Local government managers are on the frontlines of climate change: Are they ready?

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Aaron Deslatte,Michael D. Siciliano,Rachel M. Krause
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13726

VIEWPOINT

Local government managers are on the frontlines of climate

change: Are they ready?

Aaron Deslatte

1

| Michael D. Siciliano

2

| Rachel M. Krause

3

1

O’Neill School of Public and Environmnental

Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington,

Indiana, USA

2

Department of Public Policy, Management, and

Analytics, University of Illinois at Chicago,

Chicago, Illinois, USA

3

School of Public Affairs and Administration,

University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

Correspondence

Aaron Deslatte, O’Neill School of Public and

Environmnental Affairs, Indiana University, 1315

E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1701,

USA.

Email: adeslatt@iu.edu

Abstract

State and local governments in the United States are the implementation agents for

a vast swath of federal policies. As the country embarks on an unprecedented foray

into fiscal federalism to combat climate change, we face a stark reality: many local

governments are not ready. Drawing from recent data and evidence on local sus-

tainability activities, we argue policy makers and managers at all levels of gover-

nance need to apply the lessons learned over the last two decades of subnational

climate efforts. For local government managers working in the 21st century, climate

change will likely be a defining social dilemma of their lifetimes. After years of inac-

tion, the United States has taken a major step in trying to meet its greenhouse-gas

mitigation pledges.But implementation requires understandingboth the opportuni-

ties and opportunity costs posed by such generational investments.

Evidence for practice

1. The vast majority of U.S. municipal governments lack the technical competen-

cies and capacity to fully take advantage of climate funding from the 2021

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

2. Federal and state grantor agencies in the United States should streamline

and/or simplify financial mechanisms for disbursing recent climate investments

to local and tribal governments.

3. Financial matching requirements should be reduced and deadlines extended

to facilitate applications from small communities.

4. Collaborative, capacity-building efforts for planning and implementation, which

can be organized around multi-jurisdictional cohorts of local government staff

and supported by subject-matter experts, should be expanded.

INTRODUCTION

State and local governments in the United States are the

implementation agents for a vast swath of federal poli-

cies. As the country embarks on an unprecedented foray

into fiscal federalism to combat climate change, we face

a stark reality: many local governments are not ready.

This viewpoint presents three critical challenges local

governments face as they commence or scale up their

climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, along with

suggestions for how managers and policy makers can

begin to confront them. The three challenges are (i) local

governments are risk-averse with fiscal resources,

(ii) capacity building for local sustainability work is an

incremental process, and (iii) implementing climate pol-

icy requires collaborative, regional institutions.

Through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of

2021 (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA),

an estimated $600 billion is being directed to climate-

related programs across multiple federal agencies. The

amount directed to states, local and tribal governments

could top $120 billion. These funds are slated to be dis-

bursed at break-neck speed. As an example, the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has until

Received: 4 March 2023 Revised: 1 July 2023 Accepted: 28 August 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13726

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1506 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1506–1511.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar