Beth Walter Honadle

A CAPACITY-BUILDING FRAMEWORK: A SEARCH FOR CONCEPT AND PURPOSE

A growing number of persons (capacity builders) purport to be doing something they call capacity building. They go about this activity in a variety of ways-demonstrations, grants, consulting, training and development, and circuit riding, to name a few. Capacity building tends to address specialized management issues-financial management, organization development, grantsmanship, and service integration, for instance-usually depending upon the purview and interests of the capacity builders. These characteristics of capacity building are not necessarily bad. Attempts to address the broad gamut of management issues may be overly ambitious and do the client a disservice. Bolstering management practices in specific areas can build support for extending administrative improvements to others. Further, by making changes incrementally, useful knowledge is gained for application to future innovations. Hence, it may be wise to focus attention on selected management problems. In too many cases, however, capacity building is conceived of as the application of a particular approach to every management problem in any context. Or it is considered as the improvement of a facet of management which is equated with organizational capacity. An urgent need exists for a concept and purpose in capacity building. This need is underscored by the recent budget-cutting climate, which means that governments will have to operate more efficiently and effectively with fewer resources. Further, with the Reagan administrations proposals to consolidate several categorical grant programs into block grants administered by the states, many of those affected-particularly mayors and interest groups that benefited from categoricals-have raised questions concerning the capacities of various states to take on new responsibilities. Since the administrations long-range plans also call for revenue turnbacks, the states fiscal and management capacities are both timely issues.

The States' Role in U.S. Local Government Fiscal Crises: A Theoretical Model and Results of a National Survey

Abstract This article hypothesizes four potential roles that states may play in dealing with local government fiscal crises: predict, avert, mitigate and prevent the recurrence of local fiscal crises. Based on a 50‐state telephone survey administered by the author to members of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers in 2002, this article presents detailed information on states roles in dealing with actual local government fiscal crises. The research found that ten states had formal definitions of local government fiscal crises while the remainder varied between having a working definition, having no definition, or leaving it to local authorities to define a fiscal crisis for themselves. Although the majority of states lacked a rigourous, legal definition of what constitutes a local government fiscal crisis, 36 states reported that they had had such crisis in recent history in their states. Seven overlapping categories of state approaches emerged: the directive approach, the proactive approach, the ad hoc approach, the special legislation approach, the reform approach, the takeover approach, and the responsive approach. States reported a wide range of activities under each of the hypothesized roles. In general, states tended to get involved after a crisis rather than before one occured.

Rural Development Policy: Breaking the Cargo Cult Mentality

A comprehensive national rural development policy has been thwarted by at least five factors: inaccurate rural stereotypes, perceived conflicts between urban and rural interests, competition among rural development advocacy groups, declining rural population, and fragmentation of rural development within Congress. Rather than formulate a coherent strategic policy for rural development, the last several presidential administrations have substituted rhetoric and procedural changes for real action. They have cut programs and slashed technical-assistance efforts in the name of efficiency and used terms like coordination, targeting, and improved access to make existing programs more responsive. Despite the clear focus of federal policy makers on urban and international issues, rural development advocates behave like cargo cults, religious sects that wait for material goods to be brought by magic by the spirits of their ancestors in cargo ships. This article offers some relatively modest suggestions for how rural development advocacy groups might actually better serve rural people.

How Rural Local Governments Budget: The Alternatives to Executive Preparation

If the available studies are to be believed, annual budgeting by local governments in the United States is very much an executive-centered and dominated process. The idea of the executive budget is foremost in both prescription and description. Chief executives, whether appointed, as in the case of city managers, or separately elected, as are strong mayors, control the process. They and their staffs establish policy for departmental proposals, collect revenue estimates and spending requests, combine and revise these materials, and present final recommendations as their own programs to legislative bodies. The city councils and other local governing boards, in contrast, are mainly legitimizers of executive leadership in this area-rarely able and seldom willing to carry out independent and comprehensive reviews of budget proposals. Thus, budgeting in the city of Oakland is described by Wildavsky as a matter of executive domination and legislative acquiescence, a generalization that seems to fit big city and metropolitan practices elsewhere.2 But what of the many small governments that do not have recognized and powerful chief executives-how do they handle their annual budgeting? The question is not inconsequential, since the vast majority of general purpose local governments in the United States serve small populations in rural and suburban areas and lack either professional managers or strong elected executives.3 They are an important part of the nations local government apparatus, spending billions of public dollars every year to provide basic services to millions of residents.4 And they are becoming even more important, as the urban-to-rural population redistribution first noted

Participatory Research for Public Issues Education: A Strategic Approach to a Municipal Consolidation Study.

Community development involves citizens making critical decisions about complex issues. The ability of citizens to make decisions about such questions depends, in part, on the relevant information they have. Ideally they should have information about questions they want answered in a form they can understand. Strategic research is research that is needed so that a specific decision can be made by particular actors. The article presents a case study in which the research needs of key actors were sought, citizens researched the questions, the public was educated about findings throughout the process, and a critical decision about a highly controversial public issue was made, based on this research.

Managing capacity‐building: Problems and approaches

Abstract The purpose of capacity‐building is to help local communities and areas manage their own problems better. This article proposes several principles for building management capacity at the local government level.

Redefining Local Government Roles In Public Services: A research-informed process model

County officials in the seven-county metropolitan area of the State of Minnesotas Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul were seeking to redefine county roles in service delivery. This article reports on a process model that was piloted on two services. The model was commissioned by officials; was based upon and informed by literature and comparative experience; began with an examination of functions performed; involved participants in focusing the study; was context-focused; and involved local stakeholders in projecting the implications of alternative county roles. These characteristics complicated the research management process because the process took more time, involved more actors, and required more coordination than traditional research. However, having stakeholders identify alternatives and bring factual material to the process was critical to the success of the model and including the comparative and contextual research both strengthened the policy conclusions and improved the probability of their adoption and implementation. A case of a Minnesota county that followed the model in an effort to reform water governance within the county illustrated adoption of the approach. The stakeholder analysis process was previously applied in Africa, China and Southeast Asia and the model should be applicable to a wide range of settings and problems.

Financing Trends and Options

This chapter focuses on the local governments response to the changing macroenvironment, especially fiscal issues. There are numerous microlevel fiscal processes that are important to a local governments general fiscal health, including purchasing, contracting, and other alternative service delivery techniques, analytical techniques, and forecasting. States have broadened local investment opportunities. Financing innovations include targeting state revolving funds and bond banks to finance infrastructure. A group of local governments can diminish differences among their credit ratings by issuing bonds in a pool. Alternative dispute resolution techniques can yield financial savings by lowering the costs of resolving conflicts. When looking for ways to raise additional revenues, local governments must identify which revenue sources are underutilized and which are overutilized. Taxpayers reactions to property taxes suggest that they are overutilized as revenue sources. However, other revenue sources may be underutilized. A useful tool in finding the underutilization or overutilization balance is revenue capacity-effort analysis.

Fiscal Effects of Local Government Boundary Adjustments

This chapter focuses on the effects of local government boundary adjustments on local finances. The topic deserves special consideration because boundary adjustments are very common and their fiscal implications are complex and sometimes unexpected. The chapter presents a detailed case study of an actual consolidation to show how the fiscal effects of the consolidation were projected and what actually happened after the consolidation occurred. The case study is presented to show how a simple, straightforward analysis can be done and to illustrate the impossibility of making precise, accurate predictions beforehand. The case study shows how two small cities implemented their consolidation. The case study provides a framework for projecting the fiscal and serviced impact of consolidation and validated the projections through post-consolidation events. The results show that it is possible to project the impacts of a municipal consolidation on public services and finance by using data from the former cities and making realistic assumptions.

Analysis and Interpretation

This chapter focuses on analysis with interpretation rather than just quantitative methods or straightforward numerical assessment. The difference between the two approaches to fiscal health analysis can mean the difference between a generic representation of local government finances, one that could seemingly have been conducted in a near automated fashion, and one that is a true representation of the complete fiscal condition of the local government. The chapter discusses numerous quantitative measures that are derived by using the three tools: ten-point test of fiscal condition, the financial trend monitoring system, and fiscal capacity analysis. Throughout the chapter application of the three tools and interpretation of their results revolve around examples from case studies of three fictitious local governments, each comprising a different economic base, population demographics, and consequently with their own unique set of fiscal challenges. Accompanying those measures is a brief summary of the context of the local government.