Municipal Management

The concentration of businesses in the city of Brockton has risen steadily, but employment levels still haven’t returned to pre-Great Recession levels, according to Pioneer’s Brockton City Spotlight. City Spotlights is a new product developed by Pioneer Institute using 16 years of data from its MassEconomixTM and MassAnalysisTM databases.

Using municipalities' experiences during the Great Recession, a new policy brief examines the likely impact of COVID-19 on local property taxes, as well as political implications for state aid. We list the municipal revenues by category among the least tax-reliant communities in MA, show the trajectory of tax revenue growth rate in Massachusetts state and local governments, and rank stabilization fund assets per capita among Massachusetts Gateway Cities.

Despite some recent progress, there is more to do if the Commonwealth is to make the Statements of Financial Interest (SFIs) that public officials file annually truly accessible to Massachusetts citizens.

This white paper calls for the creation of an Infrastructure Investment Fund that would use excess money drawn from the Massachusetts Convention Center Fund to jumpstart economic activity in parts of Massachusetts that have not benefited from Greater Boston’s boom, through a competitive process built around local reforms.

This report updates a 2006 study of 14 Massachusetts cities with populations of more than 40,000 and average per-capita annual incomes of below $25,000 (Pittsfield is the one city in the study in which per-capita income is greater than $25,000). It provides a report card on how these Middle Cities are faring a decade after our last analysis, in terms of economic development, financial administration, education, and public safety. The aim is to inform the current policy discourse on redevelopment strategies in these important cities to identify municipalities and policy approaches that may serve as models for all Middle Cities.

Testimony before the Joint Committee on Public Service of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Regarding the Fiscal Condition of Local Retirement Systems provided in January 2014.

This guide is intended to help engaged citizens, particularly the members of municipal finance committees, understand how best to perform an analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency of municipal spending.

There is emerging academic literature on the topic of government contracting and outsourcing. This paper does not seek to examine outsourcing from an academic perspective, however, but rather seeks to be a practitioner's guide to the issue. In doing so, this paper outlines important managerial and political considerations that may help leaders evaluate the potential of outsourcing services.

This paper will explore the use of municipal benchmarks in Massachusetts, with particular reference to the 14 identified Middle Cities. Importantly, as with the original surveyor’s marks, the development and application of municipal benchmarks will require us to become comfortable thinking in relative terms—not always a simple task in a world where statistics often fly about faster than the speed of thought and the attractions of “absolute” comparisons (and judgements) tend to be hard to resist.

This paper provides a brief account of experiences and challenges facing police chiefs in several mid-sized cities in Massachusetts, the factors which impact their decision making and the strategies they utilize, and discusses the various ways in which chiefs are adapting to changing financial and social contexts.