Qian, Bingxi and Mildred Warner. (2014). "Do Municipalities Share Services with Poorer Neighbors? Factors Explaining Levels of Service Sharing Among Municipalities in New York State." The Shared Services Project, Dept. of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University.
Shared service delivery is often recommended as an approach to control government expenditure, improve service quality, and promote regional coordination. Concerns over service efficiency and quality, as well as policy incentives such as the Tax Cap and Property Tax Freeze, show more service sharing is desired in NYS. This issue brief reports on an analysis of service sharing among NYS municipalities. It explains factors leading to service sharing and whether sharing occurs across municipalities with different levels of expenditures, tax base and need. We find municipalities with management support, larger population size and similar neighbors share more. This voluntary service sharing may leave behind those municipalities (poorer, smaller), which might benefit most from sharing. State support for administrative design costs and subsidies to encourage sharing with poorer neighbors is needed to promote more service sharing.
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