SERVICE DEMANDS ON THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN MALAYSIA: BALANCING OBLIGATIONS AND BUDGET CONSTRAINTS

Since President Putin came to in 2000 we have witnessed radical assault on principles and practices of federalism. More recently, Putin has turned his attention to politics at subregional level. October 2003 new federal law, On Principles of Local Self Government in Russian (hereafter, 2003 Law), adopted that seriously compromises local government autonomy.1 After discussing major features of 2003 Law and problems of its implementation, this article examines most recent round of municipal elections, which took place in 2004 and 2005. Municipal elections in many federal subjects have been far from free and fair. State control over local electoral commissions and courts have dealt serious blow to development of grassroots democracy in Russia. consolidation of democracy has also been undermined by series of laws on elections and parties that Putin adopted in wake of Beslan hostage crisis in September 2004. These new laws, ostensibly designed to strengthen Russia's party system, have, in practice, allowed United Russia to consolidate its hold over regional and local assemblies.Federalism and Local Government in Russian FederationIn theory, local governments in Russia operate outside formal state hierarchy. Article 12 of Russian Constitution states that, In Russian Federation local self-government is recognized and guaranteed. Within limits of its powers local self-government is independent. Bodies of local self-government do not form part of system of bodies of state power. However, municipalities have, in practice, been treated as third tier of state power, subordinate to regional and federal administrations.2Municipal government in Russia also operates within quasi-federal system epitomized by high levels of constitutional and political asymmetry. Thus, to fully understand local level politics, peculiarities of Russian federal system, and in particular massive powers that were ceded to federal subjects in 1990s need to be taken into account. Between 1994 and 1998 Yeltsin signed forty-six bilateral treaties with federal subjects that granted signatories number of extraconstitutional powers, including right to develop their own forms of local government. By end of Yeltsin era, highly politicized form of contract federalism had replaced constitutional federalism. The result, Campbell stresses, was not decentralisation but 'autonomisation' . . . whereby state held together by loose parade of treaties bargained between centre and individual regions.3Daniel Elazar argues that local governments in federal systems are often able to gain a substantial measure of entrenched political power by capitalizing on the spirit of noncentralisation-the spirit of federalism.4 However, in Russia's quasi-federal system, regional elites have been able to subjugate local level bodies with impunity. many of ethnic republics (e.g., Adygeya, Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Kalmykiya, Komi, North Ossetiya, Sakha, and Tatarstan), chief executives were able to carve out personal fiefdoms and to instigate highly authoritarian regimes. Local governments were subordinated to republican administrations, and republican presidents directly appointed heads of municipalities.5 Moreover, 1995 law, On Principles of Local Self-Government in Russian (hereafter, 1995 Law), not implemented in eighteen regions, and only partially in forty-three.6Thus, on eve of Putin's accession to presidency, there were major variations, across federation, in structures, functions, and powers of local governments. Indeed, degree of political and economic asymmetry at local level even higher than in regions. Regional elites often had final say over which powers would be delegated to municipalities. …

Native American tribal government is the often-overlooked third sovereign in the American political system. Tribal governments have a unique relationship with federal, state, and local governments, and a special status under federal law, including a degree of sovereignty. Although there are more than 550 federally recognized tribes in the United States, topics related to tribal administration often are overlooked in public administration curricula. Perhaps the foremost policy issue facing tribal governments today is Indian gaming, because many tribes own and operate casinos and make decisions about revenue distribution. Tribal gaming has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, fundamentally changing how tribal governments operate and interact with nontribal governments. This article provides background on federal Indian law and policy and contains an original role-playing exercise on Indian gaming and intergovernmental relations. Indian gaming can provide an accessible context to introduce students to public policy issues facing tribes, the workings of tribal governance, and the interrelationships among federal, state, local, and tribal governments.

In this paper, I use New York City’s consideration of an amendment to its Charter that would extend voting rights to noncitizens in municipal elections as a case study in immigrant integration and local governance. I argue that New York City’s biggest challenge in moving this issue forward is dealing successfully with two related questions: 1.) why N.Y. City Council should be able to decide who the People are without approval from Albany and 2.) whether it should attempt to enact measure without a referendum. I first examine role of local government in regulating lives of immigrants, contrasting enforcement-oriented strategies with those that are more integration-oriented. I then spotlight federal law obstacles to noncitizen suffrage, concluding that while neither federal criminal nor immigration law prevents state or local governments from extending franchise to noncitizens in state or local matters, federal law imposes certain impediments that may deter some noncitizens from registering or that could carry serious immigration consequences for those who vote in violation of federal law. I then focus on state law obstacles, including New York’s Constitution, its state election law and its home rule provisions. I contrast other recent experiences with noncitizen suffrage around country, looking at both municipal and school board elections. Finally, I provide some thoughts on best practices in moving issue of noncitizen suffrage in New York City and other locales forward. I conclude that although New York law is ambiguous enough that good arguments can be made for why neither Albany’s approval nor a city-wide referendum is required, given New York City’s historic relationship with Albany and power State legislature has to preempt local law on election matters, if City Council attempts to expand franchise to noncitizen voters without a referendum or comparable measure, it could trigger preemptive action in Albany or lengthy, divisive, and costly battles in courts.

This paper uses New York City's consideration of an amendment to its charter that would extend voting rights to noncitizens in municipal elections as a case study in immigrant integration and local governance. It argues that New York City's biggest challenge in moving this issue forward is dealing successfully with two related questions: (1) why the New York City Council should be able to decide who “the People” are without approval from the state government in Albany and (2) whether it should attempt to enact the measure without a referendum. The analysis first examines the role of local government in regulating the lives of immigrants, contrasting enforcement-oriented strategies with those that are more integration-oriented. It then spotlights federal law obstacles to noncitizen suffrage, concluding that while neither federal criminal nor immigration law prevents state or local governments from extending the franchise to noncitizens in state or local matters, federal law imposes impediments that may deter some noncitizens from registering or that could carry serious immigration consequences for those who vote in violation of federal law. The article then focuses on state law obstacles, including New York's constitution, its state election law and its home rule provisions. It contrasts other recent experiences with noncitizen suffrage around the country, looking at both municipal and school board elections. Finally, it provides some thoughts on best practices in moving forward the issue of noncitizen suffrage in New York City and other locales. New York law is ambiguous enough that good arguments can be made for why neither Albany's approval nor a city-wide referendum is required. However, given New York City's historic relationship with Albany and the state legislature's power to preempt local law on election matters, if the city council attempts to expand the franchise to noncitizen voters without a referendum or comparable measure, it could trigger preemptive action in Albany or lengthy, divisive, and costly battles in the courts.

Purpose: This study aims to determine the magnitude of the influence of financial management, financial literacy and financial inclusion on the financial performance of MSMEs in Jepara Regency. Methodology: This research uses a quantitative approach with a sampling technique, namely purposive sampling. The sample in the study was 113 MSME respondents in Jepara Regency. Technical data analysis using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 program. Results: The analysis revealed that financial management had no significant effect on financial performance (β = 0.104, p = 0.378). In contrast, financial literacy (β = 0.354, p = 0.002) and financial inclusion (β = 0.277, p = 0.012) had a significant positive effect. The overall model explained 20.7% of the variance in financial performance (Adjusted R² = 0.207, F = 10.763, p 0.05). Findings: Ease of access to financial services and good financial understanding can improve the financial performance of MSMEs. Novelty and Originality: While prior studies have explored the effects of financial literacy and inclusion in various regions, limited research focuses specifically on Central Java, particularly Jepara Regency. This study addresses that gap by providing empirical evidence that highlights the importance of financial literacy and inclusion in improving MSME competitiveness. Conclusion: Improving financial literacy and inclusive access to financial services is a key strategy for enhancing MSME financial performance. This study also recommends that local governments and financial institutions design practical financial education programs and simplify service access to better support MSMEs’ financial growth and resilience. Type of Paper: Research paper.

Federal Preemption of State Regulation Over Air Ambulances

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 sparked widespread controversy over the federal government’s proper role in public education. Opponents criticized the legislation as an unprecedented federal intrusion on state and local governments’ policymaking authority. Whereas previous incarnations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) required local schools and districts to comply with detailed rules about how to spend categorical funds, federal moneys were never before made contingent on a rigorous testing and accountability regime. By requiring annual testing and tying federal funding to student outcomes, the new legislation signaled a shift in the federal government’s role vis a vis subnational governing bodies. This shift in authority led some to question whether state and local governments’ structural protections from federal overreaching are dead — at least in the field of public education. In The Political Safeguards of Federalism, Herbert Wechsler argued that because states’ rights are preserved through the legislative process, the Supreme Court need not intervene to protect states from federal regulatory intervention. The legislative process shelters state autonomy, Wechsler argued, by ensuring that federal legislation must gain the approval of the Senate, which is responsive to state interests, the House, whose congressional districts are dictated by state legislatures, and the President, who depends on states through the electoral college system. According to critics, congressional acquiescence in President George W. Bush’s drive for top-down standards-based reform (SBR) demonstrates the failure of these traditional safeguards. Beginning in the 1990s the Supreme Court stopped deferring to federal regulatory authority and began striking down legislation it deemed overly intrusive. According to the Court, national political institutions had failed to protect state interests, thus necessitating a more robust role for the judiciary in preserving the delicate balance between state and federal interests. Because federal legislators are under pressure to solve pressing national problems but are not responsible for implementation, they will inevitably pass the buck to state representatives by voting for coercive, unfunded mandates. Bipartisan support for NCLB, which brought together the likes of Representative Tom DeLay, a fierce opponent of federal intervention who once sought to eliminate the Department of Education, and liberal Democrats such as Senator Edward Kennedy, lends support to the Supreme Court’s more aggressive stance. It could be argued that federal representatives arrived at a legislative compromise without seriously considering NCLB’s impact on a broad spectrum of state and local constituents. In response to mounting criticism of Wechsler’s theory, Dean Larry Kramer has developed an alternative version of the political safeguards framework. He posits that the political party system itself protects states from federal intrusion because each party has representatives operating at multiple layers of government, all of whom are mutually dependent. According to this theory, representatives at the national level must respond to local and state concerns in exchange for political support, thus producing a natural check on federal encroachment. Dean Kramer further characterizes the proliferation of bureaucratic agencies beginning with the New Deal as an additional political safeguard of federalism. Like national political parties, regulatory agencies link federal, state, and local administrators together because the federal government relies on administrators at lower levels of government to implement policy. Dean Kramer’s revived political safeguards theory has interesting implications for the education field because of the unique role that politics and bureaucracy have played in the promulgation and implementation of federal education legislation. In this paper, I will apply Kramer’s political safeguards thesis to four educational reform movements: a New Deal Youth Program, administrative progressivism, the ESEA, and the modern standards-based reform (SBR) movement culminating in NCLB. Specifically, I will draw on educational reforms of these four periods to explore the extent to which bureaucracy and the party system can successfully mediate disputes over the division of power between local, state, and federal government. I will begin by comparing the role of bureaucracy in furthering or frustrating federalist aims in education governance under President Roosevelt’s New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society. Then, I will consider the role of party politics in federal education reform, from progressives’ attempt to depoliticize the field to the political consensus embodied in NCLB.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role and challenges for Sri Lankan local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment within urban Sri Lankan cities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a literature review and a case study conducted in the Batticaloa city of Sri Lanka, supported by expert interviews among local and other government officials, policy makers, practitioners and academics who are engaged in disaster management and urban planning within the country.FindingsThe literature and empirical data reveal that local governments are facing a number of challenges in contributing to making cities resilient to disasters. Some of the issues that have emerged are inadequate financial and human resource capabilities; a lack of knowledge of disaster risks and vulnerabilities; the need for long‐term political commitment; a lack of focus on pre‐disaster planning; inadequate legislative authority; a lack of clear cut responsibilities and coordination among agencies; and a lack of involvement in major development activities, physical planning and regulation of land use. It is important to address these challenges faced by local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment in a holistic manner to ensure effective disaster risk reduction within cities.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is based on partial findings of research which aims to explore and propose mechanisms to empower the Sri Lankan local governments to make cities more resilient to disasters, within the context of the built environment.Originality/valueThe paper identifies the weaknesses of the current institutional arrangements in place for creating a disaster resilient built environment in Sri Lanka and highlights the challenges faced by a local government in creating a disaster resilient built environment within a Sri Lankan city.

Understanding financial management, accounting reporting, and digital technology utilization can enhance the quality of business managerial capabilities. This study examines the role of financial literacy, accounting literacy, and digital literacy in improving managerial capabilities of MSMEs. Partial results demonstrate that financial literacy, accounting literacy, and digital literacy exert positive and significant effects on managerial capabilities of MSMEs in Medan City. Simultaneous results indicate that financial literacy, accounting literacy, and digital literacy collectively exert positive and significant effects on managerial capabilities of MSMEs in Medan City. MSMEs in Medan City gain greater opportunities to strengthen their competitiveness and business sustainability. The Adjusted R Square value reaches 45.1%, while the remaining 54.9% stems from variables beyond the research model, including entrepreneurial behavior among others. Research findings necessitate support from local governments, educational institutions, and relevant stakeholders to enhance training and mentoring programs in financial, accounting, and digital literacy for MSMEs, thereby strengthening managerial capacity and fostering economic growth in Medan City.

This analysis was prepared by the law firm Sidley & Austin, Chicago, Illinois, USA, at the request of the American Medical Association. Introduction State and local governments are increasingly regulating cigarette and tobacco use. They are issuing rules, for example, that restrict smok ing in the workplace and in public buildings. The American Medical Association believes that state and local governments should be encouraged to become even more active in policing the promotion and sale of tobacco products. This memorandum therefore re views some of the options available to these governments to restrict advertising and dis tribution of cigarettes, cigars, and loose to bacco. In brief, the memorandum concludes that state and local governments have great latitude to restrict the sale of tobacco products. State and local governments also have significant authority to regulate the advertising and pro motion of cigars and loose tobacco. These governments may also regulate the advertising and promotion of cigarettes in certain ways although any regulation must be carefully crafted to avoid conflict with federal law. Part I of this memorandum discusses legis lation that state and local governments may enact to limit the sale and distribution of tobacco products. Part II explains how state and local governments may regulate the ad vertising and promotion of such products to the extent permitted by federal law.

The uncertainty of income earned by farmers, namely crop failure with a very high risk, will cause financial problems in their families. The target or respondents of this study are farmers who live in Lahat Regency, South Sumatera. Initial findings indicate that the level of financial inclusion of farmers in the Lahat Regency is still quite low. The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of farmers' financial literacy, identify the components of farmers' financial literacy, and analyze the factors that affect the level of farmers' financial literacy. The research method applied is descriptive analysis and multiple regression. The analysis showed that most of the literate farmers were in the moderately literate category of 47.2 percent and the least of the farmers in the less literate category was 24.5 percent. The financial attitude component gave the largest contribution to the farmers' financial literacy index, which was 0.73. Besides, the factor affecting the level of financial literacy of farmers is education. The policy implication resulting from this research is the existence of a structured promotion and training of financial literacy for farmers by local governments. In addition, campaigning for the importance of being educated and inviting educated people to start running agricultural business activities.

This article aims to extend the political market framework by exploring whether policy demand or supply is the key consideration for local governments’ policymaking and under what financial conditions local governments favor one over the other. We expect that local governments with good fiscal conditions are more likely to respond to public demand, but local governments with poor fiscal conditions pay more attention to supply influences. To test this idea, this study examines the moderating role of fiscal conditions within the political market framework regarding what factors account for adopting local governments’ Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) recycling programs in solid waste management (SWM). The results of the fixed-effect logistic model support that fiscal conditions play a moderating role in shifting organizational attention on the supply side based on cross-section data covering 1,840 local governments in the United States.

The paper delves into the political framework of Nepal’s social welfare system of Local Level Government and its policy. The study explores the importance of social values, cultural roots and government’s decisions and their evolution in the political systems of Nepal. Similarly, it explores the significance of welfare system in local level government, their policy endeavour and ongoing impact on the subjects. The local level government structure and agencies are the important carriers of the change and welfare. The study is based on constructive interpretative nature of qualitative method, the non-probability purposive sampling with interview questions is used to explore the data of the study. The collective endeavour of Nepali cultural identity and structure has played a vital role in its polity in ancient, medieval, and early modern periods of its history. The local government system plays a greater role in bringing equal opportunity, recognition, participation and inclusion. The study explores the local government of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal engages in basic needs-interest-based polity welfare system and need to wholistic governing welfare mechanism amongst the three tiers of government. Additionally, this paper touches upon the challenges and opportunities involved in constructing Nepal as a welfare state.

Current Topics in Health Care Law

Globally, government pursued various form of public Financial Management (FM) reforms to
 enhance Local Government (LG) performance. A poor FM has contributed to the failure and inefficiency of LG in achieving substantial development, while most LG faces the problems of wide gap between citizens’ needs and the financial resources. It is against this background that the study examined FM in LG with a view to determining its contribution to the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of LG administration. The study employed an exploratory research design with focus on relevant literatures. The study concluded that LG administrators should act in the same manner as their counterparts in the private sectors based on modern FM practices, this will increase efficiency, financial capability, transparency and accountability in goods and services delivery. In addition, a sound internal control system should be put in place to minimise the level of fraud, corruptions and wastages affecting LG. Besides, LG should always prepare accurate and reliable annual budget, while financial planning and control should be seen as an important aspect of an effective FM.