Governors in Control: Executive Orders, State-Local Preemption, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Weissert, Carol S.; Uttermark, Matthew J.; Mackie, Kenneth R; Artiles, A.

doi:10.1093/publius/pjab013

Cited by 25 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Those rules fundamentally determine the extent to which state governments decentralize power to localities; thus, unsurprisingly, their design and efficacy have been repeatedly debated since their inception (Kincaid & Stenberg, 2011; Rose, 2010). The ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic is no exception to that debate, as tensions between mayors and state officials (legislators and governors) have unfolded across states concerning how to best respond to public health challenges (McDonald et al, 2020; Weissert et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Home rule and municipal revenue stability: New evidence from Texas

Zhang

Nguyen‐Hoang

2022

Public Budgeting & Finance

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Scholars have long debated whether home rule powers help improve municipal financial well‐being; however, a consensus has yet to be reached. This study advances the home rule literature by causally estimating the impact of home rule in Texas on municipal revenue stability. To accomplish this, we employed a difference‐in‐differences estimator coupled with event‐study specifications on a 40‐year‐long panel data set. This approach revealed strong empirical evidence that cities adopting a home rule charter had a significant reduction in the probability of experiencing revenue decline. This finding remained robust with multiple measures of revenue change, an alternative sample, and different model specifications. Moreover, we found that home rule cities’ revenue stability was likely to come from their increase in property taxes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Home rule and municipal revenue stability: New evidence from Texas

Zhang

Nguyen‐Hoang

2022

Public Budgeting & Finance

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“…Convoluted policies regarding mask use from local and state governments likely contributed to this type of interpersonal conflict. It is notable that the state and local governments in Arizona were often at odds about mask mandates during this time ( Weissert et al , 2021 ). Agencies that focus on a population’s well-being, like local nonprofit organizations, industry-specific trade groups, or health clinics, are important community-level resources that can work with businesses to help them disentangle the confusing and opposing views of policy makers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Small Businesses and Workers Using Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Honan

Ingram

Quijada

et al. 2022

Annals of Work Exposures and Health

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The COVID-19 pandemic has simultaneously exacerbated and elucidated inequities in resource distribution for small businesses across the United States in terms of worker health and the financial stability of both owners and employees. This disparity was further intensified by the constantly changing and sometimes opposing health and safety guidelines and recommendations to businesses from the local, state, and federal government agencies. To better understand how the pandemic has impacted small businesses, a cross-sectional survey was administered to owners, managers, and workers (n = 45) in the beauty and auto shop sectors from Southern Arizona. The survey identified barriers to safe operation that these businesses faced during the pandemic, illuminated worker concerns about COVID-19, and elicited perceptions of how workplaces have changed since the novel coronavirus outbreak of 2019. A combination of open-ended and close-ended questions explored how businesses adapted to the moving target of pandemic safety recommendations, as well as how the pandemic affected businesses and workers more generally. Almost all the beauty salons surveyed had to close their doors (22/25), either temporarily or permanently, due to COVID-19, while most of the auto repair shops were able to stay open (13/20). Beauty salons were more likely to implement exposure controls meant to limit transmission with customers and coworkers, such as wearing face masks and disallowing walk-ins, and were also more likely to be affected by pandemic-related issues, such as reduced client load and sourcing difficulties. Auto shops, designated by the state of Arizona to be ‘essential’ businesses, were less likely to have experienced financial precarity due to the pandemic. Content analysis of open-ended questions using the social-ecological model documented current and future worker concerns, namely financial hardships from lockdowns and the long-term viability of their business, unwillingness of employees to return to work, uncertainty regarding the progression of the pandemic, conflict over suitable health and safety protocols, and personal or family health and well-being (including anxiety and/or stress). Findings from the survey indicate that small businesses did not have clear guidance from policymakers during the pandemic and that the enacted regulations and guidelines focused on either health and safety or finances, but rarely both. Businesses often improvised and made potentially life-changing decisions with little to no support. This analysis can be used to inform future pandemic preparedness plans for small businesses that are cost-efficient, effective at reducing environmental exposures, and ultimately more likely to be implemented by the workers.

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“…While scholars have analyzed conflict over COVID-19 in federal systems across several dimensions, limited research has focused specifically on intra-state conflicts, i.e., between branches and levels of government within states. To date, research has included discussions of state preemption of local governments, resiliency in local governments, the ways in which states have delegated enforcement responsibility, and the ways in which some local or state governments have coordinated and cooperated with others (Dzigbede, Gehl, and Willoughby 2020;McDonald, Goodman and Hatch 2020;Weissert et al 2021;Curley and Federman et al 2021;Curley, Harrison, and Federman 2021). However, intra-state conflict remains understudied, and therefore we focus here on outlining some of the areas in which federalism has been addressed in the context of COVID-19 from that perspective.…”

Section: Federalism Covid-19 and Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Intra-State Tensions in Government Responses to COVID-19

Federman

Curley

2022

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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Research and attention to federalism has vastly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While political polarization has largely been used as a scapegoat to explain the U.S. policy response to the pandemic, federalism has also been credited and blamed for the policy response and has played an important role in providing avenues for conflict. This article explores intra-state conflict stemming from COVID-19. We utilize ten exploratory cases to identify three distinct but interrelated patterns of conflict that emerged within U.S. states, focusing on tensions between the executive and legislative branches, between bureaucratic officials and the legislature, and between state and local governments. We then examine a series of questions regarding the implication of these conflicts, focusing on the issuance of executive orders, the responses undertaken by officials who disagreed with and sought to push back against these orders, and the ways that inter-branch and inter-governmental disagreements about these orders were resolved.

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Governors in Control: Executive Orders, State-Local Preemption, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 25 publications

References 19 publications

Home rule and municipal revenue stability: New evidence from Texas

Home rule and municipal revenue stability: New evidence from Texas

Understanding the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Small Businesses and Workers Using Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Exploring Intra-State Tensions in Government Responses to COVID-19

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