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
To continue reading
Request your trial