State and Local Government Statistics at a Crossroads (2007) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Government Statistics Program in Context
2 The Government Statistics Program in Context
Pages 19-37
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From page 19... ...
The U.S. government tapped the Census Bureau to identify and catalogue state and local governmental bodies and collect data on them to measure their activities.
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in general, they have been the genesis of major reimbursable programs, whereby the Census Bureau receives financial support from external sponsors to develop more detailed surveys pertaining to specific pieces of its base programs. The Governments Division and the Census Bureau generally are of the view that core or base programs must be supported and continued, although not necessarily at their current frequency or level of detail.
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In addition, the Census Office published estimates of national wealth by state and class of property, reflecting the heavy dependence on property taxes to support state and local government expenditures. Censuses of governments, with varying scope, detail, and coverage, were subsequently conducted in 1913, 1922, 1932, and 1942.
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Other annual series on state and local government finances are part of the Governments Division portfolio, including a survey of state and local public employee retirement systems and extensive reporting, since 1978, of public school system finances in a program funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
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The AFS collects data on state and local government finances, public elementary and secondary education expenditures, and public employee retirement systems. The AES collects data for federal civilian agencies and state and local governments for March of each year on full-time and part-time employment, part-time employee hours worked, full-time-equivalent employment, and payroll statistics by type of government and governmental function, such as elementary and secondary education, police protection, financial administration, and public welfare.
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The national accounts influence the content not only of statistical programs conducted by such agencies as the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, and others, but also of administrative records programs, such as the Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income reports. The role of national accounts in shaping economic statistics programs is recognized internationally and laid out in the Handbook of Statistical Organization, Third Edition (United Nations Statistical Division, 2003)
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• Data currency. The reimbursable programs shine light on aspects of state and local government economic activity that the Govern ments Division may consider adopting in the base programs.
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into consolidated accounts for each government; ensures consistent treatment of subordinate units and special districts and classifies like transactions together, even if they have different names in different governments; provides consistent annual time series across governments by combining data reported for fiscal years ending in different months; and serves as the authoritative source of information on the geography of state and local entities. These tasks are both valuable and complex, given the proclivity of general- and special-purpose local governments to change their geographic profiles and organizational structures as they consolidate, separate, annex, and otherwise evolve into different bodies over time.
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Consider just the numbers of functioning governmental units by type (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005)
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In sum, state and local governmental units in the United States are not as simple and stable as they may appear. Even at the familiar and recognizable level of states, counties, municipalities, and townships, units of government are diverse, fragmented, layered, and changing.
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of the BEA also provide definitions of governments that the Census Bureau must consider. The Governments Division defines governmental entities by using a set of detailed guidelines.
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The standard Census Bureau rules are not always definitive in making the classifications. The criteria are "problematic in the case of charter schools" (Wulf, 2005)
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It interpreted the "entwinement" test as when private conduct is "so entwined with governmental policies or so impregnated with a governmental character as to become subject to the constitutional limitations on state actors." The judge concluded that the charter school had been granted the authority to provide free public education to all students in a nondiscriminatory manner. Since only local school districts and charter schools had been granted this authority in Ohio, the charter school was so "entwined with governmental policies" that the court was forced to consider it and other such schools as "public actors subject to the constitutional limitations on state actors." Residential Community Associations Residential community associations, which are nonprofit organizations that provide municipal-like services for groups of private residences, are ubiquitous.
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. This program required the Governments Division data on state and local taxes to determine allocations of federal funds to 39,000 eligible local governments.
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The practice of discontinuing research reports actually began in 1982 when this report, which described in detail the flow of intergovernmental funds between states and their local governments, was dropped. The surveys still collect the information, but as is the case now with most Govern ments Division data, no detailed analyses are produced and no user-friendly data are provided except for highly aggregated totals.
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Budget Adequacy, 1997–Present In more recent years, appropriations for core Governments Division programs have tended to grow somewhat, according to data provided to the panel by the Office of Management and Budget. Table 2-1 shows budget streams for the period, 1997–2007, separately for the Census of Governments and the annual and quarterly surveys (excluding the reimbursable programs)
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Internal budget constraints required the Govern ments Division to finance these improvements by cutting the sur vey program in other ways; it did not have the ability to request additional funds. After consulting with BEA, the Federal Reserve Board, the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associa tions, and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, the Governments Division developed a reduced sample of local governments for survey fiscal years 2001 and 2003, which would produce only national totals instead of the usually larger sample that yielded local government totals by state.
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From page 36... ...
A database showing which county areas were believed to be served by each special district was posted to the Governments Division web site for years prior to 2002, but not for 2002. Although this information is included in the 2002 Census Bureau volume on government organization, users have to look up the specific entity in order to find it. The database for 2002, however, remains available from the Governments Division upon request.
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The decisions about which surveys and reports to scale back or eliminate reflected the best judgment of the Governments Division and the Economic Directorate regarding where cuts could be made without adversely affecting the division's main missions. In particular, it seems clear that the division chose to favor the first of its two main missions: providing aggregate information for the national accounts and other key financial series required by BEA and the Federal Reserve Board to satisfy the information needs of the federal government for fiscal and monetary policy.
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