scholarly journals Mayoral quality and municipal performance in Brazilian local governments

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (83) ◽  
pp. 555-579
Author(s):  
Claudia N. Avellaneda ◽  
Ricardo Corrêa Gomes

Abstract We test the influence of managerial quality on organizational performance using a panel data set on 827 (out of 853) Brazilian municipalities of the state of Minas Gerais over a six-year period (2005-2010). The intra-country and intra-state comparison controls for potential institutional, historical, and cultural variables. Local managerial quality is assessed in terms of mayoral education and experience (public and reelection), and municipal performance is operationalized as property tax collected per capita and property tax collected as a percentage of total revenue. The study covers the four years of the 2005-2008 mayoral administration and the first two years of the 2009-2012 administration. After testing the effect of political, economic, and ideological factors and controlling for other municipal factors, we find, contrary to our expectations, that mayoral quality fails to explain variance in property tax collection. Rather, political factors (legislature support and electoral cycle) seem to be more strongly correlated with municipal property tax collection. Specifically, municipalities in which the mayor enjoys more partisan support on the city council tend to collect more property tax. Moreover, compared to the first three years of mayoral administration, in the last year of mayoral administration – that is, during the mayoral election year – municipalities tend to reduce their property tax collection.

Author(s):  
Mykola Somych ◽  
◽  
Yuiiia Vakulenko ◽  
Liudmyla Horbatiuk ◽  
Yurii Kovryzko ◽  
...  

The article summarizes the theoretical principles of defining the concept of «mechanism», «conflict management mechanism». The main types of conflicts according to the Law of Ukraine «On Civil Service» are clarified: official disputes and conflicts of interest – a situation in which the personal interest of a civil servant affects or may affect the objective performance of his duties and in which there is or may occur contradictions between the personal interest of the employee and the legitimate interests of citizens, organizations, society. The main types of conflict management mechanisms are identified: organizational, legal and socio-psychological, taking into account objective and subjective factors, which covers a system of parameters, sequential actions, a set of methods and measures of socio- psychological nature. The causes of conflict situations in the interaction of public authorities and the public are substantiated: objective (social, political, economic, ideological factors) and subjective (derived from objective). Conflict fields of contradictions that arise in the process of interaction are depicted: legislative principles, political sphere, personnel policy, undemocratic worldview of managers, economic competence. The analysis of the main conflict fields of contradictions of local governments of Poltava region is carried out. New, alternative methods of conflict resolution have been formed: competition, adaptation, compromise, avoidance, cooperation, their general characteristics have been determined. Officials were invited to use the open conversation technique in order to reach a compromise.


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.


1973 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Eapen ◽  
Ana N. Eapen

Regardless of the alternative assumptions used to allocate taxes and benefits from expenditures of Connecticut state and local governments in 1967, this study shows that the incidence of taxes is regressive while that of expenditures is progressive. The regressivity of the tax structure is overwhelmingly due to the regressivity of the property tax. Progressivity of expenditures stems chiefly from transfer payments, housing, and hospitals which benefit primarily low-income families. On the basis of reasonable assumptions, it is shown that the state and local fiscs bring about, on the average a net redistribution of a mere two percent of income from families with annual incomes of $12,000 and above to those below that level.


Author(s):  
T. Kliment ◽  
V. Cetl ◽  
H. Tomič ◽  
J. Lisiak ◽  
M. Kliment

Nowadays, the availability of authoritative geospatial features of various data themes is becoming wider on global, regional and national levels. The reason is existence of legislative frameworks for public sector information and related spatial data infrastructure implementations, emergence of support for initiatives as open data, big data ensuring that online geospatial information are made available to digital single market, entrepreneurs and public bodies on both national and local level. However, the availability of authoritative reference spatial data linking the geographic representation of the properties and their owners are still missing in an appropriate quantity and quality level, even though this data represent fundamental input for local governments regarding the register of buildings used for property tax calculations, identification of illegal buildings, etc. We propose a methodology to improve this situation by applying the principles of participatory GIS and VGI used to collect observations, update authoritative datasets and verify the newly developed datasets of areas of buildings used to calculate property tax rates issued to their owners. The case study was performed within the district of the City of Požega in eastern Croatia in the summer 2015 and resulted in a total number of 16072 updated and newly identified objects made available online for quality verification by citizens using open source geospatial technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Diego Francisco García-Molina ◽  
Ramón González-Merino ◽  
Jesús Rodero-Pérez ◽  
Bartolomé Carrasco-Hurtado

<p class="VARKeywords">One of the main objectives of heritage management policies is to promote measures aimed at the maintenance, restoration and enhancement of cultural and archaeological assets. To guarantee this, the responsible institutions must promote actions for the dissemination and transference of cultural heritage, as well as promoting actions with the greatest possible rigour, developing scientific and technical studies that support and improve intervention methods. Recent technological advances in fields such as photogrammetry, digital terrestrial scanning and 3D modelling have made a significant contribution to the digital preservation and dissemination of architectural heritage.</p><p class="VARKeywords">European administrations, in their desire of regional development, as well as the central or local governments have notably boosted the recovery of their rich and diverse heritage. A particular case is Priego de Cordoba’s Castle, a stronghold which was one of the most important monumental icons of the Andalusian period.</p><p class="VARKeywords">Currently, this site is the main target of many architectural interventions and a model due to the implementation of last generation techniques in digital preservation. The local archaeological department promotes a large number of interventions and archaeological excavations. This has made a priority to get a qualitative geometrical 3D documentation, and therefore a constantly updated the point cloud (xyzRGB).</p><p class="VARKeywords">This paper is focussed on presenting the results of the digital preservation process through 2D planimetry obtained from photogrammetric technics, 3D models, and geospatial data. These techniques are a previous step to large architectonical intervention planned in Priego de Cordoba’s Castle, in particular, the identified structures as Wall 1 and Tower 1.</p><p class="VARKeywords">Two out of the three studied structures can be found in Wall 1. They correspond to a cobblestone pavement located in the rampart of the Wall 1, which is a post-medieval period; a double-stepped semi-underground path, excavated in the infill of the wall. The third structure studied in this paper consists of a well, which drills vertically the infill of the wall of the Tower 1. This feature is interpreted in the last research as a vertical well to place the weights of the clock sited in this tower until the 19th century.</p><p class="VARKeywords">This work combines two techniques of geometric documentation to obtain a more complete point cloud. The terrestrial laser scanning, and the photogrammetry due to the higher colour performance, along with the completion of the point cloud obtained with the laser scanner. Along with this study, we will analyse the features which will better define the best technique to fit the documentation of the different structures. Their geometric characteristics, the incidence of sunlight or the accessibility will condition the use and choice of the technique.</p><p class="VARKeywords">We have stated that there is software nowadays which makes it easier to access and consult the information through new computing hardware. Besides, we have highlighted the importance of knowledge and synergy from the different stakeholders implied (city council, technological centre and private companies). The final goal consists of making the society aware of the capital importance of digital preservation as well as dissemination of science.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 921-941
Author(s):  
Yanrong Wang ◽  
Qizhi Wu ◽  
Xiang Zhang ◽  
Xiangbing Qiao

Agricultural industrialization consortium is a key policy tool to promote agricultural development for local governments in China. However, a stylized fact is that various consortia showed promising organizational performance at start, but then the performance deteriorated at later stages. The driving force behind is the dual paradox inherent in development and institution. The consortium is overly development oriented; yet as an institution it cannot adapt to the strong development impulses. Case studies show that the dual paradox inevitably led to the decline in organizational performance.


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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6758 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim ◽  
Eom

Open government data (open data) initiatives have been at the forefront of the strategy to make more transparent, responsive, and accountable government, and thereby lead to open innovation across the public and private sector. Governments around the world often understand that open data is disclosing their data to the public as much as possible and that open data success is the result of a data and technology-related endeavor rather than the result of organizational, institutional, and environmental attributes. According to the resource-based theory, however, managerial capability to mobilize tangible and intangible resources and deploy them in adequate places or processes under the leadership of capable leaders during the information technology (IT) project is a core factor leading to organizational performance such as open data success. In this vein, this study aims to analyze managerial factors as drivers and challenges of open data success from the resource-based theory. Findings illustrate that managerial factors are the driving forces that often boost or hinder open data success when institutional, socio-economic, and demographic factors are controlled. Discussion illustrates theoretical and practical implications for the managerial factors as drivers and challenges of open data success in terms of the comparison between technological determinism and the socio-technical perspective.


Author(s):  
John Joseph Wallis

Over the last 225 years, government finances in the United States have gone through three distinct stages. In the first stage, 1790–1850, state governments actively pursued policies to promote economic development and financed them from revenues from state investments. In the second, 1850–1930, local governments became the most important level of government, as measured by revenues and expenditures, and revenues shifted toward the property tax. In the third period, 1930 to the present, the national government became the most active and largest level of government, financed through income and payroll taxes, and developed an extensive network of grants to state and local governments. The chapter tracks the changes in sources of revenues and purpose of expenditures, with specific attention paid to military spending over the entire period.


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