Earmarking as a Strategy Against Budgetary Constraints: San Francisco's Children's Amendment

The passage and implementation of the San Francisco Children's Amendment, or Proposition J, in 1991 represents an important expansion of the increasingly common strategy of budgetary earmarking by human service organizations. The core of the initiative was a city charter amendment that earmarked a portion of existing property taxes and established a baseline budget for children's services. Of these provisions, the baseline budget has proven most important in preserving children's services and preventing any substitution effects in a time of increasing fiscal stress for the city/ county of San Francisco. This case also illustrates the role of a strong political appeal in passing technical budgetary initiatives over the objections of elected officials and others. While there was concern about the reduced flexibility created by earmarking a city's budget during a period of retrenchment, this concern was overlooked because of the overwhelming political support for the children's cause. However, conflict between groups was created by the measure as groups fought to be included in the provisions of the amendment and over whether each group had obtained its fair share of funding.     

Learning from the Mondragón cooperative experience

The Mondragón cooperative complex in the Basque country of Spain is recognized as the world’s most impressive case of industrial cooperative development. The complex links together industrial, service, and agricultural cooperatives with a bank and a series of educational cooperatives. The continued expansion of the complex defies the conventional wisdom that worker cooperatives can only survive briefly in special niches not of interest to multi-national businesses. Mondragón’s dynamic growth and development cannot be due to some special features of the Basque culture. Success is due in part to the extraordinary vision and leadership of the founder, father José María Arizmendiarrieta, to the social inventions he created, and to theorganizational culture that he and his followers built to guide the complex. William Foote Whyte is professor emeritus (1979) in Cornell University’s New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He continues to be active in the extension division of the School as research director of Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems. His best known book isStreet Corner Society. With Kathleen King Whyte, he publishedMaking Mondragón: The Growth and Dynamics of the Mondragón Cooperative Complex. His latest book is an autobiography,Participant Observer.     

An empirical analysis of the ideological barrier in community corrections

This article examines the ideological perspectives of individuals involved with the administration of community correctional programs for juveniles. The primary purpose of the research is to assess the degree to which staff members in these programs embrace the innovative theoretical and operational concepts of community corrections. In general, the data indicates a tendency to cling to traditional, individualistic approaches to delinquency prevention. Newer concepts regarding the social aspects of delinquency and the need for systems level change were not found to be instrumental. Proposals are drawn from the study with respect to overcoming the ideological barrier in community corrections.