Faculty member David Ammons will serve as keynote speaker at the national Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Conference on September 22, 2016. His address is titled, “So, Who Will ACTUALLY Do Performance Management in Your Government?” The conference is hosted by Rutgers University-Newark.
The new, sixth edition of faculty member Maureen Berner’s popular textbook, Research Methods for Public Administration, is now available from Routledge.
Assistant Professor Whitney Afonso‘s article, “State LST Laws: A Comprejensive Analysis of the Laws Governing Local Sales Taxes,” has been published in Public Budgeting & Finance.
Local sales taxes (LSTs) have received growing attention over the past decade, but a fundamental aspect of LSTs has remained largely unexplored: How do state laws governing LSTs differ from one another? The literature acknowledges that state laws vary widely, but leaves the discussion at that. This research seeks to fill that void by presenting a comprehensive set of state LST laws and creating a resource that will enable researchers to consider these differences in their analyses. State LST laws are framed within the lenses of jurisdictional eligibility and discretionary authority.
Afonso joined the School of Government in 2012. She was named Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Term Assistant Professor for 2015–2017. Prior to that time, she taught at the University of Georgia, Department of Public Administration and Policy; and Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Administration. Her research into how the choice of revenue streams by state and local governments affect government and citizen behavior has been presented at the annual conferences for the National Tax Association, Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, American Society for Public Administration, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. In October 2016, she was recognized by Public Budgeting & Finance with its Jesse Burkhead Award. Her article, “Leviathan or Flypaper: Earmarked Local Sales Taxes for Transportation,” was selected as the journal’s top article in 2015. Afonso earned a BA in political science from Vanderbilt University, and an MA in economics and PhD in public administration and policy from the University of Georgia.
Associate Professor Leisha DeHart-Davis draws on a decade of original research and interdisciplinary scholarship in her new book, Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations. This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of rules in public organizations and seeks to find the balance between rules that create red tape and rules that help public organizations function effectively, what the author calls “green tape.”
The creation of rules that govern processes or behavior is essential to any organization, but these rules are often maligned for creating inefficiencies. DeHart-Davis builds a framework of three perspectives on rules: the organizational perspective, which sees rules as a tool for achieving managerial goals and organizational functions; the individual perspective, which examines how rule design and implementation affect employees; and the behavioral perspective, which explores human responses to the intersection of the first two perspectives. The book is available from Georgetown University Press.
DeHart-Davis joined the School of Government in 2012. She was named Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Term Associate Professor for 2015–2017. She directs Human Capital Matters, a line of programming for human resource professionals in NC local government, and co-directs Engaging Women, a program that seeks to equip women to pursue public service leadership positions. DeHart-Davis was named a Top 100 Local Government Influencer by the Emerging Local Government Leaders Network in 2016. She teaches human resource management and the portfolio course in the School’s Master of Public Administration program. DeHart-Davis holds a PhD in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In the video, “Food for the Summer,” School of Government and MPA faculty members Maureen Berner and Margaret Henderson highlight how one mayor convened local government and community organizations to expand efforts to feed hungry kids during the summer. Over several years, Berner has documented food insecurity in North Carolina through research into the chain of services necessary to feed hungry kids and families, from the farms that donate crops to the non-profit, volunteer-run food banks that distribute the food in communities. For more information about this research, visit www.sog.unc.edu/resources/tools/hunger-research.
Alice Rivlin, former director of the Office Management and Budget and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, will deliver the 2018 Deil S. Wright Lecture at 3:15 p.m. on Friday, April 6 at the UNC School of Government. An expert in monetary and fiscal policy, Rivlin currently serves as a senior fellow in Economic Studies and the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution and is a visiting professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. The title of Rivlin’s lecture is “Fixing Our Broken Policy Process: The Case for Bipartisan Consensus on Economic Policy.”
In 2002, the MPA Alumni Association honored Professor Deil Wright for his 34 years of teaching MPA students by creating the Deil S. Wright Lecture in Public Administration. Each year, a distinguished professional from the field of public administration enriches the educational experience of students, alumni, faculty, and interested members of the community.
Rivlin served as director of the Office Management and Budget (OMB) in the first Clinton Administration (1993-96) and served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1996-1999). She was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83) and served as chair of the District of Columbia Financial Management and Assistance Authority (1998-2001). She was director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings (1983-87). She also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation (1968-69).
In 2010, Rivlin was named by President Barack Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and co-chaired, with former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction.
The Deil S. Wright Lecture Series is hosted by the Master of Public Administration program at UNC-Chapel Hill and sponsored by Fidelity Investments and the MPA Alumni Association.
Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Government Whitney Afonso was elected to serve on the Executive Committee for the Association of Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM). An expert in public finance, Afonso will serve a three-year term beginning January 2018.
“It is an essential part of our mission when Carolina MPA faculty members like Whitney Afonso assume such important leadership roles within the public administration community, said William C. Rivenbark, Professor of Public Administration and Government and MPA Program Director.
ABFM is a section of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), the leading interdisciplinary public service organization involving the science and practice of public and non-profit administration. ABFM aims to promote the professional development of budgeting and financial management in the public and non-profit sectors.
At AFBM’s annual conference on September 28-30, Afonso presented on “Internet Taxation and Local Government Sales Tax Capacity” and “A First Look at the Time to Adoption of Local Option Fuel Taxes.”
Afonso joined the School of Government in 2012. She was named Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Term Assistant Professor for 2015–2017. Prior to that time, she taught at the University of Georgia, Department of Public Administration and Policy; and Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Administration.
Faculty member Leisha DeHart-Davis, associate professor of public administration and government, was quoted in a News & Observer article that examines the increasing number of women running for public office.
In the article entitled, “Women are half the population. Now they’re half the Raleigh City Council, too,” N&O reporter Henry Gargan examined the trend of women running for public office, both in North Carolina and across the nation. DeHart-Davis commented, “I think women are absolutely more motivated to run. My impression is that women are seeing political issues being addressed very narrowly and not taking into account a range of concerns, and I expect we’re going to see an increasing number of women running in the coming years.”
DeHart-Davis directs the Local Government Workplaces Initiative, which conducts organizational research for improving city and county workplaces, and is also a faculty partner in Engaging Women in Local Government, a program that seeks to equip women to pursue public service leadership positions. Earlier this year, DeHart-Davis was a guest on UNC’s podcast “Well Said,” discussing women in leadership. Listen to the podcast online.
In fall 2017, Professor of Public Administration and Government Maureen Berner traveled to Belgium to conduct research on food insecurity and poverty as a visiting scholar at Ghent University and its Centre for Global Studies. Berner also exchanged homes with University of Antwerp historian Maarten Van Ginderachter, who visited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to work on his book and collaborate with faculty here in the United States.
The scholarly exchange was recently featured in Endeavors, a magazine about research and creativity at the University: “In Belgium, Berner observed many similarities between Europe and America. ‘Europe also focuses on employment policies, job training, business growth, education, community development, and social welfare,’ she shares. ‘Affordable housing is a significant issue, and recycling is a priority. Local government is local government in most ways.’”
Berner commented, “Obviously, there are great differences in how governments and non-profits work in Belgium and in Europe, but there is a lot of good information to be shared when we are all talking about the same issues and the same human condition.”
Berner wrote more about lessons learned in her semester abroad for the Community and Economic Development blog.
Read more about Berner’s exchange with visiting faculty at Endeavors online.
Faculty member Leisha DeHart-Davis has been elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Among a group of 41 distinguished practitioners of public administration recognized this year, DeHart-Davis will be officially inducted into the Academy in Arlington, VA, this November. She will join fellow School of Government colleagues Carl Stenberg and David Ammons in NAPA fellowship.
The Academy is a prestigious, non-partisan, nonprofit organization that recognizes individuals with distinguished contributions to the field of public administration through service and scholarship. Its more than 850 Fellows range from professors to Congress members to business executives. DeHart-Davis will be in the company of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. In addition, Leon Panetta, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, will join her as an inductee to the class of 2018.
For 51 years, the Fellows have leveraged their expertise to advise government leaders on addressing the issues and ever-changing discourse surrounding American governance. In the words of the Academy, they are the “primary vehicle for addressing current and emerging issues and contributing to the intellectual and popular discourse on government.”
Leisha DeHart-Davis is a professor of public administration and government, having joined the School’s faculty in 2012. She directs the Local Government Workplaces Initiative, which conducts organizational research for improving city and county workplaces, and is also a faculty partner in Engaging Women in Public Service, a program that seeks to equip women to pursue public service leadership positions. She teaches in the Carolina MPA program, and has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, International Public Management Journal, Administration and Society, and Review of Public Personnel Administration. Her book, Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2017. DeHart-Davis holds a PhD in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology.