Suchergebnisse

In consideration of increased levels of debt issued by special purpose local governments, this study explores the relationship between local government type and credit rating decisions. Investors use credit ratings as a signal for default risk, and risk level is a function of local economic base including service responsibilities and revenue sources. Governmental functions and economic bases vary across local government types which affect credit rating decisions. Specifically, special purpose governments have more limited responsibilities and revenue sources compared to general purpose governments. To model the decision of agency selection a multivariate probit model is estimated using bond deals from six different types of local governments in Texas. Findings suggest differences among general purpose and special purpose local governments. This supports the hypothesis that economic base affects credit rating decisions. Results indicate that credit rating agencies evaluate and weight information differently, and that local governments chose rating agencies in response.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have grown in popularity as a method to leverage private-sector actors in the production of government services. With the global challenge of water insecurity, PPPs are becoming more common for large-scale water infrastructure projects such as desalination. Desalination facilities are complex and expensive operations, which means that understanding the appropriate context for PPPs is increasingly important. To understand how different PPP arrangements are used in the water sector, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University examined the global desalination sector and select cities around the world using PPPs for desalination. This brief summarizes what they learned about how risks are shared between the private and public sector, how those risks vary globally, and current trends in water infrastructure finance.

AbstractThe widespread proliferation of special districts and their role in producing and delivering public goods and services has been well documented. Each new entity further fragments government authority, and thus their autonomy is a critical determinant of how local governance systems function. Existing theories of special district autonomy emphasize formal institutional attributes such as election structure and state restrictions. We argue that this approach does not fully incorporate how relational dynamics such as functional interdependence, interest alignment, and social capital affect how special districts fit within regional polycentric governance systems. We propose a Network Autonomy Framework for local governments that focuses on relational dynamics between co-located1 governments and demonstrate an example of how this framework can be applied to a metropolitan region. By understanding how co-located governments relate to one another, we can gain a deeper understanding of special districts' role in local governance systems and advance propositions as to how they will affect a variety of local policy outcomes.

The Ecology of Games (EoG) theory couples institutional rational choice with social network theory, articulating how transaction costs, social capital, and collective action dilemmas shape networks and network outcomes in polycentric governance systems. EoG literature has often focused on social–relational ties across organizational boundaries. However, jurisdictional fragmentation and increased reliance on private contractors in local public service delivery foster another source of network connectivity—shared personnel who work for multiple service providers. Drawing upon novel data of organizational personnel from more than 500 special purpose entities responsible for delivering drinking water to local neighborhoods in the Houston metro area in the state of Texas (United States), we examine how managerial, technical, and financial service delivery personnel connect otherwise independent organizations. We find that districts regulated by a common groundwater management agency and districts which contract with one another are both more likely to share technical and managerial personnel. By studying special districts that have overlapping personnel, we broaden the scope of the EoG framework to include additional layers of governance network complexity. As individual bureaucrats and service professionals play a key role in information transfer and innovation diffusion across organizations, shared personnel networks merit consideration as a mechanism for coordination and collective problem solving in fragmented urban systems.

The United States Unemployment Insurance Program is a very complex system where mistakes are inevitable, but information technology and communication innovations at the Department of Labor (DOL) have been successful at reducing the rate of improper payments. This issue of The Takeaway outlines how learning from the DOL's strategies has the potential to benefit other government payment programs and save taxpayers money.

AbstractSince the early 2000s, the U.S. federal government has placed increasing focus on combating improper payments. Implementing policies to control improper payments is no easy task. Federal programs are often large, complex, riddled with moral hazard concerns, and jointly implemented. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor adopted a national strategy to combat improper payments in the Unemployment Insurance program. This article examines the effect that the Department of Labor's strategic initiative had on lowering states' improper payments. Findings show that two of its tools—mandatory cross matching of employment records between the National Directory of New Hires and State Directories of New Hires and a communication strategy known as messaging—played a statistically significant role in halting the rise of improperly paid unemployment insurance claims. These results suggest that information technology tools and increased communication among stakeholders can be effective in lowering improper payments and improving government performance.

We examine the general factors that affect the distribution of debt among state and local governments. We measure the distribution as the percentage of total state and aggregate local debt that is issued or held by the state level of government. Using a fiscal federalism framework, we discuss the fiscal, legal, and political factors that play an important role in determining the level of government that issues debt. Findings suggest that important factors of debt concentration at the state level include state political ideology and economic factors of income per capita and unemployment rates.

The article investigates the relationship between environmental violations and water utility infrastructure investment in the Houston metropolitan area through a lens of institutional fragmentation. Special purpose water districts are highly capital-intensive service jurisdictions, which makes them extremely dependent on local fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is also important for a water district's ability to respond to performance failures, particularly regulatory violations. Resource base, however, is unevenly distributed between special purpose water districts in the highly fragmented Houston metro area. Therefore, while capital investments may significantly covary with fiscal capacity, not all water districts are expected to be capable of making needed infrastructure investment when problems arise. There are two major policy-relevant findings that we offer in the article. Institutional fragmentation in relatively more affluent areas does not impede the ability to invest in capital infrastructure related to both service pressures and regulatory violations. However, such ability is limited in relatively less affluent areas, where the fiscal capacity to respond to service delivery problems is limited.