Give a Little or Lose a Lot? The Effects of Increased Transparency on Local Applications for Federal Grant Funds

Abstract

In this article, I examine the effects of the increased transparency and reporting requirements on the decisions of local education agencies (LEAs) to draw down federal dollars allocated to state programs in nonmission areas. Data from LEAs and program expenditures are used to develop a model detailing how transparency impacts the decisions of LEAs in two states in drawing down funds from a federal grant program. Findings suggest that rather than the theoretical expectation that managers act in an anticipatory manner, managers are more concerned with immediate financial needs.

Changing Ethics Policies Without Scandal: State Responses to Published Reports and the Importance of Accurate Information

“…Additionally, Wegner et al (2008) found that when public managers respond to changes in management practices, there is often a synergistic approach to improving performance measurement outcomes. Rauh (2013) found that increasing transparency requirements on public managers did not lead the managers to behave in a more strategic manner with regard to their requests for federal grant funds. It should be noted, though, that in Kelman and Friedman's (2009) article their analysis was confined to wait-time targets within the British National Health Service, and in Wegner et al's (2008) article the analysis was on potential tradeoffs between timeliness and quality of benefit determinations for unemployment insurance.…”

“…Rauh (2013) found that managers tended not to respond to increases in transparency requirements. Additionally, Wegner, O'Toole, and Meier (2008) found that managers tend to respond to changes in managerial practices with performance management techniques which sought to synergize the management practices.…”

“…Given the work of Morris and Shin (2002) and Rauh (2013) on the effects of public information, and the works of Rosenson (2003) and Smith (2003a), one hypothesis is that 323 elected officials will respond to the provision of public information on poor ethical performance. A separate hypothesis is that changes, and proposed changes, to ethics policies will result from information that is publicly provided, as opposed to actual performance.…”

“…Given the findings in the literature (Morris & Shin, 2002;Rauh, 2013;Slovic, 1982Slovic, , 1992) that public information is over-weighted, this article uses four measures to examine the effects of rankings on changes to ethics policies:…”

“…This is the argument put forth by Morris and Shin (2002) in terms of making decisions in financial markets, and by Rauh (2013) on the effects of increasing transparency in the public sector. In this regard, one would expect that changes to ethics policies should be better explained by the publicly available information on corruption than by the state's actual risk of corruption relative to other states.…”