Richard W. Schwester

An examination of the municipal 311 system

Government accountability and responsiveness are foundational concerns of public managers, citizens, the media, and advocacy organizations. Technologies provide viable alternatives for increasing citizen access to government and improving governmentʼs responses to the issues of greatest concern to citizens, and the implementation of non-emergency 311 systems have shown tremendous potential in this regard. This paper, therefore, examines municipal 311 systems in terms of accountability and responsiveness functions, namely usability, services provided, internal operations, and measurable outputs. A survey of fourteen municipalities with 311 systems throughout the United States results in the identification of best practices in each of the four research categories.

Use of State Police Services for Local Policing: The Case of New Jersey

All states in the New England and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States provide State Police services without charge to municipalities without full-time local police departments. Efficiency and equity issues have resulted from this tradition and the development of local police departments or shared departments across neighboring municipalities in rural and exurban areas has been discouraged. These problems will diminish in scope as municipalities receiving the State Police subsidy opt out of the program and adopt local policing. We examine this potential by estimating models of the municipal decision to use the State Police for local policing among New Jersey municipalities with less than 15,000 population. We find that the elasticities of the decision to use the State Police for local policing with respect to population and median family income to be −1.1 and −2.3, respectively. If recent income and population trends in New Jersey municipalities using the State Police continue, our upper range estimate is that about 20 of the 90 municipalities using the State Police will opt out of the program in the next decade.

An Examination of the Public Good Externalities of Professional Athletic Venues: Justifications for Public Financing?

A review of the literature shows that stadiums and arenas are insignificant in terms of creating employment, engendering aggregate increases in local spending, and increasing per capita income levels. Public subsidies, then, may be better justified with reference to the nonpecuniary, public good externalities of professional athletic venues. This research examines whether the public good externalities of Baltimores Oriole Park and Clevelands Jacobs Field justify the use of taxpayer resources to finance such projects. This research finds that the public good externalities of Oriole Park and Jacobs Field are determinants of willingness to support the use of taxpayer resources to finance stadium projects.

Examining the merits of municipal police contracting

The touted benefits of inter-governmental contracting are cost savings and simplicity when compared to shared service agreements. Some managers and public officials resist contracting given the assumption that there may be a drop-off in service quality. However, inter-governmental contracting introduces market forces which theoretically would improve performance while keeping costs per unit of output low (Boyne, 1998). This paperexamines municipal police contracting in the State of New Jersey, the purpose of which is to determine if there are statistically significant differences in non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force versus those that contract with neighboring municipalities for police services. Contracting costs are also explored. While summary statistics indicate lower non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force compared to those that contract for police services, multiple regression results indicate that contracting does not predict higher non-violent crime rates at the .05 level. Therefore, contracting for police services should be explored as an alternative municipal policing model.

RACE AND ETHNICITY AS DETERMINANTS OF PRIVATIZING STATE PRISONS

The criminal justice system, in the past two decades, has witnessed an increase in incarceration rates and prison overcrowding, and a resultant rise in prison privatization. The debate over prison privatization finds itself amid public administration discourse as arguments revolve around fiscal accountability, public safety, and administrative ethics. This study looks at race and ethnicity as possible factors in the privatization of prisons, the significance of which is evident when reviewing incarceration figures for Blacks and Hispanics. U.S. Census social and economic data, along with Department of Justice data on corrections are used. Multiple regression results indicate that a state’s average cost of living and the proportion of Hispanics in its population are significant and robust predictors of prison privatization. There is some evidence supportive of the proportion of Blacks in a state°Øs population positively predicting the private prison population although further research is needed to verify this.

Review of Public Administration: An Introduction

Students studying public administration want to understand the activities taking place in their neighborhoods, the community, and the nation. Keeping an open mind as to how this book affects students’ learning is of paramount importance. Public Administration: An Introduction is well suited for the new undergraduate, public administration student. Professors should find the book easy to use, and students should find it easy to read and comprehend. Each chapter contains boxed notes on important points, along with key terms and supplementary readings lists; these features offer advantages of using the book in introductory university courses in public administration. This text is reviewed in a chapter-by-chapter format. The exact titles of chapters are used, and brief summaries and observations are presented for each chapter.

Economic Development Subsidies and the Funding of Private Prisons

For-profit prison corporations have sold prison privatization as a tool for economic development. The idea of prisons became more appealing once for-profit prison corporation demonstrated that they could finance, build, design, and construct prisons with private capital from private investment companies. Many private prisons throughout the United States are provided local, state, and federal economic development subsidies — which may include tax advantaged financing, property tax abatements, infrastructure improvements, and personnel training and development resources. Most research on prison privatization has examined costs and quality comparisons of private run prisons to government run correctional facilities. This article examines the factors that predict economic development subsidies to private prisons, which include: economic, social control, geographic, and political factors. Logistic regression results indicate the per capita gross state product, political ideology, black male disenfranchisement, and mandatory sentencing laws predict economic development subsidies to private prison corporations.