Douglas Snow

The Implementation and Utilization of Stabilization Funds By Local Governments in Massachusetts

This paper examines the management of stabilization funds by local governments in Massachusetts. It assesses the implementation and funding of stabilization funds and explores how they were utilized to respond to a midyear reduction in state aid. We find that stabilization funds correlate weakly with unreserved general fund balances. We also construct multiple regression models to predict stabilization and general fund balances. We surmise that communities have either implicit or explicit financial management strategies in which slack resources play more than countercyclical roles. Further research is needed to determine the role of stabilization funds in local government financial management strategies.

From Accountability to Decision-Making? Budgeting with Mandated Performance Measures

Government agencies in many nations, including local school districts in the United States, are under pressure to shift to an outcome-based approach to accountability. While the implications of such systems are widely debated, the use of performance measures within local school districts for budgetary decision-making has received relatively little attention. This study of school business officials finds that mandated performance measures, specifically standardized test scores, are important factors in budgetary decision-making but less influential than other factors. Variables that help explain the influence of mandated performance measures include district performance, socio-economic status, and the importance of community involvement in decision-making.

Bridging Theory and Practice

New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Service (NPS) are major reform approaches promoted and debated in the public affairs literature as competing alternatives to the traditional bureaucratic paradigm. Research has focused more on theoretical and prescriptive questions than on empirical analysis of these approaches in practice. The present study examines their application in the context of local school districts. Findings suggest that elements of both approaches are common in local school districts, with the efficiency goal of NPM dominating budgetary practices. Districts tend not to adopt these reforms comprehensively, however, and some elements are far more widespread than others. Findings identify political and management variables associated with NPM and NPS approaches, as well as economic variables associated with an NPS approach. Specifically, a recent failure to meet adequate yearly progress, based on federal No Child Left Behind legislation, is a significant positive predictor for both NPM and NPS, while a business officials educational background in government has a negative association with both approaches. Findings also suggest that district poverty is negatively related to NPS and that the influence of district budget officials over the budgetary process is positively related to an NPM approach.

Teaching “Supply-Side” Social Equity in MPA Programs

Abstract The issue here examined grows out of the proposition that tax policy is the public policy that has the most pernicious effects on social equity in the United States. We hold that this proposition is so self-evident that it need be examined only tangentially to the main topics of this article: first, why would tax policy be excluded from a core MPA course on social equity, and second, how could the social equity implications of alternative tax structures be most effectively explored in the graduate classroom? The second proposition on which this analysis rests is that the substance of social equity is ultimately operationalized as economic equity. This does not refer simply to the distribution of income that emerges from market transactions, but rather to the distribution of the total range of social goods and other benefits produced by a society. The social goods and benefits that are the products of collective actions taken to either supplement or correct the distribution that emerges from the private sector are of particular interest here. The term correct leads naturally to the question of what is the correct distribution, and this issue is ultimately a purely political one whose resolution can only be informed by analysis.

Do legislative procedures affect tax expenditures

Legislative procedures that expose tax expenditure proposals to scrutiny outside the taxation committees can improve a state legislature’s ability to control its tax base. These procedures -- fiscal notes, special subcommittees, joint taxation and spending committees, and bill size C move decisions away from the exclusive control of committees whose interests may be more narrow than the interests of the legislature as a whole. Strong legislative procedures do not, and should not, eliminate the passage of new tax exemptions, but it is desirable to enact only exemptions that match major policy objectives. Several factors, including an important economic special interest, a tax rate increase, or a major shift in intergovernmental fiscal relations, can boost an exemption past even the strongest procedures. Procedures appear to be most effective in limiting exemptions with a relatively small fiscal effect.

Stabilization fund strategies in massachusetts: a survey of chief financial officers

This article summarizes findings of a survey designed to obtain perceptions of municipal finance officers in Massachusetts regarding stabilization fund management strategies. Responses indicate that stabilization funds have become embedded components of municipal revenue management strategies, that municipalities are reluctant to tap stabilization fund balances, and that chief financial officers perceive these balances to be important to bond ratings. Some finance officers report active use of stabilization funds, generally because their communities either rely on the stabilization fund to finance capital projects or because they are currently vulnerable to revenue emergencies. A small number of communities report that they rely on voters to override statutory property tax levy limits, while maintaining stabilization fund balances above the statewide median.