Wrestling with MUDs To Pin Down the Truth About Special Districts

Federal, state, and local governments encourage and empower special districts--board-run, special purpose local government units that are administratively and fiscally independent from general purpose local governments. Special districts receive incentives, grants, and freedom from limitations (such as limitations on tax and debt) imposed on general purpose local governments. Special districts are treated favorably because they are small in size, which theoretically means they foster democratic participation; are limited in purpose, meaning that states can tailor special districts\u27 powers to serve specific problems; and are viewed as efficient solutions to specific problems. Though special districts have tripled in number over the last fifty years, the rationale justifying their favorable treatment has not been thoroughly scrutinized. One obstacle to such scrutiny is the difficulty in determining a metric of assessment: Too many different kinds of special districts exist, and the scope of districts changes constantly. An imperfect, but no less revealing, method is a close investigation of one type of special district. This Article provides one of the few in-depth reviews of special districts in the academic literature, focusing on the Texas municipal utility district (MUD), originally designed to supply water to unincorporated areas. MUDs--the most common type of special district in the state with the third largest number of special districts--embody both the strengths and weaknesses of special districts. Texas\u27s failure to address MUDs\u27 negative effects reflects our nationwide failure to analyze and correct problematic special districts. This Article discusses MUDs\u27 formation, powers, and scope, and analyzes how MUDs operate without real democratic checks, have too much power, and ineffectively work toward their goals. Throughout, it attempts to engage the central question in modern local government law: the optimality of certain units of government

Segregación residencial y vivienda adecuada en los migrantes de Bolivia y Perú en Córdoba, Argentina

In a large part of Latin America, residential segregation has been examined almost exclusively from a socioeconomic perspective, with an ethnic approach far less common. The aim of this article is to analyze segregation of Bolivian and Peruvian migrants residing in the city of Córdoba and its association with access to adequate housing, based on data from the 2010 Census. Both groups are segregated and in deficient residential conditions. Although the most segregated group does not present the worst residential indicators, it is a paradox which underscores the complex relationship between segregation and access to adequate housingEn gran parte de América Latina la segregación residencial ha sido abordada casi exclusivamente desde una perspectiva socioeconómica, siendo mucho menos frecuente su abordaje étnico. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la segregación de los migrantes bolivianos y peruanos que residen en la ciudad de Córdoba y su vinculación con el acceso a una vivienda adecuada, a partir de datos del Censo de 2010. Ambos grupos se encuentran segregados y en condiciones residenciales deficientes. Aunque el colectivo más segregado no presenta los peores indicadores habitacionales, es una paradoja que evidencia la compleja relación entre segregación y acceso a una vivienda adecuadaFil: Molinatti, Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad; ArgentinaFil: Pelaez, Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad; Argentin

Privatization of the Japan Highway Public Corporation: Policy Assessment

Unlike the expressway systems of the U.S. and Europe, where road use is largely free of charge, the Japanese expressway system consists mostly of toll roads. The toll expressway system was instituted after World War II to expedite construction of a nation-wide expressway network. Originally it was intended that the system ultimately become free of charge, as soon as the national expressway network was completed and construction debts repaid. Although expressway tolls are collected based on each individual route, tolls are included in the same budget and pooled for the construction of other routes, in what is called a pool system. However, problems have occurred in such a system. Expressway users have been required to continue paying expressway tolls along trunk expressways near big cities where construction costs have long been completely repaid. Furthermore, in rural areas where the demand for expressway use is low, the system continues to construct expressways simply because rural residents expect them to be constructed. Users have also been dissatisfied with the high price of expressway use, attributing the cost to what they have perceived as the monopolistic nature of the public corporation system, which, like the former Japan National Railway, had no competition. In this environment, Prime Minister Koizumi appointed a special committee to define the role of the Japan Highway Public Corporation and to determine whether or not it should be privatized, and the issue of highway privatization became controversial in Japan. Although there were effective arguments pro and con, it was decided that the corporation be privatized. In October, 2005, the Japan Highway Public Corporation was privatized and separated into three expressway companies, and the following companies were also privatized: the Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation, the Hanshin Expressway Public Corporation, and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge authority. The main purpose of this study is to assess the privatization policy taken by the government. The aspects which we will especially focus on are (1) ownership, (2) regional subdivision, (3) cost structure, (4) investment behavior, (5) pricing system, (6) management and incentive system of internal organization, (7) public regulations, and (8) political intervention. We will evaluate these aspects comparing the before-privatization and after-privatization periods of the Japan Expressway Public Corporation. As the performance results of the new organization are not available yet because privatization is quite recent, our conceptual outcomes will be based on theory and the lessons learned from the privatization of the Japan National Railway.

Hierarchical information clustering by means of topologically embedded graphs

We introduce a graph-theoretic approach to extract clusters and hierarchies in complex data-sets in an unsupervised and deterministic manner, without the use of any prior information. This is achieved by building topologically embedded networks containing the subset of most significant links and analyzing the network structure. For a planar embedding, this method provides both the intra-cluster hierarchy, which describes the way clusters are composed, and the inter-cluster hierarchy which describes how clusters gather together. We discuss performance, robustness and reliability of this method by first investigating several artificial data-sets, finding that it can outperform significantly other established approaches. Then we show that our method can successfully differentiate meaningful clusters and hierarchies in a variety of real data-sets. In particular, we find that the application to gene expression patterns of lymphoma samples uncovers biologically significant groups of genes which play key-roles in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of some of the most relevant human lymphoid malignancies

Privatized Communities and the Secession of the Successful : Democracy and Fairness Beyond the Gate

In this essay, I will reflect on how common interest developments, and their privatized spaces, are contributing to a broader phenomenon of civic secession, primarily by affluent property owners. In particular, I will analyze the way in which CIDs may affect electoral politics and the allocation of public resources by federal and state government. The chief threat of CIDs is that they exacerbate inequality in America while also exacerbating the challenges of governing. By giving the private property owner a formal context in which to feel justified in her view that she is doing her part simply by paying her way for services, it will be increasingly difficult in the twenty-first century to establish a mandate for governmental policy, whether federal, state, or local, that requires shared sacrifice. Because most CIDs are extremely homogenous in terms of race and class, it will be particularly difficult to build a consensus for public policies that are perceived as benefiting racial and economic groups that are underrepresented in the CID, property-holding class

Machine Precision Evaluation of Singular and Nearly Singular Potential Integrals by Use of Gauss Quadrature Formulas for Rational Functions

A new technique for machine precision evaluation of singular and nearly singular potential integrals with 1/R singularities is presented. The numerical quadrature scheme is based on a new rational expression for the integrands, obtained by a cancellation procedure. In particular, by using library routines for Gauss quadrature of rational functions readily available in the literature, this new expression permits the exact numerical integration of singular static potentials associated with polynomial source distributions. The rules to achieve the desired numerical accuracy for singular and nearly singular static and dynamic potential integrals are presented and discussed, and several numerical examples are provide