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In this paper, the authors use the Bush administration's management grades from the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to evaluate performance budgeting in the federal government-in particular, the role of merit and political considerations in formulating recommendations for 234 programs in the president's fiscal year 2004 budget. PART scores and political support were found to influence budget choices in expected ways, and the impact of management scores on budget decisions diminished as the political component was taken into account. The Bush administration's management scores were positively correlated with proposed budgets for programs housed in traditionally Democratic departments but not in other departments. The federal government's most ambitious effort to use performance budgeting to date shows both the promise and the problems of this endeavor.

This essay is a theoretical exploration of a new budgetary system to cope with fiscal uncertainty and instability. It examines policies requiring positive year-end balances and infers that annual budget cycles lead to a mismatch between the budget cycle and the continuity of public service provision. The author considers a multiyear perspective on budgeting as a potential solution, with countercyclical fiscal reserves to help ensure stability during fluctuating economic conditions. By adopting budget stabilization funds and keeping sufficient reserves, states can better maintain trend-level public services during recessions. Panel data analysis provides empirical evidence that such funds helped stabilize state general expenditures during downturns. The adoption of countercyclical fiscal policy and budget stabilization funds is a step toward a longer-term perspective on budgeting, thus promoting fiscal stability over the economic cycle.

Following a wave of state-adopted tax and expenditure limitations (TELs), in 1992 the state of Colorado amended its constitution with the strictest TEL to date. Called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and known as TABOR, the amendment has limited the size and scope of Colorado governments. Praised as a restraint on unbridled government growth in good economic times, TABOR reared its highly restrictive head as the state economy turned downward. The central issue explored is how binding tax and expenditure limitations affect the state's ability to weather economic recessions and employ sound fiscal management practices. As in most institutional arrangements, the devil is in the details. The analysis presented here reveals that binding limitations create perverse incentives for budgetary actors to earmark, privatize, and shift responsibilities to other jurisdictions, which ultimately combine to reduce the state government's ability to perform and to maintain sound fiscal management practices.

Employing a resource dependence theoretical framework, the authors analyze a set of recently awarded contracts between the Environmental Protection Agency and its suppliers to determine how joint dependence, supplier dependence, and government dependence affect contract design—specifically, the decision to use a cost-plus (flexible) contract. Findings provide evidence that organizations choose contract designs that will reduce uncertainty related to securing critical resources. However, different dimensions of dependence have different effects: (1) higher levels of joint dependence lead to more flexible governance forms; (2) the lack of alternative suppliers is a more important factor than high levels of financial dependence; and (3) the parties involved in government procurement are likely to perceive government as a unique type of organization, which, in turn, has implications for contract design choices. The authors conclude with managerial strategies for restructuring power/dependence relationships to achieve the contract design most likely to yield a surplus in the exchange.

How diversified are small town revenues? Revenue diversification is analyzed among towns governed by town meetings. Using previously developed diversification measuresy the findings confirm that these localities draw from less diverse revenue streams than other state and local governments. The reasons for these variations include differences in home rule status as well as tax and expenditure limitations imposed by states. The authors suggest that revenue allocation in these jurisdictions is substantively different from other forms of local government because these communities rely much less on sales taxation than states and municipalities. Their essay proposes possible options for improvement, along with other criteria by which small towns can assess their revenue diversification.

Following failed auctions for sewer debt in April 2008, major bond rating companies downgraded Jefferson County, Alabama's bond rating to D (default) triggering massive mandatory payments by the county to its creditors. At the time of writing, the county teeters on the brink of actual default and bankruptcy, unable to pay service on its $3.3 billion sewer debt portfolio. If the county defaults, it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history, eclipsing Orange County, California's 1994 default. The intriguingly complex tale of the Jefferson County debt crisis is recounted here by identifying and examining failures of transparency and accountability by local bureaucratic and political actors, private financial institutions, as well as the larger regulatory framework governing public finance. Enhanced regulation of local government and the financial sector plus greater local government capacity to close accountability gaps and thus prevent future crises of similar scale in this or other jurisdictions are recommended.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is one of the world's largest funders of global health programs. Set up in 2002, the Global Fund was meant to implement a new model of financing health aid, under which it would eschew the usual donor bureaucracy and red tape, and simply provide financing to countries that needed support for expanded health programs. While much has been accomplished, the Fund's reliance on country-based consortia has not created incentives for maximizing what has come to be called \"value for money\" that is, the maximum health benefit for the money available. This report identifies four domains within the Global Fund's grant cycle where health for the money can be improved: allocation, contracts, costs and spending, and verification. Decisions in each domain directly affect the availability and quality of services provided to people at-risk or suffering from disease, and ultimately the Global Fund's ability to reduce suffering and save lives.

The possibilities for constructing environmentally sustainable public transit infrastructure in the US are strongly shaped by the logic and policies of neoliberalism. In brief, neoliberal ideology advocates for the extension of market-based principles in the arena of the state in order to \"liberate\" both public services from so-called state inefficiencies and capital \"squandered\" by taxation that could be more profitably deployed by private actors. Accordingly, neoliberal governance frameworks promote fiscal austerity and market discipline over the state. The ways in which neoliberal policies shape public transit infrastructure investment today will define the environmental and political constraints future generations will have to confront in their efforts to build a more environmentally sustainable and efficient urban landscape. State support for public transportation dovetailed with the wider Keynesian project to build a social welfare state. Before the 1950s, the majority of transit systems in the US were privately owned and operated.