California County Administrators as Sellers and Brokers of Interlocal Cooperation

Abstract

County administrators occupy a unique position from which to practice concept of admin istrative conjunction. This article reports data on interlocal service agreements by cit ies and counties in California and evaluates extent to which county administrators support two conjunctive roles: selling ser vices to local governments through interlo cal agreements and brokering agreements among other local governments. County administrators' support for administrative conjunction may be limited by their atti tudes toward intergovernmental relations, tenure in office, existing contracting pat terns, and other features of local mar ket for public goods. This study finds that levels of support for broker and seller roles are distinct, highlighting need for more detailed measures of administrative support for interlocal cooperation. The intergovernmental activities of local government administrators have gained new attention in discussions about local govern ment service organization. Local governments in U.S. metropolitan areas are often depicted as competitors for economic development, tax base expansion, and mobile citizen consumers (Schneider 1989; Sokolow 1993; Park 1997; Lewis and Barbour 1999). They are also partners who are tied together in cooperative arrangements to share or jointly produce local government services (Oakerson 1999; Feiock 2004). Prompted by desire to improve efficiency or effectiveness, local officials forge interlocal agreements in order to provide services ranging from policing to parks (Thurmaier and Wood 2004; Chen and Thurmaier 2009). City managers have been identified as key actors in negotiating these agreements. Frederickson (1999) has advanced a theory of administrative conjunction to explain importance of local administrator in met ropolitan cooperation. He defines administra tive conjunction as the array and character of horizontal formal and informal association