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City Council Legislative Committees and Policy-making in Large United States Cities
Abstract
Legislative committees are extensive and integral to the structure and policy-making functions of Congress and state legislatures. Scant research exists on current roles of committees of city councils. We hypothesize that city council committee systems are less common and not as vital to policy-making than is true of other legislative bodies. Contrary to much urban research, we further expect that city government structure, not the political environment, shapes development of committee systems and their policy roles. Logistic and OLS regression are the methods used to analyze the structure of city council committee systems. Differences in policy outputs are analyzed with t-tests and OLS regression. Data are from a 1992-93 mail survey of 160 large United States cities, and from Census Bureau reports on city government finances. Committees are widely used in large cities and their use is directly due to structural aspects of city government, particularly size of city council. Broad policy-making roles are found to be uncommon, but a substantial part of city legislative business is assigned to committees. Legislative committees have a small impact on policy outputs.
... No nível de governos locais, a adoção do modelo prefeito forte (strong mayor) nos Estados Unidos da América (EUA) levou a competência técnica em finanças a se concentrar no Poder Executivo, deixando as comissões legislativas com falta de capacidade técnica e em posição de inferioridade (Pelissero & Krebs, 1997). ...
Resumo Este artigo analisa a atuação das comissões de orçamento e finanças das câmaras municipais no controle orçamentário. Tais comissões apoiariam os vereadores na análise, na avaliação e no controle de projetos de lei, emendas parlamentares e prestação de contas apresentados(as) pelas prefeituras ao longo de todas as fases do ciclo orçamentário. Baseado em um método indutivo de pequenas amostras, este estudo compara a atuação das comissões de orçamento e finanças de 3 câmaras municipais no mandato de 2013-2016. Constatou-se que tais comissões atuaram de modo cerimonial e passivo, emitindo pareceres superficiais. Os resultados indicam que a previsão regimental e a existência de recursos materiais e humanos não garantem o funcionamento dessas comissões. Os efeitos colaterais do governo de coalizão geram incentivos políticos para manter as comissões com atuação cerimonial. A frágil atuação das comissões legislativas no controle orçamentário se mostra um ponto crítico para qualquer pretensão de equilíbrio fiscal na Federação.
... No nível de governos locais, a adoção do modelo prefeito forte (strong mayor) nos Estados Unidos da América (EUA) levou a competência técnica em finanças a se concentrar no Poder Executivo, deixando as comissões legislativas com falta de capacidade técnica e em posição de inferioridade (Pelissero & Krebs, 1997). ...
This article analyses the legislative committee carrying out financial and budgetary oversight at municipalities in Brazil. These committees, similar to the internationally named Public Account Committees, support parliamentarians to analyze, evaluate, and scrutinize budgetary bills, amendments and governor’s accounts covering the entire budgetary cycle. Based on a small-N analysis inductive approach, the study compares budgetary legislative committees from three local parliaments for the term 2013-2016. Such budgetary committees just operate ceremonially and passively, offering superficial recommendations. The evidence indicates that the legal mandate to operate and material and human resources are not sufficient to guarantee the commissions’ efficiency. The collateral undesirable effects from coalitional government create incentives to maintain ceremonial commissions. The fragile legislative committee’s performance on budgetary issues is a bottleneck to any aspiration to achieve fiscal sustainability in Brazil.
... If they are lacking sufficient information and expertise, they are likely to be more dependent on managers. This dependence reduces their capacity to exercise oversight and direct the implementation of policies (Demir and Nyhan 2008;Koehler 1973;Pelissero and Krebs 1997), and leads to interactions between council and managers with regard to questions of both policy and administration (Carr 2015). ...
Research on public managers’ power at the national level has investigated an extensive range of contributing factors. Studies in local governments, however, have focused more on structural characteristics of governments under which managers serve. This paper proposes and tests a more comprehensive model to explain city managers’ sense of power. Community base, political savvy, and tenure of the city managers positively affect their sense of power. However, powerful councils with high job engagement and are supported by outside groups reduce managers’ sense of power. Results show no significant relationship between administrative capacity and city manager’s sense of power.
In the current drive for sustainable development through grassroots engagements in Nigeria, one may want to ask how accountable are locally elected government officials in the delivery of local public good? And giving the role of grassroots population in the development process, what is the impact of intergovernmental fiscal relations on service delivery in the local government? These questions are important because several developmental prognoses emphasize the need to decentralize responsibility for local public services to local institutions; and, in the absence of sufficient local revenue potential, to explore ways of financing this decentralization through state to local government transfers. This approach will enable local government play the role of the primary drivers of development at the grassroots because accountability and service delivery are crucial in the entrenchment of good governance.Accordingly,this paper examines the problems of accountability in Nigerian local government administration and how it has affected sustainable development in Nigeria. It used a qualitative analytical method to draw on available secondary data and existing literature on the state of governance and service delivery in local governments in Nigeria. It found that the local government councils in the country are not accountable to the people hence the inadequacy of service delivery at the grassroots. It recommends that the utilization of local administrations for sustainability of people driven development in Nigeria should be efficiently pursued and prudently sustained. Furthermore, expenditure assignment should match with revenue generating capability in order for local governments to discharge their functions effectively. In essence, revenue and expenditure decentralization must support local government public revenue profile. In this sense, their share of total public sector expenditure should be substantially increased through increase allocation from the federation accounts.
Although there is a widespread belief that uneven voter turnout leads to biased outcomes in American democracy, existing empirical tests have found few effects. By offering a systematic account of how and where turnout matters in local politics, this book challenges much of what we know about turnout in America today. It demonstrates that low and uneven turnout, a factor at play in most American cities, leads to sub-optimal outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities. Low turnout results in losses in mayoral elections, less equitable racial and ethnic representation on city councils, and skewed spending policies. The importance of turnout confirms long held suspicions about the under-representation of minorities and raises normative concerns about local democracy. Fortunately, this book offers a solution. Analysis of local participation indicates that a small change to local election timing - a reform that is cost effective and relatively easy to enact - could dramatically expand local voter turnout.
Although there is a widespread belief that uneven voter turnout leads to biased outcomes in American democracy, existing empirical tests have found few effects. By offering a systematic account of how and where turnout matters in local politics, this book challenges much of what we know about turnout in America today. It demonstrates that low and uneven turnout, a factor at play in most American cities, leads to sub-optimal outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities. Low turnout results in losses in mayoral elections, less equitable racial and ethnic representation on city councils, and skewed spending policies. The importance of turnout confirms long held suspicions about the under-representation of minorities and raises normative concerns about local democracy. Fortunately, this book offers a solution. Analysis of local participation indicates that a small change to local election timing - a reform that is cost effective and relatively easy to enact - could dramatically expand local voter turnout.
For decades, political scientists have argued that competition is a fundamental component of a responsible party system, such that when one party dominates politics, legislative coalitions destabilize and democratic accountability suffers. In this paper, I evaluate these predictions in an important but largely unexplored legislative environment: American local government. Using an original collection of roll-call records from 151 municipal councils, I show that legislative behavior is more one-dimensional when elections are partisan and the electorate is evenly balanced between the parties. When either of these features is absent, however, elite behavior remains unstructured, with coalitions shifting over time and across issues. These differences across institutional and competitive contexts suggest that partisan elections—and the party organizations that nearly always come with them—are critical for translating electoral insecurity into organized government, raising questions about the capacity for electoral accountability in a growing set of one-party dominant governments across the country.
Much of the literature on home rule overlooks structural variations in city governance. Because structural features of city governance expand or restrict democratic participation, we take a comprehensive look at the 481 cities in California to identify correlates of home rule status and city council size. Roughly a quarter of the cities in the state have chosen to become charter cities while the rest remain general law cities with essentially identical governing bodies of five member city councils elected in at-large elections. Some cities that have opted to become charter cities have altered their form of government or electoral systems, but many have not. Among all cities in California, both general law and charter, variations in city council size, election method, and mayoral selection are largely unrelated to demographic factors but rather the year of incorporation, selection method of the mayor, and whether the city has adopted a charter.
This paper contrasts nonguaranteed city debt with taxation and general obligation debt. Drawing upon Bureau of the Census, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) and Municipal Year Book data, the analysis shows that both per capita tax revenue and outstanding general obligation debt are best explained by background factors such as total population, functional scope, and region, while fiscal strain plays a secondary role. Political structures, in the shape of legal constraints on taxation and debt and of form of government, do not account for patterns of these traditional revenue sources. By contrast, nonguaranteed debt is best explained by a model in which fiscal strain has a paramount role, but with both legal constraints on taxing and regional differentiation contributing significantly to the explanation, at least for data collected prior to 1978. The findings suggest a two-tiered model of the revenue side of fiscal decision making, with historical accommodations to powerful economic and demographic factors dominating taxing and general obligation debt, while nonguaranteed debt serves as a flexible instrument of shorter-term strategy .