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Reviewing the development of budgeting in America in the twentieth century, this article assesses where public budgeting is as it approaches the twenty-first century. Five periods are identified in American budgeting, drawing upon the work of Schick and Rubin: control, management, planning, prioritization and accountability. Budgeting in the 1990s is described as characterized by accountability and a “new” performance budgeting emphasis. The authors argue that the budget reform movement is still alive and well in American government, with local governments once more leading the way.

Changing political landscape often renews the call for dramatic changes to federal community and economic development grant-in-aid programs. The most dramatic proposal in recent years was President Bush’s 2006 call to consolidate federal assistance programs for communities into a new block grant known as the Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative (SACI). This conceptual study reviews key characteristics of intergovernmental transfers including grant types, features, changes in the intergovernmental fiscal environment, the fungibility/flypaper debate, and the symmetry/asymmetry response of governments to declining intergovernmental revenue. The effects of intergovernmental transfers on state and local governments are connected to differences in grant design features. Potential fallout from proposed or similar changes to grant structure is discussed using the SACI proposal as an example.

An attempt will be made to shed light on the course and pattern of the decentralization process by analyzing the historical development of local government and the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020 in Albania and the factors that have been shaping it. The scope is to understand the impact of the reform elements on the subnational governments and in general their overall impact on the government. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the existing literature for Albania and at offering some insights on the administrative-territorial reform. Furthermore, it will contribute to the current debate on fiscal decentralization in South Eastern European (SEE) countries and the public management model implemented after the last reforms.

The first section analyzes the historical development of local government reforms from the 1990s to today and will help to identify if there is instrumentalism advocacy. The second section explains the determinants of the local government’s fiscal autonomy in Albania of the period from 2003 to 2016. Three indicators are used as proxies for fiscal decentralization: the proportion of subnational expenditure over national expenditure, of total subnational revenues over total revenues of central government and the indicator of own subnational revenues over total revenues of the central government. The data from the budget and the revised budgets are then compared.

Despite Albania’s commitment to decentralize its government functions, there is still work to do. The territorial and administrative reform has not generated the expected results. Almost 90 percent of the revenues still come from the central government’s unconditional transfers. Therefore, the Albanian Government should build capacities and skills, and train the employees of each level of government that currently benefit from international assistance.

The analysis represents a single case study on the territorial-administrative reform in Albania. Its implementation started in 2015 and it is probably too early to discuss outcomes. However, it might be useful to analyze the first results after a two-and-a-half-year period of implementation of reforms. Despite contributing to the existing gap in the literature, additional research will be necessary to better understand the decentralization process not only in Albania, but in all SEE countries.

It is necessary to first understand the lack of initial output, as well as the various challenges faced, in order to take the corrective measures on time.

This paper discusses in detail the reform adopted and the progress made by the Albanian local government units. The reform attempts to develop better relationships between the central and local governments and hence improve their service delivery, transparency and accountability. This paper is the first one that is attempting to analyze the initial output of the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020.

GASB Statement No. 34 required state and local governments to report information regarding general infrastructure in financial statements, to improve understanding of the organization's investments in capital assets. Some proponents suggested that this information would affect management practices and potentially resource allocation decisions, but initial survey data found limited evidence of effects. We use dynamic panel analysis covering 47 states from 1995 to 2009 to explore whether implementation of GASB 34 affected state highway capital and maintenance spending. We find evidence of increased capital spending, but no statistically significant change in maintenance expenditures. The choice of reporting method was not found to affect spending outcomes.

Little is known about the strategies used by state courts during the appropriations process. This article examines court budgetary practices in the state of Oklahoma. It reveals how court funding works in Oklahoma, what strategies are used by the state courts, and which factors are most important in determining the success of the courts in getting the funds they need. It shows that the judiciary is not necessarily at the mercy of the other branches of government when seeking resources. The findings provide the first glimpse at court budgeting strategies and determinants of these strategies’ success at the state level.

In Louisiana's coastal communities with traditions of heavy dependence on the oil industry, cycles of industrial uncertainty have become routine, eliciting a set of coping responses from local government and community institutions. However, recent industrial restructuring within the context of globalization, accompanied by shifts in the climate of federal and state policy, have significantly disrupted traditional support mechanisms and threatened their survival. This article explores the realities that two South Louisiana communities impacted by the offshore oil industry face at the close of the 20th century, with a focus on health service institutions. It also explores community efforts in managing local housing and workforce preparation issues.

Over a decade ago, Bretschneider and Gorr proposed two directions for future research in government forecasting: one was to extend the research on developing and evaluating alternative forecasting methods and the other, to look at forecasting as a human activity and examine how organizational factors affect forecasting. What has happened since then? To see partially what has been done and what remains to be done, this paper provides a review of the literature on government revenue forecasting with a primary focus on the state level and identifies areas for future research in government revenue forecasting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore inter-organizational interactions that might result in prolonged decoupling between central governments' ideas and local governments' practices during the reform of an institutional field (i.e. healthcare).

The paper is based on a qualitative study of the centrally directed reform of the healthcare financing system in Ukraine and focusses on practices and reform ideas from 1991 to 2016.

The findings show that, for more than 25 years, local governments, as providers of healthcare services, faced two major problems associated with drawbacks of the healthcare financial system: line-item budgeting and fragmentation of healthcare funds. Over 25 years, central government's attempts to reform the healthcare financing system did not comprehensively or systematically address the stated problems. The reformers' ideas seemed to focus on creating reform agendas and issuing new laws, instead of paying attention to challenges in local practices.

This article has two main points that are relevant for practitioners. First, it calls for greater involvement from local actors during all stages of public sector reforms, in order to ensure the relevance of developed reform strategies. Second, it points to potential challenges that central governments may face when conducting healthcare financing system reforms in transitional economies.

The paper's contribution is twofold: it outlines reasons for problematic implementation of healthcare financing system reform in Ukraine and explains them through a “reverse decoupling” concept.

This paper investigates the impact of state governments’ “Tax and Expenditure Limits” (TELs) on their tax progressivity and redistributive spending. A two stage least squares (2SLS) regression model of data covering 1985-2007, was employed to allow for simultaneity in the relationships between intergovernmental transfer, tax progressivity, expenditure progressivity, and labor mobility. This model tested whether high- or low income residents had paid for and benefited from these fiscal institutions. As a result we find that TELs significantly decrease tax progressivity and increase poverty rate. These two policy effects should be explicitly accounted for in the design or revision of TELs.

This paper presents a model of government saving in order to examine several questions regarding the personal and professional saving preferences or inclinations of a national sample of local government finance managers. First, is personal propensity to save related to a preference for local government saving? Second, is personal propensity to spend related to the finance managers' opinions about their local government's spending? Third, what are the determinants of finance managers' propensity to save or spend, both personally and for their local government? Results confirm that finance managers have a personal propensity to save and a positive view toward local government saving. The opposite, propensity to spend, is also influenced by personal preference. Determinants of these behaviors are explored.