This book identifies the extent, the causes and consequences of fiscal stress as it affected local government in the 1980s.

It is difficult to find someone who has not heard about the Puerto Rico, Detroit, Michigan, or Orange County, California, bankruptcies. While guides for responsibly managing government finances exist, problems often originate not because of poor financial reporting or financial deficiencies but because issues external to financial wellbeing arise, such as economic, demographic, political, legal, or even environmental factors. Exacerbating the problem, there is not much advice in the existing literature on how to act when municipalities face financial struggles. Filling this important gap, this book explores fiscal health and fiscal hardships, municipal defaults and bankruptcies, and many other aspects to help guide local governments during fiscal distress. Fiscal hardships negatively affect the quality and availability of public goods and services and, consequently, the wellbeing of residents and businesses living and working in distressed municipalities. Turned off streetlights, unmaintained public parks, potholes, inconsistent garbage pickup, longer response time from emergency services, and multiple other issues that residents of the struggling municipalities deal with, lead to higher crime rates, lower quality of K-12 education, dangerous road conditions, lower housing values, outmigration of wealthier population, and numerous other problems. The COVID-19 pandemic put additional unprecedented pressure on municipal finances nationwide. In this book authors Tatyana Guzman and Natalia Ermasova evaluate distressed cities and municipalities and provide practical recommendations on improving their financial conditions. What are conditions and signs to look for to not to find yourself in similar situations? What can be done if your municipality is already experiencing fiscal hardships? What are the consequences of fiscal misfortunes? How does one exit a fiscal emergency? This book answers these and other questions and serves as a guide to fiscal health and prosperity for U.S. municipal governments, students and researchers in public finance, and general public management fields.

A resource for administrators seeking innovative ideas and supporting precedents in formulating policy, this book also provides a useful textbook for public administration and policy students. It employs a wealth of case studies in budgeting and financial management to demonstrate strategies in system implementation, policy formulation, government accounting, auditing, and financial reporting. With contributions from leading experts, it clarifies procedures to solve cutback and downsizing dilemmas using theoretical models, and provides pragmatic approaches to managing financial activities under budgetary strain. It also covers the evolution of a debt management policy.

Gone are the days when the raising and apportioning of municipal monies was a relatively simple task, when ample income could be expected to meet projected needs and also fund a few additional projects. Now local officials are faced with shrinking budgets, tax revolts, decreasing federal support, increasing state and federal regulations—in short, genuine crunches that leave them pondering how sparse resources can ever be stretched to meet the multitude of actual needs. This book stresses the political dimensions of local finance, emphasizing the local, intergovernmental, and private-sector constraints faced by municipal officials in their attempt to provide services while balancing the budget. Integrating the implications of the Reagan administration’s new approach to federal spending into their analyses, the authors examine the impact of state regulations on local taxation and debt policies, the relationship between local governments and the municipal bond market, the political economy of New York City’s fiscal crisis, and the impact of various tax limitation measures, including California’s Proposition 13. They also study the effect of community development grants on local decisionmaking structures and the impact of urban congressional representatives on the allocation of federal grants. Their presentation is aimed especially at graduate and upper-level undergraduate students of urban politics, local finance, state and local government, and intergovernmental relations.

Why should public administrators care about city planning? Is city planning not a field ruled by architects and public works personnel? Much of city planning in fact requires expertise in areas other than buildings and infrastructure, and with city planning expertise, urban administrators are empowered to make more informed decisions on matters that involve budgeting, economic development, tax revenues, public relations, and ordinances and policies that will benefit the community. City Planning for the Public Manager is designed to fill a gap in the urban administration literature, offering students and practitioners hands-on, practical advice from experts with diverse city administration experience, and demonstrating where theory and practice intersect. Divided into three sections, the book provides an overview of the life cycle of a municipality and its services, explores city planning applications for planners on a strict budget, and walks the reader through a real-life planning research project, demonstrating how it was formulated, implemented, and analyzed to produce usable results. Topics explored include justifications for specific city services, internal and external benchmarking used for city planning, common technical tools (e.g., GIS), legal aspects of planning and zoning, environmental concerns, transportation, residential planning, business district planning, and infrastructure. City Planning for the Public Manager is required reading for students of urban administration and practicing city administrators interested in improving their careers and their communities.

This timely Research Handbook explores the handling of city and municipal finances in the 21st century. It examines the impact of the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic on cities and municipalities, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and avenues for future progress in city and municipal financial management.

This case study of a politically reformed, middle-sized Midwestern city provides a model of fiscal stress that contrasts sharply with that of America's vast metropolitan centers. Dr. Rubin examines the interaction of social, political, and economic causes of the city's predicament. She then goes on to analyze the specific factors that solved the city's problems over a six-year period. Finally, she offers a self-correcting mechanism that would allow a city to save itself from financial trouble without direct state or federal assistance. This study suggests that local political factors were even more important than national factors in contributing to the city's fiscal stress. It also brings into question the theory that generosity to the poor creates urban fiscal stress and that giving less to the poor will solve urban financial problems.

Managing the Fiscal Metropolis: The Financial Policies, Practices, and Health of Suburban Municipalities is an important book. This first comprehensive analysis of the financial condition, management, and policy making of local governments in a metropolitan region offers local governments currently dealing with the Great Recession a better understanding of what affects them financially and how to operate with less revenue. Hendrick’s groundbreaking study covers 264 Chicago suburban municipalities from the late 1990s to the present. In it she identifies and describes the primary factors and events that affect municipal financial decisions and financial conditions, explores the strategies these governments use to manage financial conditions and solve financial problems, and looks at the impact of contextual factors and stresses on government financial decisions. Managing the Fiscal Metropolis offers new evidence about the role of contextual factors— including other local governments—in the financial condition of municipalities and how municipal financial decisions and practices alter these effects. The wide economic and social diversity of the municipalities studied make its findings relevant on a national scale.