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Inflation and federal monetary efforts to control it with interest rate hikes have very real and overwhelmingly negative consequences on US local governments following the onset of COVID-19. This study explores the post-pandemic inflationary environment of US local governments; examines the impacts of inflation and high interest rates on local government revenue, operating costs, capital costs, and debt service; reviews local government inflation management strategies, including the use of intergovernmental revenue; and assesses ongoing threats to local government financial health and financial resilience.

This study uses trend and literature analysis to comment on current issues local governments face.

The study finds that the growth of property values and resulting stability of property tax revenue has been important to local government revenues; that local governments bear very real burdens as operating and capital costs increase; and that the combination of high inflation and interest rates affects local government debt issuance by negatively affecting credit quality and interest costs, leading to municipal market contraction. Local governments have benefitted tremendously from intergovernmental revenue, but would be ill-advised to rely on it.

Vulnerabilities owing from revenue mismatch with the economy; inadequate affordable housing, inequality, and social issues; a changing workforce and tight labor market; climate change; and federal fiscal contraction—all of which are exacerbated by high inflation and interest rates—require local governments to act strategically, boldly and collaboratively to achieve fiscal health and financial resilience, and to realize positive returns of investments in people and capital.

This work is unique in addressing the post-pandemic impact of inflation and interest rates on local governments.

The elderly service industry is emerging in China. The Chinese government introduced a series of policies to guide elderly service enterprises to improve their service quality. This study explores novel differentiated subsidy strategies that not only promote the improvement of service quality in elderly service enterprises but also alleviate the financial burden on the government.

Evolutionary game and Hotelling models are employed to investigate this issue. First, a Hotelling model that considers consumer word-of-mouth preferences is established. Subsequently, an evolutionary game model between local governments and enterprises is constructed, and the evolutionary stable strategies of both parties are analyzed. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted.

The findings indicate that local government decisions have a significant influence on the behavior of elderly service enterprises. Increasing the proportion of local governments opting for subsidy strategies helps incentivize elderly service enterprises to improve their service quality. Furthermore, providing differentiated subsidies based on the preferences of the customer base of elderly service enterprises can encourage service quality improvement while reducing government expenditure. The findings offer valuable insights into the design of government subsidy policies.

Compared with previous research, this study examines the role of consumer preferences in a differentiated subsidy policy. This enriches the authors’ understanding of the field by incorporating neglected aspects of consumer preferences in the context of the emerging elderly service industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the discrepancies between the services provided by municipalities through e-Government portals and the services sought by residents in the context of smart cities.

This research investigates the information and services delivered by municipalities via e-Government portals and the services that residents wish to access through these portals. A mind map representation of ideas from 707 participants is used to visually illustrate the proposed e-Government portal structure based on user recommendations.

The findings reveal that existing e-Government portals fall short in offering a comprehensive range of e-services desired by residents. The results highlight the need for municipal e-Government websites to grant residents access to a diverse array of services and information. It is crucial to note that the specific services may fluctuate over time and between cities, reflecting the evolving needs of residents and the capabilities of municipalities.

This study is original in its focus on bridging the gap between existing e-Government portals and residents’ preferences, using a mind map representation to visually illustrate the proposed portal structure based on user recommendations. The research emphasizes the importance of considering residents’ needs in terms of services and functionalities and adapting websites accordingly.

The chapter aims to evaluate the efficacy of stakeholder participation in the solid waste management system of Mauritius in view of providing a possible mechanism to attain the goals of a sustainable waste management framework.

The study employs qualitative indicators, namely, User Inclusivity and Producer Inclusivity of the Wasteaware Benchmark Indicators. Secondary data are used to conduct a critical and comprehensive analysis of the sub-indicators falling under each of the two main indicators to determine the overall compliance level with respect to stakeholder engagement of the waste management sector of Mauritius.

The results of the study show a LOW/MEDIUM compliance level for both User Inclusivity and Provider Inclusivity indicators, which indicates that improvement is required in the stakeholder engagement mechanism in Mauritius. The main weaknesses identified comprise of lack of an adequate legal framework with clear definition of waste types with regards to segregation, especially for non-hazardous wastes, low efficiency of sustainable waste management awareness campaigns and lack of inclusion of the informal sector. The main strengths identified consist of a proper bidding mechanism in place and a good level of equity in the provision of waste management services with respect to comingled waste collection. Suggested improvement areas include a revamping of the existing legal framework related to waste management to cater for higher inclusivity of all stakeholders together with including sustainable waste management topics in the formal education curriculum.

The User Inclusivity and Producer Inclusivity indicators were previously applied only to cities to measure the level of stakeholder participation, but this study has demonstrated that these indicators can also be adopted on a nation-wide level to evaluate stakeholder engagement. The use of these indicators together with secondary data presents a less time-consuming method to assess stakeholder participation in the waste sector, which can be particularly useful for Small Island Developing States.

This paper explores how fire and rescue services in England responded to the challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the form and nature of fire and rescue services’ collaborations with the ambulance, police and other services and how effective their emergency planning arrangements prepared them for the pandemic.

The authors briefly set out the background to the emergency services response to recent events of national significance in the UK and North America, focussing on the collaborative aspects of the emergency services response. The authors then examine three sets of secondary sources, namely documents specifically related to Fire and Rescue Services’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.

All three investigations found that the pandemic had provided an opportunity for issues relating to planning and collaboration to be re-examined and for the emergence of new innovations (both technological and organisational) to provide new responses and solutions. Although the Inspectorate found that the services had generally responded well, it controversially criticised the role of the Fire Brigades Union in the national and local response to the pandemic.

The research is situationally bound to England although there may be transferable lessons to other services and jurisdictions.

Potential future improvements are identified at national and local levels for policy and for the operational response to widespread and long-term emergencies.

England has had very few contemporary public health emergencies on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic; this research presents an important opportunity for seeking to understand what is working well and where improvements are required to improve both the local and national response in relation to such a complex and dynamic environment.

Although green logistics has become a new focus of cooperation between government and enterprises under environmental constraints, how local governments formulate subsidy policies to effectively guide the green transformation of regional logistics and how to facilitate the reasonable cost-sharing are rather critical. This paper will deeply explore the dynamic process of the tripartite participation (government, platform, and logistics enterprises) in the selection of regional green logistics strategy, and reveal the evolutionary game relationship of the three parties.

To explore the dynamics involving the government, platform and logistics enterprises for the green logistic transformation, and reveal the evolutionary gaming among the three parties, based on the bounded rationality premise, this study constructs the tripartite asymmetric evolutionary game models, uses the stability theorem of differential equation to explore the evolution and stability strategy of the system in different cases and explicates the paths of influence on the tripartite behaviors via simulations.

Results of this study indicate that there exist stable equilibrium strategies among the three parties regarding the regional green logistics, and they are affected by different factors. The government's subsidy, subsidy intensity and the platform's cost-sharing proportion can generate positive effects, but the latter two can also impact negatively beyond the effective ranges. The findings provide a theoretical basis for local governments, platforms and logistics enterprises to formulate justifiable subsidy intensity and determine reasonable sharing proportion.

Firstly, considering the significant relevance of local government, it is included in the evolution model, and the tripartite game (among government, platform and enterprises) is explored; Secondly, by comparing the equilibrium results under different game conditions, this paper analyzes the evolution of each party's game strategy to achieve the optimal return under bounded rationality and the important factors determining the strategic selection; Finally, the key factor of platform cost sharing is involved, and to what extent the change of platform cost sharing ratio will influence the systematic stability is explored.

Deterioration of integrity is featured in public service across the globe, including Tanzania. Local government authorities (LGAs) are among the areas where such practices have been reported. However, factors compromising integrity in LGAs receives less attention from the literature. Citing 19 LGAs from Tanzania, this study aims to examine contributes to this debate.

A sequential explanatory research design was applied. Data were collected from 54 respondents through survey questionnaires, interviews and a documentary review. The study was guided by Hoekstra theoretical framework for assessing integrity practices in LGAs.

The findings revealed that maintaining integrity in Tanzania's LGAs is still challenging. Poor institutionalization processes, institutional unpreparedness, insufficient integrity policy execution and being less informed of moral development of recruited public servants are said to compromise integrity in Tanzania LGAs. This qualifies to conclude that institutional pathologies and moral history of public servants are the major factors contributing to integrity deterioration in Tanzania LGAs. This has resulted in subpar service delivery and the waste of public funds.

This study confined itself to Tanzania LGAs. More studies could be conducted to LGAs in other countries struggling with the same problem. On the same ground, moral development should be studied more to ensure that the public service receives ethical public servants in the future.

The theoretical framework for assessing integrity systems in LGAs as proposed by Hoekstra (2022) could be applied by other countries struggling with the same challenge.

LGAs must implement an integrity-based self-reflection technique that will allow them to assess their current condition and come up with solutions. Furthermore, institutional policies must be strengthened to govern ethical behavior in LGAs.

This study comparatively examines the collaborative policy mechanisms for interlocal cooperation (ILC) utilized by municipal managers in Nebraska, USA, and Norway. The research addresses differences in ILC, factors of national setting and implications for ILC management in public service delivery.

Over a seven-year period, the researchers collected data from 16 communities in the two countries to observe perceptions and usages of ILC. Using a policy tools theoretical framework, the authors apply a typology of collaborative mechanisms for comparative analysis.

The findings suggest that institutional orientations in the USA and Norwegian systems of government affect managerial approaches to collaborative service delivery, namely the operationalization of local governments within federal and unitary structures may influence perceptions toward the formality and specificity of ILC policy mechanisms.

This study offers further understanding of ILC mechanisms for public sector management. Theoretical and practical implications of ILC in a comparative international context of governmental systems for collaboration are explored.

This study aimed to examine the adoption of consortium blockchain technology to ensure interoperability for the transparency of budgetary control in Ghanaian local government.

This study is based on the design science research (DSR) observational technique for developing a consortium blockchain budgetary control system for Ghana's local government.

The study resulted in the design of a consortium blockchain monitoring and evaluation system to set up a mechanism to monitor various budget projects, processes and transactions for Ghana's local government. The findings also proved Ghana is ideally positioned to gain an advantage from designed artefacts such as ours, given its digital financial service (DFS) policy. In addition, the evaluation of the designed artefact proves there will be a positive impact on budgetary processes by addressing transparency concerns; however, the success of this concern depends on how the local government organisation embraces the artefact.

The study sheds light on budget monitoring and evaluation tied to peer-to-peer (P2P) participation in the public sector via an advanced administrative digitalised networking and communication algorithm (A Distributed Ledger Technology - blockchain). The difference between the designed artefact and the traditional M&E system is argued. The study is limited by the paradoxes and inefficiencies of the integration of blockchain into the Ghanaian local government but, at the same time, presents a high level of certainty and possibility.

The proposed artefact has presented relevance because it is a new solution to existing concerns like trust, transparency, accountability and compliance, thereby improving local government budget administration.

The study has offered unique and new methods, guidelines and designs for tracking various budget projects and processes beyond the conventional technology-driven approach via DSR, exhibiting a unique solution for solving budget transparency, trust, accountability, compliance and data accessibility concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the mediating role of local government delivery system (here after delivery system) in the relationship between local governance (hereafter, governance) and financial distress of local governments in Uganda.

This study is correlational and cross-sectional. It uses a questionnaire survey on a sample of 109 local governments (districts) of Uganda. The data are analysed using SPSS, partial least squares structural equation modelling and Jose’s MedGraph.

Results indicate that government delivery system mediates the relationship between governance and financial distress. Delivery system in terms of capacity development and community participation causes positive variances in local government’s financial distress. Also, governance in terms of political clientelism significantly contributes to financial distress more than oversight mechanisms and audit quality. The study finds that delivery system causes more variance in financial distress than governance.

This study applies the new public management and network governance theory and tests the efficacy of delivery system and governance on financial distress in one-go and succeeded in explaining financial distress of local government using Uganda as the setting; the authors join previous scholars that root for multi-theoretical approaches. Also, this study’s design has allowed for the consideration of more than simply the main effects of governance and delivery systems by exploring the mediating role of delivery systems in the link between governance and financial distress. As such, the authors may now have a more accurate and detailed description of the relationships between governance, delivery system and local government financial distress.