Unionization and Work Attitudes: How Union Commitment Influences Public Sector Job Satisfaction

This article explores whether union commitment dampens public sector job satisfaction. By examining the connection between union commitment and two workplace attributes that are presumed to be more prevalent in public sector workplaces—perceptions of higher red tape and greater public service motivation—this article develops three hypotheses exploring the direct and indirect relationships between union commitment and public sector job satisfaction. The findings from a series of structural equation models indicate that union commitment directly increases members’ job satisfaction, but it more prominently increases members’ job satisfaction indirectly by reducing perceived red tape and enhancing public service motivation.     

The Renaissance of Comprehensive Planning: The Oregon Case

During the last decade, a popular pastime among planners and others has been to discredit the comprehensive plan and the process by which such plans are developed. Advocacy planning, strategic planning, policy planning, social planning, etc., were suggested alternatives to the traditional focus of planning-the comprehensive plan, The reasons for criticism were varied, but basically they boiled down to the fact that plans often ended up on shelves collecting dust. Plans failed as continuing guides to a wide variety of decisions since they were static end-state conceptions a supposedly better world. Plans and their associated regulatory devices were found inadequate to control or limit the effects of the market-plans were simply ineffective tools. So the searcH began for alternatives or modifications to the comprehensive plan.     

Guardians of access: Local prosecutors and open meetings laws

Open meetings laws have long frustrated access advocates, who allege that prosecutors do little to ensure compliance. The states provide a variety of enforcement powers in their open meetings laws, but powerful anecdotal evidence exists supporting the contention that there is little enforcement.

Prosecutorial discretion plays an obvious, though largely unstudied, role in the enforcement picture. To gain an understanding of the role of statutory language, prosecutorial discretion and other factors on open meetings enforcement efforts, the researchers conducted a national study of the officials responsible for enforcing open meetings laws. The survey offers the first national data on local enforcement activity and the first look at how prosecutors across the country view open meetings laws, illustrating the many weaknesses in current enforcement schemes. The authors argue that the data support the re‐examination of the way access laws are enforced.