The Mandate Issue

Abstract

Mandating by the federal government on state governments and by the federal and state governments on local governments has become a significant political-institutional and intergovernmental in the United States. Recent research shows that both state and federal mandates which affect local governments are numerous and are expanding rapidly in quantity, range, and scope, and that the practice of mandating has reached the point where the parameters of choice for local governments have been significantly constrained.* In fact, evidence is beginning to accumulate that mandates serve as the most important determinant of local government expenditures and as the single most important influence on local government policy making. Whether this is good or bad depends on the values of the observer. According to some observers, mandating is a phenomenon which is transforming, fundamentally, and for the worse, the very structure and character of American federalism. To others, the issue represents a phony campaign against national policy guidance and useful regulation which protects and enhances life and guides the various spheres of government along together toward essential societal objectives. No matter what one's attitude toward the issue, the fact remains that there has been a substantial change over the last decade in the impact of federal and state governments on local governments. As long ago as 1972, Norton Long pointed out that localities were becoming increasingly unwalled and increasingly unable to shape directly the scope and scale of their activities or to control the necessary devices to ensure the ability to manage a range of more and more difficult local problems.' Since 1972, the penetration of local governments by the federal and state governments through a combination of grants-in-aid and mandating processes has completed the unwalling. Conditions of aid plus directly mandated requirements have multiplied exponentially and have, together, increasingly constrained local policy choices. The research described here attempts to examine the mandate half of this phenomenon. The research did four things: (1) it developed a typology of mandates and inventoried the number and growth of federal and state mandates which affect local governments,