Publications

Academic Publications

Local Governments, Pandemic Aid, and Community Violence Intervention

Amanda Kass and Philip Rocco

Expenditures on police departments account for significant portions of local government budgets in the United States. Yet activism on police reform and changing views on the causes of violence have called into question law enforcement’s role in public safety. While intergovernmental transfers have historically supported traditional policing, the American Rescue Plan Act’s Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (CSLFRF) affords cities the opportunity to disrupt the status quo by providing them with the federal funds and flexibility to reshape their public safety policies around Community Violence Interventions (CVIs). This article examines how 13 cities that participated in a White House convened collaborative used CSLFRF aid to support CVIs. Our analysis reveals significant variation in how these cities in allocated CSLFRF dollars to CVI programs, suggesting that the combination of federal aid and White House encouragement has thus far led to incremental policy changes, whose durability remains an open question.

March 25, 2024

Using National Data Sources to Compare Subnational Policies: Insights from the American Rescue Plan Act

Philip Rocco and Amanda Kass

In federal systems, central governments invariably maintain data on the fiscal activity of subnational jurisdictions. While these datasets have much to offer comparative policy analysts, they can also create misleading impressions of reality. This is in part because official datasets render invisible the politics that shapes subnational governments’ fiscal choices. Using these datasets, the article argues, requires researchers to understand the technical and political considerations that inform their design. A discussion of the authors’ research on how local governments in the United States are using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to support novel Community Violence Interventions (CVIs) illustrates the argument.

March 19, 2024

Media Publications