Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan America (1999) / Chapter Skim
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4 Strategies for Reducing Disparities
4 Strategies for Reducing Disparities
Pages 79-115
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From page 79... ...
One set of strategies seeks to break down exclusionary zoning practices that help to increase the cost of housing beyond the means of low- and moderate-income households. Another set of strategies is inclusionary, seeking to require local governments or developers to include housing for lowand moderate-income households in the community.
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From page 80... ...
To the extent that such a system is associated with allocative efficiency by permitting the various local governments to respond to the relatively homogeneous preferences of their residents, as Tiebout (1956) and his followers argue, then reducing exclusionary zoning practices will adversely affect efficiency by promoting heterogeneity of preferences among the citizenry.
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From page 81... ...
The Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, under state legislative authorization, established a Development Framework Plan for the region in 1976. All the region's municipalities and townships are required to submit their own comprehensive plans to the metropolitan council for approval.
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From page 82... ...
Nor does the state have the ability to require local governments to actually construct affordable housing. As Calavita et al.
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From page 83... ...
Paul area, the state's Livable Communities Act, enacted in 1995, has created what is in effect a voluntary approach to inclusionary housing. Through a fund administered by the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, resources to support affordable housing projects (as well as for tax base revitalization and economic and community development)
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From page 84... ...
Restoring Property Rights and Requiring Suburbs to Pay the Cost of Exclusion The restoration of the development rights of owners of undeveloped land and land ripe for development would accomplish the same objective as metropolitan government with respect to reducing the economic stratification of suburban communities and opening up the suburbs to the poor, according to Fischel (this volume)
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From page 85... ...
Requiring the local governments that want to preserve open space to buy that space (or the development rights) would make existing voters pay attention to the opportunity cost of exclusion and, for the most part, deter inefficient and inequitable low-density zoning." Subsidies or Cost Reduction The exclusionary effects of local land use regulation work by increasing the cost of housing beyond the means of low- and moderate-income households.
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From page 86... ...
3. Household mobility strategies, which attempt to open up housing opportunities for residents of distressed areas in other areas where housing conditions, employment, and other opportunities are presumably better.
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From page 87... ...
Another set of place-based strategies advocates building from within rather than attempting to attract jobs to distressed areas through incentives. Community development corporations and community development financial institutions are two such approaches.
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From page 88... ...
Worker Mobility Strategies Mobility strategies involve linking residents in distressed parts of the metropolitan area such as central cities to opportunities in the suburbs through improved transportation or through improved job information networks. Reverse commuting programs have been tried in many metropolitan areas, but, as Ihlanfeldt notes (this volume)
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From page 89... ...
Household Mobility Strategies Household mobility strategies envision opening up residential opportunities in the suburbs, particularly middle-income suburbs, to poor and minority groups. The expected results would be moving these groups closer to job opportunities, thereby mitigating the spatial mismatch problem; reducing the adverse consequences of residing in areas of high poverty (assuming they are not replicated in the suburbs)
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From page 90... ...
. Household mobility strategies do not necessarily imply either stable racially or economically integrated neighborhoods, although they do imply racially and economically mixed jurisdictions.
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From page 91... ...
In addition, the cost of a full-blown household mobility effort in terms of federal housing assistance could be prohibitive given federal budget fiscal constraints, and the politics of bringing a program such as Gautreaux to scale make it unlikely (Hughes, 1995:285~: "simply consider that for African Americans to be represented in the Chicago CMSA suburbs in proportion to their presence in the metropolitan area (which is 27 percent black as a whole) , the size of the suburban black population would have to quadruple, from 250,000 (in 1990)
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From page 92... ...
Less comprehensive approaches include charter schools (publicly supported institutions chartered by the state but usually run by private or nonprofit institutions rather than the existing school system) open to students without regard to geographic location and, within existing school districts, magnet schools and school choice among any public school in the district.
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From page 93... ...
, in contrast, accepts that the existing body of research supports the finding that private schools produce superior outcomes, yet notes that it is still possible that the differences resulted from unmeasured selection biases. Evidence on the effect of choice or voucher programs on the performance of the existing public school system is scant.
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From page 94... ...
This also suggests that public schools are responding to private school competition. School-to-work programs can also play an important role in improving the skills of inner-city students and linking them to suburban labor markets (Bailey, 1995~.
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From page 95... ...
Options include aggressive annexation by the central city, reorganization to bring about broader units of government such as single-tier metropolitan government, two-tier federalized metropolitan government, city-county consolidation, and creation of metropolitan-wide, single-purpose special districts.
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From page 96... ...
City-county consolidation would be equivalent to a single metropolitan government in those metropolitan areas that consisted of only one county, but in multicounty metropolitan areas it would simply reduce the number of local governments by eliminating all those previously within the central county, improving the relative fiscal situation for those who previously were city residents. Within the units created by these reforms, it would seem that differences in tax burdens on residents due to differences in revenue-raising capacity of their previous local governments should be eliminated, assuming fair property assessment practices and administration of tax laws.
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From page 97... ...
conclude that "reformed metropolitan institutions often do not provide services any more equitably than unreformed institutions in the same area." Using a different approach, Bradford and Gates (1974) tried to estimate the redistributive effects of moving from the present fragmented system of local government in the metropolitan areas of northeastern New Jersey to a unified system with a single area-wide property tax rate and equal per capita expenditures throughout the area.
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From page 98... ...
Fiscal Stretching Strategies Fiscal stretching policies permit existing units of local government suffering from fiscal disparities to gain access to fiscal resources from outside their borders. Such options include metropolitan tax base sharing; county or state assumption of local service responsibilities; the ability to export taxes, particularly through devices such as taxes on income earned within the jurisdiction; and assistance from higher (federal and state)
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From page 99... ...
The Twin Cities plan has reduced fiscal disparities among local governments in the metropolitan area from a range of 50:1 to a range of 12:1, according to Orfield (1997~. A study for the Minnesota legislature cited by Bell (1994)
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From page 100... ...
Tax Exporting All local governments are able to export some portion of their tax burden to nonresidents. The most obvious example is the property tax on commercial and industrial property owned by nonresidents, which in addition is frequently taxed
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From page 101... ...
Equalization Aid from State and Federal Governments Equalization aid is designed explicitly to reduce fiscal disparities among local governments by providing disproportionately greater aid to those with lower fiscal capacity and higher needs. Most countries explicitly provide general grants to their subnational governments for this purpose (see Wolman,1985~.
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From page 102... ...
Fiscal assistance from state and federal government plays an important role in moderating the degree of fiscal disparities among local governments. Ladd and Yinger (1991)
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From page 103... ...
Ladd (1994b:50) also argues that states could use a program designed to narrow the gap between fiscal capacity and expenditure need, as she and Yinger have defined it, as the criterion for distributing funds to local governments; this has been done in Massachusetts.
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From page 104... ...
The argument for reform of metropolitan government structure in this context is that, in a unitary rather than a fragmented system, the incentive to engage in exclusionary zoning practices for fiscal ends would be eliminated, as would the incentive for households to sort themselves based on their ability to pay for highquality public services. Sorting by race and income might continue to appear at the neighborhood level, but differences in tax burdens among individuals would be reduced and the quality of public services, including services of fundamental importance to equal opportunity, such as education, would no longer be dependent on where in the metropolitan area an individual resided.
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From page 105... ...
To that end, public choice proponents propose a market analog: local governments produce and sell public services to consumers (taxpayers) who purchase them.
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From page 106... ...
Miami-Dade County is a rare example of two-tier metropolitan government, although incomplete consolidation renders many of the city-county consolidation efforts (such as Indianapolis-Marion County) into a form of twotier government as well.
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From page 107... ...
[T] hese governments have not eliminated the biases of the multicentered metropolis on social access issues of zoning, schools, and housing." The apparently disappointing evaluations of metropolitan reform efforts do not mean that it is impossible to design metropolitan structures that would have the desired impact on spatial opportunity structures, but only that existing ones appear to have failed to do so What is perhaps more relevant, the politics of bringing into being even the weakened forms of metropolitan governments appear nearly insurmountable.
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From page 108... ...
Similar coalitions have, of course, been found in every organized attempt to create metropolitan government. But elsewhere in the nation they invariably met with defeat because of the entrenched position of the countervailing groups who did not want to jettison the status quo for an unproven product." Most political scientists who have studied the politics of metropolitan consolidation are quite pessimistic about the political feasibility of adoption through the referendum process (Greer, 1963; Horan and Taylor, 1977; Harrigan, 1993~.
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From page 109... ...
agree, concluding that "an active state role in the reorganization of local government and the absence of a referendum appear to be the two ingredients that will facilitate, but certainly not guarantee, metropolitan reform." In short, the evidence of the effect of metropolitan government on reducing disparities and on changing spatial opportunity structures in desirable ways is not compelling, and the political feasibility of achieving comprehensive metropolitan reform of this nature in very many metropolitan areas seems slight. Partial Restructuring Comprehensive metropolitanization is not the only alternative for restructuring metropolitan institutions.
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From page 110... ...
, unlike the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, is an elected body. Metro was authorized by the state legislature in 1977 and created in 1978 by a referendum in the three counties it serves.
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From page 111... ...
Public choice theorists argue that, when joint action across a fragmented local government system is required, it will occur through activity by overlapping governmental units (such as counties) , interlocal agreements, privatization of services across local boundaries, or the creation of special districts.
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From page 112... ...
There were "no obviously redistributive or tax base sharing arrangements between the central city and suburbs that were identified by either side" (1997:15~. Special districts are another means of providing links across a fragmented metropolitan area, at least for a specific service.
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From page 113... ...
In this way, Parks and Oakerson suggest an efficient way in which redistribution might be achieved and the spatial opportunity structure altered.4 They fail, however, to identify the political incentives or conditions that might bring about such redistribution (Keating, 1995~. Unfortunately, we have come full circle; under the present system, redistribution appears not to occur or to occur insufficiently to make a difference.
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From page 114... ...
It could further encourage regional applications by indicating that it would give a degree of priority to such applications or additional funds for local governments that engage in such regional applications. It could set aside a portion of grant funds for programs such as the community development block grant to be used only for metropolitan-area-wide projects.
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From page 115... ...
Indeed, both the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council and the Indianapolis Unigov were the product of state government activity rather than local choice. States may set up special districts within metropolitan areas; they may structure state laws to make municipal incorporation more difficult and to make annexation by cities easier.
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