Jersey Municipalities Research Articles

Creation and Validation of a New Socio-built Environment Index Measure of Opioid Overdose Risk for Use in Both Non-urban and Urban Settings.

A great deal of literature has examined features of the physical built environment as predictors of opioid overdose and other substance use-related outcomes. Other literature suggests that social characteristics of settings are important predictors of substance use outcomes. However, there is a dearth of literature simultaneously measuring both physical and social characteristics of settings in an effort to better predict opioid overdose. There is also a dearth of literature examining built environment as a predictor of overdose in non-urban settings. The present study presents a novel socio-built environment index measure of opioid overdose risk comprisedof indicators measuring both social and physical characteristics of settings - and developed for use in both urban and non-urban settings - and assesses its validity among 565 urban, suburban, and rural New Jersey municipalities. We found that this novel measure had good convergent validity, based on significant positive associations with a social vulnerability index and crime rates, and significant negative associations with a municipal revitalization index and high school graduation rates. The index measure had good discriminant validity, based on lack of association with three different racial isolation indices. Finally, our index measure had good health outcome-based criterion validity, based on significant positive associations with recent overdose mortality. There were no major differences between rural, suburban, and urban municipalities in validity analysis findings. This promising new socio-built environment risk index measure could improve ability to target and allocate resources to settings with the greatest risk, in order to improve their impact on overdose outcomes.

‘Unpleasant’ but ‘helpful’: Immigration detention and urban entanglements in New Jersey, USA

As a reflection of changing geographies of US migration control, when Essex County, New Jersey’s local government adopted a new immigration detention contract with the federal government, an elected official noted: ‘This is a very unpleasant way of getting revenue…But it’s going to be helpful.’ Despite politically liberal leanings as well as active and expanding resistance to a persistently conservative immigration enforcement agenda from the national level, New Jersey has been a leading provider of detention in the United States, with numerous counties benefiting significantly from immigration crackdowns. This article examines local debates in three New Jersey municipalities alongside public records data that detail financial relationships central to immigration detention operations, to argue that the ensuing relationships intersect and intertwine in ways that make detention economies a critical facet of municipal development. Further, following a 2021 paper by Lauren Martin, we argue that attention to the array of entities that are linked through detention economies demonstrates the usefulness of understanding the migration ‘industry’ as an assemblage. Using a site-specific investigative focus we trace myriad entities’ involvement in immigration detention and reliance on income from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We detail how these multifarious actors, sometimes with opposing views on detention and distinct rationalities, converge in ways that contribute to the further entrenchment of detention in municipal areas. Through this focused case study, our analysis advances a critical migration industries approach and details how detention economies are ‘assembled’ and entangled with urban areas.

Who Should Pay for Local Streets? Who Does?: Survey of New Jersey Municipalities

Many trips, if not most, begin and end on local roads. Thus, there is a system aspect to such roads in the sense that local streets can have spillover benefits and costs for larger trips that use the total road network. Yet curbs and sidewalks and local streets are typically almost entirely provided locally in the United States. There are historical and institutional reasons for this fact and great variation of practice across jurisdictions. But two key planning and policy questions arise. Who pays for sidewalks and local streets? And who should pay? To find some empirical answers to those questions, this paper reports on a 2015 New Jersey Society of Municipal Engineers survey, developed by one of the authors, to collect data on the prevalence of curb and sidewalk installations on municipal streets. The survey explored the management and operational practices that municipal governments use to maintain their local transportation infrastructure. The results indicate that local streets in New Jersey are heavily funded and managed by localities with little focus on any broader network effects that might accrue outside those localities. Analysis of the data suggests a need of more than $1.2 billion annually in New Jersey, against a projected state and federal funding of roughly $100 million annually, a gap in funding that suggests the need to establish a long-term funding mechanism for local streets, curbs, and sidewalks.

Characterization of Factors Influencing Environmental Literacy in Suburban Park Users

Urban green spaces have long been studied in terms of their impact on human and environmental health and well-being. We collected and analyzed preliminary survey data for central New Jersey municipalities relating to participants’ perceptions of public green spaces, quality, and usage and relating these factors to environmental knowledge and literacy. Results have yielded new insights into the role of urban canopy cover in differing levels of environmental literacy. Included in this, persons living in areas with higher canopy cover have higher levels of environmental literacy (p=0.0338) and higher educational attainment (p=0.049). Persons with access to higher quality parks also exhibited higher levels of educational attainment (p=0.0475).This relationship and others collectively would support there being multiple types of environmental literacy, with diverse sources, impacts, and outcomes on individuals and communities. Work done to this point has not addressed this idea, nor sought to study the connections between EL and all influencing socio-cultural and landscape factors.

The effect of Walmart and Target on property tax rates

This paper analyzes the effect of Walmart and Target on municipal property tax rates using panel data for all New Jersey municipalities from 1998 to 2007. We analyze the impact of Walmart (30 openings) and Target (33 openings) in the host municipality and the nearest adjacent municipality. We find evidence that entry by either retailer lowers the tax rate in the host municipality. However, the estimated reduction in the tax rate is much larger for Target. Target entry reduces the equalized property tax rate by $0.38 per $100 of market value in the host municipality or about 16.8 % while Walmart reduces the equalized property tax rate in the host municipality by $0.063 per $100 of market value or about 2.8 %. The most striking result is the contrast between the positive and significant effect of Walmart entry on the equalized tax rate in the adjacent municipality and the negative and significant effect of Target entry on the equalized tax rate in the adjacent municipality. Walmart entry (in the host municipality) raises the equalized tax rate by about $0.23 per $100 of market value (about a 10 % increase). Target entry, on the other hand, reduces the equalized tax rate in the adjacent municipality by $0.14 per $100 of market value or about 6.2 %.

The impact of government form on e-participation: A study of New Jersey municipalities

During the past two decades, governments have started to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to offer a new forum for citizen involvement known as e-participation. The rapid development of e-participation has been attracting attention from many researchers. While a growing body of research has explored various factors impacting e-participation, few studies have examined the influence of government structures on the e-participation opportunities that jurisdictions offer users. To fill the research gap and begin investigating this relationship, we use data from 97 New Jersey municipalities to analyze the impact on e-participation of three local government structures: mayor-council, council-manager, and township. The results show that municipalities with the mayor-council form of government are more likely to have higher levels of e-participation offerings. We argue that the role of an elected executive in this structure facilitates the will to provide greater opportunities for citizens to participate online.

New Jersey's New View on Partial Takings Compensation

AbstractThis summer, the New Jersey Supreme Court joined the fray between New Jersey's municipalities and beachfront property owners regarding the construction or replenishment of sand dunes to protect the shore from future storms. This dispute has been going on for years, but has become front‐page news since Superstorm Sandy struck the region in October 2012. The storm proved that areas protected by properly engineered dunes fared much better than unprotected areas. The aftermath of the storm has not focused so much upon debate whether the dunes (as opposed to other planning options or concepts) are needed to protect the shore, but rather who should pay for the dunes and what constitutes constitutionally required just compensation for those who paid a premium for their beachfront properties. This article focuses on the way in which this recent court decision has modified a long‐standing legal doctrine governing the valuation of partial takings and examines its possible implications for the future.

Residential Property Values and New Jersey Transit Village Program

Since 1999, 23 New Jersey transit villages have been designated in New Jersey municipalities, with the intention of intensifying development around rail stations and bus hubs. As one test of the effectiveness of this state effort, the appreciation in residential property values is investigated and compared with that in other municipalities in the state. Some limited positive evidence is found to support the New Jersey transit village designation. Econometric analysis of the change in average residential sales price over 9 years finds an association but cannot establish a causal effect. Case study analysis of selected New Jersey transit villages suggests that the forethought, commitment, and political will required to apply for transit village status may be what sparks municipal development rather than the designation itself.

Use of State Police Services for Local Policing: The Case of New Jersey

All states in the New England and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States provide State Police services without charge to municipalities without full‐time local police departments. Efficiency and equity issues have resulted from this tradition and the development of local police departments or shared departments across neighboring municipalities in rural and exurban areas has been discouraged. These problems will diminish in scope as municipalities receiving the State Police subsidy opt out of the program and adopt local policing. We examine this potential by estimating models of the municipal decision to use the State Police for local policing among New Jersey municipalities with less than 15,000 population. We find that the elasticities of the decision to use the State Police for local policing with respect to population and median family income to be −1.1 and −2.3, respectively. If recent income and population trends in New Jersey municipalities using the State Police continue, our upper range estimate is that about 20 of the 90 municipalities using the State Police will opt out of the program in the next decade.

Functions of E-Government: A Study of Municipal Practices

nologies by government. E-government is part of a bigger movement toward public sector reform, which is driven by technol ogy and information systems. Technology has the potential to take government in new directions and transform governance (M?lki?, Anttiroiko, and Savolainen 2004), and many examples continue to arise reflecting this transformation. The majority of e-govern ment research has focused on highly popu lated municipalities and practices at the state and federal levels. The findings of the study presented here contribute to the research on e-government by highlighting the practices and trends in municipalities with populations of fewer than 50,000 residents. A 2005 survey of New Jersey municipalities was conducted to identify e-government practices and chief ad ministrative officers' perceptions of the use of technology within a framework of four distinct functions of e-government: e-organization, e services, e-partnering, and e-democracy.

Will empowering developers to challenge exclusionary zoning increase suburban housing choice?

AbstractThe municipal zoning process in the United States has come under increasing attack as a tool to create and maintain suburban socioeconomic homogeneity by mandating sprawl‐producing single‐family detached houses at the expense of less costly townhouses, apartments, and mobile homes. Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Courts of the neighboring states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey addressed municipal exclusionary zoning in different ways: Pennsylvania empowered residential developers to compel municipalities practicing exclusionary zoning to authorize market‐rate development of all types of housing, while developer empowerment in New Jersey was conditioned upon inclusion of low‐ and moderate‐income units. Using aerial survey and housing census data over a 20‐year period, this article finds that outcomes by housing type over a 20‐year period in Pennsylvania municipalities around Philadelphia were more diverse than those in adjacent New Jersey municipalities. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The Impact of Debt Financing on the Level of Capital Spending

This paper examines whether the debt illusion hypothesis holds at the local level. Generally, municipal bonds are issued to finance capital spending. However, capital costs could be funded by current revenues or borrowing. If taxpayers perceive debt financing to be less costly than current taxation, reliance on debt tends to incur larger public spending. By utilizing a sample of New Jersey municipalities in the U.S., this study found that municipalities relying on more debt spent more on capital investments than those relying on less debt.

Public Characteristics and Expenditures on Public Services: an Empirical Analysis

This article investigates the provision of police and education services using a new method of indexing quantities of local public services that isolates movements in shadow prices and quantities in expenditure data. Demand equations for two public characteristics (the crime safety rate and high school reading test pass rates) and two categories of expenditures (education and police services) are simultaneously estimated for New Jersey municipalities. The relationship between public services and public characteristics is estimated, and both the "own" and the "cross "-effects of public services are found to be empirically significant. Increases in expenditures between 1982 and 1983 are found to largely reflect increases in quantities of education services and in prices of police services.

PROMOTING GROUND WATER POLLUTION PREVENTION IN SMALL BUSINESSES1

ABSTRACT: Although they have not been the focus of major regulations, small businesses can contribute pollutants to ground water through routine practices. Because strict regulation of millions of micro firms is not likely, water resource professionals face a challenge of how to reach small business operators with effective pollution prevention messages. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that influence a small business operator to adopt measures that reduce potential ground water pollution. We looked at how information delivery, internal business characteristics, and external relationships are associated with voluntary preventive measures. Mail surveys from small businesses in New Jersey municipalities and interviews with business owners provided data about business characteristics and current pollution prevention activities. Findings suggested that businesses doing the most to prevent ground water pollution were generally more connected to external organizations and had more financial and technical resources. The study also discovered that small business owners fear government involvement in their affairs. The study concludes with recommendations to encourage more voluntary adoption of prevention measures by businesses. These center on separating assistance programs from enforcement and involving industry peer groups in an effort to make information available in a non‐threatening manner.

The Monocentric Model and Employment Location

The monocentric urban model highlights the important link between transportation access and urban form. Yet as metropolitan areas have become increasingly multicentric, the monocentric model has been criticized on several levels. This paper tests an important assumption used in many monocentric models-namely that employment location is exogenous to population location within an urban area. Using data on population and employment changes in a group of New Jersey municipalities, this work shows that employment changes are endogenous to the population change in a surrounding labor market. This suggests that urban models should give more attention to the problem of employment location within metropolitan areas.

Local fiscal policies, default risk, and municipal borrowing costs

This paper provides an empirical study of the effects that a local government's fiscal decisions exert on its cost of borrowing, using a sample of New Jersey municipalities. The results are consistent with the view that current period fiscal decisions do impact the cost of borrowing. A one standard deviation increase in the amount borrowed is associated with a 66 basis point increase in the annual yield. Furthermore, that the standard approach of treating current period policy variables as exogenous regressors leads to a downward bias in the effect of additional borrowing on the interest rate.

OBSERVABLE HETEROGENEITY AND THE DEMAND FOR LOCAL PUBLIC SPENDING

This paper demonstrates the effect of omitting quasi-governmental expenditures when estimating the demand for local public services. The data used are public works expenditures and fire protection expenditures from 179 New Jersey municipalities in 1980. I conclude that the common practice in the literature of ignoring structural aspects of intergovernmental relations is likely to lead to significant biases when estimating demand equations. Economists researching the demand for local government spending need to account for the administrative system generating their data when undertaking empirical analyses.

Make no small plans: New jersey municipalities attempt to become achieving organizations

The Achieving Organization Model incorporates 1) a set of behaviors required to create the momentum of achievement within an organization; 2) an ongoing process that can be taught, monitored, evaluated, and modified in a dynamic environment; and 3) a philosophy that long-term, high-level, measurable results can be accomplished through actions that focus on people as the key component for achievement.

The ‘rationality’ of municipal capital spending: Evidence from New Jersey

Some analysts interpret movements in capital spending by sub-federal levels of government as rational reactions to changing economic and demographic conditions. Others attribute changes to myopic decision-making by politically motivated government officials. In this paper we present a formal definition of ‘rational’ decision-making that is amenable to econometric testing, and utilize panel data on capital spending by a sample of New Jersey municipalities to test it. We find that on the basis of data from all communities, one cannot reject the joint hypotheses of forward-looking, rational, and unconstrained planning. However, the behavior of capital spending differs sharply between both suburban versus non-suburban communities, and between small versus large communities.

A Proposal for State Funding of Municipal Tort Liability

1 See Richland, Municipal Law: Local Government Liability Insurance and Tort Reform, N.Y.L.J., May 22, 1986, at 1 (over 163 towns in New York State reported a premium increase of up to 100%; over 41 towns reported an increase of up to 400%); N.Y. Times, Mar. 4, 1986, at A26, col. 1 (editorial) (California's Orange County experienced six-fold increase in premiums); Sawyer, How a Good Town Became a Bad Risk, Wash. Post, Feb. 25, 1986, at A6, col. 6 (insurance premium for Schaghticoke, N.Y., increased 400% in course of one year). 2. Wall St. J., Apr. 16, 1986, at 41, col. 2 (reporting on indications that 'quite a few' New Jersey municipalities can't get insurance); Sullivan, U.S., States Seeking Ways to End Liability Insurance Crisis, Christian Sci. Monitor, Mar. 7, 1986, at 4, col. 3 (Blue Lake, Cal., lost its liability insurance policy and flew flag upside down as signal of distress); Wolinsky, Insurance Crisis Forecast for Most California Cities, L.A. Times, Feb. 28, 1986, at 3, col. 3 (estimating that two-thirds of California cities will be forced to go without liability coverage, while 43 cities already lack coverage); see also N.Y. Times, Mar. 4, 1986, at A26, col. 1 (editorial) (discussing need for proposals to smooth out effects of insurance business cycles); telephone interview with Mark Wasser, General Counsel to California Local Agency Self-Insurance Authority (Jan. 25, 1988) [hereinafter Wasser Interview] (stating that joint insurance pools were formed in response to cyclical nature of commercial insurance rates). 3. See Blodgett, Premium Hikes Stun Municipalities, A.B.A. J., July, 1986, at 48, 51 (1986) (reform of state tort systems expected in reaction to liability crisis); Priest, The Current Insurance Crisis and Modern Tort Law, 96 YALE L.J. 1521, 1587-89 (1987) (discussing tort reform); Wash. Post, Nov. 20, 1987, at C4, col. 1 (Virginia facing problems regarding liability insurance despite prior legislative action); Weintraub, 9 Bills Limiting Governmental Liability Pass Key State Panels, L.A. Times, Aug. 25, 1987, at 3, col. 2 (legislation passed to limit state and local government liability); Pasztor, White House Switches Focus to States in Bid for Liability-Insurance Revisions, Wall St. J., Mar. 27, 1987, at 48, col. 2 (in 1986, 30 states adopted laws that in some way limit liability claims); Richland, supra note 1, at 2, col. 3 (discussing New York state proposal to amend rule of joint and several liability, and abolish collateral-source rule in reaction to insurance crisis); Sullivan, supra note 2, at 4, col. 1 (as of March 1986, 44 states with legislatures in session had tort reform bills pending); N.Y. Times, Mar. 4, 1986, at A26, col. 1 (editorial) (insurers call for tort reform to limit local government liability). In California, a bill calling for a state insurance pool was recently passed by the state assembly. CAL. GOV'T CODE ?? 6599.01-.41 (West Supp. 1988). Under the California law, a state-instituted liability fund, administered through the Local Agency Self-Insurance Authority (LASIA), provides municipalities with insurance coverage for all tort liability over $1,000,000 and under $25,000,000 not met by private insurers. The fund is supported by premiums paid by municipalities, membership fees, and interest earned on money in the fund. The fund and its administration are separate from the state government, and the state is not directly responsible for the fund or for torts committed by any municipality covered under the plan. The program's sponsor stressed that [plublic entities are among those most severely affected by the unavailability of liability insurance. Cities and counties are particularly affected because of their high contact with people who use public facilities, especially streets, highways, parks and beaches. D. Hauser, Liability: Local Agency Self-Insurance Authority 1 (Aug. 26,