Interlocal Service Agreement and Horizontal Collaboration in Florida Mandated Case

Abstract

Interlocal service agreements were used widely by the horizontal cooperation of counties, cities, and special districts. But there were few empirical researches estimating their horizontal cooperative relationships. In 2002, the Florida Legislature required all counties with populations of more than 100,000, and the municipalities and special districts within those counties, to assess the provision of urban services and then provided ”Interlocal Service Delivery Agreement Report”. This research intended to test the horizontal cooperative relationships of geographical factors, adoption of interlocal service agreements, and scale economics outlined by theoretical developments and our hypotheses. Our findings further supported that geographical factors indeed mattered to the adoption of interlocal service agreements. To measure the effects of scale economies, we used the ratio of the populations for the agreement counties versus the populations of independent counties as our critical test. The evidences emphasizing the adoption of interlocal service agreements did not only result from scale economies but also from political considerations or other factors. The limitation of our research only measured differences between agreement counties and independent counties rather than their changes at the long time period. In the future, the vertical financial grants sustaining for local governments will be declining because of budgetary pressures. We can expect horizontal collaborations will be emphasized more among interlocal service delivery. Therefore, more and more efforts are needed to invest empirical cumulating researches resulting from the review and direction of this type of local practice.