Understanding Municipal Fiscal Health: A Model for Local Governments in the USA. Maher, Craig , Sungho Park , Bruce D. McDonald III , and Steven C. Deller . 2023. New York: Routledge, 329 pages, $59.95 paperback edition, $160.00 hardback edition, $53.05 eBook, ISBN 9781032055428

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Eugenia Gorina
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13729

BOOK REVIEWS

Understanding Municipal

Fiscal Health: A Model for

Local Governments in

the USA

Maher,Craig, Sungho Park, Bruce D.

McDonald III, and Steven C. Deller. 2023.

New York: Routledge, 329 pages, $59.95

paperback edition, $160.00

hardback edition, $53.05 eBook,

ISBN 9781032055428

Eugenia Gorina

School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas,

Richardson, Texas, USA

Email: egorina@utdallas.edu

Government finance is on the verge of a digital leap. As a

field of practice and research, it is facing growing pres-

sures to automate financial reporting and find effective

ways to monitor government performance. In this con-

text, Maher et al.’s(

2023) show us what it takes to moni-

tor and evaluate the financial condition of a municipality

with tools of government finance. The book is enriching

and catalyzes our thinking on what financial monitoring

of the future may look like. It does not give us all the

answers but vastly informs our judgment.

Understanding Municipal Fiscal Health by Maher, Park,

McDonald III, and Deller (2023) is not the first book on

local financial condition. Shelves of government finance

experts already include classics like The Financial Analysis

of Governments by Berne and Schramm (1986), Evaluating

Financial Condition (2003) by Groves, Nollenberger, and

Valente (with all its earlier editions), Managing the Fiscal

Metropolis (2011) by R. Hendrick, The Handbook of Local

Government Fiscal Health (2013) by Levine et al., to name

a few. So, what sets Maher et al. (2023) apart? What

makes it relevant and worthwhile?

The key stated goal of the book is to propose a new

framework for evaluating municipal financial condition and

offer guidance on how one can use various measures to

evaluate it. The book successfully targets both practitioners

and academics. Its language is accessible for public finance

professionals and engaging for researchers. The proposed

framework may be of particular value to practitioners who

seek to organize their thinking on municipal financial

condition while the comprehensive summary of the litera-

ture on this topic may be of particular value to academics.

In fact, the role of the book as the most recent reference

text on financial condition analysis expandsits contribution

to the field beyond its stated goals!

The book is distinct in epistemological stance. By and

large, government finance is still a field of functionalist

inquiry. The book breaks with this tradition. It is meta-

modern in spirit. The narrative builds toward the authors’

framework by reviewing prior studies in a way that does

not challenge them but acknowledges their continued

usefulness. Further, the book does not impose a single

algorithm of financial analysis on the reader after present-

ing the framework. Instead, the authors recommend a set

of indicators. Since the discussion of alternative systems

of financial condition analysis takes up a lot of space in

the book and since the authors encourage the reader to

make their own choices with the indicators, the book

embodies a shift from positivistic prescription to “bricolage”

and co-creation of meaning and knowledge through

analysis and praxis. It is an example of meta-modernism in

government finance.

The book is also distinct in that it engages us in a

mosaics of discussions about local finance with as much

enthusiasm as a government finance text can afford.

Particularly, this enthusiasm is reflected in the authors’

decision to bring together many subfields of public

finance to discuss factors that influence how local

governments make financial decisions (Chapter 2). The

discussion of institutional factors like tax and expenditure

limits, balanced budget requirements, and debt limits has

not been done with such dedication in any other book on

fiscal health before. Reference tables from this chapter

are likely to be handy to future researchers.

When the authors take the reader through the histori-

cal analysis of trends in governmental finance over the

past 50 years (Chapter 3), their review of these trends for

governments of different sizes across regions and over

time reflects a monumental commitment to data analysis

and provides a lot of information on the scope and scale

of local finance in the U.S. Overall, the front end of the

book is of particular use to budding researchers and ana-

lysts of financial condition as it gives them a comprehen-

sive lay of the land.

The authors’perspective on the relationship between

fiscal health and fiscal stress is noteworthy. The two

notions are not viewed as mutually exclusive. The reader

will be stimulated to reflect upon the conceptual distinc-

tions particularly if their views differ from those of the

authors. The main contribution of the book—its proposed

Received: 25 September 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13729

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1855–1861. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. 1855