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What happens to general‐purpose local government spending for service provision when a special district enters the public service market? Theoretically, special districts can act either as complements by supplementing existing service provision spending or as substitutes by supplanting current service provision spending. We find a substitution effect using fixed effects regression on urban counties in the United States from 1972 to 2017. Special districts replace spending for public service provision by county governments; however, we find no similar result for municipal governments. But the results are nuanced—findings are confined mainly to public services that tend to cover large land areas, like fire protection, sewerage, and solid waste management. Furthermore, we find evidence that day‐to‐day operations drive observed substitution, and that county size is an important factor depending on the functional service area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being popular with the public and preventing racial and economic inequality, states often preempt their local governments' ability to adopt workers' rights laws. We test several competing theories of preemption (ideology, political institutions, interest group involvement, demographics, and policy diffusion) using a time-series, cross-sectional approach. Using data on state legislative activity from 1993 to 2018, we find that increasing legislative conservatism, and more unified political control of the state government, regardless of party, are associated with a higher risk of preempting local workers' rights laws, all else equal. Our focus on legislative ideology, a more precise measure than party control at the subnational level, as the nexus of preemption activity helps clarify prior contradictory results in the literature. For those looking to prevent or overturn workers' rights preemptions, the most direct approach appears to be to change the ideology of state legislatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This field note provides both a foundation for discussion about the role of townships in local governance and empirical evidence of their unique and embedded role. Drawing on a survey administered to Illinois township supervisors, administrators, and assessors, it presents baseline indicators about the range of township services, managerial practices, assessment, and collaboration for services to better illuminate current services, capacities, and challenges. A greater understanding of the complexity of delivering township services can guide policymakers in their deliberations about the future of township governments and provide research propositions for investigating township governments in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many affordable housing policies are the domain of local governments. While subnational housing policies can be used to increase racial and economic segregation, they can also protect renters, and thus are not without controversy. Local affordable housing policies include inclusionary zoning, rent control, short-term rental regulation and source of income discrimination. Starting in the 1980s, states began to preempt these local laws, preventing their cities from adopting affordable housing policies. We ask why states choose to preempt one or more of these four affordable housing policies. Using a cross-sectional, time-series dataset of preemptions, we find evidence that more conservative legislatures are more likely to adopt preemptions, while more professional legislatures and states with higher rental rates and previous preemptions are less likely to preempt. Contrary to expectations, interest group density, electoral competition and policy diffusion are not significant predictors of preemption. For advocates and policymakers concerned with increasing affordable housing in their jurisdictions, these results raise unease about the ability to further an affordable housing agenda at the local level, particularly in more conservative political environments, suggesting instead that affordable housing may need to return to the purview of the federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of local political fragmentation on population, employment, and per capita money income growth in 314 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results are mixed. Smaller central cities and more special district overlap are important for population growth. The findings do not generalize in regard to employment or per capita money income growth. These findings mask important regional variation: political fragmentation is largely unrelated to economic growth in midwestern and western metropolitan areas. These results partially support the hypothesis that governmental fragmentation can enhance local economic growth; however, the overall impact appears muted relative to a metropolitan area's economic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American cities are creatures of their states, with states both granting and limiting the power of their cities. This relationship is characterized by how cooperative or competitive states are with cities in their legislation. Despite the recent attention given to state preemption of local laws, this is not a new phenomenon. Part of the confusion surrounding preemption is that there is no shared definition or understanding of its forms. The purpose of this article is to begin to create that shared conception. In doing so, we define preemption according to its historic origins as the use of coercive methods to substitute state priorities for local policymaking. We argue modern state preemption of local laws can be divided into four phases, each with their own policies and mechanisms. We show how preemption has changed over time, shifting the functional, legal, and political relationship between states and their cities. Together, these phases help assist policymakers and administrators in understanding the nature of state preemption, and thus how to create and implement local policies in an environment where the distribution of power between governments is competitive and changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses 40 years of data from the U.S. Census of Governments to examine the impact of changes in local autonomy on the creation of the fastest growing form of local governments, special districts. Using fixed effects regression specified at the urban county and metropolitan statistical area level, we find that restrictions of fiscal autonomy of cities are associated with creation of new special districts. When the limits on fiscal autonomy interact with grants of functional autonomy, amplification occurs. We find no analogous effects for county governments. These two findings are consistent with the circumvention argument made in the local autonomy literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the influence of property tax delinquency on the sale price of nearby homes from 2002 to 2013 using more than 46,000 residential property sales in a representative midwestern central city—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After controlling for a number of property and neighborhood characteristics including nearby foreclosures, we find property tax delinquency has a significant influence on nearby home sales. The relationship is negative; one additional tax delinquent property within 250 m of a home sale is associated with a discounted sale price of 0.79% or approximately $1,085 on average. In addition, the influence of tax delinquent properties on home sale prices diminishes with distance, suggesting blight is the source of the discount. Based on these findings, the negative influence of tax delinquency is likely to be exacerbated in central cities where housing density is greater and delinquency is higher and more persistent than the surrounding suburbs, which has the potential to lead to fiscal distress as property taxes are the primary revenue source for cities. As such, we suggest a two-tiered approach for cities to mitigate the negative consequences of tax delinquency: a combination of policies to eliminate delinquency and also to help homeowners become financially stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the influence of fragmentation and concentration variables on per capita direct expenditures for all counties in the United States from 1982 to 2002. Building on recent research, fragmentation and concentration variables are developed to incorporate the horizontal as well as the vertical dimensions. This analysis explicitly takes into account the potential simultaneity between individual preferences for the spatial arrangement of local governments and the size of the local public sector using the element of time. The findings suggest that increased levels of fragmentation lead to an enlargement of the local public sector; however, the results are more complex than expected. Similarly, the concentration of service delivery responsibilities into counties and single purpose districts tends to increase the size of the local public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]