A Question of Genesis: An Analysis of the Determinants of Public Authorities

Back to Basics: Two Issue Areas for the Future Urban Politics Agenda

“…There are by now several decades worth of literature detailing the emergence of special purpose governments (special districts and public authorities) and the presumed or alleged reasons that constitute explanations for their creation (Doig, ; Burns, ; Foster, ) along with a smaller and more contemporary body of work systematically testing some of those explanations (Leigland, ; Bordeaux, ). Admittedly, this project has been hindered by the lack of agreement over whether public authorities can be properly distinguished from special districts (Leigland, ), though public authorities are commonly understood to feature appointed rather than elected governing boards and reliance upon user fees and grants rather than tax revenues while special districts feature elected boards and the power to tax.…”

“…Admittedly, this project has been hindered by the lack of agreement over whether public authorities can be properly distinguished from special districts (Leigland, ), though public authorities are commonly understood to feature appointed rather than elected governing boards and reliance upon user fees and grants rather than tax revenues while special districts feature elected boards and the power to tax. But the congeries of distinct and hybrid versions of these pure types clearly has presented headaches for scholars who have attempted to systematically account for the emergence of special purpose governments; and in addition to the complications of distinguishing authorities from special districts, some researchers have found it important to distinguish different types of authorities, such as Bordeaux's (, p. 445) distinction between “conduit” authorities that exist only to finance projects and “service” public authorities that finance, construct, and operate public service facilities.…”

“…Their political insulation also would maximize their capacity to make ambitious, long‐term plans rather than plans linked to a political business cycle, and to sustain long‐term commitment to planned projects even in the face of political opposition. In short, the second explanation holds that authorities proliferated because they provide a “politically buffered governance structure (Bordeaux, , p. 445).…”

Public-Private Partnerships, Public Authorities, and Democratic Governance

“…Authorities have often been established to circumvent debt limitations (Axelrod, 1992;bourdeaux, 2005) or to allow public officials to duck sensitive issues by shifting jurisdiction (Axelrod, 1992;heiman, 1992). Public authorities are expected to operate in the public interest, but also in the "manner of a self-supporting business, free from political compromise, public pressure, and bureaucratic red tape" (Mitchell, 1992).…”

Community Development Districts: The Entrepreneurial Side of Government

“…There are scholars who demonstrated that there are alternative reasons for state and local use of these entities besides their financial abilities. Special-purpose governments are used also because of demographic indicators such as population, area and urbanization (Frant, 1997) as well as for their institutional characteristics which were expected to solve service delivery concerns in a framework of political competition (Bourdeaux, 2005). The reliance on special-purpose governments is also seen as a means of overcoming collective action problems such as coordination (Baer & Feiock, 2005;Mullin, 2010) and division (Baer & Feiock, 2005).…”