Governing

Cities around the world are building urban cultural life as a way to develop local economies and revitalize urban centers. But they have done less to recognize and systematically promote the cultural lives of urban neighborhoods and their residents. This brief examines four characteristics of city cultural policy that affect cultural development and cultural life in neighborhoods. The brief is informed by policy forums held by The Living Cultures Project in New Orleans in 2008-2009 to address key policy issues confronting neighborhood and cultural life.

In a letter to top Senate Democrats, President Obama recently stated that he was open to the "principle of shared responsibility—making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the costs." This sounds very much like support for what are sometimes labeled individual and employer "mandates," though in the Presidential campaign he opposed requiring adults to buy insurance, except for their children. Done the right way, "mandates" could increase dramatically the numbers of those insured, while helping drive down the rate of increase in health care costs. Done the wrong way, they can be unenforceable or drive up the number of unemployed. The Senate Finance Committee increasingly has been turning to mandates as part of a package of health reform.

Again and again, health reformers believe they have identified ways to save money through more efficient delivery of care. So why can't we count on those savings to budget the coming expansion of health care for Americans or lower cost growth?

In Policy and Evidence in a Partisan Age: The Great Disconnect, Paul Gary Wyckoff presents an accessible, compact, and iconoclastic exploration of the paradox between the exaggerated claims made for public policies and the reality of their limited effectiveness.

If we are to achieve health reform—that is, affordable, sustainable, and constantly improving health care available to all—we need to start looking as much to the psychology of the issue as to the economics and politics.

Pundits and press alike are declaring President Obama's budget "transformational." ... Administration insiders are more careful with their claims, knowing that the hard work remains to be done.

Baltimore participated in a 2004 National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) pilot project to enhance local capacity to manage land markets through innovative use of parcel-level information. The city already had a program in place to acquire and re-market abandoned properties. The NNIP project focused on helping officials use the program-generated property information for more effective land management. New information systems were created to manage the complex business rules, to store the property data, and to provide staff with desktop access to information. An integrated disposition system reduced staff time, improved performance, and enhanced the city's service to its business partners.

"If you're depressed when Congress fails to get an 'A' on legislation, you should never work for government. Getting from an 'F' to a 'C' must be fulfillment enough." That's the advice I got many years ago at the Treasury Department from Jim Wetzler, who worked for the tax-writing committees of Congress, later became Commissioner of Taxation and Finance for the State of New York, and most recently was on an Obama transition team that reviewed the Treasury Department.

This is the sixth and final paper in a technical assistance series on child welfare privatization initiatives, funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of this paper is to assist public agency child welfare administrators in monitoring and assuring quality of contracted services. It describes the types of monitoring activities, as well as methods for collecting and using monitoring information. The paper provides examples of some of the decisions that must be made about what will be measured and how child welfare agencies have worked with providers to develop approaches to contract monitoring.

The U.S. corporate tax has been in effect longer than the current individual income tax but it has only rarely changed significantly since its 1909 inception. Daniel N. Shaviro, in the new book Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax, outlines longstanding imperfections in the tax code and describes difficulties in applying corporate tax laws now that financial instruments are so complex and capital flows are worldwide. Shaviro also explains how political and economic realities are likely to frustrate much-needed changes to the tax code.