Decentralization, Local Priorities, and the Community Development Block Grant Program in Milwaukee

This article analyzes the geographic distribution of CDBG fundsacross twenty-three neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, bycomparing federal, city, and neighborhood responses to localneed and by testing the impact of these responses on the finalfunding allocations. In Milwaukee, decentralizing decisionmakingto the city improved the program's responsiveness to local need.However, the funding decisions made by local officials did notalways direct funding exclusively to the most extreme need;nor did they distribute funding proportionately with respectto need, even though the city's targeting mechanisms were closelyrelated to the measure of need used in this analysis. We concludethat Milwaukee's program results were obtained through a mixtureof targeting rules and political competition over program decisions.