October 9, 2013
Last week, under the backdrop of a partial federal government shutdown, members of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM) convened in Washington, DC for the organization’s annual conference. ABFM links scholarly research with practitioner and is dedicated to the science of public administration and public finance. This year, researchers weighed in on many of the most pressing public finance issues that are being grappled with by state and local government officials, and clearly there is no shortage of questions that need answers. As political and legal roadblocks federal government operations to a halt, academic researchers delivered findings on a range of fiscal issues including the erosion of tax bases, shifts in intergovernmental funding, the importance of transparent municipal markets, revenue forecasting and public pension investment patterns. After reflecting on the conference as a whole, I found one presenter’s view that the United States is entering a new era in fiscal federalism most noteworthy. The demarcation of the change is perhaps best exemplified by state choices surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the post 9/11 issue known as Real-ID. Under each of these federal changes, states are choosing to opt-in or opt-out, which is resulting in a new era of federalism that is particularly distinct from previous collaborative efforts between levels of government. The abundance of fiscal outcomes from varying levels of participation in this new federalist system will likely be prime fodder for public policy researchers and state budget practitioners alike.