Debate over the virtues of one or another form of municipal government has raged since the early days of the reform movement. Proponents of professional municipal management have based their argument on the virtues of having a person trained and practiced in the skills needed to manage the diverse operations and functions that make up the modern city. This line of reasoning encompasses the premise that professional management brings eficiency to municipal management. However, little research has focused on this aspect of professional management. This study uses data from a nationwide survey of cities to test the hypothesis that cities with professional management achieve measurable eficiencies compared to cities without such management. These eficiencies include reduced levels of municipal expenditures and property taxes. The results of this analysis provide significant new information for both scholars and practitioners. As taxpayers at the local level continue to demand more services without accompanying tax increases, the quest continues for greater efficiency in city government. Since the early reform movement, the effort to make cities more efficient has focused on the structure of local government. Early advocates of city manager government stressed that the attempt to
Enterprise funds provide one means by which cities provide municipal goods and services to their residents while generating revenues to augment cities' other revenue-generating activities or substitute for other forms of revenue. Because municipal enterprises are accounted for in separate proprietary funds, determining the extent to which the revenues they generate are actually usable by non-enterprise functions is somewhat more difficult than we have generally presumed. I use data from a recent national survey of cities to demonstrate how common measures of municipal enterprise revenue generation may be misleading and propose a measure that will provide more reliable data for both researchers and municipal decision makers.
Although municipal enterprise funds provide several advantages to cities in the provision of goods and services, little is known about how these municipally operated businesses affect other aspects of the fiscal management practices of the cities which use them. This is particularly true of non-utility enterprises. This study uses the concept of net revenue transfers to examine how five commonly used non-utility enterprises impact the tax, expenditure, and revenue generation practices of cities. The results provide a new perspective and counter some commonly held views about non-utility enterprises.
An increasingly constrained fiscal environment and unrelenting citizen demands f o r services have cities searching f o r new ways to provide many needed services. Municipal enterprises require special consideration because they provide many advantagesfor cities. However, because they are separate municipal funds, an understanding Of commonly used fund tramfer mechanisms, such as payments in lieu of taxes or services in kind, is essential to making valid service provision comparisons. This study uses examples from a recent national survey of cities to explain and illustrate various means used by municipal enterprises to transfer revenue to, and from, other municipal funds. It also provides examples of how accurately accounting f o r the resultant revenue can significantly alter the results of the comparison process f o r five commonly used utility enterprises.Municipal enterprises are used by cities to provide many of the ever more costly goods and services demanded by a citizenry that has expressed a reluctance to pay for services with taxes. Recently, however, concerns over the efficiency of government agency service provision and calls for privatization and government innovation, as well as private sector offers to buy or operate profitable municipal enterprises, often require cities to examine
Special assessments have become an ever more popular form of taxation in Florida's counties since the passage of Florida's Amendment 10, the "Save Our Homes" amendment. Concurrently, the state's courts appear to have relaxed their interpretation of special assessment by counties. The focus of this research, is whether Florida's local governments are using special assessments to substitute for lost revenues under Amendment 10. Special assessments are particularly suspect because they provide a great amount of revenue and require no referenda for approval. The research relies upon analysis of county and municipal level financial data since implementation of Amendment 10. The implications of this research have broad applicability in view of the myriad tax and expenditure limitations enacted in recent years.
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