Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy Agency Performance Reporting, 2007

The Agency Performance Report for the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy is published in accordance with the Accountable Government Act. The information provided within this report is to aid in decision-making and to illustrate accountability to stakeholders and citizens. The report is indicative of the agency’s progress in meeting performance targets and achieving goals consistent with the enterprise strategic plan, the agency strategic plan and agency performance plan.

Continuity of Government Planning Interim Study Committee, March 2007

The Legislative Council established the Continuity of Government Planning Interim Study Committee in 2006 and authorized the Committee to meet during the 2006 Legislative Interim. The Committee was given the following charge: Examine issues relating to the continued functioning of state government following a disaster, including gubernatorial succession, replacement of constitutional officers and department heads, legislative elections to fill vacancies, and continued funding of state government if the General Assembly is unable to meet and pass a budget.

Are rules-based government programs shielded from special-interest politics? Evidence from revenue-sharing transfers in Brazil

Manipulation of government finances for the benefit of narrowly defined groups is usuallythought to be limited to the part of the budget over which politicians exercise discretion inthe short run, such as earmarks. Analyzing a revenue-sharing program between the centraland local governments in Brazil that uses an allocation formula based on local population estimates,I document two main results: first, that the population estimates entering the formulawere manipulated and second, that this manipulation was political in nature. Consistent withswing-voter targeting by the right-wing central government, I find that municipalities withroughly equal right-wing and non-right-wing vote shares benefited relative to opposition orconservative core support municipalities. These findings suggest that the exclusive focus ondiscretionary transfers in the extant empirical literature on special-interest politics may understatethe true scope of tactical redistribution that is going on under programmatic disguise.

Are Voting Advice Applications (VVAs) more than Toys ? : First findings on Impact and Accountability of VAAs

To what extent do Voting Advice Applications (VAA) have an influence on voting behaviour and to what extent should providers be hold accountable for such tools? This paper puts forward some empirical evidence from the Swiss VAA smartvote. The enormous popularity of smartvote in the last national elections in 2007 and the feedback of users and candidates let us come to the conclusion that smartvote is more than a toy and likely to have an influence on the voting decisions. Since Swiss citizens not only vote for parties but also for candidates, and the voting recommendation of smartvote is based on the political positions of the candidates, smartvote turns out to be particularly helpful. Political scientists must not keep their hands off such tools. Scientific research is needed to understand their functioning and possibilities to manipulate elections. On the bases of a legal study we come to the conclusion, that a science driven way of setting up such tools is essential for their legitimacy. However, we do not believe that there is a single best way of setting up such a tool and rather support a market like solution with different competing tools, provided they meet minimal standards like transparency and equal access for all parties and candidates. Once the process of selecting candidates and parties are directly linked to the act of voting, all these questions will become even more salient.

Social capital, government expenditures, and growth

Countries with greater social capital have higher economic growth. We show that socialcapital is also highly positively correlated across countries with government expenditureon education. We develop an infinite-horizon model of public spending and endogenousstochastic growth that explains both facts through frictions in political agency whenvoters have imperfect information. In our model, the government provides servicesthat yield immediate utility, and investment that raises future productivity. Voters aremore likely to observe public services, so politicians have electoral incentives to underprovidepublic investment. Social capital increases voters' awareness of all governmentactivity. As a consequence, both politicians' incentives and their selection improve.In the dynamic equilibrium, both the amount and the efficiency of public investmentincrease, permanently raising the growth rate.

Iowa Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, 2005

In accordance with Iowa Code Section 8A.502(8) we are pleased to submit the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for the State of Iowa for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005. The report is presented in three sections as follows: • The Introductory Section includes this transmittal letter, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Certificate of Achievement for the fiscal year 2004 CAFR, an organizational chart of State government, and a list of principal State officials. • The Financial Section contains the independent auditor’s report on the Basic Financial Statements, Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A), the Basic Financial Statements, and Notes to the Financial Statements. The Financial Section also contains Required Supplementary Information (RSI), other than the MD&A, and supplementary information in the form of combining financial statements and schedules. This letter is intended to be read in conjunction with the MD&A. • The Statistical Section highlights selected financial and demographic information, generally presented on a multi-year basis. The Department of Administrative Services is responsible for both the accuracy of the presented data, and the completeness and fairness of the presentation. We believe the information presented is accurate in all material respects and the necessary disclosures have been made which enable the reader to obtain an understanding of the State’s financial activity. This report has been prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for governments as promulgated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). As a part of the statewide accounting system upgrade during fiscal year 2005, the implementation team performed a comprehensive review of the adequacy of internal controls and budgetary controls of the system. The team determined that internal controls continue to be in place to provide reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that assets are safeguarded against unauthorized use or disposition, and that financial records from all appropriate sources are reliable for preparing financial statements and maintaining accountability. The concept of reasonable assurance recognizes the cost of internal controls should not exceed the benefits likely to be derived from their use. To monitor the adequacy of internal controls, the Auditor of State reviews internal control procedures as an integral part of departmental audits.

Does direct democracy reduce the size of government? New evidence from historical data, 1890-2000

Using historical data for all Swiss cantons from 1890 to 2000, we estimate the causal effect of direct democracy on government spending. The main innovation in this paper is that we use fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity and instrumental variables to address the potential endogeneity of institutions. We find that the budget referendum and lower costs to launch a voter initiative are effective tools in reducing canton level spending. However, we find no evidence that the budget referendum results in more decentralized government or a larger local government. Our instrumental variable estimates suggest that a mandatory budget referendum reduces the size of canton spending between 13 and 19 percent. A 1 percent lower signature requirement for the initiative reduces canton spending by up to 2 percent.

Ética na Administração Pública em Cabo Verde. O Papel do Tribunail de Contas de Cabo Verde como Autarquia do Estado para Accountability

Actualmente, na nossa sociedade apresenta desafios, está continuamente em busca de padrões éticos para uma melhoria da sociedade, é um padrão de grande importância para crescimento e desenvolvimento da Administração Publica cabo-verdiana (APCV). A gestão da coisa Pública é um dos fundamentos de” boa governação”. De acordo com os dados da pesquisa, a ética na APCV é um dos padrões que pouco se poem em pratica. Neste sentido o presente trabalho visa analisar” Ética na Administração Publica”, tendo como estudo de caso o Tribunal de Contas de Cabo Verde (TCCV). Para alcançar o objectivo deste trabalho, fez-se uma pesquisa bibliográfica sobre a ética na Administração Publica e sobre teorias relacionadas com a ética nas organizações. Utilizou-se o método inquisitivo baseado em questionários com perguntas abertas e fechadas para obter as percepçoes dos dirigentes públicos. O tratamento de dados foi feito recorrendo o Software SPSS versão 17 e Excel. Portanto na realização deste estudo foi utilizado o modelo American Psychological Association (APA) no que refere as citações e referências bibliográficas. Os resultados do estudo demonstraram que a ética é um dos instrumentos de extrema relevância para gestão da coisa pública.

Catalan government popularity. An example of economic effects on sub-national government support

The aim of this essay is to deal with economic voting in contexts ofmultilevel governance and to be a contribution to the debate on attribution of responsibilities in popularity functions literature. We use aggregate and individual data from Catalonia in order to analyse the relation between the state of the economy and the support for a sub-state government. The empirical analysis shows that the responsibility hypothesis works in regional governments without explicit macroeconomic competencies. We have also considered the evaluations of government performance on certain specific policies in order to clarify and determine the factors that drive Catalan government support. The article considers the implications of the findings for future attempts to model party support in a context of the European Union.

Policy making in divided government. A pivotal actors model with party discipline

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United States lawmaking is here modified to account for policy outcomes and institutional performances in other presidential regimes, especially in Latin America. Legislators' party indiscipline at voting and multi-partism appear as favorable conditions to reduce the size of the equilibrium set containing collectively inefficient outcomes, while a two-party system with strong party discipline is most prone to produce 'gridlock', that is, stability of socially inefficient policies. The article provides a framework for analysis which can induce significant revisions of empirical data, especially regarding the effects of situations of (newly defined) unified and divided government, different decision rules, the number of parties and their discipline. These implications should be testable and may inspire future analytical and empirical work.

State Government E85 Use Plan filed December 31, 2007

The State Government E85 Use Plan was mandated by Culver Executive Order 3 and was required to be submitted to the Governor’s Office December 31, 2007. The plan makes policy recommendations governing the use of E85 fuel by state government, the reporting of E85 fuel sales statewide, and establishes a task force to discuss biodiesel use for state government, local government, and private industry and make recommendations.

Fiscal decentralization policies and sub-national government debt in evolving federations

As part of a process of democratization, many countries spanning Europe, Latin Amertica, Africa, and Asia are reorganizing their governments bydevolving fiscal responsibility and authority to newly empowered regionaland local governments. Although decentralization in each country proceedsdifferently, a common element tends to be an initially heavy relianceon central government grants to fund regional spending. We develop atheoretical model of regional borrowing decisions in which the incentivesfor regional borrowing depend crucially on how the regions expect thefederal system of finance to evolve. We examine the implications of themodel using data on Spanish regions for the period 1984-1995 and findevidence that regions may be borrowing inefficiently in response toincentives imbedded in the Spanish system of fiscal decentralization.