Suchergebnisse

This article reviews & reassesses the achievements associated with 30 years of consolidation in Jacksonville-Duval County, FL -- a highly acclaimed experiment that has been frequently proposed but rarely accepted elsewhere. In the 1960s, reformers sought to wrest power from politicians to centralize the executive authority of the mayor. Community elites believed a modernized government would lead to improved governance. Proponents of consolidation have uncritically touted reform, but there are discrepancies between the ideal of reform & its reality, which have implications for citizenry. In this sense, merger advocates are "justifiers" of change. Some social scientists also are justifiers. Others, however, play the role of "clarifiers," raising important caveats that may undermine reform agendas. 1 Table, 41 References. Adapted from the source document.

Never before, perhaps, has government at all levels been lobbied in behalf of the same cause by both liberals and conservatives, haves and have‐nots, welfare statists and rugged individualists… All these have embraced the same vague, but virile, objective: the salvage and renewal of American, cities.2

In 1987, in their book Urban Fortune: The Political Economy of Place, Logan and Molotch argued that growth is not usually in the community interest. They proposed a strategy to alter the ability of business to force cities to compete for capital. This strategy depends upon the antigrowth coalition winning its struggle against the growth machine in individual communities. But the issue of growth is more complex than suggested by a growth/no growth dichotomy. The real issue facing localities is how to attract, direct, or repel growth to serve the community interest. In this article, we consider (1) whether growth management can resolve the power struggle between pro- and antigrowth forces and (2) whether growth management can encourage communities to undertake a search for the public interest.

This study tests the appropriateness of two competing hypotheses drawn from the public finance literature about the impact of municipal utility profits on local tax and spending patterns. By comparing data from cities that own their electric utilities to nonelectric cities, this research finds that neither city expenditures nor property tax rates are significantly affected by the transfer of profits. The evidence suggests that the profits are used by cities with relatively weak tax bases to obtain revenues from tax‐exempt institutions, homeowners, and nonresidents.