Income sorting by specialized services: Service differentiation by overlapping governments

Abstract

Background The flexible boundaries of special districts allow for overlaps with each other that generate various specialized service bundles on a territorial basis. The combined overlapping boundaries may reveal willingness to have more services at additional costs as the special districts generally provide services selectively to those who reside within their boundaries. Objective This study aims to investigate whether overlapping special districts sort citizens by income level as reflected by the Tiebout model. Methods This study utilizes a cross‐sectional block group data of Ventura County in California, taking numbers of vertices of special districts as independent variable and household income as dependent variable. Results Estimation result demonstrates that a greater number of specialized services is associated with higher income levels and varies by service type. Conclusion Findings of this study imply that income segregation could be predetermined by jurisdictional boundary, and that other subjects of urban segregation may have similar pattern.

Testing a relationship between special districts and nonprofits: Do they substitute or complement?

“…SDs may seem to simply substitute individual service responsibility of general‐purpose governments, but the SDs contribute to the continuous provision of local public services. SDs fundamentally supplement local services for general‐purpose governments by providing greater varieties of services for the target population on a residential basis (Park 2021).…”

“…SDs provide public services for designated populations who pay additional taxation within geographically limited areas (Foster 1997). Such exclusiveness allows SDs to functionally meet heterogeneous local service demands that single underpopulated general-purpose governments can hardly achieve alone (Park 2021). Also, fees and charges are used by the SDs as popular pricing modes, which tend to make local public services exclusive.…”

“…Specialized services from the various districts resemble private goods (Burns 1994). This is due to their primary funding sources and eligibility for exclusive service provisions being based on a locational basis (Park 2021). Thus, SDs and nonprofits function similarly despite sector differences, as they are responsible for services that were never or are no longer provided by general‐purpose governments (Foster 1997).…”

Special-District Proliferation and Local Financial Condition: The Hidden Cost of the Externalized Service Responsibility

“…Once a special district is created, some public services that were openly provided by city or county authorities now require citizens to either dwell within speci c areas served by the special district, or pay for the additional services themselves, or both (Burns, 1994;McCabe, 2000). Further, constituents living within the newly formed special districts must now pay for the specialized services, and no longer bene t from the previously provided city-or county-wide public services intended for common consumption (Park, 2021b).…”

“…For instance, the special district services are relatively scarce across minority populations (An, Levy, & Hero, 2018; Reardon, Farrell, & Matthews, 2009; Wilson, Roscigno, & Huffman, 2015). Gentri cation at the intersection of income and race raises several negative externalities, such as homelessness, urban blight, crime (Massey & Hajnal, 1995;Park, 2021b;Schneider & Logan, 1982). Such manifestations require the general-purpose governments to draw on resources to manage these issues that are beyond the resources that would otherwise be necessary for public service provisions after transferring the service provision responsibility to special districts.…”