Collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local government

Abstract

This article explores collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local governments. To date, the capital budgeting literature has focused on practices within individual governments. This leaves a gap in our understanding because a large portion of capital planning, acquisition, and maintenance occurs through collaboration between two or more local governments. Drawing on the capital budgeting and collaborative public management literature, and on illustrative cases of collaborative capital budgeting in the United States, an inductive approach is used to: (1) identify and categorize the different objectives that motivate local officials to pursue collaborative agreements, (2) examine common patterns in the types of assets involved in collaboration, and (3) discover common institutional arrangements in collaboration agreements. The research findings demonstrate significant heterogeneity in the objectives, patterns, and institutions of collaborative capital budgeting.