Intergovernmental Management
Federal programs administered through the states and local governments and state programs carried out by local governments must be managed cooperatively. The process of managing programs involves officials working to solve problems that combine legal, technical, political, and project tasks.
Most domestic programs are administered through intergovernmental means in the U.S. federal system: federal-state-local, state-local, and local-local. They also employ nongovernmental organizations. The process of managing across jurisdictional boundaries is called “intergovernmental management” (IGM) by professionals and academics. IGM is the process of solving problems across the boundaries of jurisdictions that interrelate legal, political, technical, and project-related tasks in making programs work. The functions and processes of IGM are normally practiced by elected and appointed administrative officials, although on occasion legislative officials become involved in the processes of facilitating projects or clarifying policy aims.
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INTERGOVERNMENTAL INSTRUMENTS
The management of programs almost always entails actions relating to the more common “action instruments” of intergovernmental relations. They are listed in Figure 1, classified by whether they are primarily economic, legal, administrative, or political in nature. Of the twenty-four actions illustrated, the most prevalent are related to grants, audits, tax policies, loans, regulation, intergovernmental agreements, basic laws, program standards, and intersectoral networks and councils.
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
Three brief examples of managing programs illustrate the heavy involvement of administrative officials in programming within American federalism. First, a city wishes to preserve a historic three-square-block area near its central business district. It must first go through a federally required and state government–managed process of designation, which entails citizen hearings, financial feasibility studies, cost estimates for restoration, a plan of use, and ultimately a city council ordinance. If approved, the area is designated on the National Register of Historic Places. This allows building owners involved in rehabilitating their property to qualify for tax credits. After designation, the city can help developers qualify for state and federal funds and low-interest loans. There will follow numerous other contacts and negotiations to actually restore the buildings and arrange use.
Second, a county government is trying to attract a high-technology business within its borders. It will try to leverage some of its own money to gain resources from several federal and state programs. It could access U.S. Economic Development Administration funds to help with the land purchase, use Community Development Block Grants funds to pay for part of the construction, adopt an ordinance to use state-authorized/supervised tax increment financing (a program that devotes future tax increases to improvements) to pay for site improvement and infrastructure, secure state venture capital funds as a partial investment in the company, access U.S. Department of Labor funds for workforce training, and secure road improvement money from federal and state highway funding streams. Each of these efforts will require extensive work in making applications, negotiating with state/federal officials over purposes and details, seeking approvals from the county council and the potential investor, holding public hearings, and meeting a host of funding and program requirements.
FIGURE 1. Action Instruments of Intergovernmental Relations
1. Economic Devices
2. Legal Approaches
3. Administrative Practices
4. Political/Government Bodies
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Third, the Medicaid program, Title XIX of the Social Security Act, funds health care for the poor. In terms of expenditures, it is the largest single intergovernmental program in the United States. This federal-state program involves the federal government setting minimum requirements for benefits, eligibility, and the reimbursement of health care providers, and establishing administrative rules that states must follow. States can then expand on the minimum requirements in regard to eligibility and services funded if they wish. Each year the states must file and then negotiate a “state plan” relating to how they intend to operate the program. The plan involves literally thousands of administrative details that are subject to interpretation, and in recent years several different kinds of “waivers” or excepted actions that permit states to fund services that would not otherwise be allowed, as well as a few dozen “assurances” that certain crossprogram federal standards are met. During the plan year, state officials will engage in literally thousands of inquiries, subagreements, contracts, and informational transactions with local government and medical vendors, as well as with federal officials. Also, pages and pages of fiscal and program reporting will be collected. Finally, some two years or so after plans have been executed, the paper reporting will be audited by other federal officials. While the proportion of Medicaid spending on administration is quite small compared to its very large budget, no one has been able to estimate the cost impact of the paperwork burden or the extensive administrative time up and down the line that this program takes.
WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT TASKS: LEGAL, TECHNICAL, POLITICAL, AND PROJECT
The multifaceted process of managing federal programs can be illustrated by examining one program that affects every citizen, that of ensuring that a healthy drinking water supply is available. The U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) of 1974 expanded the federal role in monitoring and standard setting to protect human health and the regulation of water suppliers. The program delegates inspection and enforcement to the states, and some states have further delegated authority to local governments. States are required to have programs that include statutory and regulatory enforcement authority adequate to ensure compliance, a system of conducting inspections of public water supply systems (sanitary surveys), a process to certify laboratories that test for contaminants, and other management provisions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pays around three-quarters of the costs of operating these programs, which includes a loan program for improvement of facilities. Most important for this illustration is the requirement in the act for the EPA to issue standards for any contaminant that may have an adverse effect on human health and that is known to occur in public drinking water supplies.
The legal issues involved are the published revisions of the Arsenic Rule in 2001 and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund established in 1996 under amendments to SWDA. The EPA changed the Arsenic Rule from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb after the National Academy of Science concluded that the old level could not protect against nonfatal and fatal bladder and lung cancers and that the new level will reduce the frequency of other health effects such as diabetes, developmental problems, gastrointestinal illness, and heart disease. The rule applies to community and nontransit noncommunity water systems, 97 percent of which are small systems that serve fewer than 10,000 persons. Clearly the greatest challenge will be to help very small water systems overhaul or convert their systems at costs that will not be excessive financial burdens on their small customer bases.
Technically it means that over 3,000 community and 1,100 nontransit noncommunity systems have to overhaul their systems, the majority of which serve 500 or fewer users. Fortunately, several technologies are 90–95 percent effective, for example, modified lime softening, modified coagulation/filtration, coagulation-assisted microfiltration, oxidation filtration, and others. Some water suppliers are consolidating into larger systems or are finding new water sources. The total cost for investments in these treatment technologies is estimated to be about $900 million plus an additional $120 million in operating costs. Most states have begun to address the issue of small-system compliance with the Arsenic Rule, along with such other rules as one for uranium, by accelerating inspections and by devoting portions of their Revolving Loan Funds to upgrade small systems. In addition, other funding sources (mostly loans) are available: the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Rural Development, state-administered Community Development Block Grant funds (small cities), the Economic Development Administration, and state water resources programs. Grants or loans in some combination are available through one or more of these sources to assess water system needs, to procure an engineer’s report, and to introduce new technologies.
The political process in small communities begins with finding a local official who is willing to take the lead in orchestrating the process. Most often it is the mayor, or it could be the city clerk, who may be the only full-time official. In others it might be a council member who “volunteers” to take on this administrative process. In larger cities it would be the city administrator or city manager, working along with the city engineer. Whoever leads the political process, it begins with contacting people in the state environmental agency to learn about the process and requirements, and to learn what steps need to be taken. In some states the different funding sources meet together to help smaller communities work the different sources. At this point the city will learn about the key role of hiring a consulting engineer, who will have to prepare reports and plans. The local official taking the lead will have to go back to the community and convince the city council to pass an ordinance putting the process of securing an engineering report and construction/treatment plan in motion. Normally a prior notification public hearing/meeting must also be held to seek public input on all available options, siting issues, environmental impacts, and costs. If the water system is to be consolidated with other systems either by clustering nearby communities or by establishing a new regional water system, then extensive political negotiations with other communities will ensue. After all of this processing, the local lead official can prepare applications for project funding.
The extensive project-related managerial activities then prevail over this Arsenic Rule process. The state agency receives the application that includes community financial data and the engineering consultant’s report (which can be paid for by small grants). The report is reviewed for three basic concerns: feasibility of the user charge system to repay loans, city financial capability, and the environmental assessment review. The engineering report is also separately reviewed. When all reports are acceptable (and the thirty-day hearing is held), planning and design are approved. Then the process involves fee review and technical review of health effects by the state, and all federal cross-program assurances are checked. After any necessary revisions are negotiated, an approval letter for construction is issued. At this point the community must pass what is normally a routine loan authorizing resolution(s) or bond ordinance through its council if the existing revenue debt obligates the water rate. Then the loans from the various sources mentioned earlier are transacted and closed. At this point, which can take from three to six months, the community can open bids for construction. The construction phase finalizes the project, which will have a similarly involved sequence orchestrated by some manager and including the consulting engineer, city attorney, and city council/village board.
MANAGERS IN THE HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL SYSTEM
Managers do more than talk on the phone, e-mail, or make personal contacts when they are working on programs within the federal system. Figure 2, taken from Agranoff and McGuire’s Collaborative Public Management (2003) study of city economic development, lists twenty-one distinct type of IGM practices. They are both vertical (that is, those devices used for working with state and federal governmental officials) and horizontal (working with other local governments, NGOs, and the private sector). The vertical IGM instruments are of two types, those that try to make some form of adjustment within the system within the boundaries of the policy intent of programs and those designed to determine information or joint understandings. The horizontal instruments either serve particular investment projects or help develop or maintain networks of officials. The frequency of these actions, of course, varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but all twenty-one activities are regular instruments used by managers. In sum, these are the instruments used to coordinate programs—that is, to help make programs work within a given situation.
FIGURE 2. Intergovernmental Management Practices
| Type of Practice | Use in IGM | Purposes of Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Discretion-seeking (vertical) | Requesting and granting local “asymmetrical” treatment not technically or apparently within standards or regulations | Waivers; Model program efforts; Policy changes; Funding innovation; Negotiated flexibility; Trading compliance for performance results |
| Information-seeking (vertical) | Seeking and providing program details and/or reaching operating understandings regarding program operations | Seek program availability and eligibility; Seek program operation information; Seek interpretation of standards; Seek new funding; Seek technical assistance |
| Project-based (horizontal) | Leverage and engagement of public and private resources to accomplish plans, projects, and other efforts | Develop managerial partnerships in projects; Seek financial resources from partners; Combine or leverage financial resources; Build financial partnerships for projects |
| Structural design (horizontal) | Development and maintenance of organizations or networks for program design and implementation | Engage in joint policy making; Seek policy-making assistance; Consolidate policy effort; Contracted planning or implementation; Employ joint financial incentives; Access technical resources |
MANAGEMENT: A KEY FEDERALISM TASK
Several forces converge to make managing within federalism a core activity of officials at all levels. First, there are high numbers of intergovernmental programs. In addition to the approximately 1,000 programs listed in the U.S. Catalogue of Federal Domestic Assistance, (http://12.46.245.173/cfda/cfda.html) states offer hundreds of their own programs, which have increased in number in the past several decades. For example, the typical state has adopted up to thirty economic development programs or instruments since the 1970s. Second, the United States has a tradition of separation of governments and powers. Each level of government has different legislative and administrative branches, and at the local level many different types of government exist. Third, there is a tradition of jurisdictional autonomy in the United States. Every city or village, county government, and state government can claim some degree of independence or freedom from interference from higher levels as well as the right to pursue their own aims, even with programs that come from elsewhere. Fourth, the number of actors involved in programs has increased in recent years. In addition to governments, nongovernmental organizations such as private firms and nonprofit agencies have important implementation roles in programs. These new actors share intergovernmental administration with those who are inside governments. Fifth, many programs like the Arsenic Rule within SDWA have become very complicated, calling for legal, technical, and political skills to facilitate action. This has put a premium on administrative actors and program specialists. And sixth, there is increased concern for accountability and performance in programs. This means that there is more managerial activity involved in planning, reviewing, negotiating, and auditing. Together, these forces call attention to the less visible but important managerial aspect in American federalism.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Robert Agranoff and Michael McGuire, Collaborative Public Management: New Strategies for Local Government (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003); Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, http://12.46.245.173/cfda/cfda.html; John J. Gargan, ed., Handbook of State Government Administration (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2000); Denise Scheberle, Federalism and Environmental Policy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1997); and David B. Walker, The Rebirth of Federalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Chatham House, 2000). |
Robert Agranoff
Last updated: 2006
SEE ALSO: County Government; Economic Development; Education; Environmental Policy; Executive Orders; Federal-State Relations; Grants-in-Aid; Health Care Policy; Intergovernmental Lobbying; Intergovernmental Relations; Local Government; Medicaid; Political Parties; Preemption; Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974; Social Security Act of 1935; State Government