Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded in Interlocal Agreements

• Author: Jesseca E. Short,Simon A. Andrew,Sudha Arlikatti,Kyujin Jung
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12312

Simon A. Andrew is associate professor

of public administration and PhD program

coordinator at the University of North Texas. He

earned his doctorate in public administration

and policy from Florida State University.

His research has appeared in American

Review of Public Administration, Public

Management Review, Natural Hazards

Review, Disasters, Urban Affairs Review,

and Urban Studies. He performs National

Science Foundation–funded research to study

organizational resiliency in Thailand and cur-

rently studies interorganizational collaboration,

disaster recovery and response, and issues

related to metropolitan governance.

E-mail: sandrew@unt.edu

Jesseca E. Short is a doctoral student in

the Department of Public Administration at

the University of North Texas. Within public

administration study, her area of concentration

is f‌i nancial management. Her research interests

include local government budgeting, f‌i nancial

resiliency, collaborative governance, and social

network analysis.

E-mail: jessecashort@gmail.com

Sudha Arlikatti is associate professor and

coordinator of the Emergency Administration

and Planning program in the Department of

Public Administration at the University of North

Texas. She earned her doctorate in urban and

regional science from Texas A&M University. Her

research interests include risk communication

and protective action decision making, disaster

response, organizational resiliency, and disaster

sheltering and long-term housing recovery.

She is currently working on a National Science

Foundation–funded project to study the 2013

f‌l ash f‌l oods in North India.

E-mail: sudha.arlikatti@unt.edu

Kyujin Jung is a doctoral candidate in

the Department of Public Administration at

the University of North Texas. His research

focuses on interorganizational arrangements,

emergency management, and social network

analysis. He is recipient of a Quick Response

Research Grant funded by the Natural Hazards

Center and the Donald C. and Alice M. Stone

Award for Best Graduate Student Paper from

the American Society for Public Administration’s

Section on Intergovernmental Administration

and Management.

E-mail: jkyujin@gmail.com

Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded in Interlocal Agreements 401

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 3, pp. 401–410. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12312.

Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision

of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded

in Interlocal Agreements

Simon A. Andrew

Jesseca E. Short

Kyujin Jung

Sudha Arlikatti

University of North Texas

Abstract:  is article examines how monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) are associated

with vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations.  e authors hypothesize that ILAs established by local gov-

ernments with higher-level governments are likely to rely on a clearly specif‌i ed set of rules to establish an administrative

structure, whereas ILAs established by local governments with other local governments rely on associational benef‌i ts to

ensure that policy preferences are aligned across multiple political boundaries.  e article examines ILAs established

by small town, county, and municipal governments in Denton County, Texas, for the provision of emergency medi-

cal, police, and f‌i re services. Findings show that more than half of the ILAs specif‌i ed a f‌i nancial reporting system, but

an almost equal percentage did not contain features requiring f‌i nancial records to be available for audit by a third

party. Quadratic assignment procedure correlation analysis conf‌i rmed the presence of cross-monitoring mechanisms and

showed that the patterns of ILAs tend to cluster around a geographic space.

Practitioner Points

• Monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) matter, highlighting the important

managerial functions played by frontline of‌f‌i cers drafting ILAs.

•  e rules embedded in ILAs are important not only for encouraging intergovernmental cooperation but also

for reducing the risks associated with contract failures.

• With the increasing number of ILAs, local government of‌f‌i cials need to consider various types of ILAs that

are suitable to meet jurisdictional interests and policy preferences.

Interlocal agreements (ILAs)—a term that best

describes agreements between city and city or city

and county governments—are a vital part of local

governments’ strategies to produce and provide services

on behalf of, or jointly with, other jurisdictions. In

the context of fragmented metropolitan governance,

ILAs allow municipal governments to share personnel

and pool resources with other governmental entities,

thus enabling them to cut costs and take advantage of

economies of scale in the production and provision of

public services (ACIR 1985; Collins 2006; Hirlinger

and Morgan 1991; Morton, Chen, and Morse 2008).

 e agreements def‌i ning a form of special relations

developed by local of‌f‌i cials over time can also produce

intangible benef‌i ts such as social norms, trust, and pro-

fessionalism (Andrew 2009a; Frederickson, Johnson,

and Wood 2004; Wukich 2014).  ey are similar to

what Brito refers to as “institutional relationships”

resulting from “a process of institutional aggregation of

a range of dispersed and fragmented interests into an

expected coherent and unif‌i ed action” (2001, 157).

 e purpose of this article is to understand how the

choices of specif‌i c monitoring mechanisms included in

ILAs are inf‌l uenced by whom local governments enter

into agreements with. More specif‌i cally, when local

governments enter into agreements with county gov-

ernments or other local governments, are they likely

to formalize such relationships by including a spe-

cif‌i c set of written rules?  is question is particularly

relevant to the literature on contract management and

governance. From the perspective of the institutional

collective action framework, an ILA is one of many

institutional arrangements purposely designed by

local governments to coordinate regional activities and

encourage cooperation. To say that ILAs should induce

interjurisdictional cooperation, however, implies

a need to understand the monitoring mechanisms

embedded in ILAs and what those rules should look

like (Feiock 2013; Feiock and Scholz 2010).

Although most scholars would agree that ILAs are a

fundamental dimension of contract management, few

have examined the monitoring mechanisms embedded

in formalized agreements and how those mechanisms

inf‌l uence the nature of intergovernmental coordina-

tion and cooperation. Studies examining contract

clauses that are crafted by government agencies with