Interlocal Contractual Arrangements in the Provision of Public Safety Simon A. Andrew Askew School of Public Administration and Policy FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

Public Safety Functional Services Law Enforcement/Police Emergency Medical Services Fire Enabling Statutes Interlocal Cooperation Act of 1969 Growth Management Act Florida Mutual Aid Act State Emergency Management Act

Research Question What factors explain local governments choice of interlocal contractual arrangements?

Interlocal Contractual Arrangements as Relational Contract Relational contracts are defined as “adaptive features to affect realignments caused by unanticipated disturbances” (Maser 1998:528)

The theoretical argument runs like this: Uncertainties impose costs on interlocal relationships. Absent foresight, parties to any transactions cannot agree on a substantive response to uncertainty. So, in order to minimize costs of planning, adapting, and monitoring task completion across jurisdictions, interlocal contracts are crafted as a procedural safeguard to reduce uncertainty

The existence of multiple types of interlocal contractual arrangements provides alternative mechanisms for managing uncertainty because the ability of municipal and county governments to cope with uncertainty differs given their available capital and human resource endowments. They strategically align the safeguard guaranteed to them by a particular contractual arrangement against uncertainty accordingly because alternative arrangements also impose different costs on their relationships. So, local governments enter into a contractual arrangement in a bounded rational fashion by selecting an arrangement to achieve task completion that simultaneously minimizes the transaction costs of contracting.

For example: Interlocal Service Agreements May include some or all of the following elements that specified the rules: nature of the assistance; discretion by the parties as to when and to what extent assistance will be available; agency/entity that will bear any liability arising from acts undertaken under the agreement; procedures for requesting and for authorizing assistance; Agency/entity that has supervisory responsibility; time limit for the agreement; any compensation or reimbursement to the assisting agency or entity.

Tradeoffs Once an agreement is adopted, it becomes legally binding. Can only be changed with the agreement of all. Unable to respond to changed conditions, leading to suboptimal outcomes. Lost the freedom / local autonomy More acute when multiple localities are involved – “Joint decision Trap”

Example: Mutual Aid Agreements Relational Contract - Adaptive features Generally non-obligatory; Generally voluntary and reciprocal. The agreements are flexible and adaptive – i.e., services identified are highly specific, yet the contractual arrangement does not require a complete assumption of authority by the other jurisdictions.

Interlocal Contractual Arrangements ILA Contract / Lease MOU Mutual Aid Informal / Letter of Agreement Non Relational Contract Relational Contract

What factors explain the existence of multiple types of interlocal contractual arrangements?

Logistic Regression Model Boundary Spanning City-County Relations (-) City-City Relations (+) County-County Relations (-) Characteristics of Services Service Measurability (+) Asset Specificity (-) Functional Service Area Combined (Police, Fire, EMS) (+) Police (+) EMS (+) Number of Collaborators (+)

Data The FL Department of Community Affairs was authorized by the Florida Legislature to collect data from 33 Florida counties and issue an Interlocal Service Delivery Report by January 2004.

Conclusion We have examined the factors that explained the different types of contractual arrangements. We argued that they were the product of state statutes employed by local government to span their political and administrative boundaries. We have shown that vertical boundary spanning involving municipal and county governments generally employed non-relational contracts.

4. We have also shown that the characteristics of goods and services as the product of transaction costs influenced the types of interlocal contractual arrangements in the provision of public safety. 5. Functional service area and the number of collaborators involved also influenced the type of interlocal contractual arrangements municipal and county governments employed.