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- Title
Resource Scarcity and the Reform Model: The Management of Retrenchment in Cincinnati and Oakland.
- Authors
Levine, Charles H.; Rubin, Irene S.; Wolohjian, George G.
- Abstract
Many local governments faced with fiscal stress have stumbled into a period of helpless indecision, unable to make necessary expenditure reductions for fear of political conflict and further fragmentation of authority. But not all cities faced with financial problems have developed political crises. In some cases, the extent of fiscal stress has not been severe or has occurred gradually over a long period of time allowing officials to adjust budgets in small decrements. In still other cases, the level of politicization of the community and the design of the government structure have provided the managerial authority and political power necessary to avoid overcommitting expenditures during resource expansion, and to smoothly reduce expenditure levels when resources have declined. While, from an historical perspective, low level of politicization and firm executive control may be found in strong mayor governments, they are especially likely to occur in cities that have adopted a council-manager form. Such cities adopted the council-manager plan in part to centralize control of budgeting and personnel management in the hands of the city manager. Reformed Cities might therefore be expected to manage retrenchment with a minimum of disruption. This article describes the expected behavior of city manager cities under conditions of fiscal stress and resource scarcity, and then compares the expected and actual retrenchment behavior of two reformed cities-Oakland, California, and Cincinnati. Ohio.
- Subjects
OAKLAND (Calif.); CINCINNATI (Ohio); CALIFORNIA; OHIO; UNITED States; URBAN planning; CITY managers
- Publication
Public Administration Review, 1981, Vol 41, Issue 6, p619
- ISSN
0033-3352
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/975737