Public Works Management & Policy

The United States has the most extensive, complex, and arguably the most sophisticated system of public infrastructure in the world. This linked system of facilities and activities provides the broad range of essential services that support our economic well-being and overall quality of life. In light of the critical role that infrastructure plays in our everyday lives and the many challenges facing the owners and operators of these systems, professionals of the highest caliber are needed to support and manage the nation’s infrastructure. This article suggests that existing university curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels are generally inadequate to provide the necessary integrated and cross-disciplinary training required for infrastructure professionals. A focused activity should be undertaken to assess the educational needs and the adequacy of the training of those professionals and propose necessary curricula improvements.

This study examines the third goal of the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water’s Environmental Justice Strategy that focuses on providing equal access to environmental infrastructure for all citizens, including those located in disadvantaged communities. One way to ensure equal access is through the equitable distribution of funding pursuant to the Clean Water Act. This article examines whether disadvantaged communities received a disproportionately low share of the funding or had a lower probability of obtaining construction grants. The article also examines 9,854 grant awards in the 48 contiguous states at the county level during the period 1983 to 1992. The results indicate that counties with relatively small populations had more difficulty obtaining construction grants. The effect of income and minority composition was more pronounced in small communities. High-income communities did better than poor communities in terms of both the share of awards and the probability of receiving grants. The results also indicate that a county’sminority composition was inversely related to the probability of obtaining a grant but positively related to the share of grant awards.

Marginal-cost pricing of municipal water in water-scarce regions is both an efficient way to achieve conservation goals and an efficient revenue source for municipalities. Nevertheless, marginal-cost water pricing is quite unusual and often prohibited, probably because water revenues are perceived to have an unfairly regressive incidence. To examine the validity of this perception, Census data from San Antonio, Texas, is used to estimate the income elasticity of demand for water there. This result and similar estimates elsewhere suggest that the regressivity of water revenues compares favorably with published regressivity estimates for traditional municipal revenue sources. Moreover, a form of two-part water pricing is shown capable of increasing progressivity without inefficiency. Revenue under this pricing regime is flexible, which allows authorities to meet a range of preset revenue targets, trading off neither efficiency nor fairness.

This panel study examines trends in recycling participation, diversion, and costs among a national sample of municipal programs in 1989 and 1996 and identifies the recycling policies associated with changes in performance. This study finds that local recycling officials made recycling performance comparisons with other jurisdictions and engaged in a rational process of policy experimentation to fine-tune the performance of their programs during the 1990s. The policies that distinguished higher performing recycling efforts included mandatory recycling, curbside collection and free recycling bins, operating composting programs, and banning disposal of yard wastes. Recycling participation increased about 36% to a mean level of 73% by 1996. Diversion increased by 111% to a mean level of 33% by 1996. The total costs for recycling programs rose an average of 220%, but many cities with curbside collection also improved efficiency to the point where unit recycling costs were competitive with the costs of solid waste collection and disposal.

Cities continue to struggle to provide the level of goods and services demanded by their residents while federal and state support dwindles. One proposal for resolving this dilemma is privatization because it is assumed that the private sector is more efficient, at least partly as a result of more readily adopting efficiency enhancing techniques such as TQM. The electric power industry provides an excellent comparison between the public and private sectors because its units of input and output are easily quantifiable in standard terms, and meaningful measures of efficiency can be developed. This study uses data from a comprehensive survey of Florida’s electric power enterprises to determine the extent of TQM implementation; whether TQM has enhanced productivity; and whether there are measurable differences in efficiency between the state’s private and public sector power producers. The results provide a benchmark of current practice and productivity standards for Florida’s electric power industry.

The debate over an appropriate definition of privatization has been underway for nearly 30 years; Dominy’s offering provides an additional voice to that debate. In response to Dominy, the author suggests that Dominy’s typology of privatization is incomplete, empirically suspect, and ignores much of the previous theoretical work in the field. Whereas such voices are both useful and intellectually stimulating, Dominy’s typology may ultimately prove limiting to public works practitioners seeking guidance on how to improve the delivery of services.