Endnotes

Unless otherwise indicated, all the city government finance figures contained herein are in constant 1990 dollars, refer to per capita levels, and are from the 1979-80 and 1989-90 editions of the U.S. Census Bureau's annual publication, City Government Finances. (year). At the time of publication, the 1989-90 edition was the most recent.

Note that of the 11 cities examined, hospital finances are handled by city government only in Flint. Hospital spending in the other ten cities is handled by county government. Therefore, we have excluded Flint's hospital revenues (an estimated $1,000 per capita) from their per capita own-source revenue figure.

See State Government Finances: 1991, U.S. Census Bureau, Table 13.

"Intergovernmental revenue from the state government" includes amounts originally from the federal government that were channeled through state governments. See City Government Finances: 1989-90, U.S. Census Bureau, for a more complete description.

Since spending on health and hospitals, education, and welfare is done by a wide variety of combinations of levels of government, it is customary to exclude such spending by city governments when making inter-city comparisons. Unless otherwise noted, all spending figures herein will refer to general expenditures minus spending on health and hospitals, education, and welfare.

See City Government Finances: 1989-90, U.S. Census Bureau, for a strict definition of "police protection" spending.

See City Government Finances: 1989-90, U.S. Census Bureau, for a strict definition of "government administration" spending.

See City Government Finances. 1989-90, U.S. Census Bureau, for a more detailed description. j

Stephen Moore and Dean Stansel, "The Myth of America's Underfunded Cities," Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 188, February 1993.

This was done by finding for each city the sum of the standardized values of each of the economic growth measures. The standardized value for each city's performance on each growth measure is the number of standard deviations that the observed value of the particular variable is above or below the 11-city mean for that variable. A list of the sources for each variable is provided in the appendix.

Refers to the "relative tax effort rate" as reported in the Michigan Tax Commission's Assessing Officer's Report of Property Taxes Levied. The relative effort rate equals the local effort rate divided by the state average local effort rate. The local effort rate is the total taxes collected divided by the state equalized value.

See especially Moore and Stansel, "The Myth of America's Underfunded Cities,"

Ibid.

Cox and Brunelli, "America's Protected Class," American Legislative Exchange Council, Washington, D.C., 1991.

See Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan Privatization Report, January 1993.

Some of those studies are listed in Stephen Moore, "How to Privatize Federal Services by Contracting Out," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 494, March 13, 1986.

Stephen Moore, "Does Privatization Really Harm Public Employees?" Partnership Focus, June 1990, pp. 18-22.

Sam Staley, "Bigger Is Not Better: The Virtues of Decentralized Local Government." Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 166, January 21, 1992.

For a list of such studies, see Moore and Stansel, "The Myth of America's Under-funded Cities."