompliance or Inadequate Civic Concern?

The paper suggests anexplanation for the geographical dimensionof tax evasion that focuses on thestructure of territorial government. Taxesadministered by the central government arenot differentiated by regions. Poor areasmay prefer a combination of lower taxes andlower levels of public services at both thecentral and the local level. This isespecially true when income and wealthlevels differ among the areas and thedemand for publicly provided goods iscorrelated to these levels. But the use ofnationally uniform tax schedules imposes awelfare burden on poorer areas. While thetax rates of local taxes can be adjusted tolocal preferences, tax evasion may betacitly accepted as a compensation for thewelfare loss deriving from too highcentrally set tax rates.     

Does the Charter Form Improve the Fiscal Health of Counties?

The public administration literature has paid attention to the relationship between the structure of a government and its ability to provide public services, reflected by its fiscal health. Although this literature has provided a useful understanding of government structures, it has largely ignored the charter form of government. As a formal written document that grants counties the power of self‐governance, a charter frees the county from state control. Included in this freedom is the ability to establish its own tax policies and services. In this article, the effects of charter adoption on fiscal health are tested using Florida county data from 1980 to 2012. The results show that the presence of a charter can improve the fiscal health of a county, which, in turn, can affect overall service provision.     

A Tale of Two Taxes: The Fate of Environmental Tax Reform in Canada

Policy makers who embrace market‐based approaches to environmental regulation, typically eschew carbon taxes in favor of the political advantages of cap and trade, which offers lower visibility of costs to consumers and the opportunity to allocate valuable permits freely to industry. Against this backdrop, the article examines two surprising proposals for carbon taxes, by the government of British Columbia (BC) and by the federal Liberal Party of Canada. Both reflected a triumph of party leaders' normative “good policy” motives over “good politics.” The BC tax alone succeeded first because it was adopted by a party already in government. Second, the onset of a recession before the next elections shifted voters' attention to the economy, which advantaged the BC Liberals but disadvantaged their federal counterparts. However, proposals for carbon taxes were unpopular in both jurisdictions, offering a cautionary tale concerning the fate of politicians' normative commitments absent electoral backing.     

Autonomous Agencies,Happy Citizens? Challenging the Satisfaction Claim

Is the delegation of public services to semi‐autonomous agencies associated with increased citizen satisfaction? This article assesses three theoretical routes that might link the two: responsiveness, credible commitment, and blame deflection. The article draws on data from the European Social Survey and an expert survey about delegation of tax and police services to semi‐autonomous agencies in 15 countries. No supporting evidence was found for the responsiveness and credible commitment theories. Yet semi‐autonomous agencies sometimes can absorb or deflect blame for bad performance. In the tax case, dissatisfied service users blame the agency, rather than the government. The presence of an agency worked as a scapegoat for dissatisfied service users and resulted in less dissatisfaction with the government in countries where tax services were delegated.     

Paternalistic or Participatory Governance? Examining Opportunities for Client Participation in Nonprofit Social Service Organizations

Nonprofits represent a substantial group of third-party agents that deliver public services, yet little is known about the extent to which these organizations embrace participatory governance practices. Using survey data from nonprofit social service agencies in Michigan, the author examines how these organizations provide opportunities for client participation and identifies factors that contribute to these practices. Four methods of securing client involvement are examined: participation in agency work groups, client feedback surveys, advisory boards and committees, and client service on the agency board of directors. The results indicate that government funding plays a systematic role in promoting these activities within nonprofits. These findings carry important implications for the government–nonprofit contract relationship by demonstrating that government funding shapes the practices of nonprofits in ways that promote democratic governance.     

Government-to-Government Contracting: Stewardship,Agency, and Substitution

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence detailing the distinctive nature of service delivery provided through contracts with other governments. The results of a survey of Ohio city and county managers both confirm and stand in contrast to implications derived from stewardship theory. Consistent with stewardship, our data demonstrate that contracts with public sector service partners generate less intensive monitoring by contracting governments than do services contracted with private entities. In contrast to stewardship theory, we find that contracting governments do not use other governments for services requiring intensive monitoring. In an era of accountability and results-oriented management, reliance on trust may not satisfy constituents who seek evidence of effective service delivery. The inability of the contracting government to affect another government's service delivery reduces the attractiveness of that government as a contracting partner. If the tools of stewardship prove to be inadequate, the imposition of carrots and sticks appropriate for a principal-agent relationship could undermine the trust central to stewardship. Given these tensions, it is not surprising that governments are contracting less with other governments.     

Corporate lobbying and political contributions and their effects on tax avoidance

This study looks at the impact of U.S. lobbying and political contributions on taxes avoided by U.S. publicly traded corporations. Previous research provides mixed conclusions about the effects when examined separately. Looking at political contributions and lobbying contributions simultaneously displays the larger picture. I find that lobbying expenditures and political contributions both lead to lower future taxes, but those political contributions are more effective in reducing taxes paid from what would be expected given the federal statutory rate. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides empirical evidence on the positive effects of lobbying contributions and political contributions on taxes avoided. Second, the results of this study are particularly useful for future research following the U.S. Citizens United ruling that affects corporate lobbying and political contributions. Third, differing from previous research, I build a simultaneous equation model to jointly determine the link among lobbying contributions, political contributions, and taxes avoided addressing the endogeneity issues of those relationships. These insights can help firms, policy makers, and public affairs researchers understand the connection between contributions and tax avoidance.     

Separate,Unequal, and Ignored? Interjurisdictional Competition and the Budgetary Choices of Poor and Affluent Municipalities

The fundamental value underlying the design of a fragmented system of local governance is consumer sovereignty. This system functions as a market‐like arrangement providing citizen‐consumers a choice of jurisdictions that offer different bundles of public services and taxes. However, the same choice also can facilitate class‐based population sorting, creating regions where fiscally wealthy jurisdictions coexist with impoverished ones. Some argue that the public market enhances the power of all consumers, whether poor or rich. Even if the poor are concentrated in some jurisdictions, they can exercise their voice to ensure that their government responds to their service needs. But does the voice of the poor matter as much as the voice of the rich in determining service levels in the local public market? Comparing the budgetary choices in poor and affluent municipalities, this article shows that in highly fragmented regions, some municipal services are provided the least in communities where they are needed the most.     

Outsourcing Public Service Delivery: Management Responses in Noncompetitive Markets

Capturing the benefits of competition is a key argument for outsourcing public services, yet public service markets often lack sufficient competition. The authors use survey and interview data from U.S. local governments to explore the responses of public managers to noncompetitive markets. This research indicates that competition is weak in most local government markets (fewer than two alternative providers on average across 67 services measured), and that the relationship between competition and contracting choice varies by service type. Public managers respond to suboptimal market competition by intervening with strategies designed to create, sustain, and enhance provider markets. In monopoly service markets, managers are more likely to use intergovernmental contracting, while for‐profit contracting is more common in more competitive service markets. The strategies that public managers employ to build and sustain competition for contracts often require tangible investments of administrative resources that add to the transaction costs of contracting in noncompetitive markets.     

A System-of-Systems Perspective for Public Policy Decisions

Problems of increasing complexity are facing decision makers within government and industry, and the key characteristic of these problems is that they are of system-of-systems type. With multiple, heterogeneous, distributed systems involved (including policies and economies as well as technologies), effective analysis for decision-support quickly becomes unmanageable within the “stovepipe” context that still characterizes many organizations in the research and development community. There is not a process/field of study in place that can enable us to systematically solve these types of problems, exemplified by the Next Generation Transportation System. While indeed numerous tools are available to help, they cannot be used effectively because the people who build and understand the tools all speak different languages. Much confusion still remains about words and phrases for system-of-systems type problems, let alone the best modeling approaches for dealing with them. While pockets of organizational restructuring may address this challenge for particular projects, there is a lack of systematic thinking at the basic level about how to address the challenges. This paper recommends that intellectual, financial, and institutional resources be invested for the purpose of initiating and nurturing a field of study that will enable us to better address this important type of problem. The future of transportation serves as a motivating example of a multidomain, system-of-systems problem of critical importance to the nation and in need of effective decision-support. The analogy of creating better maps and “navigation aids” for decision makers will be employed, emphasizing that, when navigating a minefield, knowing where not to go is the key factor in successfully traversing the terrain (i.e., making wise decisions).     

POLITICAL VALUES IN A CHANGING RURAL COMMUNITY

This survey data from a rapidly growing rural community reports on the attitudes and expectations residents have toward government. These residents, influenced by their "politics of escapism" from urban living, are oriented to relationships with a few friends and neighbors and a sense of community cooperation. Rather than being primarily interested in better public services, these residents possess a larger view of the values of a rural life style and a willingness to accept less service as its cost.     

Interest Group Strategies: Navigating Between Privileged Access and Strategies of Pressure

The literature often contrasts interest groups possessing insider status and outsider groups forced to seek influence through more indirect means. Drawing on data from a survey of all national Danish interest groups, this article demonstrates that most groups have an action repertoire including both direct contacts to bureaucrats and parliamentarians and indirect activities such as media campaigns and mobilizations of members. Different strategies of influence are correlated positively, hence, there is no contradiction between pursuing strategies associated with insider access to decision-making and strategies where pressure is put on decision makers through media contacts and mobilizations. An analysis of four distinct strategies – an administrative, a parliamentary, a media and a mobilization strategy – finds interesting variations in the factors that affect the pursuance of the various strategies of influence. Groups with a privileged position vis-à-vis decision makers have high levels of activities targeting these decision makers, but the lack of a privileged position does not lead groups to pursue indirect strategies. Indirect strategies are most intensively pursued by cause groups and groups who find themselves in a competitive situation with regard to attracting members.