I have the senior project term paper and will provide you with that. In addition, I have 9 sources that are needed for this paper. Feel free to include more sources that are relevant.

In order to determine the role of contracting out in the resolution of fiscal stress in cities during the post-recessionary period, it is important to first understand ideologies of governance. Many factors lead to outsourcing, however empirical evidence is unclear as to whether situations of fiscal stress are responsible for provoking changes in the delivery of public services. By using ideology decision making to better understanding local government methodology, this provides a clearer explanation of the relationship between contracting out public services and cities under fiscal stress.

INTRODUCTION

Fiscal health remains a concern across U.S. local governments. (Davidson, 2019). There are many drivers of fiscal stress, including declining property value, weak economy, and pension costs and liabilities, all of which have affected cities in different ways. An increase in debt level and fiscal stress have caused local managers to seek appropriate solutions. In more recent publicized city fiscal crises, we have seen cities like Detroit plunge into bankruptcy, having to restructure their debt and other obligations. This is one of the more extreme cases and was due in large part to unfunded retirement obligations (Gorina, 2018). Local governments rarely use this option, and rather look to reduce spending, raise taxes, and borrow money. Municipal authorities may also implement market mechanisms, such as the contracting out of public services (López-Hernández, 2018). There are a variety of responses to fiscal stress and management, however this study will focus on the role of privatization. It is one very important response and in the context of several governance ideologies, its meaning and significance varies. This case study will examine local governments of Hartford and New Britain Connecticut and will connect theories of decision making such as neoliberal austerity, pragmatic municipalism, and several other sub-ideologies to their financial health and processes of decision-making around privatization.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Many local governments have been faced with significant budgetary challenges. Excessive and overly burdensome levels of debt can become a fiscal constraint, especially if the debt grows faster than the tax base which supports the debt. (Williams & Rosemary, 2013). Economic crises also put local governments financial condition in duress. The most recent major economic shift has been the Great Recession of 2009. Local governments were faced with an abundance of fiscal issues, for example falling property value declined municipal property tax revenue. Left with severe budget problems, it was necessary for many cities to restructure. Although the recession is over and its long-term effects are starting to stabilize, municipalities that are faced with fiscal stress on short-term levels take varieties of actions. Responsive reforms have been approached by local governments through several forms of urban governance ideologies. One main categories of ideology includes neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is defined as an ideology and policy model that emphasizes privatization, austerity, deregulation and free trade (Ward et al.). Austerity urbanism is the subset of neoliberalism and involves the application of a neoliberal playbook (Davidson, 2019) in which wages and spending are reduced. Another main category of ideology is pragmatic municipalism. Contrary to austerity, pragmatic municipalism emphasizes staff retention and public management. Pluralism is sub-category of pragmatic municipalism, and involves an approach to policy making with the belief that numerous groups exist, and the system is not dominated by a single group but rather open to a variety of interests (Jimenez, 2009). The last category, obscure ideologies, are rather new and understudied, and include managerialism and entrepreneurialism. Managerialism is an urban politic where the management of groups directly influence the direction of government action. Lastly, entrepreneurialism is the regulation of cities in a more business- like fashion by cultivating and retaining businesses(Ward et al.).

Fiscal Stress

A local government’s fiscal health is a dynamic concept that influences strategies of local authority policymaking. Given the diversity of local governments, it is best to define fiscal stress in simplest terms. A local government’s financial condition represents the ability to meet financial and service obligations (Levine, Scorsone, & Justice, 2012). Therefore, fiscal stress is the inability to meet financial and service obligations.

It is important to understand how fiscal condition is measured, and what is meant by the term fiscal stress. Four different types of solvency exist that are commonly used by scholars to measure fiscal stress: cash solvency, budgetary solvency, long term solvency, and service level solvency. The measurements of fiscal stress are perceived differently among scholars and they have their own interpretations. Mallach & Scorsone (2011) emphasize solvency through ability to meet immediate financial obligations. They argue that budgetary solvency and cash solvency are most important and an inability to generate revenue compromises a local government’s ability to pay liabilities, resulting in financial issues such as underfunded pension payouts. Both cash solvency and budgetary solvency directly impact the long-term solvency of local governments. López-Hernández et al., (2018) suggest measuring fiscal stress with long term solvency and argue that a lack of revenue leads to more and more costs incurred in the future. Service level solvency is rather difficult to measure, because of the roles of public and private sectors. In regard to fiscal stress, it can be summarized as the inability to sustain public services and a declining quality of life of citizens. Levine, Scorsone, & Justice (2012) discuss how there is no one best way to measure financial condition or assess fiscal stress, and rather the most effective way to examine financial condition is with the developments that occur through the passage of time. For the purpose of my research, fiscal stress is defined as lack of cash and budget solvency. To measure government's’ current fiscal condition, I will look at their current expenditure and revenue. I will measure a government’s long-term solvency when looking at city budgets post-recession to current day. This will provide me with a timeline of 10 or so years of government’s long term obligations. In addition, this will allow me to see how cities have been able to sustain short-term solvency year to year.

Major economic shifts heavily impact local government’s ability to meet obligations. As a consequence for the US economy’s Great Recession of 2009, state and local governments were faced with enormous budget shortfalls (Jiminez, 2009). Environments that local governments operate in have undergone significant changes during the past thirty years (Maher & Deller, 2007). Citizen expectations for services provided by local governments, including things such as better public education, added police and fire protection, more transportation, and several other services, have risen. In addition, the economic base that local government depends for revenue undergo changes periodically. For example, Wisconsin has seen a noticeable shift, where their rural areas that once collected revenue from agriculture are now being dominated by forms of tourism and other non-extractive economic activities (Maher & Deller, 2007). Another important factor in the fiscal stress of local government is state revenue. Local government does not control how much state revenue is distributed to them, and these funds are not guaranteed, creating uncertainty at the local level. This will be taken into account when looking at my sample of Connecticut cities, and examining how much state revenue is allocated to each city.

Responses

Local governments are resilient to fiscal stress in several ways, often using cost shifting mechanisms. This has been achieved with the implementation of cutback management, where the budget is constrained, and both expenditure and employment is decreased. It has also been attained with diversifying revenue from both sales and property taxes, therefore reducing overall tax effort and allowing municipalities to avoid cutbacks. Fiscal stress may also be addressed by raising taxes, reducing or eliminating public services, or making changes to the organizational structure of the local authority (López-Hernández, 2018). Particularly, one way that has been speculated as a method of alleviating fiscal stress and reducing the cost of providing public series is through privatization. This strategy is sought out for a multitude of reasons, including public choice, transaction costs, and politics. It may also provide greater flexibility in resource management, and hence increased efficiency in the provision of services (Zhanga, Gibsonb , & Schafer, 2018).

How local government responds to fiscal stress is dependent on the local government agency. In the post-recession urban governance landscape, a growing agenda has been for the roll out of austerity urbanism, pushing local government toward neoliberal strategy and a small state model. (Davidson, 2019). Local governments may turn to alternative service delivery as a means to address fiscal stress, such as with inter-municipal cooperation (Kim & Warner, 2016). This is considered a pragmatic response to fiscal stress. Ways in which urban governance typically respond to fiscal stress varies.

Privatization is a more basic approach to restructuring and reorganizing in response to fiscal stress where local authorities decrease the delivery of public services under their jurisdiction and privatize public assets by turning to alternative service delivery. In a study of Wisconsin cities and villages, Maher and Deller (2007) found that contracting out was one of the most popular responses to fiscal stress. Privatization is one form of pragmatism. However, it has not been consistently considered to be a cost saving mechanism. In one study, scholars found that the competition was too low in the public service market and localities turned to inter-municipal contracts instead of privatization for ease of monitoring, lower transactional costs, and an already existing trust between public organizations (Kim & Warner, 2016). In a similar study, Warner & Aldag (2019) found re-municipalization in the US to be a pragmatic process of contract management, not primarily driven by political interests. Indeed, the Great Recession created an aftermath of changes to collective bargaining rights, unionization, and union dues collection (Kim & Warner, 2016). My research will assess how the Great Recession and fiscal stress thereafter affected ways in which municipalities delivered public services.

It is beneficial to distinguish the role of privatization within methodologies of governments. From a neoliberal viewpoint, often times urban policy is steered toward public-private partnerships to gives the private sector more influence. Outsourcing from the public sector is a load shedding mechanism and has potential efficiency gains in the production process (Sager, 2011). Privatization is present in both austerity and pragmatism and increases or decreases in intermunicipal cooperation and outsourcing is not a result of one approach any more than the other. My research aims to understand how governance in Connecticut relates to these theories of decision making in relation to both the amount of fiscal stress endured and the privatization of public services.

Neoliberal Austerity

Accounts of the response of fiscally constrained governments differ. There are many characterizations of urban governance responses to fiscal stress. First and foremost, neoliberalism is the centerpiece for urban governance ideologies. It is an over-arching theme of urban governance that scholars use to connect political discourse. An ideology and policy model that emphasizes deregulation of financial markets, privatization, and individualization, it is commonly associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism economics. As a policy model, neoliberalism is linked to austerity, a strategy involved in responsive reforms to alleviate financial problems. Austerity is a predictable outcome in extreme cases of fiscal stress, however the scholarly accounts of how austerity manifests differs. Reducing spending and cutting the amounts of services provided by the local government is one way that austerity can be viewed as an outcome for extreme cases of fiscal crises. Rather than seeing reforms ideologically, Aldag et al. (2019) claim that austerity is due to the legal and economic structures within cities, for example with cities with high concentrations of property-tax exempt institutions. Within neoliberal policy literature, scholars identify resistance and movements against neoliberalism and protests that occur with the roll out of austerity. There exists two forms of “roll with it” neoliberalism that are important for understanding the resistance to neoliberalism: authoritarian social formation and benevolence and reformation. (Aguiar & Noiseux, 2018). This is the latest phase that Aguiar & Noiseux explain cannot be trusted and is a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. Kim and Warner (2016) argue that there is a coalition of businesses and governance that compose an austerity machine and bypass democratic processes to decrease the level of public services and public employment. I define austerity to be a neoliberal agenda in the resolution to fiscal stress that is achieved either cutting services or reducing rages and attempting to restructure with eliminating budget and deficits.

Pragmatic Municipalism

Rather than turning to neoliberal austerity with things like cutback management , local governments can turn to alternative service delivery when faced with fiscal stress. Pragmatic municipalism tends to be focused on service retention, both through privatization and municipal cooperation. Kim and Warner (2016) argue local governments are doing much more than hallowing out services when under fiscal stress. They argue that local governments are pragmatic and consider a wide range of issues for service delivery decisions. It is true that pragmatic municipalism emphasizes staff retention and public management, however local governments are pragmatic about their approach and use both privatization and cooperation to cope with fiscal stress (Kim & Warner, 2016). Warner and Aldag argue that fiscal stress and debt have no effect on local government decisions regarding public service delivery. Larger local governments with more service capacity are more likely to re-municipalize. (Warner & Aldag, 2019). There is a pragmatist urban political ecology that are comprised of two pragmatist traditions: American pragmatism and French pragmatism. (Holifield, 2018). American pragmatism is a philosophical tradition with the idea that truth is to be ascertained through the practical consequences of something. A French pragmatic sociology analyses how there are ordinary actors that challenge injustices through critiquing and justification of their own beliefs (Holifield, 2018).

My definition of pragmatic municipalism is the focus on service retention, both through privatization and municipal cooperation. However, to narrow the scope of this definition, introducing the concept of pluralism is important for understanding the drivers of privatization and cooperation. Privatization decisions are cost concerns, and intermunicipal cooperation is driven by a broader set of concerns (Kim and Warner 2016). American pragmatism is a conception of knowledge as a social construction? that embraces epistemological pluralism (Holifield, 2018). Robert Dahl argues pluralism allows for a democracy that is open to the diversity of plural thought and voice. Jimenez (2009) argues the pluralist perspective is an approach to policy making with the belief that numerous groups exist, and the system is not dominated by a single group but rather open to a variety of interests. According to Ward, pluralism is a pragmatist approach that can both open new lines of inquiry and help strengthen currently dominant approaches through mutual engagement and dialogue. My definition of pragmatic municipalism is an argument for pluralism where the dispersion of power is among many people, and local authority is the enabler for assessing the most practical decisions.

Additional Ideologies

There are a number of other government processes that have been studied by urban scholars. This research will include concepts of managerialism and entrepreneurialism. Managerialism is an urban politic heavily influenced by the management of capitalism that mirrors the ways corporations manage.(Klikauer, 2015). Klikauer argues politics and democracy are a hinderance to efficiency and a side effect. There are no democratic solutions to managerialism, rather management is engineered to approach societal problems that have been converted into technicalities. (Klikauer, 2015). Warner and Aldag argue that re-municipalization is part of a pragmatic managerial process. I define managerialism to be a blend of pragmatic and neoliberal ideology, with guiding principles that carried out through both political and economic techniques.

Much like managerialism, entrepreneurialism is the regulation cities that has parallels to a way in which a business regulates. (Ward et al.).Ward et al. argue that this process occurs through cultivating and retaining businesses in local districts, and that urban entrepreneurialism has displaced urban managerialism. There is a notion that this austerity urbanism can be understood as late entrepreneurial conjuncture (Peck, 2016). Peck alludes to entrepreneurialism as an emergency governance, where public managers intervene for a fiscally unstable local growth machine. The private enterprises are financially restructured through intervention of the public sector, and this coalition is more a form of disaster relief and ultimately a relationship that depends on reliance. As it relates to this study, I define entrepreneurialism as the encouragement of public managers create coalitions with private businesses that have common goals. The next section will cover the focal points of my research and the ways in which data was extracted.

DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS

The focus of my research was summarized into three main points. It was crucial that I first measured and analyzed the amount of fiscal stress that Hartford and New Britain endure. I then examined the ways that these cities privatized and the types of services that they outsourced. By following these steps, I identified the relationship between cities that have experienced fiscal stress post-recession and the different ideologies that surrounded decision-making. To fully understand the role of contracting out in the resolution of fiscal stress in cities during the post-recessionary period, I investigated the two cities of New Britain and Hartford to uncover these three main points.

My research employed three methods of data collection: quantitative, interviews, and archival document collection. The quantitative data was comprised of city governments’ total revenue, including both intergovernmental and own-source, and expenditures. This was used to determine whether a city was under fiscal stress based on the ratio expenditure/revenue and how much fiscal stress a city was under compared to other cities in Connecticut. Archival sources provided detail of the privatization process and helped in understanding the political influences and ideologies involved in outsourcing. Interviewing was useful for understanding a city’s budgeting by speaking with people that deal with local government finances. It provided an examination of outsourcing methods and different deliveries of public services. Interviewing was a more confidential way of surveying, and private conversations with city officials introduced different perspectives and provided better answers to the some of the broader questions about why particular decisions were made to outsource.

Budget data was important when classifying city governments under fiscal stress. Fiscal stress is the inability to generate enough revenue within a fiscal period to cover expenditures. When observing expenditures, I included current pension payouts, however I left out future pension liabilities. Although city pension liabilities are a form of fiscal stress, it was considered long-term solvency and that was not what my research pertained to. In TABLE 1 below, there is a summary of the budget health of 19 cities in Connecticut. (Government Finance Database of Williamette University, 2018). The columns include 19 cities of Connecticut, and the rows are the years before the recession (2006-2007), during the recession (2008-2010), and years after the recession (2011-2016). The cell numbers represent the ratio expenditure/revenue. This metric, used to determine whether a city is under fiscal stress and how much fiscal stress it is under, compares each city’s fiscal ratio to that of others and shows what cities have endured the most and least fiscal stress from 2006-2016. At the beginning of my research, I knew that I was going to be investigating Hartford. However after reading this table, I chose to include New Britain as it had the highest ratio among these Connecticut cities.

With the quantitative methods employed in my research, I was able to identify the level of fiscal stress and investigate the local responses. Budgetary data derived from the Government Finance Database and CAFR’s of Connecticut cities were statistically analyzed to produce descriptive statistics and will uncover the levels of debt for municipalities. To further investigate local responses, I examined the cost of public services and any statistical shifts that happened (indicated contracting out). It was important to note that by looking at cities solely in Connecticut, there was no variation in state government. I also looked at the amount of intergovernmental revenue that Hartford and New Britain received to see how much aid these cities were receiving from other governments.

Archival research was important when identifying privatization patterns within municipalities. This was achieved by collecting documents such as white papers, internal memoranda, city documents, media reports, and financial statements. Media reports in local newspaper articles allowed me to identify the types of services that local government outsourced, any correlation between the timing of privatization and the city’s fiscal condition that year, and any political impacts on decisions to outsource. Collections of media reports were found in local libraries, for example with the Hartford Public Library and accessing Hartford Courant articles. By searching for key words that made headlines in newspaper articles within the past 10 or so years, I was able to find leads on outsourcing timelines. I also used other city documents, such as those pertaining to the financial report of cities, to observe the cost of public services and identify budget restructuring and changes to the delivery of services. Additionally, I used whitepapers to examine any authoritative changes that were either implemented or proposed within municipalities and to uncover how this directly or indirectly affected outsourcing.

Using archival documents, I did a textual analysis on delivery of public services, the cost of services, market trends that determined how services were delivered, and the fiscal history of cities and ways cities restructured public services. Archival documents was used to identify any political influences involved with why municipalities made decisions when they did to outsource. Timing was of the essence, and it was worth noting the timeline of privatization and fiscal stress endured post-recession. Additionally, archival research assisted in drawing connections between politicians lobbying for privatization and opposing party responses. Data from archival documents was sorted into different types of local responses including neoliberal austerity, pragmatic municipalism, and obscure ideologies. It was useful to understand the methodology of the local government authorities and allowed me to identify ways in which particular government responded to fiscal stress and the importance of decisions to privatize.

Interviewing was useful in gaining the ability to look at different perspectives of something, as well as look at different subjects much more closely and personally from someone that has experience with the subject matter. Participants that I interviewed were government officials that worked in municipal departments of city government. It was important to stray away from certain trigger words, such as “privatization”. Certain words such as these garner a negative reaction, so it was best to avoid them altogether. Interview questions were tailored differently as there were different levels of fiscal stress and different privatization patterns city to city in Connecticut. My quantitative data collection and archival work contributed to my interview targets. This gave me an opportunity to use information that I had already discovered to let the interviewee elaborate on.

Interviews were used to ascertain attitudes towards privatization and perceptions of fiscal stress. Interview data was transcribed to identify key differences in responses of local government officials. Analysis focused on understanding how outsourcing related to the budget health of different city departments. I recorded interviews and transcribed the dialogue in order to textually analyze the interviewee. Themes that stayed consistent with every interview was asking how their city was affected by the great recession, what measures were taken in restructuring fiscal stress, and any personal opinions they hold with outsourcing. My goal was to understand the interviewees definition of fiscal stress and what role they thought privatization played when resolving cities in poor fiscal condition. In addition, it allowed me to correlate the transcript to archival documents about theories of government decision-making. I used interviewing to uncover any underlying ideologies or political methods that I speculated after examining other data.

INITIAL FINDINGS

The intention of this study is to draw attention to methodologies of local government that are understudied yet have major implications on decision making. While we agree that fiscal stress is important and must be evaluated constantly, it is pivotal to pay attention to the concepts that are implemented to restructure and inevitably prosper in attaining fiscal stability. This research will provide a baseline in describing how municipal governments respond to fiscal stress during shifts in the economy and ways in which outsourcing affects their ability to maintain short-term and long-term solvency. 

Austerity as a Neoliberal Solution

Neoliberalism is the most useful concept for connecting the socio-political climate. There are profound consequences to neoliberalism, both socially and spatially. In the context of contemporary urban governance, there have been phases of neoliberal agenda, that scholars consider having either evolved or devolved. The most recent of radical changes in the economy has been with the Great Recession, and the form of crisis neoliberalism that has either been rejected or accepted. With neoliberal ideas deeply entrenched in public sector administrations around the US, a free market restructure post-Great Recession has been nothing but ordinary. In the aftermath of the Great Recession and the budgetary crises of local and state government that succeeded, cities like Detroit and San Bernardino were remedied by opportunities that arose for a strategic push towards a neoliberal model. Bankrupt cities illustrate the onset of systematic discipline through legal structures of neoliberalism through a process of post-recession urban governance known as austerity urbanism (Davidson, 2019). There have been many opportunities for local public managers to enact forms of austerity that follow the neoliberal model with things like downsizing and privatization. Neoliberalism takes a stand against public intervention, and those that have advocated this rolling out of neoliberal agenda hold valuable opinions about advantages. However, there are groups of people, such as with the labor workforce within cities, that question the legitimacy and effectiveness of neoliberalism. This chapter will examine the rolling out versus rolling against neoliberalism in cities in Connecticut.

Local governments are vulnerable to the capacity of service level and delivery that it can provide within fiscal constraints. Government managers try to cope with a rising cost of providing mandatory service level necessities in the face of inflation, uncontrollable expenditures, lack of both own source and intergovernmental revenue, and structural change (Kim & Warner, 2016). In a sense, a neoliberal transformation for cities that endure stress financially can be seen as a matter of time. The discipline of local government authority to sustain itself by restructuring and reformation and carefully cresting an austerity machine can be viewed through drastically different lenses (Kim & Warner, 2016). Is limiting the level of public service and employment and privatizing public asset a market tool or simply the haphazardly hallowing out of services to combat worsening economic situations? There is no short, simple answer to this, and it depends on many factors, none more important than the amount of fiscal stress.

The Great Recession of 2009 can be empirically examined with TABLE 1 CONDENSED by looking at the expenditure/revenue ratio of Connecticut cities 2009 observing that 2009 was the only year between 2006 and 2016 that reached a ratio below .9. Since this extreme economic crisis, cities have recovered and grown economically. However, post-recession fiscal recovery has been uneven. Many cities like Hartford that teeter on the edge of bankruptcy continue to undertake spending cuts (Davidson 2019). The Detroit’s and other cities that were under such an immense amount of stress financially that they were forced to default and usher in a disaster relief budget reform through ideology that follows austerity. To a lesser but significant degree, Hartford has experienced fiscal crises and political opportunism has pushed the city towards neoliberal austerity (Davison, 2019). It is a fact that there is nothing easy about managing a budget for city government. It is a balancing act that Hartford has been trying to achieve but has been lacking the necessary savings and economic growth. In 2017, Hartford faced a $65 million deficit next year and requested $40 million in additional state funds. (Fitch, 2018). Governor Malloy then signed an agreement with Hartford to refinance its debt for the next 20 years at a cost of $550 million (Fitch, 2018). Hartford is stuck in a cycle of getting bailed out by the state of Connecticut when in reality they are borrowing more than they can afford to pay back. Then, when there is not enough revenue generated to pay back the already increasing debt, Hartford must then make spending cuts.

Decisions made to contract out or contract in public services are different among local governments. For a city like New Britain that is in a better fiscal condition than Hartford, is receiving less intergovernmental revenue than Hartford (Hartford & New Britain CAFR’s), and is therefore borrowing far less state funds, rather than being last case scenario roll-out neoliberal austerity, decisions to either privatize or re-municipalize are meticulous decisions that are made on a micro-level for effectiveness and efficiency. As we saw in TABLE 1, history has shown that New Britain has been a city that has had one of the best fiscal conditions of Connecticut. Yet, when speaking with a town official in New Britain’s Finance Department, “John Smith” (March 2020) was reluctant to acknowledge this, stating that the budget has been merely “okay”. In New Britain, the number of city departments has been consolidated from 49 to 14, and the city has also flushed the older generations of employees out and ushered in less employees that are more apt to being technologically sound and easier to train. John Smith said that this has been an improvement for the fact that less departments equate to more accessibility of people and resources. New Britain is a city that is heavily unionized, and the public union has an undisputed presence, however the city still makes it a priority to organize their public services in the most efficient way possible. The process that goes into contracting out is diligent, and New Britain private sector contracts are composed for a specialized field or skill set that the public sector is lacking. In addition, poor or inadequate performance of public unions are influential in negotiating how a certain labor job is provided. For cities like New Britain that have adequate budgets, the possible onset of austerity is not a sporadic decision, rather it is regulated for efficiency. For a city that is or has endured a large amount of fiscal stress and cannot meet its fiscal requirements, this may be unalike.

Practical Governance

The word pragmatic is defined as “relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic” (Merriam-Webster). Governance makes decisions in a practical way, therefore creating and following a certain ideology known as pragmatic municipalism. There is much more that goes into the decision to contract out or contract in. In the context of New Britain city government, their decision to privatize or re-municipalize was a pragmatic approach. When local governments are under fiscal stress, is difficult to clearly define a solution that will satisfy many of the problems, because there is not one solution that is the answer. It is found that solutions surrounding budget are often criticized and protested. In particular, austerity measures that cut and privatize services were proposed in a New Britain recommended budget with the Public Works set to eliminate 6 positions (City of New Britain, 2018). In a message from the 2018 Union Budget Memorandum, the president of New Britain’s Local 1186 union urged Mayor Stewart to reconsider the cuts, explaining that they will cost more than to save city taxpayers, and how the department is already working at minimal staffing. The recommended budget was seemingly an example of austerity and budget cuts however, it was not in the mutual agreement to this union president and his staff. Mayor Stewart, presumably after receiving this memorandum, vetoed the common council budget that had been adopted, stating that “eliminating the positions would lead to the significant functions of the positions ceasing to be performed going forward”. This example is the two-fold process of preserving influences of citizens and union workers that pluralism allows for within a democracy and its policy-making.

The roles of unions are important for understanding that numerous groups exist, and the system is decentralized and open to a variety of interests (Jiminez, 2009). When investigating the services that cities in Connecticut privatize, there was a lack of literature and empirical evidence to prove that these cities are outsourcing. Therefore, it is difficult to discern the ideologies around public service delivery without significant data to draw conclusions. However, public service is not the only area of public work that is being consolidated. Interviewing city officials in Hartford’s accounting and budget department, local government Corporation Counsels have specialized work where they contract out law firms. They found that's been very beneficial, and even though the budget each year keeps going down, they're able to maintain it based on all the litigation.

A pluralist policy is one that is self-regulating and bargains and compromises among interest groups. (Jiminez, 2009). A government has the ability to neither be pragmatic nor neoliberal, but still follow a pluralist agenda. Take, for instance, Hartford and the agreements of the state to provide for its short-term solvency. Though Hartford is not taking into account the long-term solvency, they are plural because it is in the best interest of the people to provide a service level solvency. This does not make the policy a necessarily responsible one, but there is an ability to be a plural without practicality.

Obscure Ideologies

With the most notorious and studied ideologies of decision-making already covered, it is important to introduce new ideologies that are more obscure. Local government are able to run and operate like a business would. Managerialism first originated in for-profit organizations but now covers both public and private enterprises. It was in the United States where management became managerialism. There is focal point of managerialism is not politics but rather the management of capitalism by mirroring the ways corporations manage (Klikauer, 2015). There exists a likeness between managerial and neoliberal governance, as both advocate a free market ideology, however managerialism seeks to establish economic monopolization. Entrepreneurialism is the encouragement of public managers to convince private businesses to create coalitions with common goals of implementing projects and securing revenue. (Peck, 2016).

Local government can offer their own government to play a kind of managerial or even brand of entrepreneurialism during times of social and economic change with the implementation of technology. (Harvey, 1989). In both the interviews conducted in New Britain and Hartford, city officials deemed technology to be the most positive aspect of their department and with the budget in general. Within the budget office in Hartford, “Mike Smith” (February 2020) said that “a lot of that management and efficiencies can be done with technology.” However, any time that there is the implemention of technology and administration, there is a process to it. “John Smith” (March 2020) has “sent people to excel training or training that they see is beneficial with little to no cost to the city.” In an era of a technological boom, businesses have been able to capitalize with efficient ways to administer technology in order to cut costs and allocate time elsewhere. Local government is able to manage in a similar way to achieve successes with administering their data as well.

Conclusion

When there is variation in the fiscal standing of a city, the government uses austerity in different ways. For cities like New Britain that are not under immense fiscal pressure to enact neoliberal austerity, any form of budget restructuring that falls in the category of neoliberal austerity is methodically planned and regulated for efficiency. For a city like Hartford that has endured a large amount of fiscal stress and fails to generate enough revenue meet its fiscal requirements, decisions to usher in austerity are not methodical, rather they are in the form of disaster relief budget reform. Still, it is rather difficult for local government define a solution that will fix the fiscal problems, and although it may seem like they make sporadic decisions, local authorities have the ability to think practically in times of fiscal stress. Local governments must provide service-level solvency and consider a wide range of issues for service delivery decisions and follow a pragmatic municipal ideology. Local authority is open to the diversity of plural thought and voice and displays these ideals in the wake of austerity. Lastly, local government has able to run and operate like a business would. They can offer their own government to play a kind of managerial or even brand of entrepreneurialism during times of social and economic change with the implementation of technology. Local authority has seen technology as a bright spot, especially with the reduction of staffing.

For future application, this research can be used to show the ways that government officials either take on privatization as a cost-saving measure or how they fight privatization. Local governments in Connecticut have all been subject to privatization, and this research can be used to further describe variables that were taken into account during times of refinancing and restructuring. All in all, this study demonstrates how Hartford and New Britain in Connecticut were affected by the Great Recession of 2009 and continue to attempt to improve their fiscal condition through different ideologies of urban governance within an era of financial uncertainty.

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