scholarly journals Moving Beyond the Influence of Neighbors on Policy Diffusion: Local Influences on Decisions to Conduct Property Tax Reassessment in New York

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 599-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae Ho Eom ◽  
Hyunhoe Bae ◽  
Soojin Kim

Over the past few decades, research on policy adoption and diffusion has grown rapidly. Despite the relatively large number of publications, however, little attention has been paid to the important question of why a policy is differently implemented or diffused across governments. To answer this question and improve our understanding of local policy choice beyond widely cited neighboring influences, we closely examine the roles of three main policy actors—internal actors, external actors, and go-betweens—in the local policy diffusion process, drawing particularly upon property tax reassessment scenarios. In addition, we focus on nested institutional arrangements, including form of government and type of property tax assessor, that affect the policy decisions of internal actors. Using data on cities and towns in New York State for 1993-2010, we estimate event history models of property tax reassessment activities. Our findings reveal that regional interactions with neighbors that have already adopted the policy and top-down go-betweens through positive inducements can help facilitate property tax reassessment across municipalities. Reformed municipal governments in the council-manager form, along with appointed assessors, are also most likely to adopt reassessment policy frequently, compared with other institutional arrangements. Overall, this study advances the policy diffusion literature by exploring the roles of different influences through a more detailed, broader approach.

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin M Aldag ◽  
Mildred E Warner ◽  
Yunji Kim

Abstract Fiscal federalism argues local governments compete to provide optimal tax-service bundles as responsible public stewards. In contrast, Leviathan theories argue tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) are necessary to make local governments fiscally responsible. We analyze local taxing behavior in New York State, which implemented a levy limit in 2012 that allows legislative overrides with 60 percent vote of the local governing board. Our 2017 survey of all general-purpose local governments measured fiscal stress, service responses, and local political attitudes and found 38 percent of municipalities voted to override. Logistic regressions show local governments that have more fiscal stress, weaker property tax bases, higher need, and higher employee benefit costs are more likely to override. These findings support fiscal federalism, as local governments that override are pushing back against state policy in order to respond to local needs. TELs introduce unnecessary rigidity and run counter to the precepts of fiscal federalism.


1978 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Kochan ◽  
Todd Jick

This paper develops and tests a model of the labor mediation process using data from a sample of negotiations involving municipal governments and police and firefighter unions in the State of New York. The test of the model also incorporates an estimate of the impact of a change in the statutory impasse procedures governing these groups. The model examines the impact of (1) alternative sources of impasse, (2) situational characteristics, (3) strategies of the mediators, and (4) personal characteristics of the mediators on the probability of settlement, percentage of issues resolved in mediation, movement or compromising behavior, and the tendency to hold back concessions in mediation. The results indicate that the change in the impasse procedure had a marginal affect on the probability of settlement in the small to medium cities in the sample but little or no effect on the larger cities. Furthermore, a number of other measures of the sources of impasse and mediator strategies and characteristics had a stronger impact on the effectiveness of the mediation process than the nature of the impasse procedure.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-45
Author(s):  
Lee Jae Bok ◽  
Roh Chul-young ◽  
Woolley Jonathan A

Health services should be accessible regardless of citizens’ gender, age, race, or insurance type, and geographic barriers should not interfere with this access. This article aims to assess the heterogeneous impacts of geographic barriers on inpatients’ hospital choices and to examine whether they vary according inpatients’ socioeconomic or insurance status. Using data on providers and inpatients obtained from the New York State Bureau of Health Informatics Office of Quality and Patient Safety for New York County (New York City’s borough of Manhattan) for 2009, we employed a discrete choice model. Our findings reveal that geographic barriers limit inpatients’ choices of hospitals more when they are of low socioeconomic status.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-547
Author(s):  
Yusun Kim

In 2005, New York (NY) state capped the growth of county-level Medicaid spending, which abruptly decreased counties’ Medicaid outlay in both relative and absolute terms. This study exploits this discontinuity in county Medicaid outlay to estimate the impact of the relief mandate policy on county budgets and property tax levies. It bridges a gap in the public finance literature by addressing local government responses to a sudden decrease in the outlay of a large mandatory spending category. We find a compositional change but no income effect on non-Medicaid spending. However, the policy reduced the effective property tax rate significantly by 6.6 to 8.1 percent on average among affected NY counties after the enactment of the policy relative to control counties. This study advances our understanding of local fiscal responses to an intergovernmental fiscal policy that changes how state and local governments share the costs of a large public social insurance program.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Earl ◽  
Sarah Soule

Existing explanations of repression and the policing of protest focus on the interests of political elites, with research indicating that a chief predictor of state repression is the level of threat protesters pose to elite interests. However, prior research has only paid sporadic attention to how the institutional and organizational characteristics of local law enforcement agencies shape the character of protest policing. This article addresses this significant theoretical gap by developing a police-centered, or "blue," approach to protest policing. Using data on the policing of public protest events in New York State between 1968 and 1973, this article finds support for the blue approach. Specifically, the situational threats posed by protesters to those agents who actually perform repression-local police-are critical predictors of police presence and action. Results also show some residual support for the role of elite threats in structuring repression.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Pudalov ◽  
Sydney Ziatek ◽  
Ana Gabriela Jimenez

Migration represents a significant physiological challenge for birds, and increasing ambient temperatures due to global climate change may add to birds’ physiological burden during migration. We analyzed migration timing in a central New York county and two counties in the Adirondack region by using data from the citizen science network, eBird, and correlating it with historical temperature data. Species of birds sighted in Central NY (N=195) and the Adirondack region (N=199) were categorized into year-round residents and one- and two-stopover groupings based on eBird observations. Using linear regressions, we looked at various relationships between temperature and variables relating to birds’ migration across 2010–2015. Of the total 195 species used within this data in Central NY, 35 species showed some alteration in their migration timing or in the temperature regime they experienced while breeding or on migration stopover. In the Adirondack region, of the total 199 species used within this dataset, 43 species showed some alteration in their migration timing or experienced significantly colder or warmer temperatures while breeding or on migration stopover during 2010–2015. Additionally, many of the bird species affected by temperature changes in the state of New York and those that altered migration timing tended to be long-distance migrants.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae Ho Eom ◽  
William Duncombe ◽  
Phuong Nguyen-Hoang ◽  
John Yinger

New York’s School Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides state-funded property tax relief for homeowners. Like a matching grant, STAR changes the price of education, thereby altering the incentives of voters and school officials and leading to unintended consequences. Using data for New York State school districts before and after STAR was implemented, we find that STAR increased student performance, school district inefficiency, and school spending by 2 to 4 percent in most districts, leading to an average school property tax rate increase of 14 percent. The STAR-induced tax rate increases offset about one third of the initial STAR tax savings and boosted property taxes for business property. STAR did little to offset the existing inequities in New York State’s education finance system, particularly compared to an equal-cost increase in state aid. This article should be of interest to policy makers involved in property taxes or other aspects of education finance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 1631-1658
Author(s):  
Jerome Niyirora ◽  
Ossayne Aragones

Medical care services can be organized into a network. Understanding the structure of this network cannot only help analyze common clinical protocols but can also help reveal previously unknown patterns of care. The objective of this research is to introduce the concept and methods for constructing and analyzing the network of medical care services. We start by demonstrating how to build the network itself and then develop algorithms, based on principal component analysis and social network analysis, to detect communities of services. Finally, we propose novel graphical techniques for representing and assessing patterns of care. We demonstrate the application of our algorithms using data from an Emergency Department in New York State. One of the implications of our research is that clinical experts could use our algorithms to detect deviations from either existing protocols of care or administrative norms.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document