Fiscal Considerations Research Articles

Emergency Management and the Intergovernmental System

The literature focusing upon emergency management is diverse and growing. A few years ago, there was little research on policy and administration in this area. Increasingly, however, there is a realization that hazards administration requires an understanding of both the policy process and the intergovernmental system within which it operates.' The importance of these two processes for understanding and improving emergency management is evidenced by a growing body of literature, as well as an increasing number of funded projects with this focus. The policy process and intergovernmental system must not be divorced from each other if one is to understand the constraints upon successful implementation of emergency management policy.2 This article expands on the importance of the intergovernmental policy system for emergency management. Despite increased attention in this area of investigation, there remain several gaps in our empirical knowledge of the relationship among the different governmental actors.3 Because of this lack of empirical work, this article is largely conceptual and heuristic. Several components of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) organization and mission apparently are ill-suited to the challenge the agency faces within the context of the existing intergovernmental policy system. Furthermore, the resulting problems are not solely a function of efforts of the agency, but stem from the events of FEMA's origin and organization, the characteristics of its organizational relationships in the federal system, and the political structure within which emergency management occurs. A brief description of the major characteristics of the political system within which FEMA developed and operates sets the context for a more detailed discussion of the agency as part of the policy system. Next, a brief review of the phases of emergency management and the integrated emergency management system (IEMS) is offered. Third, the intergovernmental setting and some fiscal considerations affecting emergency management are discussed. The fourth section of the paper places emergency management and the intergovernmental system into a policy perspective. Finally, an intergovernmental emergency management policy matrix is de-

Caseload Management: Choosing Suitable Clients in a Community Health Clinic Agency

Discretion in decision-making is a well-known but poorly understood phenomenon. This paper examines the contextual features influencing the exercise of discretion in screening and assigning clients in a community mental health agency. I develop a caseload management model to analyze the interplay between organizational circumstances, determinations of client suitability, and decision-making outcomes. This study finds: (1) Decisions are based on judgments of client suitability. (2) These assessments use stereotyped characterizations to typify clients as suitable. (3) The typifications serve as a means of limiting the allocations of scarce treatment resources. I describe the related common-sense reasoning and decision-making practices which I observed. The community mental health care system has experienced a rapid expansion in the United States since the 1950s. Federal legislation in the 1960s provided a major impetus for this growth through subsidies for the construction and staffing of comprehensive community mental health centers. Through 1975, over 600 of these agencies had received federal funds and been designated to provide services to community residents in local catchment areas. There was also a parallel proliferation of community care agencies funded privately and by local government. Although clientele varies from agency to agency, the community mental health system as a whole must deal with two distinct client populations, each with its own needs and demands: (1) Chronic mental patients have been discharged in large numbers from state mental hospitals. Although the philosophy of community care as more humane and effective (Bellak, 1963) provided an ideological justification for deinstitutionalization, Scull (1977) argues that fiscal considerations were most important. Bassuk and Gerson (1978) note that patients released from state-funded mental hospitals can be shifted onto federally-funded support programs. (2) A new class of clients has been created through net widening (Van Dusen, 1981), expanding the definition of those in need of mental health care. These clients are generally less seriously disturbed, seeking relief from self-perceived personal problems or referred by official agents of the criminal justice and social welfare systems. The major problem currently facing the U.S. community mental health system is its failure to care for the gravely disabled, whose release from mental hospitals was predicated on continuing community care (Chu and Trotter, 1974; Kirk and Thierren, 1975). The cost of treatment has been subsidized by public funds to lower barriers to utilization, but this has not alleviated underutilization by the chronically ill population (Buck and Hirschman, 1980). Increased utilization by the less disabled population has absorbed the available supply of services without satiating the demand. The consequence is that the two client populations must compete for a limited supply of services; not all who seek treatment are able to obtain it. When the demand for an agency's services exceeds its resources, several responses are possible. It can make clients wait, or try to reduce demand, for example by negotiating with referral sources (Lang, 1981) or discouraging self-referrals (Gereboff, 1981). Alternatively, the agency

Is There an Answer to the Subject Access Crisis?

Library of Congress subject heading policy has been frequently criticized for using obsolete and biased terminology, for not providing subject analysis in depth, and for being overly research library oriented. While both PRECIS and the Subject Analysis Project offer possible solutions, fiscal considerations make their adoption unlikely. By using existing computer technology, individual libraries could improve subject access by improved subject searching capabilities and by implementatation of subject authority files which could tailor LC subject headings to the individual libraries' needs and provide an individualized cross-reference structure. For its part, the Library of Congress should provide an updatable machine readable file of its complete cross-reference structure. This file should contain all references used in the Library of Congress Public Catalog since much of LC's subject heading practice is based upon its cross-reference structure. With such improvements, LC subject headings could provide much better subject access at an acceptable cost.

Growth Management and Land use Controls: The San Francisco Bay Area Experience

Local land use and growth controls have had a substantial negative impact on the San Francisco Bay Area housing market. These regulations have significantly diminished the availability of development opportunities in the region and forced builders to make major changes in the way they do business and costly alterations in their development projects. Both the empirical evidence reviewed and the case studies documented in this paper indicate that building moratoria, growth management systems, and restrictive zoning practices have helped lead to significantly increased house prices in those Bay Area communities in which they are present. The evidence strongly suggests that land use controls as they are currently utilized in the Bay Area provide a poor policy alternative for reconciling important environmental and fiscal considerations with equally important regional and national housing needs.

Cash flow analysis for energy impacted local governments—a case study of mercer county, north dakota

Energy resource taxation policy has become a major issue in a number of energy producing areas and particularly in the western united States. This paper compares alternative energy taxation systems in terms of their implications for local governments and local planning. A fiscal impact simulation model is utilized to evaluate a severance-production tax system and, alternatively, an ad valorem property tax system. The results indicate that the form of taxation system adopted can have a major influence on the fiscal outlook for local governments in areas affected by large scale development projects and thus on the welfare of area residents. These results also suggest that local fiscal considerations should receive careful attention in local planning and policy formulation.

The Development of Scottish Gas Technology 1817–1914: Inspiration and Motivation

Evolution of Scottish coal-gasworks is reviewed here in relation to changing economic and social conditions. Initial design procedure, and the roles of consultant engineers, equipment suppliers, and gasworks' chief engineers, are complemented by fiscal considerations. The diffuse influence of competition, economies-of-scale, and municipal ownership upon technological progress, is contrasted to specific stimuli in the form of valuable byproducts, sharp price increases in labour and coal, material shortages, and finally competition from electric and paraffin-lamp lighting. The particular technical improvements these engendered are detailed, including tar-fuelled furnaces, clay retorts, regenerative furnaces, mechanization of retort charging and discharging, and vertical retorts. Also, mineral-oil 'enrichment' replacing scarce best cannel coals, and water-gas to cheaply boost peak output. Methods of monitoring gas quality and volume, and of extracting impurities for retail as byproducts, are examined together with the storage and distribution of gas. In conclusion some consideration is given to marketing methods, and the efficiency, availability and design of consumer appliances.

Case Western Reserve: Federation Fever

it a federation, a merger, a consolidation, or an amalgamation. Whatever nomenclature, two private institutionsone strictly a school of science and engineering, other known for its strong liberal arts and professional programs pooled their resources in 1967 in what still stands as one of most important cooperative moves ever made in American higher education: Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, next-door neighbors in Cleveland, became Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). John S. Millis, president of Reserve for 18 years prior federation, called it the first non-shotgun marriage of two educational institutions in history of America. Other mergers have been prompted by imminent bankruptcy of one or both institutions. This one was motivated, as board of trustees at Reserve framed it in a 1966 resolution, by a wish to bring into being a nationally recognized community of academic excellence. That was during Golden Age of higher education, when colleges could luxuriate in noble aspirations untainted by fiscal considerations. As it later turned out, though, Case-Reserve federation was a lifesaver when financial crunch came. If we hadn't federated, hard times of 1970s would have pushed us over cliff, says Louis A. Toepfer, CWRU's president since 1970. I don't see how we could have survived individually. Today CWRU is a unitary institution. On local level, it is a source of unabashed civic pride in a community beset by such indignities as an attempted mayoral recall and a bankrupt public school system. On national level, it has a reputation both in sciences and in humanities even more solid than its components formerly enjoyed. On a practical level, it is envy of countless private institutions; it is deficit-free (quite miraculously, considering its stormy fiscal history). It appears have solved most of problems stemming from federationapprehension on part of administrators, faculty, and nonacademic staff who woke up one morning discover that they were duplicate (and perhaps dispensable) personnel; alumni who bristled at change; and, of course, massive task of combining finances. A few problems still persist. Some of them are frivolous: What can you do about a university whose name is cumbersome when recited in full and whose acronym students insist upon pronouncing Screw U ? Others are more profound: Why does everyone still seem embarrassed over forced resignation of CWRU's first president, who was one of architects of federation? Western Reserve College, forerunner of Western RUTH FISCHER has written for magazines ranging from Playboy The New Republic, The Nation, Consumer Reports, and Change. Formerly an associate editor of Change, she now is an editor for Atlas World Press Review.

Administrative and Fiscal Considerations in Urban Development

The urban government administrator may soon receive much greater help from science, which can provide him with informational and rational bases from which to strive for excellence. Urban interaction analysis, end-product-oriented program budgeting, effectiveness analysis, and computerized information flow systems for planning and operating purposes hold promise for better decisions. Large-scale metropolitan consolidation has turned out to be an unlikely remedy for metropolitan problems. New voluntary forms of co-operation, made effective by state and federal financial inducements, are being proposed and tried. Many considerations point to a government serving 100,000 to 2 50,000 people as being of ideal size. Because of certain fiscal considerations, the sug gestion is that the federal government should assume increasing financial responsibility for those services with major interstate benefit and cost spillovers and in which income redistribution plays an important role. By the same rule, federal financing of public housing, urban renewal, community development, air- pollution control, urban transportation, and water projects should be de-emphasized, except in multistate areas. Greater assumption of financial responsibilities by the federal govern ment for such costly services as education, health, and welfare should free state funds. In turn, states would be in a position to act more aggressively in guiding and aiding cities, townships, and counties.

Charitable Trusts and the Conflict of Laws

mobility of the population, conditioned both by habits of travel and by fiscal considerations, would appear to be added reasons for encountering trusts distributed in this way. This dearth of literature has been the subject-matter of comment in recent times,' and it has been suggested that it may be due to the fact that most trust problems in the conflict of laws are subsumed under the law relating to settlements, which has received comprehensive treatment.2 On the other hand, in the United States, as might be expected, there is an extensive body of literature dealing with the whole topic, for diversity of jurisdictions renders the occurrence of such questions much more common.3