Special Districts as Institutional Choices for Service Delivery: Views of Public Officials on the Performance of Community Development Districts in Florida

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn an effort to reduce the cost and size of government, service delivery has become more decentralized, flexible and responsive. One of the strategies for reducing the cost and the size of service delivery is the establishment of special districts. Community Development Districts (CDDs) are a particular type of special created to manage and finance infrastructure services that accommodate new development within the State of Florida. They have significant implications for service delivery since they are considered flexible institutional choices for infrastructure service provision. In trying to assess the CDD performance this study aims at identifying the contribution of the to service delivery and at determining whether they represent an effective and responsive institutional choice for service delivery. Findings demonstrate that the CDD institutional model is both an effective and responsive service delivery tool but only in certain circumstances.INTRODUCTIONSpecial represent an important component of the American governing structure. They are independent, special- purpose units of local government (other than counties, municipalities, townships or school districts) that have administrative and financial independence from general-purpose governments such as counties and cities (U.S. Census, 2007). These entities of government are established by a legislative body to provide specialized services within limited boundaries (Mitchell, 2001).Special are the most common form of local government. According to the U.S. Census (2012) there are 89,004 local governments1 in the United States. Special represent 41.8% of the total number of local governments, followed by municipalities with 21.6%, townships with 18.4% and counties with 3.4%. Besides being the most common form of local government, special have also increased dramatically in the last six decades. Districts more than tripled their number in the last 60 years in comparison with a 8.6% increase for municipalities and a slight decrease of 0.7% for counties and 4.9% for townships. This increase in the number of special is explained by numerous reasons: service delivery for certain areas is better handled by special (Bollens, 1957), were created as a consequence of legal, institutional and political factors (Foster, 1997) and are financial mechanisms (Leigland, 1994; Porter, Lin, Jakubiak & Peiser, 1992) whose proliferation overcomes the fiscal restrictions placed on local general-purpose governments (Bowler & Donovan, 2004; McCabe, 2000).The extant literature distinguishes special purpose governments by different names. Eger III (2006) classifies special purpose entities into three main typologies: ''public authorities,'' ''special districts,'' and ''government corporations.'' He asserts that the degree of financial and governance autonomy explains the diversity of special-purpose governments. Therefore, special purpose entities range from controlled authority which is the least autonomous combination of financial and governance criteria to the most autonomous entities called directly accountable (Eger III, 2006). Porter et al. (1992) acknowledge that special are known by different names such as authorities, and commissions. Foster (1997) divides special-purpose governments in two categories: districts which are local governmental entities with the power to tax and levy special assessments and public authorities which are government corporations without property taxing powers. Even though the aforementioned typologies of special-purpose entities - ''public authorities,'' ''special districts, ''government corporations,'' boards and commissions are used interchangeably in the extant literature, this study will focus on the category of independent special or those special- purpose entities that have both high governing and financial autonomy in Eger's III (2006) words. …