State and Local Politics

Cases and Topics

Jayme Renfro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429614996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is the first of its kind to take concepts directly from the most commonly used textbooks in state and local politics and apply them directly to current events. It presents twelve chapters of case studies, richly detailing key topics ranging from how the comparative method can be used to understand the similarities and differences between diverse places, to a look at how state governments have taken the lead on COVID-19, environmental policy, civil rights, gun control, college tuition regulation, cybersecurity and elections, sex offenders, and many more subjects of contemporary interest. It devotes a complete chapter to local-level politics in Nevada, Florida, and Iowa, and wraps up with a unique chapter on regional governance bridging between states and localities. This detailed and highly readable book is designed to complement traditional state and local textbooks. It is also of interest to students of public administration, public policy, urban politics, and intro to American politics.

1

THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

Ok, now you understand the importance of knowing about state and local governments and their policies. That's great, right? Sure, but it isn’t enough. In order to actually learn about state and local governments, one needs to develop a systematic approach to looking at the similarities and differences—also known as variance—between comparable units.

The comparative method is a fundamental tool of analysis. It greatly improves our power of description, and plays a role in idea formation by illuminating potentially interesting and meaningful similarities and differences among cases. Comparison is often used in hypothesis testing, and it can contribute to the discovery of new hypotheses as well.

The forms of comparison used in the study of state and local politics vary widely, however most boil down to the systematic analysis of a small number of cases—either two or more different places compared to one another, or one place compared to itself over time. In this chapter, you will read case studies that are examples of both. First, you will read about Kansas City, a city that spills over the border into two different states. This unique situation sheds light on some pretty profound differences between the two states that share it. Next, we will walk through some of the history of Georgia, from its beginnings as a small settlement to the bustling state it is now. Changes in the economy and politics since its inception allow us to compare Georgia to itself over time, developing a deeper understanding of why things are changing there so quickly today. Finally, we examine a topic that is timely and important—the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we talk about the variation in how states responded to the pandemic and how that information can be used moving forward to make decisions. Taken together, these three case studies illustrate the comparative method and its potential uses for the study of state and local government.

Borders and BBQ: KCK and KCMO and the Dividing Lines of Government and Culture

In 1718, acting on a tip from a French ne’er do well, Gillaume de L’Isle mapped out an area smack in the middle of nowhere and named it after the local tribe, the Cansez. Natives and a small group of settlers coexisted peacefully in the area until a century later when Lewis and Clark appeared from the river and promptly kicked everyone out in order to start work on a new fort and village. One thing that they did keep (pretty much) was the name, though they changed it slightly from the French spelling to Kansa and later, Kansas (Kansas State Historical Society n.d.).

The town of Kansas had been around for a century if you count from when it was named, but it wasn’t until 1821 that Missouri became a state. The lines were drawn between Missouri and the unincorporated lands to the west—lines that went right through the town of Kansas. So, Kansas City never really crossed the border, the border was drawn right smack through Kansas City.

No one truly considered this an issue though. Because the west side wasn’t really part of anything for the next six decades, there were few complications as to where the borders were drawn. However, as the United States moved west as part of the whole Manifest Destiny thing, the area that would become the state of Kansas was settled and organized by a different group of people than those that had founded Missouri. Hence, Missouri and Kansas are different states, with a different history, culture, and population. They share a border, and, in many ways, the “town” that is now the sprawling, bustling metropolis called Kansas City¹.

When Daniel Elazar developed his political culture typology, he identified Missouri as an individualistic state and Kansas as a moralistic one. Individualistic populations see government as existing for the purpose of addressing individual goals and issues. Much like a marketplace, government should provide the goods and services that people want, prioritizing individual interests over the needs of groups/communities. A society that sees things in this way would favor such policies as cutting taxes to low rates to try to encourage individual economic benefit.

Moralistic states on the other hand, believe that government is essentially good and should be in the business of bettering society and promoting its general welfare. Group interests should be held as the ultimate focus over individual interests. Politicians are held to high standards, voting and other forms of civic participation are not only encouraged, but expected of citizens. Moralistic societies have high levels of volunteerism and voter turnout.

Many of the differences between Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri make perfect sense when examined thought Elazar's lens. Generally, Kansas has higher taxes than Missouri does. The sales, income, and property taxes are all higher in KCK than they are in KCMO. On a trip down to Missouri to visit a school, the author was once told that Missouri is a “low tax, low service” state, and many believe this to be true. One resident of a KCK suburb reports that she can tell when she crosses over the border into Missouri by the way the streets are maintained. Lower taxes mean that the state has less money to put into the construction and maintenance of roads. She noted that this is especially evident during the winter when snow removal tends to be more prompt and frequent on the Kansas side of the line than on the Missouri side.

So, historically, Kansas had been the higher tax, higher service state, however in 2012, Governor Sam Brownback instituted a series of tax cuts, the likes of which most places had never seen. Income, business, and corporate taxes were lowered drastically, ostensibly to create growth—trickle-down style. Instead of the shot of adrenaline that this was supposed to be though, the Kansas economy tanked (Prokop 2014). Their credit rating dropped and their economic growth slowed to almost nothing. In order to try to balance some of the cuts and increase the money in the coffers, lawmakers increased the sales and excise taxes, however that wasn’t enough. Funding for Kansas schools dropped so low that the United States Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional. Even though things started to look up in 2019, there was a $351 million shortfall leftover from 2018 (Cohn 2019) and the pandemic of 2020 is expected to trigger further shortfalls.

It gets particularly complicated in Kansas City. Missouri and Kansas both want businesses located on their side of the border. Businesses (even if they aren’t being taxed directly) are worth money to the state government. They bring jobs and economic growth to the state in addition to things like sales taxes. Thus, KCK and KCMO offer tax breaks and other economic incentives to encourage businesses to set up shop on one side or the other. The Hall Family Foundation estimated that they gave up approximately $217 million dollars in taxes from 2009-2014 in order to attract these businesses. During that time period Missouri “stole” 2,824 jobs from Kansas and Kansas “stole” 3,289 from Missouri. It appears that Kansas is winning this race, however, if you took the difference between the bounties and divide it by Kansas’ half of the $217 million, each of those jobs cost Kansas about $233,333 (Hall Family Foundation 2019). One might wonder if it was worth it.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think that Kansas might no longer be a moralistic state? Did Elazar have anything to say about the possibility of a state changing their political culture? Are there precedents in other states?
2. States have been referred to as laboratories of democracy in terms of creating policy. What can other states learn from Kansas’ experiment in extreme tax cutting? What can the Federal government learn? Is the experience of a state even relevant to the Federal government?
3. How can funding for schools be a constitutional issue? Why can’t a state decide that it doesn’t want to fund schools at a higher level if it wants to?
4. What information about the sociodemographics of KCK and KCMO would be valuable in understanding the differences in culture between the two? Why? How might one go about obtaining this information?

Key Concepts

• Comparative method
• Variance
• Political culture
• Laboratories of democracy

For More Information:

• https:/​/​kchistory.org/​faq/​why-there-kansas-city-both-kansas-and-missouri
• https:/​/​www.bestplaces.net/​compare-cities/​kansas_city_mo/​kansas_city_ks/​people
• https:/​/​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=B_x_67fXtqM

Georgia on My Mind

The state of Georgia has had seven official state flags over the course of its history (New Georgia Encyclopedia 2018 b). From a simple coat of arms on a blue background, through versions that included the confederate battle flag, to the current flag that is reminiscent of both the American flag and the national flag of the confederacy, these changes can easily be seen as a metaphor for a state that has undergone myriad changes itself.

Prior to the British settling in the area in the early 1700s, the land that we now know as Georgia was inhabited by the Cherokee and Creek nations. Like many of the American colonies, Georgia was founded as a refuge for those suffering religious persecution at home and as a place for hard-working, unemployed, or even debt prisoner Englishmen to go and work for the crown while creating new lives for themselves. Trustees were tasked with choosing the new settlers from a long list of applicants, largely choosing tradesman and those who intended to open small businesses (and interestingly but perhaps unsurprisingly no debt prisoners) (Georgia Historical Society n.d.).

Over the years, a discontent with British rule over the colonies spread through the new lands, however Georgia was generally less unhappy than most. Georgians had set up a relatively satisfactory, and mutually beneficial, system with England, shipping raw materials over and receiving manufactured goods in return. Eventually though, however well this back and forth was working, the British managed to overstep and irritate the wrong Georgians with some uneven trade deals and high taxes. Georgians, it turned out, did not much care for big government taking advantage of business owners and farmers. This sentiment led to the creation of an independent colonial government, and has continued to shape the culture of Georgia to this day.

Georgia continued to chug along as an agricultural center, and if you will remember back to middle school history class, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This was a particularly big development in Georgia, and the ability to separate cotton seed from lint of the plant with a machine allowed for the development of bigger and more productive farms devoted to growing and processing cotton (Georgia Humanities 2009). Slavery wasn’t new to Georgia, however these larger plantations made slavery more profitable than before, as farmers could now clean the cotton as quickly as they had hands to pick it. By 1860, Georgia had both the highest number of slaves and slaveholders in the Deep South and of all the colonies only Virginia had more (New Georgia Encyclopedia 2017).

Georgian culture and the ensuing politics then developed through the combination of an anti-big government sentiment and some pretty significant cotton money rolling in on the backs of slaves. Essentially, Georgia was more economically prosperous than most of the other southern states and just wanted everyone to leave them alone to keep doing what they had been doing. The election of President Lincoln in 1860 made that impossible. Where Georgia conservatives had been pretty politically moderate before, this attack on states’ rights from the federal government was not to be tolerated. How dare some northerner in Washington tell them that they probably shouldn’t own people! The legislature appropriated money to grow the state militia in short order, followed quickly by an official secession in January of 1861.

Participation in the Confederates’ war on the Union did not change the people of Georgia's basic worldview on government though. They were still states’ rights believers through and through. They did not believe in the conscription of soldiers to the Confederate army or in sending the Georgia militia to other states to fight. They were not supportive of the use of private property or railroads for military uses. They were willing to fight the Union in support of their way of life and mode of income, but they weren’t ready to change themselves to achieve victory.

The war was over in 1865 and even though the Confederates surrendered, it took Georgia a while to accept the outcome and its consequences. The United States required some conditions of the states that had seceded before they were allowed to rejoin the union, and Georgian leaders w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Comparative Method
• 2 Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
• 3 State Constitutions
• 4 Budgeting, Finance, and Fiscal Policy
• 5 Elections and Political Participation
• 6 Political Parties and Interest Groups
• 7 State Legislatures
• 8 State Executive Leadership
• 9 State Court Systems
• 10 The Bureaucracy
• 11 Local Governments
• 12 Regional Governance
• Conclusion
• Index