Do Small Local Governments Fare Well? A Survey of Villages in New York

• Author: Marc Holzer,Pengju Zhang
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074019864184
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074019864184

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(1) 77 –91

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074019864184

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Article

Introduction

Local general-purpose governments have encountered a

variety of governance challenges, and this condition has

drawn wide attention from scholars and practitioners in the

United States. Osborne and Hutchinson (2004), for example,

argue that many localities will live with a “permanent fiscal

crisis,” and Afonso (2013) finds that 12.3% of county gov-

ernments have not been able to provide services at a respon-

sible level since the Great Recession, based on a survey of

local governments in California and Georgia.

The existing studies, however, primarily concentrate

either on counties or on large central cities.1 Although there

are case studies examining the plight of small towns or small

legacy cities (Hollingsworth & Goebel, 2017; Mattson, 1990,

2014, 2017; Reed, 1988; Wolensky & Enright, 1991), schol-

ars rarely focus on villages. Compared with other layers of

local governments, villages are possibly subject to a compli-

cated intergovernmental relationship, more direct public

scrutiny, and more fiscal constraints due to a relatively

smaller revenue base.

In addition, the literature rarely discusses the organiza-

tional vulnerability of village government, with the excep-

tion of some pioneering legal studies by Anderson (2012a,

2012b, 2015). Incorporated villages exist in more than one

third of states,2 and village governments typically embody

the spirit of local autonomy as they are small enough to

enable people to conveniently exercise democracy by par-

ticipating in elections and public meetings. A common per-

ception is that villages, like other local general-purpose

governments, are stable or immortal, which is distinguished

from the dramatic decrease of school districts (Brasington,

2004; Duncombe & Yinger, 2007; Duncombe, Yinger, &

Zhang, 2016; Gordon & Knight, 2008, 2009) and the rapid

growth of special districts in the United States (Bunch, 1991;

Burns, 1994; Foster, 1997; Zhang, 2018). This common per-

ception is being challenged by the emerging and cautionary

trend that many localities have been experiencing decline or

death. In New York, a recent survey of local governments

shows 10% and 32% of villages subjectively rank their fiscal

stress as “significant” and “moderate,” respectively (Aldag,

Warner, & Kim, 2017).3 Furthermore, since 2008, more than

50 villages, which is approximately 10% of all villages in

total in New York, have voted to explore dissolving their gov-

ernments through the referendum process. Consequently, 22

of them have, as of now, succeeded (see Table 1). New York

is not alone. In Nebraska, more than 40 townships have disin-

corporated since 2000, and more than 10 municipal disincor-

poration cases have occurred in Missouri and Oklahoma

during the same period, based on the Boundary and

Annexation Survey (BAS) by the Census Bureau. Nationwide,

at least 373 municipal governments have dissolved between

864184ARPXXX10.1177/0275074019864184The American Review of Public AdministrationZhang and Holzer

research-article2019

1Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

2Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Pengju Zhang, Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs and

Administration, Rutgers University, Newark, 111 Washington Street, CPS

322, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: pengju.zhang@rutgers.edu

Do Small Local Governments Fare Well?

A Survey of Villages in New York

Pengju Zhang1 and Marc Holzer2

Abstract

Public administration studies have not adequately discussed governance challenges for small local governments. Given

that more than 10% of villages have, unprecedentedly, voted on dissolution in New York over the past 10 years, this

article exclusively and comprehensively investigates how well villages are faring in New York. Using a representative

survey of village governments, coupled with a rich secondary data set, it finds institutional and political tensions between

villages and their underlying town(s). It also suggests intergovernmental fiscal factors have threatened the organizational

and fiscal health of some village governments. In addition, villages have extensively established service-sharing mechanisms

with town(s) to mitigate fiscal stress. The majority of village officials remain skeptical about dissolution as an effective

approach to cost savings.

Keywords

village government, fiscal stress, organizational decline, village dissolution, shared services, consolidation