A Bad Time for Disaster
| Author | David E. A. Johnson,Robert L. Skertich,Louise K. Comfort |
| DOI | 10.1177/0095399712451884 |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
84Skertich et al.Administration & Society
© 2012 SAGE Publications
Article
Administration & Society
45(2) 145 –166
A Bad Time for
© 2012 SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/0095399712451884
Disaster: Economic
aas.sagepub.com
Stress and Disaster
Resilience
Robert L. Skertich1, David E. A. Johnson2, and
Louise K. Comfort3
Abstract
Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to bal-
ance obligations to protect their communities. As populations change and
hazards expand, they confront a mounting number of threats while trying
to maintain basic services. This article examines demands and constraints
that are placed on government agencies in providing public safety and public
health services. The authors recommend building interagency cooperation
to maximize the utility of existing staff and resources. These distributed sys-
tems increase the flexibility and resilience of the community as well as the
cooperating organizations. It is a paradigm shift from organization-centric
thinking toward a coordinated effort to build resilience for the whole com-
munity.
Keywords
economic stress, disaster resilience, interagency cooperation
1Point Park University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
2Missouri State University, Springfield, USA
3University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Corresponding Author:
David E. A. Johnson, Missouri State University, 901 S National Ave., Springfield, MO 65897, USA.
Email: davideajohnson@missouristate.edu
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Administration & Society 45(2)
Tension Between Increasing Demand for
Services and Declining Resources
Local governments face a tightening bind in their struggle to balance legal
obligations to protect their communities with the constraints of declining
resources under economic conditions of fiscal stress. As populations change
and hazards expand in scope and number in risk-prone communities, local
governments confront a mounting number of threats under conditions of
aging infrastructure, cutbacks in personnel, and a lack of funds to support
training or update procedures while maintaining basic services. It is a clas-
sic policy problem, as measures intended to manage declining resources for
daily services limit the reserves of personnel and resources needed to miti-
gate the risk of extreme events. Even attempts to recruit and train concerned
citizens, while successful in some locations, is being revisited. With limited
reserves, even modest hazards can escalate into major disasters, if
unchecked by timely, informed, effective action. Tightening this bind is the
legal requirement for local governments to balance their budgets on an
annual basis. Local governments face an uncompromising dilemma: They
either cut services to balance their budgets and risk increasing the vulnera-
bility of their communities to major disaster or adapt new modes of opera-
tion that allow them to engage a broader range of partners and new modes
of collaboration in protecting their communities.
Four principal factors contribute to this dilemma for local governments:
(a) legal requirements for provision of public safety and public health ser-
vices to their communities, (b) shrinking economic resources under fiscal
stress, (c) cutbacks in personnel required to balance municipal budgets, and
(d) increasing demand for services due to aging infrastructure and increasing
numbers of vulnerable people living in regions of risk. While this interacting
set of conditions characterizes many, if not most, of the 84,000 local govern-
ments in the United States, it is illustrative to examine this problem of declin-
ing resources, but increasing demand in the delivery of emergency and public
health services, using the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a case study.
Legal Requirements for Public Safety and Public Health
In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, public agencies have limited options
to manage this tension of increasing demand but declining resources under
legally mandated requirements. For example, the establishment of police, fire,
and emergency medical services (EMS) is authorized by the various municipal
codes as a local option. Home rule charters may include specific authorization
for these services or leave it to the discretion of the legislative body. Although
Skertich et al.
147
many municipalities provide police protection through their own departments,
contracted services, or intergovernmental compact, approximately 27% of the
state’s population (87% of the landmass) relies on patrol and response services
of the Pennsylvania State Police (Pennsylvania Governor’s Budget Office,
2010). The provision of fire services is largely through volunteer organiza-
tions, supported at least minimally by the municipality with required workers’
compensation insurance. EMS can be provided directly by the municipality
within the police or fire departments, a “third service,” volunteer organizations,
municipal authorities, or private companies.
The requirement for local emergency management coordinators (LEMC)
and emergency operations plans (EOP) is addressed in the Emergency
Management Code (Pennsylvania’s Emergency Management Services Code,
1978). The only options available to the municipality are either to provide
their own coordinator or to share services through an intergovernmental
cooperation agreement.
The responsibility for public health follows two models in Pennsylvania.
The Local Health Administration Law of 1951 (Local Health Administration
Law, 1951) authorized county and municipal health departments (CMHD) to
provide a minimum set of public health services, funded by state grants. The
required services include the following:
• Communicable disease control, including tuberculosis and venereal
disease control
• Public health laboratory services
• Public health education
• Environmental health services
• Public health statistics
• Maternal and child health services
• Public health nursing services
• Chronic disease control
Currently, there are six county and four municipal health departments in
Pennsylvania. The required services in areas without a CMHD are provided
by state agencies. Regardless of CMHD status, there are several areas for
which the state department of health (Pennsylvania Department of Health
[PADOH]) retains responsibility, including hospital and EMS regulation.
EMS regulation is administered by regional PADOH contracted nonprofit
agencies, which includes ambulance licensure inspections and administration
of personnel certification examinations. In areas not covered by a CMHD,
other state agencies exercise authority, such as food safety inspection ser-
vices of the Department of Agriculture.
148
Administration & Society 45(2)
In larger emergencies or disasters, the Emergency Management Code per-
mits counties and the state to provide material and personnel assistance to an
affected municipality. The code does not permit the county or state to reim-
burse municipalities for response costs. Response costs (emergency protec-
tive measures) and repair of qualified municipal and private nonprofit
facilities are permitted under a Presidential Declaration of Major Disaster
under the Stafford Act (Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency
Assistance Act, 1988). Yet, the threshold of loss required to receive a Stafford
declaration is high, leaving the municipality to rely on insurance, cost con-
trol, or tax increases to pay for the response costs.
Land-use planning also affects public safety and involves primarily local
government. Land-use planners and planning commissions can limit build-
ings to areas outside hazardous areas, but the drive to spur economic develop-
ment in regions seeking to create jobs may pressure local commissions to
permit development in hazardous areas or permit variances that might other-
wise be denied. These commissions can also require the use of mitigation
techniques to reduce risk (Burby et al., 1999), but these techniques can be
cost prohibitive in constrained economic environments. Planners have dis-
cretion in the use of management tools (Stevens, 2010), which can be valu-
able aids in a holistic mitigation effort. The added irony, when planning
efforts are circumvented, is that the creation of increased risk from hazardous
conditions places additional demands on the traditional public safety and
public health agencies. The 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania (n.d.), an organi-
zation that supports local government, states that
without major changes in the structures and laws that govern munici-
palities and the way they are financed, and unless communities are
empowered to work more closely together, their fiscal and physical
integrity is at grave risk, and the state’s economy will continue to strug-
gle in the coming decades. (Available from http://10000friends.org/)
On this basis, the group is advocating the integration of collaborative man-
agement for scarce resources into their planning process to reduce shared
economic and physical risk.
Shrinking Economic Resources Under Fiscal Stress
In further constraint, municipal budgets must be balanced within a tight
economy. Pennsylvania’s municipalities, counties, and school districts rely
largely on real estate taxes, which are limited by law, political pressures, and
Skertich et al.
149
practicality. The municipal services are caught between those required by the
state and those desired by the residents, and sometimes public safety loses.
For example, in August, 2010, the City of...
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