Jeremy L. Hall

University of Central Florida | UCF · School of Public Administration

Not since the late 1850s has the United States seen the portents leading to a major political crisis be so numerous and grave. Over the last two decades, local and national social capital has steeply declined, culminating into a near‐collapse of social capital within the last six years. The potential for national political crisis is now more plausi...

Does performance management use in local governments actually bring about performance improvement? If so, can performance be attributed to the use of particular tools or approaches? This study examines the particular performance measurement tools and approaches being utilized within Tax Increment Finance (TIF) districts in one metropolitan area—the...

We do not address epistemic decolonization in all its richness and complexity; instead, we have the modest goal of exploring epistemic consequences of power imbalances amongst disciplinary bodies of knowledge. We pursue this goal of raising awareness about disciplinary decolonization by focusing on and interrogating public policy pedagogy and schol...

For years, scholarly interest in the intersection of government and technology has overwhelmingly focused on the end‐product of technology capabilities. Recent advancements in computational power have facilitated breathtaking growth of data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and process automation, sparking considerable attention by scholars...

Research in the field of public administration has changed and advanced significantly in recent years. These advancements concern both how we engage in research—such as the methods we apply, the interdisciplinary nature of the theories we use, and the research questions we ask. Increasingly, we are witnessing a shift in public‐sector values away fr...

Despite mounting worldwide use of Pay-for-Success (PFS) projects to deliver social services, available research consists largely of commentary with scant details on the actual implementation of these projects. This study offers an exploratory analysis of PFS projects in the U.S. from an implementation science perspective to elucidate the challenges...

Are municipal-level local option sales taxes (LOST) in Texas associated with long-term economic development outcomes? The Texas 4a and 4b LOST options fund economic development projects managed by a dedicated municipal-level economic development corporation (EDC). Instead of short-term outputs, we consider associations with three primary long-range...

Do state policies that allow municipal governments to levy economic development taxes stimulate economic development? Texas allows municipal‐level economic development corporation dedicated local option sales taxes (LOST), effectively diverting revenue from general fund purposes exclusively toward local economic development efforts. Drawing from a...

A core feature of academic research is the peer review process. The thinking behind this process is straightforward: in an effort to ensure the validity of research, opinions regarding the reliability, thoroughness, and appropriateness of reports on research findings are solicited from outside experts before they are cleared for publication. Howeve...

Evidence‐based management is on the rise as a strategy to promote more rational decision‐making and effectiveness in governance and public service delivery. To understand how widespread the use of evidence is among managers in various settings, and why evidence is emphasized more in some settings than others, it is necessary to have a good measure...

Functional theory suggests that each level of government expands in the arena in which it can best perform, reducing the price of federalism. Focusing on the functional pattern of American federalism, we suggest that increased federal welfare spending increases state government performance in so-called ‘new economy’ development policy areas by help...

Performance management, the use of performance information in strategic daily decision making, has not infiltrated local governments to the same degree as state or federal agencies. This article uses the capacity/performance paradigm as a framework to build a theoretical synthesis of the obstacles to local government use of performance management....

The field of performance measurement (PM) is firmly entrenched as a management practice in many governments, agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Though emerging later, the field of evidence-based practice (EBP) has developed simultaneously as a new approach to enhance agency performance. While both rationality-oriented reforms intend to enhance...

Research into tax increment financing (TIF) effectiveness has yielded mixed results, often under extensive controls. Until recently, no study had considered or controlled for the potential effects of internal management practices, including preproject planning and postimplementation performance measurement, on TIF performance. This study draws on e...

The most enduring policy concern in Kentucky politics is economic development. Governors, state legislators, senators, congressmen, mayors, and county judge- executives all give special attention to job creation and business growth. As Congressman Harold “Hal” Rogers, a Republican representing the Fifth District of Kentucky, often states with deter...

Governance increasingly relies on intergovernmental and intersectoral collaboration in providing public services. This research reports perceptions of state representatives to the multistate collaborative Drug Effectiveness Review Project about the importance of factors influencing successful collaboration. Findings reveal state motivation to colla...

We examine poverty's effect in two ways. First, we study the relationship between poverty and capacity for innovation in the U.S. states; second, we study the combined effects of poverty and innovation capacity on U.S. state economic output and employment. Because many of the relationships among poverty, innovation capacity and economic performance...

The contemporary policy environment makes persistent demands on agency officials to use the best information available when making decisions about policies, programs, and practices. State and federal legislation calls on agencies to incorporate evidence-based practices (EBP) in their programs. Using data from a 2008 survey of state agency directors...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) channeled billions of dollars through the states in an effort to stimulate the economy and shore up faltering state services. It presented unprecedented accountability expectations in the form of required state transparency with regard to ARRA expenditures. This study examines the variations in stat...

Tax increment financing (TIF) has become a mainstay of local economic development efforts. A significant body of research has investigated the effectiveness of TIF efforts as economic development tools. Such research has concentrated on measuring economic impact of TIF projects, with widely varied results. There has been little examination of the i...

Tax increment financing (TIF) has become a mainstay of local economic development efforts. A significant body of research has investigated the effectiveness of TIF efforts as economic development tools. Such research has concentrated on measuring economic impact of TIF projects, with widely varied results. There has been little examination of the i...

President Barack Obama promised that his administration would make a clean break with the past, setting new standards in transparency and accountability. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), one of his early legislative initiatives, marks a concerted effort to realize the promises he made during the campaign. This article examines the...

Performance measurement and management have become pervasive across levels of government and areas of programmatic emphasis. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) entitlement program, facing cuts and reorganization under the second Bush administration, adopted enhanced performance measure...

Following failed auctions for sewer debt in April 2008, major bond rating companies downgraded Jefferson County, Alabama’s bond rating to D (default) triggering massive mandatory payments by the county to its creditors. At the time of writing, the county teeters on the brink of actual default and bankruptcy, unable to pay service on its $3.3 billio...

This article seeks to determine the effect of rurality and need on per capita federal grant receipts in local areas over time, controlling for local and regional government capacities. In other words, are rural places treated differently than urban places in federal grant distributions? Kentucky is used as the case state, with 120 county areas cons...

This study reports results from a 2008 survey of U.S. State agency administrators across all 50 states and 12 different agency types. Agency managers were asked to disclose the extent to which they relied on information from 19 information sources and to weight the value of information from each source. This paper is particularly interested in asce...

This article examines federal economic development policy implemented through fiscal federalism. A new measure is developed to assess the burden created by local financial match requirements on federal grant awards over time. This measure is applied to counties in three states (Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina) to determine if burden varies by...

This chapter examines the relationship between county size and organizational frequency for state economic development as a means of addressing the policy question of county consolidation. We examine the prevalent policy positions for consolidation and find no strong basis for consolidation of county governments. We further explore the significance...

This essay describes a unique approach to assigning Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) students to groups in order to enhance the value of the overall classroom team experience. The relevant mechanism of interest is the Cognitive Styles Matching (CSM) group-selection process, combined with a brief explanatory session. Many instructors utilize...

How do states compare to one another, and to themselves, in innovation capacity and past innovation performance? Are there groups of states that are more or less similar in innovation capacity composition? Because different score dimensions vary independently, it is possible for states to be high on some dimensions and low on others. In an effort t...

The contemporary policy environment makes persistent demands on agency officials to use the best information available when making decisions about policies, programs, and practices. State and federal legislation calls on agencies to incorporate evidence-based practices in their programs. Using data from a 2008 survey of state agency administrators,...

Local areas, consisting of governments, special districts, and nonprofits, benefit from the receipt and use of federal funds in support of local programs and projects. This study examines the combined effects of political and administrative capacity factors that influence flows of federal grant funds into local areas. The effects of these capacity...

This article asks whether the Reagan Executive Order (EO) 12372 matters for intergovernmental fiscal relations today. To address this question, federal grant receipts from programs that are, and programs that are not, covered by EO 12372 are compared by examining the differential effects of political and local administrative capacity on each. Grant...

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy...

Changing political landscape often renews the call for dramatic changes to federal community and economic development grant-in-aid programs. The most dramatic proposal in recent years was President Bush’s 2006 call to consolidate federal assistance programs for communities into a new block grant known as the Strengthening America’s Communities Init...

Government capacity helps explain variance in public sector organizations’ performance, and measuring capacity helps identify deficiencies that may be addressed in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these organizations. This study examines the capacity of regional economic development districts to leverage federal grant funds in t...

This study considers recent evidence of state innovation capacity in order to better understand where new economy–type economic development is likely to occur and, by extrapolation, where strategies geared toward such growth are more likely to succeed. The research focuses on data from the National Science Foundation’s State Science and Engineering...

Recent attention to innovation as the core of a knowledge-based economy has resulted in an array of studies and reports that seek to measure states' relative ranks as they advance their economic agendas. This study improves on state performance measurement by distinguishing innovation capacity from innovation outcomes by examining change over a 20-...

Public sector organizations collect vast amounts of information that often goes unused. Information may serve a symbolic role to imply that decision makers are using rational decision processes, or it may be collected to rationalize a preconceived decision and develop or maintain public support. Over-collection of irrelevant information or under-an...

A presently-unfolding case study is used to address present and growing challenges facing small to medium-sized cities in nonmetropolitan areas. The framework incorporates fragmentation, value conflicts, and annexation to illuminate the struggle such communities face as they balance efficient public service delivery with divisive value conflicts th...

Economic development policy refers to government actions that are intended to affect growth in the economy, either through development (a structural change in production) or growth (an increase in output based on existing production). The role of economic development policy in the development of American federalism has always been inextricably link...