Coping With the Great Recession: Theory and Practice for County Governments

This article explores “best” and actual practices of county governments coping with fiscal stress. Using survey results from county commissioners in California and Georgia, it is possible to assess the recession's impact and identify strategies that have been used to deal with revenue shortfalls and how different taxes may have changed these tactics. It becomes clear that reducing expenditures is more commonplace than increasing taxes, and almost no counties are able to “do nothing” as the academic literature prescribes (Marlowe, 2009 Marlowe, J. 2009. “Can local government leaders formulate strategies that will actually—rather than hopefully—stimulate their local economies? Has history any record of such successes?”. In Navigating the fiscal crisis: Tested strategies for local leaders, Edited by: Miller and Svara. Prepared for the ICMA.  [Google Scholar]). Overall, the counties that are most successful at coping with the recession began to take action before they felt the recession's impact and subsequently are able to maintain service levels without dramatic changes to the way they budget.