[{"content":"","date":"May 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/policing-the-american-university/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"First-ever look at the staffing levels and arrest patterns of the 877+ campus police departments operating in the United States. Combines FBI Uniform Crime Report data with U.S. Department of Education records. Paired with a Campus Policing Toolkit for community-led conversations about local policing.","title":"Policing the American University","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"Dr. Jared Knowles is the president of Civilytics Consulting, a firm he established in 2016 to advance public performance metrics for government services. He provides consulting in statistical computing, research design, data analysis, and R programming training, with specialized expertise in machine learning, multilevel modeling, and statistical analysis methods.\nPreviously, Knowles served as a research analyst at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, where he designed and implemented the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS) — a machine-learning predictive framework deployed statewide for grades 5–9. He led internal analysis efforts and presented findings to agency leadership, legislators, school leaders, teachers, and the public.\nHe completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/people/jared-knowles/","section":"About Us","summary":"Dr. Jared Knowles is the president of Civilytics Consulting, a firm he established in 2016 to advance public performance metrics for government services. He provides consulting in statistical computing, research design, data analysis, and R programming training, with specialized expertise in machine learning, multilevel modeling, and statistical analysis methods.\n","title":"Jared Knowles, PhD","type":"person"},{"content":"","date":"June 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/education-data-done-right/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Three-volume book series (Volumes 1, 2, and 3) covering the elements critical to success in building data capacity in education agencies. Written by agency analysts, for agency analysts.","title":"Education Data Done Right","type":"portfolio"},{"content":" What are the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds? Established by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Program (SLFRP) provides $350 billion in emergency fiscal recovery funding (FRF) for eligible state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments. All state and local governments are eligible for some amount of aid to respond to acute pandemic needs, fill revenue shortfalls, and provide much needed support to populations hardest-hit by COVID-19.\nFind out how much your community will receive using our online tools. See the tools.\nLearn more Civilytics has created a number of resources to help you and your community understand this important program — including the amount of funding, the timeline for funding, the eligible uses of funds, and the ongoing monitoring and reporting requirements for this funding. See below for our coverage.\nA two-page explainer on fiscal recovery funds FAQs on the eligible use categories Public health and economic impact Premium pay Revenue loss Investments in infrastructure FAQs on administration of the funding Restrictions and recoupment Payment amounts and timeline Reporting requirements (coming soon) Aid estimates for all municipalities ARPA aid to small towns (Part I) How 5 words shifted $5 billion dollars (Part II) How you too can become obsessed with understanding ARPA aid allocations (Part III) Regulations and Requirements Civilytics\u0026rsquo; official comment on the Interim Final Rule What you need to know about Treasury\u0026rsquo;s Final Rule (1.26.2022) Ideas for spending funds Civilytics is also committed to helping communities find ways to use the funds that meet the critical needs of this moment. See below for our ongoing coverage on eligible funding uses and details on how your community might establish a program to do things like provide housing, eliminate rent or water debt, compensate essential workers in the private sector, and support a more equal recovery.\nSeven bold ideas for ARPA aid Five uses for ARPA aid Eligible use FAQs Official guidance from Treasury State and Local Fiscal Recovery Program Fact Sheet (opens in new tab) US Treasury Fiscal Recovery Fund Interim Final Rule (opens in new tab) (published 5.10.21) State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund Homepage (opens in new tab) Guidance on Allocating Aid to Non-entitlement Units (opens in new tab) (published 05.27.21) Official State and Local Fiscal Recovery FAQ (opens in new tab) (published 06.07.21) Non-entitlement Unit Aid FAQ (opens in new tab) (published 06.07.21) Frequently asked questions What are the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds? Established by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Program (SLFRP) provides $350 billion in emergency fiscal recovery funding (FRF) for eligible state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments. All state and local governments are eligible for some amount of aid to respond to acute pandemic needs, fill revenue shortfalls, and provide much needed support to populations hardest-hit by COVID-19.\nHow do governments get the funds? All state, Tribal, county, territorial, and local governments are eligible for funds. All governments except non-metropolitan local governments (e.g. towns, villages, and smaller cities) will receive their funding by submitting an application through the Treasury Submission Portal (opens in new tab).\nSmaller local governments will receive their funds through their state government. Details on this process are available from the Treasury (opens in new tab).\nHow much funding will my government receive? Type of government Amount ($ billions) States \u0026amp; District of Columbia $195.3 Counties $65.1 Metropolitan cities $45.6 Tribal governments $20.0 Territories $4.5 Non-entitlement units of local government $19.5 Source: US Treasury (opens in new tab).\nTo find out how much your state, county, and local government will receive, visit our up-to-date page of estimates.\nWhen will funds arrive? Funds will begin to arrive in May 2021. Most local governments will receive funds in two equal payments, 12 months apart. One exception is states or U.S. territories with a large net increase in unemployment, which are eligible to receive their full funding in 2021 in two payments, one in May and one in June, rather than waiting a year for the second payment. The second exception is \u0026ldquo;non-entitlement units\u0026rdquo; of local government (towns and smaller cities), which will receive their payments from states rather than the Treasury.\nTreasury estimates (opens in new tab) that 30 state governments will be subject to split payments as of May 10, 2021. Follow the link for the list by state.\nWhen do the funds need to be used by? The funds must be obligated by December 31, 2024. This does not necessarily mean expenses must be incurred by then.1 The regulations intentionally adopt a flexible approach to the timeline for spending funds to give state and local governments the most options in how to use these funds to promote a robust and successful recovery.\nHow can the funds be used? The intent of these funds is to respond to needs created by the pandemic and rebuild a stronger, more equitable economy as the country recovers. To meet these goals Treasury has adopted permissive guidance that gives state and local governments flexibility to serve their community. Treasury lists seven categories of possible fund uses:\nSupporting the public health response Addressing the negative economic impacts of the public health emergency Serving hardest-hit communities and families Replacing lost public sector revenue Providing premium pay for essential workers Investing in water and sewer infrastructure Investing in broadband infrastructure What are ineligible uses of the funds? States and Tribal governments may not offset tax cuts using Fiscal Recovery Funds (FRF) No recipient may make an extraordinary contribution to pay down an unfunded pension liability Where can I get more detail on eligible uses for funds? Civilytics has summarized all of the key provisions related to eligible uses of the funds, categorizing them in an easy-to-digest format. See the Eligible Uses FAQ tab.\nEligible uses of fiscal recovery funds Here you will find Civilytics\u0026rsquo; review of the Interim Final Rule governing the use of State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The Interim Final Rule, adopted on May 10, 2021, clarifies the intent of the original legislation and has the force of law. All page numbers referenced are from the PDF pages in the full text of the rule published by Treasury (opens in new tab).\nWhat is the purpose and status of the rule? The regulations published by Treasury are an Interim Final Rule, which means that while Treasury is actively seeking public comment, it is the controlling rule governing the use of the funds until a revised rule is implemented.\nImplementation of the Fiscal Recovery Funds also reflect the importance of public input, transparency, and accountability. Treasury seeks comment on all aspects of the Interim Final Rule and, to better facilitate public comment, has included specific questions throughout this Supplementary Information. Treasury encourages State, local, and Tribal governments in particular to provide feedback and to engage with Treasury regarding issues that may arise regarding all aspects of this Interim Final Rule and Treasury’s work in administering the Fiscal Recovery Funds. In addition, the Interim Final Rule establishes certain regular reporting requirements, including by requiring State, local, and Tribal governments to publish information regarding uses of Fiscal Recovery Funds payments in their local jurisdiction. (p.9)\np.9 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nOverall the Treasury Interim Final Rule reinforces that most things communities envision responding to the COVID-19 crisis are allowable. The Treasury identifies a number of specific ideas it encourages communities to support, which are noted below. While the funding is fairly unrestricted, funding is even more unrestricted when providing services in low-income communities in recognition of the disproportionate impact the COVID-19 pandemic had in these places. To find out more about recommended uses and the specific language and requirements around these funds click on the categories of allowable uses below to learn more.\nHow does Treasury define public health and economic impacts? The regulations begin by broadening the scope of responding to COVID-19 beyond just immediate public health needs. The regulations instruct recipients to identify a need or negative impact of the public health emergency or its resulting economic disruptions and then identify programs, services, or other interventions to address those needs or impacts.\nAssessing whether a program or service “responds to” the COVID-19 public health emergency requires the recipient to, first, identify a need or negative impact of the COVID-19 public health emergency and, second, identify how the program, service, or other intervention addresses the identified need or impact. While the COVID-19 public health emergency affected many aspects of American life, eligible uses under this category must be in response to the disease itself or the harmful consequences of the economic disruptions resulting from or exacerbated by the COVID-19 public health emergency.\np.10 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nWhat is considered responding to COVID-19? Treasury emphasizes that the list of acceptable uses is non-exclusive, that is, things not listed by Treasury can still be acceptable. From the beginning Treasury is indicating broad flexibility in the use of funds and granting latitude for State, Tribal, and local governments to best assess how to use FRF to address local issues.\nThe Interim Final Rule implements these provisions by identifying a non-exclusive list of programs or services that may be funded as responding to COVID-19 or the negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency, along with considerations for evaluating other potential uses of the Fiscal Recovery Funds not explicitly listed. The Interim Final Rule also provides flexibility for recipients to use payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds for programs or services that are not identified on these non-exclusive lists but that fall under the terms of section 602(c)(1)(A) or 603(c)(1)(A) by responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency or its negative economic impacts.\np.11 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nTreasury explicitly lists as acceptable uses some public health areas negatively impacted by COVID-19 including mental health care, substance misuse and overdose, domestic violence and preventative public health measures.\nOther areas of public health have also been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in one survey in January 2021, over 40 percent of American adults reported symptoms of depression or anxiety, up from 11 percent in the first half of 2019.26, The proportion of children’s emergency department visits related to mental health has also risen noticeably.27 Similarly, rates of substance misuse and overdose deaths have spiked: preliminary data from the CDC show a nearly 30 percent increase in drug overdose mortality from September 2019 to September 2020.28 Stay-at-home orders and other pandemic responses may have also reduced the ability of individuals affected by domestic violence to access services.\nFinally, some preventative public health measures like childhood vaccinations have been deferred and potentially forgone.\np.14-15 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nTreasury elaborates on p.17-21 to define other eligible public health uses, again, a non-exhaustive list.\nWhat are eligible public health uses? The eligible uses when responding to the public health crisis, but not its disproportionate impact, are listed on pages 17-21 of the Interim Final Rule and include the following non-exhaustive set of items:\nCOVID-19 Mitigation and Prevention Public hospital improvements and infrastructure Adaptations to public buildings to improve communicable disease mitigation, such as ventilation systems, heating and cooling upgrades, filtration systems Other expenses that were allowable under the CARES Act Medical Expenses This is not well defined in the Interim Final Rule other than to say that funds cannot be used as a contribution when accounting for required contributions to other Federal funds. Behavioral Health Care Funding to provide mental health services where they do not exist and to expand outreach, including: \u0026ldquo;mental health treatment, substance misuse treatment, other behavioral health services, hotlines, or warmlines, crisis intervention, overdose prevention, infection disease prevention, and services or outreach to promote access to physical or behavioral health primary care and preventative medicine\u0026rdquo; (p. 20 Interim Final Rule) Public Health and Safety Staff Treasury clarifies what employees expenses are eligible for coverage under this provision but does not provide a clear definition of which employees would be eligible for coverage except to say that, if a unit or division that an employee works in is dedicated to responding to COVID-19, those employees are eligible. Communities will have broad latitude to classify public employees as responding to the crisis, but funds are only eligible for expenses incurred beginning in March 2021, not retrospectively (p. 20 of the Interim Final Rule).2 Expenses to Improve the Design and Execution of Public Health Programs Local governments may use FRF to engage in planning and analysis to improve programs addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, including targeted consumer outreach, improvements to data or technology infrastructure, impact evaluations, and data analysis. A lottery incentivizing people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 would be eligible under this provision (opens in new tab). What are eligible uses to address disparities in public health outcomes? Treasury specifically lists one definition of addressing disparities in public health outcomes while leaving recipients flexibility in being able to define other ways of addressing disproportionate impact. Treasury states that any services provided by a Tribal government or provided to the residents of a Qualified Census Tract (QCT) (opens in new tab) will be considered automatically responsive to disparities in public health outcomes.\nTreasury provides specific examples of eligible services in a QCT, including outreach to help community members access health services and address the social determinants of health, public benefit navigator services (probably provided by non-profits), housing services to support healthy environments, remediation of lead paint, and violence intervention programs.\nFunding community health workers to help community members access health services and services to address the social determinants of health;\nFunding public benefits navigators to assist community members with navigating and applying for available Federal, State, and local public benefits or services\nHousing services to support healthy living environments and neighborhoods conducive to mental and physical wellness;\nRemediation of lead paint or other lead hazards to reduce risk of elevated blood lead levels among children; and\nEvidence-based community violence intervention programs to prevent violence and mitigate the increase in violence during the pandemic.\np.22-23 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nSome or all of the above services may still be eligible to be funded by FRF as a \u0026lsquo;general use\u0026rsquo; not just a \u0026lsquo;disproportionate impact\u0026rsquo; provided they are responding to the Negative Economic Impacts as outlined in the subsequent section of the rule. Communities wishing to provide these services outside of a QCT should carefully review the FRF guidelines about negative economic impacts.\nWhat activities are eligible by responding to negative economic impacts? Most government programs that help people who are struggling to pay bills, get healthcare, or secure shelter, stability, and/or treatment and care will be eligible. Unemployment assistance, food, shelter, cash assistance, reimbursement for medical costs, job training and grants to hard-hit businesses and non-profits will all qualify.\nTreasury gives two important details here – that funds must be deployed to “respond to” the economic crisis and that responses must be “related and reasonably proportionate.” Broad latitude is emphasized in the legislation and rule. Expand below to see the non-exhaustive list of programs outlined by Treasury.\nUnemployment assistance and services States replenishing their unemployment insurance trust funds Assistance to households including: Food assistance Rent, mortgage, and utility assistance Legal aid to prevent eviction Direct cash payments Emergency assistance for burials, home repairs, weatherization or \u0026ldquo;other needs\u0026rdquo; Internet access or digital literacy assistance Job training Expenses to improve efficacy of existing economic relief programs Loans or grants to small businesses and non-profits Rehiring public employees Aid to impacted industries These items are non-exclusive meaning other activities that can be shown to “respond to” and be “related and reasonably proportionate” to the economic impact can also qualify.\nCan a government offer cash assistance with fiscal recovery funds? Yes.\nCash transfers must be reasonably proportional to the negative economic impact they are intended to address. Cash transfers grossly in excess of the amount needed to address the negative economic impact identified by the recipient would not be considered to be a response to the COVID-19 public health emergency or its negative impacts. In particular, when considering the appropriate size of permissible cash transfers made in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, State, local and Tribal governments may consider and take guidance from the per person amounts previously provided by the Federal government in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Cash transfers that are grossly in excess of such amounts would be outside the scope of eligible uses under section 602(c)(1)(A) and 603(c)(1)(A) and could be subject to recoupment.\np.33-34 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nCan funds be used for loans or grants to businesses and non-profits? Yes.\nRecipients may consider additional criteria to target assistance to businesses in need, including small businesses. Such criteria may include businesses facing financial insecurity, substantial declines in gross receipts (e.g., comparable to measures used to assess eligibility for the Paycheck Protection Program), or other economic harm due to the pandemic, as well as businesses with less capacity to weather financial hardship, such as the smallest businesses, those with less access to credit, or those serving disadvantaged communities.\np.35 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nCan funds be used to support restaurants, tourism, hospitality, or travel-related businesses? Yes.\nTo facilitate transparency and accountability, the Interim Final Rule requires that State, local, and Tribal governments publicly report assistance provided to private-sector businesses under this eligible use, including tourism, travel, hospitality, and other impacted industries, and its connection to negative economic impacts of the pandemic. Recipients also should maintain records to support their assessment of how businesses or business districts receiving assistance were affected by the negative economic impacts of the pandemic and how the aid provided responds to these impacts.\np.36 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nAre there additional eligible uses of funds when addressing the disproportionate economic impact of COVID-19? Yes.\nTreasury outlines three categories of additional uses of funds.\nBuilding Stronger Communities through Investments in Housing and Neighborhoods Addressing Educational Disparities Promoting Healthy Childhood Environments Expand the quote below to see Treasury\u0026rsquo;s interpretation for these broad eligible uses of funds:\n\\[The funds\\]… provide resources to not only respond to the immediate harms of the pandemic but also to mitigate its longer-term impact in compounding the systemic public health and economic challenges of disproportionately impacted populations. Treasury encourages recipients to consider funding uses that foster a strong, inclusive, and equitable recovery, especially uses with long-term benefits for health and economic outcomes.\np.41 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nWhat is premium pay and which workers are eligible? Premium pay is extra money to compensate essential workers who faced and continue to face elevated health risks due to working during the pandemic. The rule states that eligible workers are those whose work involves regular in-person interactions or regular physical handling of items that were also handled by others.\n\u0026quot;… to remunerate essential workers for the elevated health risks they have faced and continue to face during the public health emergency. To ensure that premium pay is targeted to workers that faced or face heightened risks due to the character of their work, the Interim Final Rule defines essential work as work involving regular in-person interactions or regular physical handling of items that were also handled by others.\u0026quot;\np.47 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nThe regulations clarify that remote worker positions, management positions, and other types of positions that did not involve regular in-person interactions would not be eligible and that not all work in all sectors is essential. It specifically calls out healthcare, childcare, education, transportation, food production and services, and other industries as among those that are essential and thus eligible.\n\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;industries recognized as essential critical infrastructure sectors\u0026hellip;include healthcare, public health and safety, childcare, education, sanitation, transportation, and food production and services, among others as noted above. As provided under sections 602(g)(2) and 603(g)(2), the chief executive of each recipient has discretion to add additional sectors to this list, so long as additional sectors are deemed critical to protect the health and well-being of residents.\u0026quot;\np.48 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nIs there a salary cap on which workers can receive premium pay or how much? Yes, premium pay is capped to keep within the bounds of the legislative intent of a proportionate response. Premium pay requires a justification if it would increase a worker\u0026rsquo;s total pay above 150% of the average annual wage for all occupations in the state or the county.\nThe table below illustrates three scenarios for giving eligible workers a $10,000 premium pay bonus. In the first two scenarios, the total pay including the premium pay bonus would remain under the state, the county, or both income caps and not require further justification from the recipient. In the third scenario, however, the high base pay of the employee means that any premium pay would need to be accompanied by a written justification to the Treasury.\nBase Pay Bonus Premium Pay State Annual Wage Cap County Annual Wage Cap Required Justification? $28,000 $10,000 $38,000 $46,000 $39,000 No $35,000 $10,000 $45,000 $46,000 $39,000 No $55,000 $10,000 $65,000 $46,000 $39,000 Yes Example created by Civilytics.\nTreasury has full language clarifying the intent of these regulations.\n\u0026ldquo;If premium pay would increase a worker\u0026rsquo;s total pay above 150 percent of their residing state\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage for all occupations, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u0026rsquo; Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, or their residing county\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u0026rsquo; Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, whichever is higher, on an annual basis, the State, local, or Tribal government must provide Treasury and make publicly available, whether for themselves or on behalf of a grantee, a written justification of how the premium pay or grant is responsive to workers performing essential worker \\[sic\\] during the pandemic.\u0026rdquo;\np.49-50 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nCan premium pay be used for retrospective pay? Yes. Premium pay may be provided retrospectively for work performed any time since the start of the public health emergency, and Treasury encourages recipients to provide retrospective premium pay where possible to essential workers who have not yet been adequately compensated for work previously performed. However, such compensation must be in addition to wages already received \u0026ndash; that is, employers may not use FRF to compensate themselves for premium pay previously provided.\n\u0026ldquo;The definition of premium pay also clarifies that premium pay may be provided retrospectively for work performed at any time since the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency, where those workers have yet to be compensated adequately for work previously performed. Treasury encourages recipients to prioritize providing retrospective premium pay where possible, recognizing that many essential workers have not yet received additional compensation for work conducted over the course of many months. Essential workers who have already earned premium pay for essential work performed during the COVID-19 public health emergency remain eligible for additional payments, and an essential worker may receive both retrospective premium pay for prior work as well as prospective premium pay for current or ongoing work. \\[…\\] However, such compensation must be \u0026lsquo;in addition to\u0026rsquo; remuneration or wages already received. That is, employers may not reduce such workers\u0026rsquo; current pay and use Fiscal Recovery Funds to compensate themselves for premium pay previously provided to the worker.\u0026rdquo;\np.50-51 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nHow will premium pay be disbursed? Treasury assumes recipients will distribute the funds through grants to employers who will then make the necessary disbursement to their workers. Grants to private employers will need to be monitored and reported to Treasury for public disclosure to ensure transparency and appropriate use of the funds.\n\u0026ldquo;To ensure any grants respond to the needs of essential workers and are made in a fair and transparent manner, the rule imposes some additional reporting requirements for grants to third-party employers, including the public disclosure of grants provided. See Section VIII of this Supplementary Information, discussing reporting requirements. In responding to the needs of essential workers, a grant to an employer may provide premium pay to eligible workers performing essential work, as these terms are defined in the Interim Final Rule and discussed above.\u0026rdquo;\np.51 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nHow do the regulations define \"revenue loss\" and how can governments use FRF to respond to revenue losses? Recipient governments have broad latitude to use FRF to pay for continuation of government services at pre-pandemic levels and avoid “austerity measures” in the face of revenue losses resulting from COVID-19. Treasury encourages governments \u0026ldquo;to use payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds to avoid cuts to government services and, thus, enable State, local, and Tribal governments to continue to provide valuable services and ensure that fiscal austerity measures do not hamper the broader economic recovery.\u0026rdquo; (p. 53)\nHow does Treasury define revenue loss? Revenue Loss will be defined by measuring decreases in “general revenue” which Treasury clarifies will follow the components of revenue reported in the Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances.\n\u0026ldquo;The Interim Final Rule adopts a definition of \u0026lsquo;general revenue\u0026rsquo; based largely on the components reported under \u0026lsquo;General Revenue from Own Sources\u0026rsquo; in the Census Bureau\u0026rsquo;s Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, and for purposes of this Interim Final Rule, helps to ensure that the components of general revenue would be calculated in a consistent manner. By relying on a methodology that is both familiar and comprehensive, this approach minimizes burden to recipients and provides consistency in the measurement of general revenue across a diverse set of recipients.\u0026rdquo;\np.54 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nRecipients who demonstrate a decline in general revenue will have significant flexibility in deploying FRF to maintain government operations. Treasury gives specific and clear guidelines on how to calculate the amount of FRF recipients will have available to fund this work.\nAn important detail is that revenue loss is compared to a counterfactual trend of 4.1 percent annual growth or the annual revenue growth over the prior three years to COVID-19, whichever is higher. This is more generous than calculating revenue loss based on an assumption of flat revenue from the most recent fiscal year and ensures that most recipients will be able to allocate at least a portion of FRF to funding general government operations over the period of the award.\nIn general, recipients will compute the extent of the reduction in revenue by comparing actual revenue to a counterfactual trend representing what could have been expected to occur in the absence of the pandemic… In other words, the counterfactual trend starts with the last full fiscal year prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency and then assumes growth at a constant rate in the subsequent years. Because recipients can estimate the revenue shortfall at multiple points in time throughout the covered period as revenue is collected, this approach accounts for variation across recipients in the timing of pandemic impacts. Although revenue may decline for reasons unrelated to the COVID-19 public health emergency, to minimize the administrative burden on recipients and taking into consideration the devastating effects of the COVID-19 public health emergency, any diminution in actual revenues relative to the counterfactual pre-pandemic trend would be presumed to have been due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. For purposes of measuring revenue growth in the counterfactual trend, recipients may use a growth adjustment of either 4.1 percent per year or the recipient\u0026rsquo;s average annual revenue growth over the three full fiscal years prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency, whichever is higher.\np.56-57 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nNote that \u0026ldquo;general revenue\u0026rdquo; includes “intergovernmental transfers between State and local governments, but excludes intergovernmental transfers from the Federal government, including Federal transfers made via a State to a local government pursuant to the CRF \\[CARES Act\\] or as part of \\[ARPA\\]” (p. 56).\nTo help explain what a response under the Revenue Loss use of FRF might look like, Civilytics is including the following worked example.\nConsider a city with $500 million in base year general revenue. In this case the base year is the most recent full fiscal year prior to the onset of COVID-19 in the US (January 27, 2020).\nEstimate a counterfactual revenue equal to base year revenue * \\[(1 + growth adjustment) ^( n/12)\\], where n is the number of months since the end of the base year (p.58).\nSelect the higher of either 4.1% revenue growth or the growth observed in the three years prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency.\nThe reduction in revenue is equal to counterfactual revenue less actual revenue. This is the amount eligible for use under this provision.\nTree City 12/31/2020 12/31/2021 12/31/2022 12/31/2023 Months elapsed 18 30 42 54 Counterfactual revenue at 4.1% $531.0M $552.8M $575.5M $599.0M Actual revenue $529.0M $533.8M $545.5M $588.0M Eligible revenue loss $2.0M $19.0M $30.0M $11.0M Assuming Tree City is eligible for $200M in ARPA aid, $62M of it would be eligible for funding general government operations under this Revenue Loss provision (see below). The remainder would need to allocated to other acceptable uses under the act.\nWhat are acceptable uses of revenue loss funds? The intention of revenue loss funds is to maintain government operations at the level they were expected to reach without a pandemic. As such funds used under this provision have wide latitude and can be used to provide most services normally funded by recipient governments. The following is a non-exhaustive list from the Interim Final Rule:\n\u0026ldquo;Sections 602(c)(1)(C) and 603(c)(1)(C) of the Act provide recipients with broad latitude to use the Fiscal Recovery Funds for the provision of government services. Government services can include, but are not limited to, maintenance or pay-go funded building of infrastructure, including roads; modernization of cybersecurity, including hardware, software, and protection of critical infrastructure; health services; environmental remediation; school or educational services; and the provision of police, fire, and other public safety services.\u0026rdquo;\np.60 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nWhat are reporting requirements for this type of funds? Reporting requirements for funds used in this way are likely to be restricted to demonstrating the amount of the revenue loss and evidence the funds were deployed to make up the difference. Unlike other provisions, Treasury does not indicate additional reporting provisions that may be associated with this use of funds.\nHow can these funds be used to improve infrastructure? Fiscal Recovery Funds can be used to fund \u0026ldquo;necessary investments\u0026rdquo; in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure. \u0026ldquo;Necessary investments\u0026rdquo; are defined as those needed to provide an adequate level of service, such as adequate broadband to work or attend school, and those that are unlikely to be made using private funds.\nTreasury does place restrictions on how projects using these funds are to be conducted and will institute a separate guidance for reporting requirements on this use in the future:\n\u0026ldquo;To provide public transparency on whether projects are using practices that promote on-time and on-budget delivery, Treasury will seek information from recipients on their workforce plans and practices related to water, sewer, and broadband projects undertaken with Fiscal Recovery Funds. Treasury will provide additional guidance and instructions on the reporting requirements at a later date.\u0026rdquo;\np.63 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nWhat qualifies as water and sewer infrastructure? Treasury gives some specific examples, including investments in cybersecurity practices to secure drinking water systems, building or upgrades facilities to distribute and store water, etc. Treasury specifically encourages recipients to consider replacing lead service lines because of their impact on children\u0026rsquo;s health. More broadly, Treasury relies on existing rules and regulations regarding what is and is not water and sewer infrastructure using the projects eligible under the EPA Clean Water State Revolving Fund or Drinking Water State Revolving Fund — projects eligible under these programs would be presumed to be eligible uses.\nRecipients may use Fiscal Recovery Funds to invest in a broad range of projects that improve drinking water infrastructure, such as building or upgrading facilities and transmission, distribution, and storage systems, including replacement of lead service lines. Given the lifelong impacts of lead exposure for children, and the widespread nature of lead service lines, Treasury encourages recipients to consider projects to replace lead service lines.\nFiscal Recovery Funds may also be used to support the consolidation or establishment of drinking water systems. With respect to wastewater infrastructure, recipients may use Fiscal Recovery Funds to construct publicly owned treatment infrastructure, manage and treat stormwater or subsurface drainage water, facilitate water reuse, and secure publicly owned treatment works, among other uses. Finally, consistent with the CWSRF and DWSRF, Fiscal Recovery Funds may be used for cybersecurity needs to protect water or sewer infrastructure, such as developing effective cybersecurity practices and measures at drinking water systems and publicly owned treatment works. Many of the types of projects eligible under either the CWSRF or DWSRF also support efforts to address climate change.\np.67 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nHow can these funds be used for broadband infrastructure? Treasury highlights the need for universally accessible, high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband coverage to meet the needs of the pandemic and protect communities in the future. Recipients are encouraged to invest in areas without existing services, but this is not a requirement in the rule.\n\u0026ldquo;In selecting an area to be served by a project, recipients are encouraged to avoid investing in locations that have existing agreements to build reliable wireline service with minimum speeds of 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload by December 31, 2024, in order to avoid duplication of efforts and resources.\u0026rdquo;\np.76 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nTreasury encourages recipients to prioritize support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with not-for-profit entities like local governments, co-operatives, and non-profits. As Treasury notes, these providers are more likely to be committed to serving entire communities and have less focus on turning a profit (p. 76).\nWhat does Treasury define as broadband? Treasury defines adequate broadband as upload and download speeds of 100 Mbps and notes that millions of Americans live in areas that do not meet this either because there is no broadband infrastructure or it is unaffordable.\n\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;tens of millions of Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides download speeds greater than 25 Mbps and upload speeds of 3 Mbps. By contrast, as noted below, many households use upload and download speeds of 100 Mbps to meet their daily needs. Even in areas where broadband infrastructure exists, broadband access may be out of reach for millions of Americans because it is unaffordable, as the United States has some of the highest broadband prices in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In selecting an area to be served by a project, recipients are encouraged to avoid investing in locations that have existing agreements to build reliable wireline service with minimum speeds of 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload by December 31, 2024, in order to avoid duplication of efforts and resources.\u0026quot;\np.70 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nTreasury does provide some flexibility about the definition of broadband speeds in instances where symmetrical broadband speeds of 100 Mbps would be impractical:\n\u0026ldquo;Under the Interim Final Rule, eligible projects are expected to be designed to deliver, upon project completion, service that reliably meets or exceeds symmetrical upload and download speeds of 100 Mbps. There may be instances in which it would not be practicable for a project to deliver such service speeds because of the geography, topography, or excessive costs associated with such a project. In these instances, the affected project would be expected to be designed to deliver, upon project completion, service that reliably meets or exceeds 100 Mbps download and between at least 20 Mbps and 100 Mbps upload speeds and be scalable to a minimum of 100 Mbps symmetrical for download and upload speeds. In setting these standards, Treasury identified speeds necessary to ensure that broadband infrastructure is sufficient to enable users to generally meet household needs, including the ability to support the simultaneous use of work, education, and health applications, and also sufficiently robust to meet increasing household demands for bandwidth.\u0026rdquo;\np.71 of the Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 by the US Treasury\nTerms, conditions, restrictions, and recoupment What uses of funds are specifically ineligible? The US Treasury Interim Final Rule published May 10, 2021 governing the Fiscal Recovery Fund program is broadly permissive. State, Tribal, and local governments are given a variety of eligible uses for funds in order to best meet the recovery needs of their local context. In most cases, for most activities, recipients can treat these funds as largely unrestricted and eligible to support most activities. This document reviews the specific exceptions to that rule.\nExtraordinary deposits into a pension fund for the purpose of reducing accrued unfunded liability. For State and territorial governments, using the funds to pay for a tax cut. What qualifies as a pension fund deposit? Deposits are an extraordinary payment for the purpose of reducing accrued unfunded liability. Deposits made in the course of funding an employer contribution as part of the salary and benefits of an employee are not considered a deposit, but instead a \u0026ldquo;payroll contribution\u0026rdquo; and are allowed.\nthe Interim Final Rule does not permit this assistance to be used to make a payment into a pension fund if both: 1. the payment reduces a liability incurred prior to the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency, and 2. the payment occurs outside the recipient\u0026rsquo;s regular timing for making such payments. Under this interpretation, a \u0026ldquo;deposit\u0026rdquo; is distinct from a \u0026ldquo;payroll contribution,\u0026rdquo; which occurs when employers make payments into pension funds on regular intervals, with contribution amounts based on a pre-determined percentage of employees\u0026rsquo; wages and salaries.\nUS Treasury Interim Final Rule, p.79, May 10, 2021\nDo employee benefits count as pension fund deposits? No. Treasury clarifies the language to clearly allow payroll contributions to pension funds as eligible expenses when those payroll contributions are eligible costs under the other provisions of the law.\nAccordingly, if an employee\u0026rsquo;s wages and salaries are an eligible use of Fiscal Recovery Funds, recipients may treat the employee\u0026rsquo;s covered benefits as an eligible use of Fiscal Recovery Funds. For purposes of the Fiscal Recovery Funds, covered benefits include costs of all types of leave (vacation, family-related, sick, military, bereavement, sabbatical, jury duty), employee insurance (health, life, dental, vision), retirement (pensions, 401(k)), unemployment benefit plans (Federal and State), workers\u0026rsquo; compensation insurance, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act taxes (which includes Social Security and Medicare taxes).\nUS Treasury Interim Final Rule, p.80, May 10, 2021\nHow is Treasury defining revenue to support a tax cut? Treasury clarifies this provision only applies to State and territorial governments — not local or Tribal governments. A tax cut is referred to by Treasury as a \u0026ldquo;reduction in net tax revenue.\u0026rdquo; The rule goes into great detail about how Treasury will monitor and verify this provision. The intent of the rule is to avoid fiscal recovery funds being used to reduce government spending and deny funding to much needed recovery efforts in State and territorial governments.\nMoreover, this approach recognizes that, because money is fungible, even if Fiscal Recovery Funds are not explicitly or directly used to cover the costs of changes that reduce net tax revenue, those funds may be used in a manner inconsistent with the statute by indirectly being used to substitute for the State\u0026rsquo;s or territory\u0026rsquo;s funds that would otherwise have been needed to cover the costs of the reduction. By focusing on the cost of changes that reduce net tax revenue—and how a recipient government is offsetting those reductions in constructing its budget over the covered period—the framework prevents efforts to use Fiscal Recovery Funds to indirectly offset reductions in net tax revenue for which the recipient government has not identified other offsetting sources of funding.\nUS Treasury Interim Final Rule, p.82-83, May 10, 2021\nHow will Treasury identify funds used to support a tax cut? Treasury identifies a 4-step process in the Interim Final Rule that will be used to verify that funds were not used to offset tax cuts.\nRecipients will identify and value the changes in law that would result in a reduction of tax revenue and the sum of these values is the amount to be \u0026ldquo;paid for\u0026rdquo; with sources other than Fiscal Recovery Funds. If the total value of the reductions in tax revenue is below a minimum threshold (1%) then no sources of funding are needed. If the tax revenue in any year is greater than the amount of the tax revenue for the fiscal year ending in 2019 adjusted for inflation then there is no net reduction in tax revenue. If neither #2 or #3 is true, then the recipient government needs to identify tax changes that would increase the general fund revenue and spending cuts in areas not being replaced by Fiscal Recovery Funds to offset the total value of covered tax changes. A recipient government will not be required to repay to the Treasury an amount that is greater than the recipient government\u0026rsquo;s actual tax revenue shortfall relative to the baseline (i.e., fiscal year 2019 tax revenue adjusted for inflation). This \u0026ldquo;revenue reduction cap,\u0026rdquo; together with Step 3, ensures that recipient governments can use organic revenue growth to offset the cost of revenue reductions.\nUS Treasury Interim Final Rule, p.84, May 10, 2021\nFurther details and clarifications of this process that are helpful to affected recipients (State and territorial government officials) are available on p.85-88 of the Interim Final Rule.\nAre there other restrictions on funds? Yes. Fiscal Recovery Funds are subject to other limitations and restrictions provided by Federal statutes. Most importantly, Fiscal Recovery funds cannot be used as non-Federal matching funds for Federal programs that bar the use of Federal funds for meeting matching requirements. (p. 96)\nAlso, recipients should be aware that the Universal Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 CFR 200 of the Uniform Guidance) apply to Fiscal Recovery Funds as well.\nAs provided for in the award terms, payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds as a general matter will be subject to the provisions of the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 CFR 200) (the Uniform Guidance), including the cost principles and restrictions on general provisions for selected items of cost.\nUS Treasury Interim Final Rule, p.97, May 10, 2021\nHow will Treasury enforce these regulations? Treasury will review all required reporting of Fiscal Recovery Fund uses in order to ensure compliance with these regulations and the statute. Treasury notes that compliance failure will be identified based on reporting provided by recipients. But, Treasury also reserves the right to consider other information to aid it in identifying a violation such as information from members of the public. Once a violation has been identified, a multi-step process of fact-finding will begin (p.100) to determine how much, if any, funding is to be recouped.\nTreasury will submit a notice to a recipient government informing them of its finding of ineligible uses of funds and the amount of money to be recovered. Recipient has 60 calendar days to submit a request for reconsideration (an appeal) of the decision by Treasury. This request should include: A full explanation of why the finding should be reconsidered Submission of all relevant additional information to support the request Additional information relevant to determining if a violation occurred (e.g. evidence of eligible uses of funds) Within 60 calendar days of receipt of the appeal the recipient will be notified by the Secretary of Treasury of the decision to affirm, withdraw, or modify the notice of recoupment. This decision is final. This notice will include an explanation of the decision including responses to the recipient\u0026rsquo;s supporting reasons and considerations of additional information. Any amount subject to recoupment must be paid within 120 calendar days of receipt of any final notice. If there is no request for reconsideration payment must be made within 120 calendar days of the initial notice. The definition of \u0026ldquo;obligation\u0026rdquo; is based on the definition used for purposes of the Uniform Guidance which is a definition that most recipients are familiar with (p.97-98 of the Interim Final Rule).\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nIn general, if an employee\u0026rsquo;s wages and salaries are an eligible use of Fiscal Recovery Funds, recipients may treat the employee\u0026rsquo;s covered benefits as an eligible use of Fiscal Recovery Funds. For purposes of the Fiscal Recovery Funds, covered benefits include costs of all types of leave (vacation, family-related, sick, military, bereavement, sabbatical, jury duty), employee insurance (health, life, dental, vision), retirement (pensions, 401(k)), unemployment benefit plans (federal and state), workers compensation insurance, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes (which includes Social Security and Medicare taxes). (Footnote 46, p. 20 of the Interim Final Rule.)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"May 17, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/arpa-fiscal-recovery-faq/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Comprehensive guide to the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Program (SLFRP) authorized by ARPA — overview of the $350 billion program, plus detailed FAQs on eligible uses across public health, premium pay, revenue loss, and infrastructure, and on terms, conditions, restrictions, and recoupment.","title":"ARPA Fiscal Recovery Funds","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"Dr. Hannah Miller is an experienced researcher and program evaluator who has conducted research and led projects in K-12 and higher education, youth justice, family wellbeing, and more. She has over a decade of experience in evaluation design, quantitative research, data analysis, and reporting. Across her career she has worked as both a project leader, supervising and managing teams to execute high-quality research, and as part of collaborative teams, consulting on and directing projects in partnership with clients and stakeholders.\nShe began her career as a research assistant at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, followed by the Institute for Research on Poverty. Next, in the Social and Economic Policy Division at Abt Global, she worked on many federally-funded studies of academic literacy, college counseling, financial aid, afterschool programs, and more. She designed surveys and interview protocols, analyzed data, drafted reports and briefs, and led teams producing closely scrutinized deliverables for the U.S. Department of Education.\nSince joining Civilytics, she has continued to conduct research for and advise education agencies, nonprofits, and government staff and has appreciated the opportunity to broaden her focus to other critical social policy areas. She is a skilled project manager who is highly organized and committed to helping teams achieve short- and long-term goals on set timelines and budgets.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/people/hannah-miller/","section":"About Us","summary":"Dr. Hannah Miller is an experienced researcher and program evaluator who has conducted research and led projects in K-12 and higher education, youth justice, family wellbeing, and more. She has over a decade of experience in evaluation design, quantitative research, data analysis, and reporting. Across her career she has worked as both a project leader, supervising and managing teams to execute high-quality research, and as part of collaborative teams, consulting on and directing projects in partnership with clients and stakeholders.\n","title":"Hannah Miller, PhD","type":"person"},{"content":" Abstract This memo provides a descriptive overview of public budgeting across U.S. local governments, assessing the challenge of understanding how thousands of municipalities and counties allocate hundreds of billions of dollars each year. It describes the scale, structure, and common practices of revenue collection, expenditure categories, and budget processes among city and county governments.\nDrawing on the 2017 Census of Governments — the only universal source of data on all 90,000-plus local governments — the study gives an overview of national patterns in local revenue streams (intergovernmental transfers versus own-source taxes), major expenditure categories, and fiscal year timing.\nKey Findings City and county governments generate over $600 billion annually, with roughly two-thirds of revenue coming from local taxes and one-quarter from state aid.\nSupplementing this analysis with an in-depth comparative study of 40 local budgets, the memo describes how a local budget is created and what it contains. The memo identifies a five-stage process that most public budgets follow: departmental requests lead to an executive proposal, followed by a legislative review resulting in adoption, and then transitioning into ongoing monitoring.\nThe analysis highlights significant gaps in publicly available information across jurisdictions, with critical elements like staffing levels, overtime expenditures, and contract details incomplete or missing in many budgets.\nThe memo closes by detailing the challenges of cross-jurisdictional comparison of local budgets due to a lack of standardized fund and category definitions.\n","date":"April 1, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/the-landscape-of-local-government-budgets/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"This memo provides a descriptive overview of public budgeting across U.S. local governments, assessing the challenge of understanding how thousands of municipalities and counties allocate hundreds of billions of dollars each year. It describes the scale, structure, and common practices of revenue collection, expenditure categories, and budget processes among city and county governments. Drawing on…","title":"The Landscape of Local Government Budgets","type":"portfolio"},{"content":" Abstract Local government budgeting fundamentally shapes service delivery and equity, yet systematic attention to how institutional constraints and transparency practices influence public participation remains limited. This report asks: How do legal, fiscal, capacity, and social constraints influence the design, presentation, and equity potential of municipal budgets in the United States?\nWe conducted a comprehensive analysis of 38 city and county budget documents, supplemental materials, and public-engagement tools, supplemented by interviews with finance officials and review of Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) guidelines.\nThe memo shows that incremental line-item budgeting persists due to rigid legal mandates, state-level fiscal preemption, labor agreements that lock in expenditures, and a rushed budget development cycle that is often understaffed. Staffing constraints in finance departments coupled with limited technical resources results in many budgets being published as static PDFs lacking searchable tables, glossaries, or consolidated fund summaries, with key information about indirect and \u0026ldquo;nondepartmental\u0026rdquo; costs obscured.\nSocial constraints further limit inclusion: public engagement typically occurs late in the process, relies on self-selected participants, and rarely extends beyond English-language materials. The memo highlights promising practices in a few jurisdictions that offer interactive dashboards, mid-year spending updates, or participatory budgeting portals. Unfortunately, these tools often have a limited scope and lack feedback mechanisms for public input. The most equitable practices — such as multilingual budget summaries, real-time expenditure tracking, and community-led \u0026ldquo;people\u0026rsquo;s budgets\u0026rdquo; — often emerge from grassroots initiatives rather than official processes.\nThis suggests that advancing budget equity requires more than improved transparency; it demands institutional reforms that embed meaningful public voice directly into core budget design.\n","date":"September 1, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/local-budgets-and-the-forces-that-shape-them-implications-fo/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Local government budgeting fundamentally shapes service delivery and equity, yet systematic attention to how institutional constraints and transparency practices influence public participation remains limited. This report asks: How do legal, fiscal, capacity, and social constraints influence the design, presentation, and equity potential of municipal budgets in the United States? We conducted a comprehensive analysis of…","title":"Local Budgets and the Forces that Shape Them: Implications for Equity","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"Friends and colleagues,\nThis August, Civilytics turns 10.\nWhen Jared started Civilytics in August 2016, he made the logo on a free business card website. The site we deployed when Hannah joined was a bog-standard WordPress theme. We kept patching it and swatting away hundreds of spam comments for half a decade. Updating the logo and site to speak to the work we are doing now had been on our to-do list literally for years, but it always seemed like too heavy a lift amidst client work.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re so happy that today it\u0026rsquo;s finally time for a change! Today we\u0026rsquo;re launching a new website, a new visual identity, and a new tagline that reflects what we\u0026rsquo;ve actually been doing all along: social science for the public good.\nOur old tagline was \u0026ldquo;Measuring the pulse of civic life.\u0026rdquo; We still believe in the importance of that mission. Our newsletter The Civic Pulse references that goal. But we find our value to clients has been less in the measurement of civic life and more in engaging directly with it. We apply our social science toolbox to questions of public policy, together with partners invested in the answer.\nWhat hasn\u0026rsquo;t changed The team, the methods, and the standards. We still:\nApply rigorous methods and high-quality standards to our work Work shoulder-to-shoulder with clients on sustainable solutions Lead with kindness, compassion, and our values Ten years in, the work we\u0026rsquo;re proudest of is quite varied. A few highlights from our past:\nThe Strategic Data Project at Harvard. Jared\u0026rsquo;s first major engagement and one that defined Civilytics\u0026rsquo; earliest work focused on building sustainable, reproducible data analytics together with partners. Jared trained education data analysts across the country to write R, run causal designs, build predictive models, and visualize their findings. He worked with great colleagues and co-authors whose work he has continued to follow for years! The $5 billion ARPA discovery. Five words in a Senate amendment shifted $5 billion in pandemic relief between states. We caught the change, which was almost certainly made for ease of disbursement, not policy principles. The Intercept used our analysis to put Treasury, the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Schumer on the record. We also put out the earliest projections of ARPA aid allocations, earning national coverage. Partnerships with grassroots organizations. Our work with Reimagine Los Angeles, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, and the formerly incarcerated people and family members they organize alongside has shaped how we think about whose questions deserve rigorous answers and who usually has to fight to get access to data and transparency. What\u0026rsquo;s new The brand. New logo, new color palette, new typography. A cleaner, more modern look so that our visual identity finally matches the quality of our work.\nThe site. New from the ground up. We went with a Hugo static site, used modular CSS, and deployed to a global CDN (Cloudflare in front). The whole thing is in version control, with a CI pipeline that validates content frontmatter and checks every link on every change. The content is focused on who we are, what we\u0026rsquo;ve done, and why you should choose us.\nThe new site is a huge upgrade. Mobile load times dropped from an average of seven seconds to under two. The contact page, embarrassingly, took 18 seconds to load on mobile under our old WordPress install. Now, it\u0026rsquo;s 1.6s. Some pages dropped from over 3 MB to under 300 KB. Performance scores jumped from a mobile average of 70 to a mobile average of 98.\nAnd did we mention it looks nicer too?\nThat brings us to how we were able to do this now.\nWe used AI.\nWhen looking over our options to redesign, we took this as an opportunity to see what we could accomplish with Claude Code, an AI coding agent from Anthropic. Rebranding while serving clients had been on our list for years, but the lift was too high. AI tools made it tractable for a two-person team to design, build, and deploy a production website without stopping client work.\nAI tools allowed us to do things beyond our own skillset, including increasing the accessibility of our website.\nWe are cautious AI adopters. AI has real negative externalities and poses real dangers in many walks of life. However, we think the only credible posture is to engage with these tools directly: use them, understand their limitations, and bring that experience back to clients. A consulting firm that won\u0026rsquo;t touch AI in 2026 is a less useful advisor than one that has tested its limits and used it for meaningful work.\nThis website is a portfolio piece to our work with AI tools. We expect to write more about what we learned in the future but, for now, the short version is that the productivity gains are real and the work to validate, correct, and decide is still significant. The site outperforms the one it replaced not only because AI is clever but because we used AI to do things it is highly proficient in.\nClient highlight: Delivering an AI-powered knowledge base We also have a new AI-driven project with the Student Leadership Network (SLN) that we\u0026rsquo;ve loved working on the past couple months. For SLN, we\u0026rsquo;re building a curated literature review of research evidence on college access interventions and practices. The modern wrinkle is the desire to have the literature review not be a static document but a deployed knowledge base that the team can interact with, extend, and build upon using AI tools.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been working with Claude Code and testing how research evidence, human expertise, and machine capabilities interact. The project is still in progress, but it\u0026rsquo;s been fascinating to work on building an interactive knowledge base that allows users to ask questions, generate their own views of the evidence base, and look up specific details accurately and quickly.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s next Hannah is booking client engagements for Q3 and Q4 2026. If you\u0026rsquo;re scoping a project (a one-off analysis, a longer-term embedded engagement, a training, or extra capacity while a team member is on leave), get in touch (opens in new tab).\nSubscribe to The Civic Pulse if you don\u0026rsquo;t already. While it\u0026rsquo;s the same publication, it\u0026rsquo;s now lightly refreshed to match the new look.\nPoke around. Tell us what you find. We migrated a lot of content and migrations are hard to get right! If a link is broken or something looks off, we\u0026rsquo;d appreciate a note.\nOnward to decade number 2.\n— Jared \u0026amp; Hannah\n","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/rebrand/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Annoucing our new visual look and our brand new website.","title":"A new look for our 10th year: same mission, sharper tools and better branding","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/authors/","section":"Authors","summary":"","title":"Authors","type":"authors"},{"content":"","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Civilytics Consulting","summary":"","title":"Civilytics Consulting","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/authors/hannah-miller/","section":"Authors","summary":"","title":"Hannah-Miller","type":"authors"},{"content":"","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/authors/jared-knowles/","section":"Authors","summary":"","title":"Jared-Knowles","type":"authors"},{"content":"","date":"May 11, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"","title":"Read The Civic Pulse","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Part 1: Using the CRDC to examine who gets arrested where To pique your interest: Out of 1000s of school districts in the U.S., how many do you think accounted for over half of all school-based arrests of American Indian and Alaska Native students in 2021-22? Keep reading for the answer.\nIn this newsletter we:\ndive deep into our research on arrests in schools, share work on school closures from our friends at Research For Action, including how to minimize harms when school closures are announced, and share a new tool Jared co-authored to help districts and SEAs implement user-focused data dashboard design. Let\u0026rsquo;s go!\nArrests in Schools: Initial Descriptives from the CRDC Our June 2023 newsletter announced that we were awarded a research grant from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grant Program funded by the National Science Foundation (opens in new tab).\nNearly 3 years later, we\u0026rsquo;re sharing what we found. (Timelines get extended when prioritizing client-driven work. Thanks very much to AERA for granting us a no-cost extension that allowed us to finish our report last September.)\nSo what did we learn? We wrote the grant to use small area estimation strategies to \u0026ldquo;get the most\u0026rdquo; from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) school arrest data. In this and subsequent newsletters we\u0026rsquo;ll cover:\nthe basic facts about who gets arrested where at school which districts arrest lots of students, have high arrest rates, or account for most arrests of students from particular groups (e.g., American Indian/Alaskan Native students) the effect of outliers and potential data errors on the credibility and utility of district-student group comparisons how these descriptives motivate statistical modeling and what our models show The CRDC is the only source of data on school-related arrests for all the nation\u0026rsquo;s public schools and districts. The most recent available data, released in January 2025, are for the 2021-22 school year.\nNearly 35,000 students were arrested in \u0026ldquo;school-related arrests\u0026rdquo; in 2021-22.\n\u0026ldquo;School-related arrests\u0026rdquo; are defined as those taking place on school grounds, while students are taking school transportation, or due to a referral by a school official.\nThe maps below show how many students were arrested \u0026ldquo;at school/in a school-related arrest\u0026rdquo; in each state as well arrest rates by state (maps 1 and 2).\nThe national school-related arrest rate was 0.72 out of every 1,000 students.\nAnother approach (borrowed from epidemiology) is to calculate the \u0026ldquo;number needed to harm\u0026rdquo; (NNH) or how many students it \u0026ldquo;takes\u0026rdquo; before 1 is arrested.\nNationally, 1 out of every 1,428 students was arrested \u0026ldquo;at school\u0026rdquo; in 2021-22. In Kansas, 1 out of every 194 students was arrested in schools. In Maine, it was 1 out of over 54,000 students \u0026ndash; highlighting the large variance even at the state level.\nIn our next newsletter, we\u0026rsquo;ll explore how the variance in these state numbers is driven in part by data errors and how we can use multiple years of data and statistical modeling to address them. For now, let\u0026rsquo;s continue with some more descriptives.\nTrends over time The good news: overall, the number of students with school-related arrests declined by ~40% in the last three CRDC data collection waves,1 from over 62,000 students arrested in 2015-16 to under 35,000 in 2021-22. Correspondingly, the arrest rate declined from over to under 1 student per 1,000.\nDisparities by student group Disparities in arrest rates follow well known patterns with inequities by race/ethnicity, gender, and disability status. There are many different ways to describe these inequities.\nRaw numbers: More Black female students were arrested than White female students despite there being 3 times as many White female students enrolled in U.S. public schools. Arrest rates: White students had 0.51 arrests per 1,000 students, Hispanic students 0.65, American Indian/Alaskan Native students 1.16, and Black students 1.62 arrests per 1,000 students. The \u0026ldquo;number needed to harm:\u0026rdquo; While 1 in about 1,500 White males were arrested at school in 2021-22, 1 in about 500 Black males and 1 in about 700 American Indian/Alaskan Native males were arrested at school in 2021-22. Another way to describe disparities is by highlighting how concentrated arrests of specific student groups are in particular districts, which is partially driven by the geographic concentration of students by race. The line chart below shows the concentration of cumulative arrests by district for four student groups.\nMaking this chart we learned that over 50% of arrests of American Indian/Alaskan Native students in 2021-22 occurred in just 7 districts.\nDistricts as the Appropriate Level for Understanding School-Based Arrests We wrote this grant in large part because we wanted to examine district arrest rates in more detail.\nThe district level is often the appropriate site of authority for the policies and procedures leading to school arrests and is where individual and collective actors (parents, students, school staff, and elected officials) can have the most immediate, direct, and demonstrable effect. Unfortunately, it\u0026rsquo;s also where errors or anomalies become more obvious, often leading folks to dismiss what can be learned from data.\nArrests in school are concentrated among a relatively small proportion of districts: in 2021-22, only 11.6% of districts reported at least one arrest. In our next newsletter, we\u0026rsquo;ll look at district arrest rates in more detail.\nThis research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its \u0026ldquo;AERA Grants Program\u0026rdquo; from the National Science Foundation under NSF award NSF-DRL #1749275. Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those AERA or NSF.\nHow Districts Can Do Better When Closing Schools Speaking of things that districts partially control: take a minute to think about school closures. We always assumed that school closures were a disruptive but necessary strategy to \u0026ldquo;right size\u0026rdquo; school facilities for districts with declining populations\u0026hellip;but there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more to it than that, including some evidence that closures save very little money!\nOur friends at Research for Action (RFA) have a new series written by Dr. Alyn Turner that excellently demonstrates the value social science research can bring to school closure policy. The first post focuses on what districts need to know (opens in new tab) when announcing school closures and how to mitigate harms in the year leading up to a closure. Here\u0026rsquo;s an excerpt:\nThe most rigorous evidence on pre-closure effects comes from Chicago Public Schools, which experienced waves of closures between 2001 and 2013. Researchers tracking student achievement patterns found something striking: the largest negative achievement effect occurred during the announcement year\u0026mdash;the period between when closure was announced and when students actually moved to new schools.\nStudents in closing schools experienced approximately 1.5 months of learning loss in reading and 0.5 months in math during this announcement period. Similar patterns have been documented in other districts.\nDr. Turner provides an approachable overview of research on school closures, then quickly turns to giving leaders 8 practical recommendations on how to mitigate negative effects of school closure announcements on student learning. If your district is considering closing school(s), send them this article and be sure to follow the whole series. According to RFA, here\u0026rsquo;s what\u0026rsquo;s next:\nComing next: how closures function as neighborhood policy and what happens to buildings after students leave.\nSo be sure to read the article and follow RFA! (opens in new tab)\nMaking Data Dashboards that Inform In 2023, Jared worked with the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast \u0026amp; Islands (opens in new tab) and the Rhode Island Department of Public Education (RIDE) on a design and feedback process for data dashboards.\nRIDE publishes lots of in-depth, high-quality data and analytics (opens in new tab) for schools, district leaders, and communities, so they wanted to understand how to implement a better design process into the annual updates for their data dashboards.\nThe team began by holding structured feedback sessions around high-profile existing dashboards. The idea was to gather existing dashboard users and get their feedback on three core areas: usability and functionality, value of the information, and information retrieval. By structuring the feedback process this way, Jared and team avoided what can sometimes happen in less structured settings where feedback can stagnate around a single issue such as a bug in usability or contention around a data definition.\nThe feedback sessions were a hit, both with users and with the RIDE team! Having user feedback helped the RIDE team prioritize and adapt their development to ensure the dashboards were serving their intended audience and purpose. Bringing user voices directly into design meetings and product roadmaps made it easier to plan and know what milestones were most important to hit. Users felt like their feedback was genuinely being taken into account and this increased their likelihood to keep engaging with the dashboard.\nThe REL-NEI team created a resource detailing how states and districts can follow a five-step continuous improvement process to build user feedback into their own data dashboard design process. You can read it now here (opens in new tab).\nI\u0026rsquo;m so glad to see this resource made it out into the world \u0026mdash; and to see that REL-NEI has started back up. Go read their blog for the announcement of this project (opens in new tab) and the other great work they are doing.\nThe CRDC is generally a biennial data collection. We examine data from the most recent year available, the 2021-22 school year, and from two prior collections, 2017-18 and 2015-16. There was also an off-cycle data collection in 2020-21 (due to the pandemic, the planned 2019-20 data collection was postponed). In 2020-21, only about a quarter as many arrests (9,738) and referrals (65,312) were reported as in 2021-22. We do not include 2020-21 data in these analyses because students’ and schools’ experiences during that time varied greatly depending on whether instruction was virtual, hybrid, or in-person along with other factors.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"March 3, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arrests-in-schools-starting-with-the-basics/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"To pique your interest: Out of 1000s of school districts in the U.S., how many do you think accounted for over half of all school-based arrests of American Indian and Alaska Native students in 2021-22? Keep reading for the answer.","title":"Arrests in Schools: Starting with the Basics","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"March 3, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/crdc/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Crdc","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"March 3, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/education-data/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Education-Data","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"March 3, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":"What a doozy the start of this year has been.\nWhile there is a lot to be concerned about and often frustratingly little we can do, we are energized by our work at Civilytics and especially the many community groups, advocates, researchers, and partners we get to meet, learn from, and sometimes assist.\nThanks for being part of our community and for spending a few minutes of your day with us and our newsletter.\nIn this edition:\nKicking off a new collaboration with The Greenlining Institute (opens in new tab) Hannah is #opentowork, including new contract work as well as part- or full-time roles Our series on government budgets continues. At the new year, many people take a fresh look at their finances, and government budgets are no different in that way. New collaboration with The Greenlining Institute Have you heard the term \u0026quot;greenlining\u0026quot; before? We hadn\u0026rsquo;t until The Greenlining Institute (opens in new tab) reached out. The term is so evocative, though, that we immediately had a sense of what it means and what the Institute does!\nWhile redlining refers to the discriminatory practice of excluding communities of color from economic opportunities based on race, The Greenlining Institute defines greenlining as \u0026quot;proactively driving investments and opportunities into communities of color.\u0026quot; Greenlining is focused on combating the impacts of historic redlining and building an abundant future where communities of color can build wealth, have access to economic opportunity, and are ready to meet challenges posed by climate change. They\u0026rsquo;ve been around for over 30 years and have worked with communities throughout California and the country.\nAt Civilytics, we\u0026rsquo;re thrilled to be supporting the Greenlining The Block (opens in new tab) (GTB) initiative which invests in and builds funding for community-led climate action projects. In 2024, GTB:\ndisbursed more than $2 million in grants to 24 community partners helped these partners submit $40 million in funding applications for federal aid provided technical assistance to partners hiring experts for design, capital stacking, and more Civilytics will be working with GTB sites to assess funding landscapes. We\u0026rsquo;re excited to help GTB partners identify strategies for funding community projects via local government dollars, state earmarks, federal sources, and more.\nIn 2026, we\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to learning from and contributing to Greenlining and their community of partners!\n#opento contract, part-time, or full-time roles Hannah is seeking additional contract work or a part-time (or potentially full-time) role. As regular Civic Pulse readers know, we lost a lot of federally funded research last February. While we were fortunate to find some additional work in 2025, I (Hannah) am missing the \u0026ldquo;anchor\u0026rdquo; project(s) that federal research previously provided. I like my work and would love to do more!\nI am open to new contract work or part- or full-time roles. My background is in K-12 and higher education research, but I also have experience in other social policy areas like:\nLocal government budgets and services Family wellbeing and supports, including afterschool/out-of-school programs and home visiting Youth justice and efforts to divest from detention and invest in community supports Capacity building for community groups interested in using data and research for advocacy I\u0026rsquo;ve led research studies from start to finish, analyzed over 100 local budgets, designed surveys, conducted interviews, and written countless documents from reports to briefs to newsletters for a wide variety of audiences. I love research but also love leading project teams, strategizing about how to improve existing services, working with advocates to gather data and make the case for their programs, and more.\nIf you hear of any roles that I might be a good fit for, please reach out or pass my contact information along to others! You can reach me at hannah@civilytics.com \u0026ndash; I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate any help!\nNew year, new budget? Continuing our series on government budgets At the start of a new year \u0026ndash; or end of an old one \u0026ndash; do you evaluate how much you spent on different categories like housing, food, and entertainment, then make decisions about how to tweak your budget for the upcoming year? If so, you basically budget like local governments.\nDespite periodic efforts at reform, most governments budget the same way: with a one-year focus on \u0026ldquo;line items.\u0026rdquo; According to the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) (opens in new tab) and International City/County Management Association (opens in new tab) (ICMA):\nLocal governments have developed their budgets in essentially the same way for decades. The essence of the traditional approach is, first, that the budget is incremental. This means that last year\u0026rsquo;s budget becomes next year\u0026rsquo;s budget with changes at the margin. Second, the budget is built around line items\u0026mdash;categories of spending like personnel, commodities, and contractual services, which are then grouped into departments and funds. People have criticized this approach for almost as long as it has been in use with local governments (p. 1 (opens in new tab)).\nJust as we look at our household budgets by focusing on \u0026ldquo;line items\u0026rdquo; like rent and compare changes year-to-year, governments approach their budgets the same way. This incremental approach has many advantages. It\u0026rsquo;s:\neasy to understand whether line items have been over- or under-spent requires less effort, requiring consideration of only changes from the prior budget rather than the entire budget itself uses readily understood categories like \u0026ldquo;personnel spending\u0026rdquo; However, the approach also has many limitations, as the GFOA and ICMA note. Limitations include the strong incentive to determine how much to spend on different activities based on historical precedent rather than on identified needs. Additionally, the focus is almost entirely on inputs with little attention to what services are actually provided.\nFor these reasons, various alternatives have been considered and sometimes tried by local governments. For example, zero-base budgeting (ZBB) \u0026ldquo;asks managers to build a budget from the ground up, starting from zero.\u0026quot;1 This approach sounds great in theory but is very labor intensive. Additionally, it creates interdepartmental competition (and potentially conflict) since each department is justifying its services each year.\nFun side note on ZBB and its connection to Kraft macaroni and cheese: This interesting Wall Street Journal article (opens in new tab) from the beginning of January reported Kraft Heinz used/uses zero-based budgeting and suggested this may have led to some underinvestment in macaroni and cheese R\u0026amp;D! This may explain why Hannah has been seeing a lot of open positions in consumer research (opens in new tab) at Kraft Heinz on LinkedIn 😉\nAnother alternative approach is \u0026ldquo;budgeting for outcomes.\u0026rdquo; This approach sounds great in theory as it asks local governments to identify their most important priorities and allocate resources accordingly. However, it can be hard to administer in practice since priorities/outcomes span departments, creating issues of \u0026ldquo;ownership,\u0026rdquo; and the most important outcomes may be hard to measure or achieve within one budget cycle.\nThus, most local governments persist with the tried-and-true but notably flawed annual, incremental, line-item budget.\nOne way government budgets differ from yours \u0026ldquo;Fiscal year\u0026rdquo; is a term that applies to government and organizational budgets but not so much to household ones. It simply means the time period to which the budget applies.\nFigure 1: Fiscal year end month for city and county governments Nationally, just under half of local governments\u0026rsquo; fiscal years follow the calendar year (from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31). For many local governments, the fiscal year is from July 1 to June 30, and fiscal years running from October 1 to September 30 are also fairly common. Interestingly, there is no month in the year that at least some local governments do not use as their fiscal year start.\nWithin the same state, local governments often have the same fiscal year start and end dates. For example, Figure 2 shows that, in California, most city and county budgets\u0026rsquo; fiscal years run from July 1 to June 30.\nHow\u0026rsquo;s that for some random local government budget trivia?\nFigure 2: City and county government fiscal year end month by state In the next edition of the Civic Pulse, we\u0026rsquo;re thinking of dipping our toes into more controversial budget content. Perhaps praising and shaming particular local governments for good and bad examples of budget transparency? Or recognizing both the positives and limitations of participatory budgeting?\nLook for that next time and thanks, as always, for reading!\nGovernment Finance Officers Association. 2022. Why Do We Need to Rethink Budgeting? http://www.gfoa.org/rethinking-budgeting (opens in new tab). Citing p.87 of Rubin, Irene, S. (2019). The Politics of Public Budgeting: Getting and Spending, Borrowing and Balancing. 9th Edition, Sage.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"January 21, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/new-year-new-budgets-and-a-new-collaboration-with-the-greenlining-institute/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"What a doozy the start of this year has been.","title":"New Year, New Budgets, and a New Collaboration with The Greenlining Institute","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"January 21, 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/public-finance/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Public-Finance","type":"tags"},{"content":"When you think about government constraints, what comes to mind? Money? Political will? Public opinion? Lack of staff?\nIn this edition, we\u0026rsquo;re diving into the constraints local governments face in developing budgets. This edition continues our series on government budgeting, drawing on a project we conducted with the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. If you missed our first newsletter in the series, check it out here (opens in new tab)!\nIf someone forwarded this to you and you\u0026rsquo;re not subscribed \u0026ndash; subscribe here (opens in new tab) to make sure you get the next edition in the series.\nWhen thinking about budgets, the first constraint that comes to mind is probably fiscal \u0026ndash; individuals (and local governments) only have so much money.\nKeep thinking and you can probably identify other types of constraints. Perhaps capacity constraints? For instance, in terms of your household budget, you may not have time to go to multiple grocery stores to get the best deals on each item. You may have time to do home repair projects but not the requisite skills. The latter may also point to \u0026ldquo;political will\u0026rdquo; constraints! You may have time and the purported ability to figure out how to do some repairs but not the will to do so. (Just me?) And then there are legal constraints \u0026ndash; for instance, we are legally required to pay our mortgage and other debts.\nLocal governments face all these types of constraints and more. Below, we divide constraints on government budgeting into four categories: legal, fiscal, capacity, and social constraints.\nBefore we jump into those constraints \u0026ndash; a quick and fun update. We just got back from Taiwan where we greatly enjoyed presenting to graduate students at National Taiwan University (NTU) about career paths outside of academia. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about Taiwanese academic and professional culture, government research and data, and of course enjoy the food and the sights of Taiwan.\nThanks to Dr. John Chung-En Liu (opens in new tab) for arranging the seminar and to NTU\u0026rsquo;s Sociology department (opens in new tab) for hosting! It was our first international presentation, and it was a lot of fun!\nNow, onto the main focus, budget constraints\u0026hellip;\nLegal constraints Local governments impose legal constraints on themselves through ordinances, charters, and regulations. These rules often set the timeline for the budget and prescribe processes for amending and approving the budget. Some locales set rules about service levels, which have significant budget implications. For example, many locales set minimum staffing levels for policing \u0026ndash; in 2020, San Francisco (opens in new tab) voters elected to remove police minimum staffing levels from their city charter but, in subsequent years, supervisors introduced a ballot measure to reinstate these minimums.\nLegal constraints also come from the state government. In the federalist system, the power to create and regulate local governments is left to states. This gives state governments the final say on rules regarding how local governments set and approve their budgets. It also gives states an implicit veto over local government decisions through a power known as preemption.1\nWhen you talk to local officials or advocates in some states about their budget, the first thing they mention is preemption (here\u0026rsquo;s looking at you Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, etc.). Preemption hangs over budget deliberations because any decision made by a local government can be overridden by a sufficiently motivated state legislature.\nProbably the most common constraint state governments place on local budgets is capping the ability to raise revenue by limiting local property taxes or restricting revenue sharing from sales tax. Another common constraint occurs when the state provides funding to local governments to deliver a specific program or service while setting requirements about the quality and conditions of that service. This is sometimes called \u0026ldquo;devolution\u0026rdquo; and occurs in policy areas like juvenile justice and K-12 education. Here funding comes with detailed rules about how it is to be used.\nDisagreements about state preemption, labor costs, and devolution boil over into mass protests in the Wisconsin capitol in 2011 The federal government has less formal authority over how local governments operate but, by setting terms and conditions on the receipt of federal aid, it is able to significantly regulate some aspects of local budgets and program implementation. For example, federal aid from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is often the primary or sole housing assistance spending in city government. Although regulations for this aid may not be identified in the budget, availability of this aid and its corresponding rules do shape the budget implicitly or explicitly.\nA final source of legal constraints is\u0026hellip;creditors. Local governments carry over $2.1 trillion in outstanding debt, more than their annual revenue.2 This debt\u0026mdash;and the contracts signed to acquire it\u0026mdash;creates legal (and fiscal) constraints. As a result, one primary purpose of the budget document is to make information available to creditors and communicate the continued credit-worthiness of the locale. This means the budget document and procedures may be adapted to meet the preferences of the county\u0026rsquo;s creditors or the wider municipal bond market. As with federal regulations above, these rules or preferences usually are not explicitly identified in the budget itself but are well known to financial experts or relevant staff within the local government.\nFiscal constraints Unlike the federal government, state and local governments must balance their budgets annually. What fiscal constraints do they face in doing so?\nCurrently, one of the clearest constraints that local governments face is fiscal uncertainty. 2025 made clear just how much local governments depend on money from \u0026ndash; and stability in \u0026ndash; the federal government. Uncertainty about the amount of federal aid and its \u0026ldquo;strings,\u0026rdquo; and volatility in national and local economic conditions, create a strong pressure toward caution and small \u0026ldquo;c\u0026rdquo; conservatism in approaching local budgets.\nIn local budgets, not all dollars are exchangeable. Certain revenue sources, such as specific buckets of federal or state aid, are subject to specific regulations. While a city\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;general fund\u0026rdquo; is comprised of general purpose dollars that can be allocated to any activity, other funds contain dollars earmarked for specific purposes. For example, a group of funds designated for \u0026ldquo;public safety\u0026rdquo; will be clearly appropriate for departments like police, fire, and emergency services. However, depending on the definition of the fund, its sources, and even the \u0026ldquo;expansiveness\u0026rdquo; of the views of the budget manager or elected officials, other departments may be able to access this funding for programs contributing to public safety broadly conceived, like a needle exchange program offered by the health department or a job program offered to \u0026ldquo;at-risk\u0026rdquo; youth.\nA third fiscal constraint relates to financial implications over time \u0026ndash; past debt must be paid down, money can (or cannot) be saved for a rainy day, and maintenance may be done on time or deferred. Local officials may find themselves constrained by a previous administration\u0026rsquo;s budget moves or by decisions made in prior budgets when fiscal conditions differed. Likewise, decisions about whether to spend on or defer maintenance, to construct a new facility (pay now but avoid higher future costs), or contribute to rainy day and budget stabilization funds may be made in one budget cycle but have ripple effects for years to come\nAt the margins there are also many opportunities to shift expenditures on either side of the fiscal year boundary to balance the budget. For example, contracts may be structured to pay out ahead of a fiscal year end date, a large purchase may be deferred until the next year, or supplies may be stockpiled using this year\u0026rsquo;s surplus.\nOur favorite example of this “saved” California $3.2 billion one year. In 2024-25, the state of California deferred payroll for one day. By shifting payroll from June 30 to July 1, the state “saved” one month’s payroll…at least from the perspective of the 2024-25 budget. Like we said above, it just added $3.2 billion in costs to the next year!\nThe final \u0026ndash; and perhaps biggest \u0026ndash; fiscal constraint on local budgets is labor agreements. According to the GFOA (opens in new tab), \u0026ldquo;[f]or many local governments, workforce costs represent more than two-thirds of their operating budget.\u0026rdquo; Labor agreements set pay scales, but also often dictate staffing levels, insurance coverage and plans, supplies required for each employee, and more. For example, police contracts often specify that officers receive extra pay for being assigned to a different unit or station than their regular assignment and can specify whether patrol cars have one or two officers. They can set minimum overtime requirements as well: past editorials (opens in new tab) have noted that the way to cut overtime spending is via contract negotiations, not through the budget itself.\nBudgets do sometimes acknowledge labor agreements directly, but, just as often, a budget may obliquely mention increased staffing costs without ever saying that these costs were approved by elected officials in negotiations separate from the budget process.\nCapacity constraints Governments, even well-resourced ones, cannot do everything and must make choices in how to deploy their resources. There are real constraints imposed by both government staffing decisions and the realities of an annual budget timeline.\nLocal governments are multi-million to multi-billion dollar organizations, requiring extensive attention to fiscal reporting and financial controls. However, spending money on these administrative tasks \u0026ndash; and then sharing the details with the public in a transparent, accessible manner \u0026ndash; can sometimes be seen as taking money away from providing public services. Many local governments have limited staff available to monitor the budget, share details beyond a \u0026ldquo;print preview\u0026rdquo; chart-of-accounts, or evaluate alternative spending decisions. Additionally, local officials are often part-time, volunteer, or professionalized but with few dedicated staff. Without training in public budgeting or administration and, with limited time to devote to all the position responsibilities, elected officials may find it difficult to analyze the volume of information generated during the budget process \u0026ndash; or to identify exactly what information on the budget is needed when.\nThe City of Jackson, MS public budget document – a printout of the chart of accounts. The format of the budget is vitally important because of its ability to frame decisions, provide certain data to decisionmakers, and foreclose answering other questions without additional analysis. Unfortunately, due to limit staff workload, budget updates during the year are often left as agenda items or committee reports rather than being compiled and published in a consistent format so the public (and even officials) can track approved spending throughout the year. Additionally, because actual spending is often shown on a two-year lag, sometimes it can take a year (or even longer) for the public and policymakers to know for sure if the budget was exceeded or funds misused.\nNew Orleans’ current budget woes appear to demonstrate some of these capacity constraints in action. While the city faces fiscal constraints as well (last year’s spending far exceeded the planned budget, and revenue was also less than expected), one of the biggest problems appears to be that officials themselves aren’t clear on the numbers and haven’t provided regular updates on revenue and spending throughout the year. In New Orleans’ case, the consequences may be drastic including layoffs, reduced services, and higher fees for services.\nNew Orlean\u0026rsquo;s example may also point to capacity limits in terms of what staff are trained and comfortable doing. Initiatives to boost local government capacity, as well as support innovation, include What Works Cities (opens in new tab), Results for America (opens in new tab), and Code for America (opens in new tab). The latter two attempt to place trained policy analysts and software developers in partnership with local governments to solve challenges. These programs highlight one avenue to overcome capacity constraints but also point to how difficult it can be to implement new programs to meet a community\u0026rsquo;s challenges. In the face of uncertain success and many competing interests, it can be challenging for public officials to make the case for a dramatic change in course to solve local problems. As a whole, then, lack of staffing resources and the hectic pace of annual budgets contributes to a tendance toward incrementalism and the status quo, requiring sustained effort and education on the part of elected officials or the public to overcome.\nSocial Constraints Finally, governments operate in a social environment that also constrains their options. One social constraint is that governments rely on public input and trust (or at least public acquiescence). Local governments generally want to share information about services and seek at least some feedback from constituents. Yet, which residents provide public input to the budget process is generally very limited, and the most engaged citizens may be highly focused on one or two issues.\nPublic trust is crucial because much of what the government does is designed and carried out by technical experts. Expertise is necessary for good government \u0026ndash; to do things efficiently, safely, and responsibly. However, technical expertise also limits public democratic participation. The terms of the program or services are often set by and designed for domain experts \u0026ndash; doubly so when the domain is the intricate web of rules and regulations governing the budget. Public participation is often reduced to legally required comment-giving where public comments are recorded but public officials do not engage and the public receives no opportunity for deliberation with elected officials, experts, or one another.3\nAs a result, community members find themselves at a disadvantage in public decisions about how to allocate their community\u0026rsquo;s resources. Residents usually lack the time, network, and means to hire experts of their own, and they lack the credibility of professionalized experts themselves. For the government\u0026rsquo;s part, it can be difficult to tap into the local expertise of residents because of a lack of time and resources to thoughtfully engage, build trust and credibility, and balance competing concerns. The culture of professionalized policy evaluation can be seen as an attempt to shortcut this process but often results in the interests of those with the resources to hire experts being privileged. This is how a clear and simple public demand to build more publicly accessible drinking fountains can be met with requests for environmental impact studies, water quality upgrade plans, concerns about long-term sustainable funding for maintenance, and issues with shortfalls in the water infrastructure capital fund. To meet a seemingly simple demand, the public is sometimes expected to anticipate and address all possible issues before the government will take action.\nIf this analysis of budget constraints resonated or if you’ve seen how data gaps impede equity, transparency, or accountability in your community, reach out! At Civilytics we help nonprofits, government agencies, and others build internal capacity to use data and translate complex documents like budgets into actionable information. We’ve done this for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, PolicyLink, The New School and many more. If you’re in search of research and data expertise to help move your good work forward, let’s schedule a 20 minute conversation about how we can help.\nSo where do we \u0026ndash; and local governments \u0026ndash; go from here? In the next edition or two, we\u0026rsquo;ll discuss how governments budget and how they navigate the constraints above. If you\u0026rsquo;d like a \u0026ldquo;sneak peak\u0026rdquo; at the answers in the form of an even fuller discussion of constraints, responses, and \u0026ldquo;best practice\u0026rdquo; examples, check out our full white paper on Local Budgets and the Forces that Shape Them (opens in new tab) produced for The New School and available on our website!\nAdditionally, if you have any suggestions for what you\u0026rsquo;d like us to cover regarding local government budgets or another topic, let us know! We\u0026rsquo;d love to hear from you and get some inspiration for future newsletters!\nAs always, thanks for reading. Wishing you all a good end to 2025 and all the best in the year ahead!\nA 2019 report by New America discusses preemption at length: https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/punching-down/ (opens in new tab)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nU.S. Census Bureau, 2021 Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nAs an example from one of our partners in Phoenix, translation services by the city were inadequate, but the mayor refused to allow community members to supplement or replace the city-contracted translation services – making it difficult or impossible for Spanish-speaking residents to participate.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"November 14, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/just-like-you-local-governments-face-budget-constraints-that-go-beyond/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"When you think about government constraints, what comes to mind? Money? Political will? Public opinion? Lack of staff?","title":"Just like you, local governments face budget constraints that go beyond 💵💵","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"We said we\u0026rsquo;d have another newsletter coming soon\u0026hellip;and we kept our word for once! We strive to be super reliable to clients and always meet their deadlines, but our self-imposed newsletter timelines are another story\u0026hellip;\nFor this edition of The Civic Pulse, we\u0026rsquo;re kicking off a short series on government budgeting, drawing on a project we began in 2023 for the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School (opens in new tab). Budget analysis has been a big part of our portfolio since 2019 \u0026ndash; you can catch up on that work through a few (opens in new tab) past (opens in new tab) newsletters (opens in new tab).\nhttps://www.civilytics.com/policing/take-the-budget-back/ (opens in new tab) Government budgets are in the news right now, but the focus \u0026ndash; of course \u0026ndash; is the federal budget and its \u0026ldquo;trickle down\u0026rdquo; effects. Today we want to focus instead on local budgeting, starting with providing a sense of the scope and scale of local governments as well as the variation in the budgets they produce.\nDid you know there are almost 90,000 local governments in the U.S.? That number comes from the Census of Governments (opens in new tab) (CoG) which collects data on the (U.S.) universe of local governments every five years. At the time of our work, the full 2022 CoG was not yet available, so we used the 2017 version (the most recent full version at the time). But don\u0026rsquo;t worry, unlike people, new governments tend not to crop up or go away, and local governments\u0026rsquo; revenues and expenditures are pretty stable over time, making the 2017 CoG still a great reference.\nThe Census of Governments recognizes 5 types of local governments: counties and county equivalents, cities, townships, school districts, and \u0026ldquo;special districts.\u0026rdquo; (If you live in a place without many \u0026ldquo;special districts,\u0026rdquo; it\u0026rsquo;s hard to fathom just how many there are: water districts, fire districts, library districts, mosquito abatement districts, business improvement districts, etc.)\nThe number of local governments varies dramatically by state, ranging from only 22 in Hawaii to 6,919 in Illinois with an average of 1,767 local governments per state. How does your state stack up?\nCategorizing levels of local government across states is harder than you might initially think. For example, the county is the primary legal subdivision of most states but, as anyone familiar with Louisiana knows, it calls its subdivisions \u0026ldquo;parishes.\u0026rdquo; And don\u0026rsquo;t forget about \u0026ldquo;boroughs\u0026rdquo; in Alaska. Then there are unique cases of \u0026ldquo;independent,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;consolidated\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;merged\u0026rdquo; city/counties which aren\u0026rsquo;t as rare as you might think. You\u0026rsquo;ve got:\n\u0026ldquo;independent\u0026rdquo; cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, and Carson City \u0026ldquo;fully merged\u0026rdquo; locales that are both cities and counties like Philadelphia, Honolulu, and Denver \u0026ldquo;consolidated\u0026rdquo; city-counties that differentiate services and budget costs between the central city and other communities like Nashville-Davidson County and Louisville-Jefferson County And places that don\u0026rsquo;t have county-level governments (e.g., Connecticut and Rhode Island) or have selectively \u0026ldquo;dissolved\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;abolished\u0026rdquo; some county-level governments (for example, only 5 of the 14 counties in Massachusetts have functioning county-level governments, one of which, Barnstable County, we worked with on ARPA funding) All of this makes treating what one city or county spends vs. another less of a guaranteed \u0026ldquo;apples-to-apples\u0026rdquo; comparison than you might think. Understanding the levels of local government and how they overlap sets the stage for describing the amount and types of revenue they control as well as the services they provide.\nDo you have a project that requires attention to detail, an understanding of local government finances, and the ability to analyze expenditures or economic impacts, or make cross-site comparisons? Reach out! With over five years of experience doing this work across the country, we have a unique perspective and would love to discuss how we could aid your work!\nRevenue and Spending The Census of Governments divides revenue sources into \u0026ldquo;intergovernmental\u0026rdquo; versus \u0026ldquo;own source\u0026rdquo; revenue. Intergovernmental revenue comes from the feds, state, and other local governments. Revenue from own sources is primarily taxes (including property, sales, individual income, corporate income, and motor vehicle licenses) but also includes charges for service, utility revenue, etc.\nWhile the trillions of dollars in the federal budget get headlines, much of the important work carried out by local governments is predominantly funded by revenues closer to home: local and state taxes. (Some state aid that localities receive is passed through from the federal government.) On average, almost two-thirds of city and county total revenue comes from local taxes, with state aid making up the second largest revenue source.\nWe often like to highlight for communities with big populations that they spend big money. For example, combined Phoenix and Maricopa County spend more on law enforcement and jails than the entire budget of the Executive Office of the President (~$1.1 billion in FY24). And the budget for LA County is regularly bigger than the entire budget of NASA (~$34 billion) or the Department of Justice ($40.1 billion).\nThe CoG distinguishes between direct expenditures versus intergovernmental ones. Direct expenditures are what local residents pay attention to and are categorized into issue areas like education, social services, transportation, public safety, and more. Often states, counties, and cities all provide some services within each of these \u0026ldquo;issue areas,\u0026rdquo; but the level of government with primary responsibility for a certain service varies by state and is one of the most interesting cross-state patterns to examine, in our opinion.\nThe Urban Institute\u0026rsquo;s State and Local Backgrounders (opens in new tab) project provides a nice overview of patterns of state and local expenditures in each of these areas. For example, Urban shows how responsibility for Health and Hospital Expenditures (opens in new tab) varies across states, with these activities carried out almost completely at the state level in some places versus mostly the responsibility of local governments in others.\n(opens in new tab)\nUrban Institute (opens in new tab)\nBudget Process When people talk about the city or county \u0026ldquo;budget,\u0026rdquo; they often mean different things. A local government \u0026ldquo;budget\u0026rdquo; is at least three things:\nAn administrative tool for operating a large organization A legislative process legally required to approve spending of public funds and raising of public revenues A published document, usually produced annually, communicating #1 and #2 Producing a local government\u0026rsquo;s operating budget1 is a continuous process throughout the year, not a singular event. The process typically looks like this:\nDepartment heads meet with the budget director to discuss and submit their requests. The budget director or government executive prepares and submits a proposed budget to city councilors or county supervisors. Elected officials review the budget and hold hearings on it, recommending changes. The city or county executive approves or vetoes changes and publishes the final budget. Departments and finance staff monitor actual spending and request supplemental funding midway through the year. From reviewing well over 100 city and county budgets, we\u0026rsquo;ve learned that the proposed budget is usually only amended to a minor degree by the approval process.2 There are lots of reasons for this: anchoring bias presented by the proposed budget, a tight timeline for budget passage, information imbalance between the executive and legislative branches, and more. As a result, much of the budget is decided in administrative negotiations with department heads well before the public reveal.\nWhile much of the public attention on the budget dissipates after the \u0026ldquo;final\u0026rdquo; budget is adopted, most local governments continue to adjust their budget as the year goes on, often with much less scrutiny at much more sparsely attended public meetings. Here is where adjustments are made that can have a big impact on the current and future budgets, as cities and counties adapt to the changing conditions each year.3\nJust as there are stages of producing the budget, there are stages of monitoring and tracking it. At one level, the actual amounts within the budget move through stages from adopted or approved planned spending to estimated or projected spending to actual spending reflecting what happened when all accounts were finalized.\nThe initial budgeted amounts reflect what the city council or county commissioners have publicly approved departments to spend. Even at this stage, officials and departments may have a sense that the budget for a specific department is likely to be more or less realistic and that a particular department is likely to over- or under-spend. In monitoring the budget, it is important to track not only what is budgeted but what is actually spent. Some departments consistently have over- or under-runs that are in fact anticipated by elected officials.\nComparing Budgets Budgets present the public with dizzyingly large numbers tied to broad goals like transportation, safety, and education. The budget differs from financial statements in that it is intended to communicate to a wider audience both the allocation of public dollars as well as the reason and intent behind the allocations.\nBecause the numbers are so much larger and the categories more abstract than what we experience with our own finances (e.g., spending $50 a month on streaming services compared to $1.2 million a year on clean air initiatives), comparing budgets between communities can help. Comparison puts the local budget in context: are we spending more than we need on fire protection? What is a reasonable amount to spend on afterschool programs? Do other places spend more on parks than we do?\nUnfortunately, even with the skills and resources of the Census Bureau, comparisons across communities are difficult. This is because budgets are all about categorization\u0026mdash;there is no uniform standard for reporting and categorizing government revenue, expenditures, and funds, just some common (but not universal) practices. This lack of standardization means that comparing budgets takes effort, and that budget creators (officials, department heads, and others) have significant opportunities to use the budget as a tool for political communication.\n(opens in new tab)\nDashboard we created (opens in new tab)\nSuffice to say, budgets differ in how they categorize and divide up expenditures and revenue (for example, what is a \u0026ldquo;fee\u0026rdquo; in one budget may be a \u0026ldquo;fine\u0026rdquo; or a \u0026ldquo;charge for service\u0026rdquo; in another) and this does not yet get into broader budget labels. What one budget labels \u0026ldquo;public safety\u0026rdquo; may include services such as parking enforcement, mental healthcare, and food inspections, while in another budget each of those items may fall under separate categories. Additionally, what is labeled \u0026ldquo;public safety\u0026rdquo; this year could be next year\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;police protection.\u0026rdquo; Nevertheless, information on each of these general categories\u0026mdash;funds,4 revenue, expenditures, and departments\u0026mdash;is almost always in each local budget in some form.\nMost budgets categorize expenditures into at least personnel, services, supplies, and equipment. However, these categories can have slightly different definitions across jurisdictions and even across years within the same jurisdiction (for example, a vehicle purchase may be classified as a capital expenditure one year and included as equipment in an operating budget another year). More importantly, governments make very different choices in how they allocate expenditures among departments. For example, some jurisdictions centralize all vehicle purchases and maintenance costs, so called fleet costs, within a single department. The costs of vehicles used by all other departments are addressed by transfers between departments, which may or may not be reported within the budget. Other jurisdictions will account for each department\u0026rsquo;s vehicle costs within that department\u0026rsquo;s budget.\nBudgets are about people, and personnel costs are by far the biggest cost for most government services. In some budgets non-salary personnel costs, such as retirement contributions, insurance premiums, and paid-time-off, are centralized in a single department like human resources. This makes each department\u0026rsquo;s own budget appear smaller since a large portion of personnel costs are budgeted elsewhere. Other governments account for the full cost of employees within each department. These differences in accounting practice can inhibit comparisons across budgets\u0026mdash;and even interpretation within a single budget.\n(opens in new tab)\nhttps://civilytics.substack.com/p/four-myths-about-police-budgets (opens in new tab)\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t want to come across as blaming governments for these categorical differences \u0026ndash; localities need flexibility in how they organize their finances to carry out their work. But sometimes budgets are incomplete and don\u0026rsquo;t contain the minimum information needed to understand how the community\u0026rsquo;s dollars are spent. Budgets often miss information on:\nStaffing: The number of staff in different departments is perhaps the most important piece of budget info that is often missing from budget documents. In a project we conducted that analyzed fiscal year 2022 city and county budgets from almost 40 locales, we found that several large budgets, including Fulton County (Atlanta), Dallas County, and Philadelphia did not contain any information on the number of staff employed by departments.5 Overtime: In the project described above, only 16 budgets included information on overtime spending in the police or sheriff\u0026rsquo;s department. Of particular note were budgets that stated overtime spending was a concern but did not provide overtime spending amounts to the public. Contract and grant awards: Budgets often include line items for \u0026ldquo;Contracted Program Services\u0026rdquo; (LA County\u0026rsquo;s wording) or \u0026ldquo;Purchased/Contracted Services\u0026rdquo; (Atlanta\u0026rsquo;s wording), but this provides little information to the public on what these services entail or who is providing them. However, we have seen some budgets that list specific contracts, particularly for community-based organizations or organizations serving families and children, providing far more useful information. Did the content above whet your appetite and make you want to learn even more about local government budgets? Then you should check out our full white paper on The Landscape of Local Government Budgets (opens in new tab) produced for The New School and available on our website. Even better, we\u0026rsquo;ll be continuing the series soon with another newsletter on forces that shape local budgets including legal, fiscal, capacity, and social constraints. Our third entry into the series will then describe a pilot local budget equity assessment we conducted with The New School and nine community groups across the U.S.\nWe hope you\u0026rsquo;ll stay tuned!\nSometimes just called “the budget” and, as opposed to their capital budgets, often linked to a strategic plan\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWhile we cannot quantify this in a systematic way without further research, almost all changes from the proposed to amended/adopted budget that we have seen have been on the scale of 5% or less.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThese adjustments can be called a supplemental budget, mid-year revision, budget addendum, or quarterly update.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWhile of little direct interest to the public, funds are a crucial component of understanding budgets because revenues and expenditures are almost always accounted for within funds. Funds are a strategy to balance the need to operate a budget in compliance with finance-related rules against the need to communicate clearly to external stakeholders how money is being used.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nAt the same time, other large budgets, including for Harris County (Houston) and King County (Seattle), did not show how much departments spent on personnel. The GFOA states that local governments should consider it mandatory to provide a schedule or summary table of personnel or position counts for prior, current, and budgeted years.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"November 3, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/can-you-guess-the-number-of-local-governments-in-the-u-s-in-your-state/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"We said we’d have another newsletter coming soon…and we kept our word for once! We strive to be super reliable to clients and always meet their deadlines, but our self-imposed newsletter timelines are another story…","title":"Can you guess the number of local governments in the U.S.? In your state?","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" What we learned analyzing data on students experiencing homelessness for Wisconsin's DPI In 2024, we worked with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction\u0026rsquo;s (opens in new tab) Education for Homeless Children and Youth team to analyze data on students experiencing homelessness. We were so impressed by the team\u0026rsquo;s knowledge of the students and schools they were trying to serve \u0026ndash; and were really struck by the number of children experiencing homelessness in Wisconsin, a state not particularly known for this issue.\nIn this edition of The Civic Pulse we thought it\u0026rsquo;d be interesting to share what we learned about who these students are, where they attend school, and how they fare on critical educational outcomes. We hope you\u0026rsquo;ll check out the issue.\nA quick note that this was a relatively short project that we were able to complete quickly thanks to Jared\u0026rsquo;s prior experience with DPI data and the excellent staff at DPI who delivered the data in great shape and asked insightful questions, as well as the focus on clear data insights and graphics that could be used for a variety of internal and external audience rather than on a longer, very polished report.\nIf the analysis below sparks ideas of ways we could aid your work or you think we might be a good fit for something you need, please get in touch! Hannah is looking to book clients for the next several months. More about our capabilities, services, and philosophy below. If you\u0026rsquo;re starting up a new project and need extra capacity, scaling up work but aren\u0026rsquo;t ready yet to make a full-time hire, or have a team member on leave whose responsibilities you need to cover temporarily, maybe we could help!\nAnd a second quick note: before we dive into the data analysis, we want to highlight the federal funding that makes data like this available and that may be at risk for 2026.\nThe McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (opens in new tab) provides critical rights to students experiencing homelessness including the right to remain in their original school if it\u0026rsquo;s in the student\u0026rsquo;s best interest and to receive transportation to and from that school. This Act allocates funding to states and districts to be used for program implementation and data collection. Without this funding, this project likely wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have happened (because the data likely wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be collected!). More importantly students experiencing homelessness wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have as much support, including local liaisons in each district working to get them all available services.\nFor a great profile of one district\u0026rsquo;s homeless student liaision, check out this 2022 NYTimes article (opens in new tab) about a liaison in Texas. Please recommend other articles, profiles, or information sources in the comments. (There was an article (opens in new tab) about homeless students in NYC just last week.)\nIn June, the Trump administration\u0026rsquo;s fiscal year 2026 budget proposed consolidating the McKinney-Vento grant program with other programs and dramatically cutting funding, as described by NPR (opens in new tab). The House bill (opens in new tab) rejects this proposal but, given the state of everything U.S. Education Department-related, it\u0026rsquo;s critical to understand and share with others the importance of these funds to a group of students who already face so many challenges and the schools and educators trying to support them.\nOnto Wisconsin\u0026hellip;\nOver 18k students were homeless in Wisconsin during the 2022-23 school year It\u0026rsquo;s always good to start a data project by getting a sense of scale. We began this project by putting the number of students into context. Even with our prior experience working on K-12 education data in Wisconsin, we were really surprised to learn that over 18,000 students were homeless in Wisconsin during the 2022-23 school year. If all students experiencing homelessness were counted together, they would make up the fifth largest school district in Wisconsin!\nTable 1: Rank of homeless students among districts by total enrollment in 2022-23\nDistrict Students Milwaukee 71,519 Madison 26,333 Kenosha 19,809 Green Bay 19,566 Homeless Students 18,351 Racine 16,874 Appleton 15,529 Waukesha 12,140 Eau Claire 11,176 Janesville 9,855 Sheboygan 9,800 We examined both the school districts with the highest counts of homeless students and the districts experiencing the highest concentration of homeless students. In 2022-23, nearly 4,600 students in Milwaukee Public Schools experienced homelessness. Madison had over 1,000 students experiencing homelessness and Green Bay had nearly 1,000. While the Menominee Indian School District had \u0026quot;only\u0026quot; 155 homeless students, this was over 15% of students in the district. In six other districts, 9-10% of students were homeless that year.\nStudent characteristics The first question in most K-12 education analyses is: what are these students' characteristics? While less than 1 in 10 Wisconsin students are Black, over 1 in 3 students who are homeless in Wisconsin are Black. In the 2022-23 school year, there were more Black students experiencing homelessness than White students despite there being about 7.5 times more White students as Black students in the state. Let that sink in.\nAmong Wisconsin public school students, the general patterns of homelessness by race/ethnicity have remained similar over the past five years, although the share of homeless students who are Hispanic has risen over time. (The number of students identified by schools as homeless dropped precipitously in 2020-21. This is likely partly because of pandemic-related rental assistance and protections and partly because schools were struggling to stay in touch with students and may not have had as much information on students\u0026rsquo; homelessness status as usual.)\nEach year, around 1% of White students in Wisconsin experience homelessness. In contrast, up to 8% of Black students are homeless. In 2022-23, 1 in every 12 Black students in Wisconsin experienced homelessness. That is just staggering. High percentages of American Indian students also experience homelessness and the percentage of American Indian students who are homeless may be rising. In 2022-23, 1 out of every 15 American Indian students was homeless.\nWhile the share of non-homeless Wisconsin students identified as having limited English proficiency (LEP) has grown slightly over time, the share of homeless students who are LEP has nearly doubled in the past five years. The share of homeless students identified as needing special education services has been relatively consistent over the past five years. However, compared to non-homeless students, a very high share of homeless students are identified as needing special education services: 1 in 4 homeless students need special education services.\nBeyond the basic student characteristics After looking at the \u0026ldquo;standard\u0026rdquo; student characteristics usually analyzed in education data, we looked at some data available specifically for this group. With the caveat that this information is based on what schools know -- which may paint a less bleak picture than reality since caregivers have an incentive to give a family member\u0026rsquo;s/friend\u0026rsquo;s address as their primary location rather than say they\u0026rsquo;re living in a car or unsheltered and students may feel pressured to say they have an adult with them:\nThe vast majority of students identified as homeless in Wisconsin are \u0026ldquo;doubled up,\u0026rdquo; temporarily sharing housing or staying with friends or family. Each year, about three-quarters of homeless spells are for students who are \u0026ldquo;doubled up\u0026rdquo; in someone else\u0026rsquo;s home. (We focus on homeless spells rather than homeless youth because, with each spell, youth\u0026rsquo;s living situation may change.) Roughly similar shares of homeless students have nighttime residences that are hotels/motels or shelter/transitional housing. However, the frequency of staying in a hotel/motel appears to have increased slightly over the past five years.\nWhile most homeless youth are accompanied by an adult, some unfortunately are not. Each year around 12% of homeless spells are for youth who are unaccompanied by an adult. (Again we report numbers and percentages of homeless spells, not homeless youth, because youth could be accompanied by an adult for one spell and then unaccompanied in another spell.)\nIncluding students who have experienced homelessness any time in the past 5 years, rather than focusing one year alone, more than doubles the number of students impacted by homelessness. For example, while about 18,300 students were homeless at some point during SY 2022-23, over 40,500 students were homeless at least once between SY 2018-19 and 2022-23. This means, while about 2% of students experience homelessness in any given year in Wisconsin, nearly 5% of students experience homelessness within a five-year period.\nAttendance and graduation outcomes For this project, we looked at the full suite of \u0026quot;typical\u0026quot; education outcomes. Going into the analysis, we already \u0026quot;knew\u0026quot; part of what we'd find: that these students were likely to be struggling more than their peers in many ways.\nStudents and families experiencing homelessness are dealing with circumstances that honestly most of us cannot imagine -- of course, that's reflected in their outcomes. Therefore, we wanted to start by highlighting some outcomes that we were surprised by and we thought pointed to the resilience of these students and the efforts of the schools trying to serve them.\nFirst, Wisconsin public school students experiencing homelessness still attend 80% of school days. While that\u0026rsquo;s far from ideal from a learning perspective and more than 10 percentage points lower than the attendance rate for non-homeless students, it\u0026rsquo;s still a lot of days especially considering the effort it may take for some of these students to attend. DPI\u0026rsquo;s team suggested we compare attendance rates for other groups of students who might also be facing challenging family circumstances, such as students who experienced homelessness in a prior year or students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and had changed schools during the year. Across all groups that we examined, youth experiencing homelessness in the current year had the lowest attendance rate.\nSecond, despite facing significant challenges, two-thirds of students who experience homelessness in Wisconsin still graduate \u0026ldquo;on time\u0026rdquo; and 70% graduate within five years. Compared to other states, Wisconsin has very high graduation rates: 92% of \u0026ldquo;non-homeless\u0026rdquo; students graduate on-time. Among students who experienced homelessness at any time during the 5 years prior to their (expected) graduation, graduation rates are 25 percentage points lower: just 67% graduate on-time. However, extending the time frame to five years increases the graduation rate to 71% and we think it\u0026rsquo;s worth recognizing what it takes for these students, their families, and school to earn a diploma. (Numbers don\u0026rsquo;t include students who earned a high school equivalency diploma or other high school completion credential.)\nState achievement tests Before turning to proficiency rates, it\u0026rsquo;s important to recognize that homeless students are less likely to participate in required state assessments. For example, in 2022-23, 96% of non-homeless students but only 86% of homeless students took the required assessments. This likely makes the disparities in proficiency rates appear smaller than they would otherwise be because students who aren\u0026rsquo;t tested, either because they missed test and make-up test dates or took an alternative assessment for students with the most severe disabilities, would likely have lower than average scores.\nIn both ELA and math\u0026mdash;and in almost every grade from 3 to 8\u0026mdash;there is about a 30-percentage point difference in proficiency rates for homeless vs. non-homeless students. Proficiency rates for homeless students range from as low as 5% in grade 8 math to at most a high of 14% (in grades 3 math and 4 ELA). In contrast, the range for non-homeless students is 32 \u0026ndash; 50%.\nProficiency rates condense all the details about student scores into a binary decision: proficient or not. The following graphs look at scores in more detail, showing math test scores for all homeless students by grade (top panel) and for a selection of 7,000 randomly selected non-homeless students (bottom panel; because the number of non-homeless students is very large, putting the full data on a chart would make it difficult to see patterns for non-homeless students). The mean (central point) for homeless students in every grade is in the \u0026ldquo;below basic\u0026rdquo; range. In contrast, the mean for non-homeless students is in the basic range or even right on the line with the proficient range in grade 3. We see a \u0026ldquo;pooling\u0026rdquo; of homeless students at the lowest possible score\u0026mdash;in each grade, there is a notable line of dots at the bottom score for homeless students. In contrast, for non-homeless students, we see some students scoring at the lowest possible score, but the number of students is much fewer. Finally, we see more non-homeless students scoring in the proficient and advanced region compared to homeless students and that there are very few homeless students scoring as advanced in any grade (though there are a few).\nPatterns are similar for ELA, though with less \u0026ldquo;pooling\u0026rdquo; of homeless students at the lowest score possible. We also examined trends in scores over time, scores on the science and social studies tests, ACT/Aspire, etc. While we were able to look across many measures and timepoints, we don\u0026rsquo;t have many broader takeaways here other than the consistency of continued disparities in all proficiency outcomes in all grades for homeless students compared to their non-homeless peers. These students simply need much more support, on average, to reach proficiency.\nOur value-add for this project One of the things we\u0026rsquo;re most proud of at Civilytics is our commitment to accuracy, documentation, and verifiability. We live this commitment by delivering the code behind our analytics to the client. With code delivery, we\u0026rsquo;re committed to clients being able to trace where numbers come from, including what filters and transformations were applied to the data. We\u0026rsquo;re not saying we never get it wrong or make mistakes, simply that one of our company values is for us and clients to be able to trace back (and correct as needed) where every number came from. As an added benefit to our clients, we always intend that they can pick up the work themselves in the future if they choose. For the Wisconsin Education for Homeless Children and Youth team, we\u0026rsquo;re especially optimistic that having the code will be useful in enabling this, allowing the team to rerun the analyses with updated data annually.\nAt Civilytics, we are also proud of our adaptability and responsiveness to clients\u0026rsquo; timelines and needs. This project was completed in only five months. While we had a lot of ideas ourselves for what to examine about homeless students\u0026rsquo; characteristics and outcomes, the EHCY team also suggested great additional analyses after we shared first drafts with them. We want to do impactful social science analysis and believe the best way to do that is through communication, collaboration, and a commitment to accuracy and transparency. By staying in close communication with clients throughout the analytic workflow, we keep the deliverable aligned to serving the needs of the client and avoid wasted effort.\nHow we can help If the values above resonate with you or the analyses we\u0026rsquo;ve shared sparked ideas of ways we could aid your work, please get in touch!\nAs mentioned at the start, Hannah is looking to book clients for the next several months. She\u0026rsquo;s well prepared to pitch in with:\nProject management Report and grant writing Data cleaning (in R or Stata if you have an extra license/remote desktop) Literature reviews Survey and interview data collection \u0026ndash; including protocol design, recruitment and outreach, piloting, analysis Preparing IRB or OMB forms All aspects of evaluation design \u0026ndash; including preparing and revising logic models/theories of action, identifying metrics, planning data collection, etc. Any type of fact/information checking We loved working with the DPI team to learn a somewhat-new-to-us subject and help them better understand the characteristics and outcomes of the students they serve. We'd love to learn more about your team's work as well and see if we could be a good fit!\nComing next We often say we\u0026rsquo;ll have another newsletter coming soon\u0026hellip;and then 6 months goes by. But this time we mean it! Our next newsletter will highlight work on local budget equity and advocacy that we did for and with the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School and nine community groups across the U.S. Keep an eye out for that later this month!\n","date":"October 7, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/uncovering-wisconsins-hidden-fifth-largest-school-district/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In 2024, we worked with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth team to analyze data on students experiencing homelessness. We were so impressed by the team’s knowledge of the students and schools they were trying to serve – and were really struck by the number of children experiencing homelessness in Wisconsin, a state not particularly known for this issue.","title":"Uncovering Wisconsin's hidden fifth largest school district","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"A portfolio of representative projects, case studies, and public-facing analyses is in the works. Check back soon — in the meantime, the Services page describes the kinds of work we take on, and the Civic Pulse newsletter has examples of recent analyses and public reporting.\n","date":"September 1, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"A portfolio of representative projects, case studies, and public-facing analyses is in the works. Check back soon — in the meantime, the Services page describes the kinds of work we take on, and the Civic Pulse newsletter has examples of recent analyses and public reporting.\n","title":"Portfolio","type":"portfolio"},{"content":" Who will study how to retrain education researchers for the new economy? This edition of the Civic Pulse is off to a cheeky start as Jared was speculating earlier in the week about whether there are currently more coal miners or education researchers. Determining the current number of coal miners \u0026ndash; about 40k \u0026ndash; is easy thanks to the gold standard source (opens in new tab) of economic data: FRED (opens in new tab). Unfortunately, education researchers don\u0026rsquo;t get our own labor category so our population count is less clear. The American Educational Research Association (opens in new tab) (AERA) claims 25k members although that includes students and international members. Considering major contractors like AIR, Mathematica, WestEd, and others as well as myriad researchers at state and local education agencies, we\u0026rsquo;ve got to be approaching 20,000 or more education researchers right? Will we merit any Emmy-award winning TV shows (opens in new tab) or Pulitzer Prize-winning books (opens in new tab)?1\nJared\u0026rsquo;s offhand question about the number of people employed in these two very different industries got us thinking about what is and may happen with all the researchers \u0026ndash; not just education researchers \u0026ndash; whose industries are changing so rapidly and whose skills feel pushed aside at the moment.\n“The Worker” memorial in Lowell, MA. Photo by Jared. We know lots of others are feeling this way at the moment and thought it would be a good time to update you all on how things are going here. In our last newsletter (opens in new tab) we shared our immediate thoughts about a week after much of our work was \u0026ldquo;terminated for convenience\u0026rdquo; by the government. (As an aside, we want to thank the many of you who reached out with kind words, your own stories, or an opportunity). In the two months that have elapsed, we\u0026rsquo;ve been busy, with Jared mostly working on our last big project (due soon) and Hannah mostly applying for new work. While we\u0026rsquo;ve been grateful to find and apply for a handful of opportunities that seemed like very good fits for our skills and experience, we haven\u0026rsquo;t been selected for much yet. It\u0026rsquo;s a tough market out there.\nOn that note\u0026hellip;If you have a short- or long-term project that might be a good fit for us, please reach out! Even if you\u0026rsquo;re not looking for project assistance at the moment, we\u0026rsquo;d appreciate it if you could:\nRefer us! Several of the opportunities we recently applied to came from referrals \u0026ndash; we are so appreciative of those who connected us with their colleagues, forwarded us solicitations, and recommended us to others. Send us info! Do you know of an RFP that might be a good fit for us? A listserv or network we should be aware of? A foundation seeking LOIs? A source for contract work? Please send them our way! Figuring out where to search for work is a challenge and so we\u0026rsquo;d appreciate any tips in this direction. We\u0026rsquo;re particularly looking for the following types of work:\nProgram evaluation and evaluation design including both carrying out evaluations and providing technical assistance/advice to others conducting their own research Quantitative and qualitative analysis including descriptive research and impact analyses Evidence review and synthesis Public budget analysis and cost comparisons Analysis of jail and prison populations, prison closures, cost of police activity, etc. Our backgrounds are in education research, sociology, and political science. While we have primarily worked on projects in education (K-12 and higher education), public finance, and carceral systems, we are open to working in other areas and have some experience on projects in child welfare, workforce development/labor, housing, and mental health supports.\nOn a different note: Jared will be in Denver this weekend so, if you\u0026rsquo;ll be at AERA or in Denver for another reason, let him know \u0026ndash; he\u0026rsquo;d love to meet up!\nWhile looking for new opportunities, we\u0026rsquo;ve also taken time to reflect on some of the great projects we\u0026rsquo;ve worked on. We\u0026rsquo;ve written four brief \u0026ldquo;articles\u0026rdquo; about IES-funded projects we worked on including:\nAn Evaluation of Grant Programs to Increase School-Based Mental Health Services (opens in new tab). Thinking about this project, we were reminded of just how little is still known about the mental health support provided in schools. A lot has been written about the pandemic\u0026rsquo;s mental health consequences, including how K-12 students have experienced urgent and ongoing increases in stress, anxiety, and depression. Some has been written about how schools are the most common place students can access mental health services (both for prevention and intervention) and the very high student-to-provider ratios in schools. But, beyond the basics of number of people employed and reported student needs, there hasn\u0026rsquo;t been a lot of large-scale research on expanding access to school-based mental health resources, including what works in different labor markets and local contexts. In this brief article, we shared some reflections on a project that was just months away from delivering a complete dataset on this topic. A Planned Guide on What Works in Promoting K-12 Student Attendance (opens in new tab). This project was also incredibly timely \u0026ldquo;thanks\u0026rdquo; to the pandemic since student absences increased dramatically (opens in new tab) almost everywhere in the past few years. Those who aren\u0026rsquo;t education researchers probably don\u0026rsquo;t often think about the million different reasons students miss school (some detailed in the post), but the diversity of reasons really calls for a range of different strategies in improving attendance. Schools and districts have been trying a lot but which of these strategies actually have strong evidence that they work not just in one place but in multiple settings? That\u0026rsquo;s what this contract aimed to answer through a systematic review of evidence-based practices. Evaluation Support to Maximize Studies\u0026rsquo; Value (opens in new tab). This post shared a little about a long-running series of evaluation technical assistance contracts that were canceled. Though Hannah just joined the project about a week before the contract was canceled (!), different iterations of the work had been going on for years with new cohorts of grantees each year. One impressive statistic from an earlier iteration of the project: over 75% of evaluations (opens in new tab) supported through the project were found to meet rigorous standards for experimental and quasi-experimental designs. A Canceled Contract that Aimed to Help Determine \u0026ldquo;What Works\u0026rdquo; in Supporting Postsecondary Students\u0026rsquo; Success (opens in new tab). If you stop to think about it, the sheer variety of higher education students\u0026rsquo; goals, from short-term credentials to graduate degrees is incredible as is the range in institutional settings, from small technical colleges to massive state systems at all levels of \u0026ldquo;selectivity\u0026rdquo; and institutional support. This makes applying strategies with existing evidence bases challenging. For example, if success coaching (opens in new tab) was effective for students transitioning from high school to college in one place, will it also help students who are already enrolled in college in a different setting? If so, what adaptations are needed to the content covered, format and frequency of coaching, and so forth? In this project we were providing guidance to five institutions that received Postsecondary Student Success Grants to implement and evaluate evidence-based activities like peer mentoring, success coaching, and financial incentives in new settings. That\u0026rsquo;s a rundown of what we\u0026rsquo;ve shared about our recent education work. We\u0026rsquo;re still planning to do one or two more write-ups on other canceled projects, including work for two of the Regional Educational Laboratories. In the meantime, we also shared some reflections on a different youth-focused project we\u0026rsquo;ve loved working on: support for the Youth First Justice Collaborative (opens in new tab). The Youth First Justice Collaborative is a network of 15 state campaigns focused on keeping kids out of youth detention centers and building a robust set of alternatives to provide the services that youth need.\nIn this post (opens in new tab), we shared a little about the history of how \u0026ldquo;[b]etween 2000 and 2020, the number of young people incarcerated in the United States declined by an astonishing 77 percent\u0026rdquo; (source (opens in new tab)). We also reflected that, at the moment, efforts to further decarcerate youth seem to be facing headwinds, as regressive forces once again push for highly punitive approaches disproportionately affecting youth of color. The post describes some of the work we\u0026rsquo;ve done for campaigns to analyze state budgets, find information on and price alternatives to detention, and analyze data dashboards and reports. For us, this work has been eye-opening and an interesting contrast to much of our K-12 education work because, while much of K-12 education is highly studied \u0026ndash; with studies using rigorous methods and with extensive statistics available \u0026ndash; a lot of what happens in juvenile justice centers is still a \u0026ldquo;black box.\u0026rdquo; In this area, we\u0026rsquo;ve found that a little information can go a long way \u0026ndash; and that we still have a lot to learn. Image from the linked article (opens in new tab), data from The Sentencing Project.\nWe may write up some other reflections on past projects too, things we worked on but didn\u0026rsquo;t have time to share much about over the past 18 months or so. Look for more of that in a future newsletter perhaps and let us know if there\u0026rsquo;s any aspect of our work or particular project you\u0026rsquo;d be interested in reading about!\nIn the meantime, hang in there. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to figure out what exactly to say at the moment \u0026ndash; it really is a difficult time on so many fronts for so many. We appreciate the virtual community this newsletter (occasionally) provides and we appreciate you reading and sharing. Please reach out or comment below with your own experiences, thoughts, and reflections and of course refer us for work or to resources if you can!\nThank you.\nDespite our jokes, as researchers we feel obligated to say that, of course, the situations and industries are not at all equivalent. Obviously coal mining is a much more dangerous profession with much more serious physical health risks. (Health risks of education research: dry eyes from staring at computer screens, depression from confronting realities of inequality daily.) Coal mining also obviously used to employ many more people (as shown by FRED and by mining\u0026rsquo;s much larger space in the cultural imagination.) Coal mining also obviously has more negative environmental externalities (negative environmental externalities of this newsletter: Jared’s use of perplexity.ai to try to figure out the number of education researchers). There has been (still is?) a whole set of funding and efforts to support communities and regions negatively impacted “by changes in the coal economy.”\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"April 24, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/are-education-researchers-going-the-way-of-coal-miners/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This edition of the Civic Pulse is off to a cheeky start as Jared was speculating earlier in the week about whether there are currently more coal miners or education researchers. Determining the current number of coal miners – about 40k – is easy thanks to the gold standard source of economic data: FRED. Unfortunately, education researchers don’t get our own labor category so our population count is less clear. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) claims 25k members although that includes students and international members. Considering major contractors like AIR, Mathematica, WestEd, and others as well as myriad researchers at state and local education agencies, we’ve got to be approaching 20,000 or more education researchers right? Will we merit any Emmy-award winning TV shows or Pulitzer Prize-winning books?1","title":"Are education researchers going the way of coal miners?","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Civilytics' statement on slashing the Department of Education's research The Civic Pulse has been on an unplanned 14-month hiatus as we were blessed with lots of interesting projects keeping us busy. Now it\u0026rsquo;s back*,* making an unplanned reappearance, because lots of those projects were abruptly canceled last week with the termination of most contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). To learn about the cancellations from a more objective perspective, please check out these articles from Education Week (opens in new tab) and The Washington Post (opens in new tab). Why write now? We hope to achieve three things:\nTo give voice to the direct impact contract cancellations have on people and their work. It is important to go beyond the headlines and document direct impacts. To defend the valuable work that has been lost due to these actions. To catalyze others to share this example or their own example of how these actions are leading to specific harm. We are speaking out because frankly we have already lost all of our education business with the federal government. We know many others may be unable or unwilling to speak out for fear of retribution (opens in new tab), though they are impacted as well. We hope if you are in this situation you know we are thinking of you, and if and when you can speak out, we\u0026rsquo;ll be there to listen.\nRobert Kelchen says it well. (opens in new tab)\nQuick primer: The Department of Education (opens in new tab) has the smallest staff of the 15 federal Cabinet agencies. The Department\u0026rsquo;s total budget (opens in new tab) represents 1% of the overall federal budget. Within the Department, the Institute of Education Sciences (opens in new tab) (IES) is the department\u0026rsquo;s research and statistics arm. IES is only 1% of the Department\u0026rsquo;s budget (opens in new tab) but apparently 85% of IES\u0026rsquo;s contracts (opens in new tab) were cancelled last week. It\u0026rsquo;s small potatoes on the grand scale of federal spending but very large potatoes in our world as it\u0026rsquo;s the (one of the?) main source(s) of education research funding. Quick personal primer: It also funds (funded?) the doctoral program where we met each other and many of you. And then also, of course, funded many of our colleagues\u0026rsquo; work since then! With hundreds of billions (opens in new tab) spent on K-12 education each year, IES\u0026rsquo;s focus is on tracking student outcomes, evaluating what education programs, strategies, and initiatives are worth the investment, and providing data on students, teachers, schools, and colleges that is literally used by countless stakeholders.\nOf course, there were signs that cuts were coming \u0026ndash; the decimation of USAID, the Republican administration\u0026rsquo;s rhetoric around education and disdain for numbers, data, and facts (opens in new tab). So, while these cancellations technically weren\u0026rsquo;t out-of-the-blue, or on the list of most egregious decisions made in the past few weeks, they did radically reshape our work, expectations for the future, and more starting last Monday around 3:30pm.\nBefore sharing more about the canceled projects, we want to share some thoughts on what feels particularly frustrating about the administration\u0026rsquo;s approach:\nLack of transparency \u0026ndash; There wasn\u0026rsquo;t (or isn\u0026rsquo;t?) an official list of all the contracts that were canceled. We had three subcontracts for the What Works Clearinghouse (opens in new tab) canceled and heard of others. Were all the WWC\u0026rsquo;s contracts cancelled? The havoc one person can wreak on countless \u0026ndash; Contracts were originally issued because experts decided more research on a topic was merited, because studies were congressionally mandated, or for other (probably thoughtful?) reasons. Then, many people were involved in issuing RFPs, submitting proposals, and evaluating bids. Then one person unilaterally canceled all of it, affecting so many people\u0026rsquo;s lives (researchers yes but also educators for sure). Apparent (?) acceptance of assertions at face value \u0026ndash; Statements like cancellations were for waste or fraud, or because of a focus on particular topics (e.g., DEI), seem to continue to be taken at face value despite the scope of contracts canceled (opens in new tab), lack of information on what contracts were actually for, and ample evidence to the contrary. Similarly, we continue to see outlets/individuals report that department spokespeople say some contracts will be rebid without mentioning in the same sentence how this contradicts the stated goal of eliminating the Dept. of Education. This is an attack on expertise, knowledge, and science across the board. We found this post on LinkedIn particularly insightful:\nThank you Marilyn Pryle. (opens in new tab)\nMore on our canceled subcontracts to just add some evidence to what funds were supporting. While we welcome sympathy, we aren\u0026rsquo;t sharing this to say these were the most important initiatives eliminated in the past few weeks (they certainly weren\u0026rsquo;t!) or that we won\u0026rsquo;t be ok (we will, especially to the extent that our communities, friends, families, and world are also ok). Rather we think it\u0026rsquo;s important to give concrete examples of what is being eliminated and what it means for real people\u0026rsquo;s lives.\nLast week all five1 of our Department of Education subcontracts were canceled \u0026ldquo;for convenience.\u0026rdquo; These projects were focused on:\nImproving student attendance \u0026ndash; two projects! With students missing much (opens in new tab) more school than before the pandemic, this topic couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more timely and relevant. One of the projects was a WWC practice guide (opens in new tab) reviewing strategies for promoting student attendance. WWC practice guides evaluate the quality of evidence supporting different interventions, products, and practices and share actionable recommendations for educators. We\u0026rsquo;ve heard these are among the WWC\u0026rsquo;s most used resources.2 Another project was sharing near-time (like real-time but not quite) attendance data with educators, to their email rather than requiring them to log onto a dashboard, focusing on which student groups were slipping behind attendance rate goals. Cataloguing school-based mental health supports With many students (opens in new tab) struggling with anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges, the Department of Education funded two grant programs to provide mental health supports to students where they are \u0026ndash; schools. While the grants themselves may (??) continue, collecting, summarizing, and sharing data on the grants\u0026rsquo; effects \u0026ndash; how many psychologists, social workers, and counselors were hired; how many students were served; what strategies were effective for recruiting and retaining new staff \u0026ndash; will not. Advising grantees on how to conduct rigorous studies that provide information about whether investments truly move the needle on student outcomes \u0026ndash; two projects! Grantees often have deep experience with and great ideas on new approaches that could help students \u0026ndash; peer mentoring, student success coaches, financial incentives \u0026ndash; but less experience evaluating whether these ideas actually translate to gains for students. We had two cancelled subcontracts providing assistance to grantees (colleges, universities, K-12 education agencies) to conduct research evaluations. Could efficiencies have been found in some of these projects? Yeah. Some of the projects even had suggesting efficiencies for future years built in. And also have you ever worked on a project or for a company where nothing could be improved? The cancellations had nothing to do with efficiency or value \u0026ndash; they were wholesale cancellations of as many contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as possible.\nObviously many federal workers (opens in new tab) have already lost their jobs. The federal government conducts much of its work through contracts, and contractors are beginning (opens in new tab) to be laid off too. Our subcontracts were for organizations \u0026ndash; American Institutes for Research (opens in new tab), Mathematica (opens in new tab), Abt Global (opens in new tab)\u0026ndash; with thousands of staff, quite a few of whom we know personally! The terminations affect us but likely affect staff at these companies just as much! And the cuts ultimately will \u0026ndash; even if indirectly, more long-term, and less clearly \u0026ndash; affect schools, educators, and students.\nIf the federal government (and us as taxpayers) don\u0026rsquo;t invest in education research, who will?\nUniversities (to some extent but they\u0026rsquo;re not in a good place at the moment either) Philanthropies (we\u0026rsquo;re so thankful to have philanthropy-funded work now, but philanthropic investments are limited in conducting the type of national data collection that\u0026rsquo;s a hallmark of the federal government\u0026rsquo;s work) Education technology/curriculum/product development companies The third group has a vested interest in achieving certain results \u0026ndash; this research isn\u0026rsquo;t equivalent to federally funded research where impartiality, objectivity, and lack of vested interest in outcomes is key. If most \u0026ldquo;research\u0026rdquo; comes from those making money off the product, how can schools or educators trust it?\nAgain, we want to reiterate that we\u0026rsquo;re sharing this not because our experience is unique or because it\u0026rsquo;s particularly egregious in the scheme of current events but because we think the country needs as many examples of the impacts of the administration\u0026rsquo;s actions as possible. We\u0026rsquo;ve talked to our state and federal representatives about the impact of these cuts this week, and we hope you are also reaching out to yours as often as possible (use this site (opens in new tab) to find your federal representatives\u0026rsquo; local and DC numbers as well as phone scripts if useful). We found it cathartic to be listened to and an opportunity to educate them about the importance and value of publicly funded education research.\nTo colleagues in this space \u0026ndash; and particularly to any reading this whom we might have worked with on the projects above or others \u0026ndash; we are thinking of you, we loved working with you, we hope our work continues in the future, and we know you are eminently competent researchers doing work that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been cancelled for one person\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;convenience.\u0026rdquo;\nIt is easy to feel powerless to do anything against the extremely wealthy at the helm of the state, but one thing we can do is support each other and speak up. The more of us who speak up and the more we support each other, the harder our experiences are to deny. This is our contribution, and we want to be sure to support you however we can. If you want to share your experience or your feelings on these actions \u0026ndash; we encourage you to share this newsletter as an example, comment below with your own story, or, if you want to share privately, please feel free to email us (or reach out on Signal). We promise to listen.\nMaybe six or seven? We had another project for which our work was supposed to start in the fall (though the prime contract had been underway for a while). We assume it was surely canceled too as it was an IES research study examining outcomes for English learners. We also had an outstanding request to sign a small contract for a Regional Educational Laboratory that was also canceled before we signed the paperwork!\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWe couldn’t find a citation for this but have heard it from several reputable sources…\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"February 18, 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/the-headlines-hit-home-terminated-for-convenience/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The Civic Pulse has been on an unplanned 14-month hiatus as we were blessed with lots of interesting projects keeping us busy. Now it’s back, making an unplanned reappearance, because lots of those projects were abruptly canceled last week with the termination of most contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). To learn about the cancellations from a more objective perspective, please check out these articles from Education Week and The Washington Post. Why write now? We hope to achieve three things:","title":"The Headlines Hit Home: \"Terminated for Convenience\"","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Announcing a new way to understand local budgets across the country Did you know that local governments (cities, counties, school districts) spent over $2.2 trillion in 2021?1 That\u0026rsquo;s nearly as much as all state governments combined and about ⅓ of total federal spending including Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. In other words, thousands of local government decisions across the country account for a large part of the public investment that shapes our lives. This is a topic we\u0026rsquo;ve been tackling from a number of directions here at Civilytics - sharing information on how to read local budgets (opens in new tab), analyzing and summarizing budget decisions for grassroots organizations, and now, making cross-community comparisons about budget priorities. In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll hear more about our latest work, a collaboration with PolicyLink (opens in new tab) to make cross-community budget comparisons more readily available. You\u0026rsquo;ll also hear how some of our community-specific work has been used on the ground in Des Moines, Iowa. And, because it has been unavoidably a \u0026ldquo;server-room summer\u0026rdquo;, we have a callback to a previous post about our IT infrastructure at Civilytics. We\u0026rsquo;re also swapping a music recommendation for a YouTube recommendation and wrapping up with our usual link roundup. If someone forwarded this to you - please consider subscribing!\nAt What Cost? A look at local spending across 20 communities Just Voices Iowa and an equitable budget Inside baseball - a look at IT in our microbusiness Show recommendation Link roundup On to the topics!\nAt What Cost? A look at local spending across 20 communities Civiliytics is excited to announce the release of At What Cost? Examining Police, Sheriff, and Jail Budgets Across the US (opens in new tab) \u0026mdash; a new data tool we developed in partnership with the National Equity Atlas (a research partnership between PolicyLink and the USC Equity Research Institute). The interactive dashboard explores how much cities and counties across the United States spend on policing and incarceration. (opens in new tab)\nWhat Does the Dashboard Show? Using data from the fiscal year 2022 budget allocations of 20 US cities and counties, At What Cost? (opens in new tab) compares local spending on carceral activities with money allocated toward community investments that contribute to residents\u0026rsquo; well-being \u0026mdash; like housing, health care, and social services.\nTogether, these 20 cities and counties:\nPlan to spend $142.35 billion in annual expenditures, with at least $38 billion of that coming from tax dollars paid by residents Allocate $22 billion in annual spending to police, jails, and carceral activities. Employ over 133,000 people as workers in carceral systems each year Represent over 39.7 million people, or 1 out of every 8 people in the US The \u0026ldquo;local\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;detail\u0026rdquo; tabs of the dashboard provide more information on what carceral activities each selected city or county funds and how.\nWhy Does the Dashboard Focus on Local Budgets? City and county budgets have immense consequences on communities and the people who comprise them. However, these budgets often are hundreds of pages long and not easy to understand. That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s important to have a tool, like At What Cost?, that can support residents in better understanding how their tax dollars are being spent.\nThe localities featured in the dashboard range in size, from just under 150,000 residents to more than 5 million. Not surprisingly, these local governments organize their provision of services \u0026mdash; and corresponding budget information \u0026mdash; in many different ways. To compare different communities as consistently as possible, the dashboard focuses on spending on specific activities rather than on specific department- or program-level spending. In addition, because residents in most communities pay taxes to and receive services from both the city and county, the dashboard features budget data from both types of local governments to document different communities\u0026rsquo; spending priorities.\nWhat Can I do with the Dashboard? At What Cost? is a valuable tool for anyone working to promote transparency and accountability in local government. It enables users, including residents, advocates, and policymakers, to:\nUnderstand how their tax dollars are being spent. Assess their community\u0026rsquo;s spending priorities and compare them to other cities and counties. Identify budget trends, funding disparities, and potential areas for reform. One feature Hannah and I worked hard on was making the connection between the dashboard and budget documents clear and direct. In many of the visualizations, users can click on a link to go directly to the corresponding page of the budget or to see a tooltip with the budget pages the numbers are drawn from. Any questions about a particular number of value can be answered by referring to the original source. To learn more about using the dashboard and leveraging its data, explore the user guide (opens in new tab).\nWhat Was Civilytics\u0026rsquo; Role? We lead the creation of the data for the dashboard by reading and coding 36 budget documents into a standard, comparable data file. We created the coding scheme and used it to turn hundreds of pages of budget documents into a tidy data file for visualization in Tableau. We then worked with the rest of the team to propose comparisons and metrics that best captured the meaningful differences across the communities in the data.\nJust Voices Iowa and an equitable budget Earlier this year we worked with a community organization called Just Voices Iowa working to raise awareness about and end the practice of racial profiling by police in Des Moines. As part of that work, they have heard repeatedly from community members about unmet needs and the impact of divestment from public services in their community. So we helped them to analyze the proposed city budget. (opens in new tab) Like most cities (see dashboard above), a lot of spending in Des Moines is non-discretionary (i.e., federal/state grants, debt service, utility operation). The discretionary portion of the budget, the General Fund, is about ¼ of the total budget, or just over $202 million. Of that $202 million more than $1 out of every $3 goes to the Des Moines Police Department, leaving less than $130 million for everything else. Des Moines\u0026rsquo; discretionary budget is like that of a lot of cities we have looked at \u0026ndash; police and fire spending are big line items, most spending is on staff (salaries and benefits), and many local social services (housing, education, food security) are funded by outside sources with limited city government funding.\nThis allocation is not new in Des Moines, you can see the history here (opens in new tab) (as well as the history of about 149 other cities). However, what is new is the shrinking of city spending on other services like parks, libraries, housing, and health. Just Voices has highlighted the cumulative impact of these decisions using the chart below which shows the 40 year investment in different service areas. The Just Voices Iowa team is doing a great job talking to community members and engaging them in the budget process and we\u0026rsquo;ve been happy to work with them!\nCallback: Inside baseball, a look at IT in our microbusiness I recently had an unplanned excuse to test restoring our IT infrastructure from our offsite backup (read: near data disaster!) in July. Running a microbusiness means wearing a lot of hats and one that I enjoy, but have had to work on too lately is deploying hardware and applications to help us get our work done and keep our data safe.\nI covered our basic infrastructure in a past newsletter (opens in new tab).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s still largely the same today with a few tweaks, upgrades, and a lot more resiliency. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in that side of things - give it a read!\nShow Recommendation I love the World Cup. The schedule was brutal for fans on the east coast, but I tried to diligently avoid spoilers and watch games on replay.2 And this summer\u0026rsquo;s World Cup was worth the effort. Late goals. Penalty shootouts. A computer \u0026ldquo;well-actuallying\u0026rdquo; a save into a goal that eliminated the United States (opens in new tab). But, above all the great action on the field, the \u0026ldquo;re-cap show\u0026rdquo; with Tobin Heath and Christen Press was the absolute star of the tournament for me. In addition to talking about the tournament, they had incredible guest segments covering things like tactics, the difficulties of making a career in the women\u0026rsquo;s professional game, and how sports science is woefully behind in supporting female athletes. The conversations feel honest, emotional, educational, and inspiring all at once. Christen and Tobin complement each other so well and each episode is joyful. Even if you didn\u0026rsquo;t watch the World Cup - I highly recommend you check out this show (free, on YouTube!) and their organization (opens in new tab). Link Roundup We hope we never have to think about it, but when you think about it, money bail is a cruel system (opens in new tab)\nYou are not innocent until proven guilty once you are placed under arrest. I\u0026rsquo;ll let the editorial speak for itself:\nHere’s how it works. An officer arrests a person on suspicion of committing forgery. At the station, police consult the bail schedule and find the $20,000 rate that the suspect must pay in order to be released before trial. They direct the suspect to a list of phone numbers for bail bond agents who will lend the money for a fee, usually 10% of the bond, or in this case, $2,000. If the suspect can come up with the fee, he can go home and prepare his defense, but he will never get the $2,000 fee back. It’s effectively a punishment — not for being convicted, because there has been no conviction. It’s a penalty merely for being arrested.\nIf he doesn’t have the bail money, the suspect goes to jail. He will wait there for two to five days until he’s brought before a judge, is formally charged, perhaps gets a court-appointed lawyer and can finally argue that he’s safe to be released because of his ties to the community and his job. But he’s been in jail and missed work so he may well lose his job. He was away from his family. He has been confined to unsafe and miserable conditions, which is traumatizing. Until the hearing, even the prosecutor didn’t know of his case and couldn’t seek dismissal if it was a bad arrest. Once again, it’s a punishment for being accused and, in this case, for being poor.\n— The Times Editorial Board Your regular update on LeBron James\u0026rsquo; rebuild of Akron\u0026rsquo;s safety net (opens in new tab)\nIt is a well-established fact that this newsletter serves a secondary function as a LeBron James fan page. While LeBron and the Lakers ponder yet another rebuild after falling short in the NBA playoffs, LeBron\u0026rsquo;s ten-year long effort to rebuild an entire neighborhood is moving ahead at full steam. The project, centered now around the I Promise School, a public school within Akron Public Schools, has expanded to include housing, healthcare, job training, and more, not just serving the 600 students of the school, but their families and neighborhood as well.\nThis is the most important battle of James\u0026rsquo; three-decade tenure in the public eye. There are children and parents, most of whom James will never meet, that will be affected by his dedication. There will be kids depending on James who haven\u0026rsquo;t even been born yet. This battle will continue long after his basketball career is over. In many ways, he\u0026rsquo;s committed his life to this cause because that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what it\u0026rsquo;s going to take if James, his foundation and the city of Akron are to see the change they\u0026rsquo;re convinced is possible. Could the House of Representatives hold over 1,000 representatives? (opens in new tab) (Spoiler: yes!)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been loving this series from Danielle Allen in the Washington Post about how our democratic institutions could be modernized. She does an excellent job connecting democratic theory with practical realities and showing that our institutions can change, if we wish. This is a great visual article about how the Capitol could be physically reconfigured to allow for a much larger House of Representatives to meet, giving each of us better access to our representative in DC. As always, thank you for reading and supporting our work!\nJared\nSource: U.S. Census Bureau, 2021 Annual Surveys of State and Local Government Finances.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nA skill I have honed from years of watching top-tier Korean esport events like the GSL.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"September 11, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/at-what-cost/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Did you know that local governments (cities, counties, school districts) spent over $2.2 trillion in 2021?​*​ That’s nearly as much as all state governments combined and about ⅓ of total federal spending including Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. In other words, thousands of local government decisions across the country account for a large part of the public investment that shapes our lives.","title":"At What Cost?","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" We won our first research grant and we\u0026rsquo;re excited! Early this year we were awarded a research grant from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grant Program funded by the National Science Foundation (opens in new tab). Our proposal was titled: Equity analysis at a large scale: Using small area estimation to get the most from the CRDC school arrest data and Hannah and I will both be serving as Co-Principal Investigators. This is one of the many reasons it\u0026rsquo;s been awhile since our last newsletter - there\u0026rsquo;s interesting work all around us these days - and you\u0026rsquo;ll hear about more of it in the next few issues. Writing the newsletter is one of my favorite things to do at Civilytics, and I\u0026rsquo;m aiming for 3-4 more newsletters this year. In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll hear more about our AERA-NSF funded research, learn about the future of public safety being created in Atlanta, Georgia, hear about some recent trainings on how to read a local budget we\u0026rsquo;ve given, as well as a link roundup. If someone forwarded this to you - please consider subscribing!\nHow we\u0026rsquo;re researching measuring equity using public data What Atlanta can tell us about the future of public safety Musical Interlude ~ Sam Fender\u0026rsquo;s Hypersonic Missiles On the road talking about budgets Inside baseball - a look at our microbusiness IT Link roundup On to the topics!\nHow we\u0026rsquo;re researching measuring equity using public data We are really excited to have the resources to dedicate to basic methodological research that will benefit the broader field of equity analysis using publicly available data. There are still many ways we can get more useful information from publicly available datasets and we\u0026rsquo;re excited to get the time and space to demonstrate one. Below is an excerpt from our winning proposal, edited slightly for clarity and length:\nIn 2021, we worked with the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub to create a public dashboard (opens in new tab) showing student arrest rates and referrals to law enforcement for nearly every public school district in the country. On the dashboard, users can pinpoint their district, view student arrests by race/ethnicity and sex, and compare to other districts of the users\u0026rsquo; choice. The dashboard is based on the 2017-18 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). I wrote about it previously here (opens in new tab).\nEducation agency staff and others shared positive feedback about the dashboard, particularly the ability to easily view their own district in the data. But this dashboard and most, if not all, public-facing analyses of arrest rates focus on \u0026ldquo;raw\u0026rdquo; or observed counts or rates with some exclusion restrictions based on sample size. This approach provides fodder for critics to dismiss the data as one-year anomalies or as potential data errors. Furthermore, while using rates rather than counts provides a sense of scale and standardization, rates\u0026rsquo; sensitivity to slight differences in counts magnifies differences that may not be substantively meaningful (sometimes called the base rate fallacy) and may imply a false precision in reported numbers. Setting exclusion restrictions on sample size can also erase entire student groups from reporting \u0026ndash; the opposite of an equity-focused outcome. Taken together, these issues inhibit equity analyses and efforts to push for change.\nConsider a hypothetical district with 400 Black students that arrested 10 of those students last school year. The \u0026ldquo;raw\u0026rdquo; arrest rate for Black students would be 25 per 1,000 (such rates are commonly reported on a the per 1,000 scale). But since the data do not actually include 1,000 students, the observed number of arrests is consistent with an arrest rate from 17 to 34 arrests per 1,000\u0026mdash;the \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; rate is unobserved.1 The arrest rate itself has a probability distribution shaped by both the frequency of the event and the number of trials (i.e., number of students observed). What does this mean for real data and districts? This figure shows the arrest rates for Black and White students in six Maryland districts. Points represent the raw/observed rates calculated from the 2017-18 CRDC, with point sizes proportional to the number of Black and White students in each district. The points show the simplified comparisons that are usually presented. The curved distributions above the points are simulations based on posterior draws from a Bayesian multilevel binomial regression model \u0026ndash; a straightforward way to adjust for the different group sizes. From these distributions, we can see that the data are consistent with definitive Black-White arrest rate disparities in Charles County and Montgomery County Public Schools, but other districts have varying degrees of overlap. From the distributions, it is also clear that Baltimore City Schools arrests Black students at a lower rate than the other Maryland districts shown.\nThese results come from a basic Bayesian shrinkage model that weights observations toward the grand mean, with the degree of weighting based on population size. This type of analysis is critical to support equity work at the local level, which is currently hindered by insufficient population sizes (the Maryland districts above are larger than most in the U.S.), implausible rates, and data errors. In our research we will evaluate how different statistical modeling strategies can improve arrest rate precision relative to the costs of model complexity, data requirements and assumptions, and computation time. Early results are promising and we\u0026rsquo;ll be sure to keep you updated! What Atlanta can tell us about the future of public safety One of our most impressive clients is the Atlanta Policing Alternatives \u0026amp; Diversion Initiative (Atlanta PAD) (opens in new tab). As a homegrown initiative, PAD works to reduce arrest and incarceration of people experiencing extreme poverty, problematic substance use, or mental health concerns and increase the accessibility of supportive services in Atlanta and Fulton County. PAD provides consent-based direct services to people in need and supports hundreds of community members each month with care navigation and support to connect them to the services they need including food, shelter, employment, and healthcare. Their work is truly groundbreaking!\nThe policy case for their work is clear - true public safety requires a portfolio of support services for people in need or crisis so they can get well, and not just be detained. The moral case is also clear - many of the people in jail are there as the result of poverty and are disproportionately non-white, low-income, or otherwise marginalized identities. The criminal legal system is made to hold, not help them. To build a more equitable society means we need systems of care like PAD.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been helping PAD make a third case - the fiscal case. We wrote a memo (opens in new tab) illustrating how much money Fulton County has saved through PAD helping people who would have otherwise been booked at Fulton County jail, and how much Fulton County spent by jailing people who PAD could have helped. The key findings looked at PAD\u0026rsquo;s work from 1/1/2022 through 10/31/2022:\n120 people were diverted from jail to PAD by law enforcement this year (through Oct. 31) who would otherwise have been incarcerated at Fulton County Jail. These diversions saved Fulton County an estimated $524,160 that would otherwise have been spent on jail stays.\nDuring this same period, at least 658 people (an average of 65 people every month or two people every day) who were potentially eligible for diversion to PAD were arrested and taken to Fulton County Jail during PAD\u0026rsquo;s operating hours. Incarcerating these people cost Fulton County an estimated $2,871,144, or around $280,000 per month\nPAD\u0026rsquo;s work is so important and we are grateful to work with them to find new ways to illustrate the impact and success they are having. Follow their amazing work and get a sample of what they\u0026rsquo;ve been up to here:\nAt @CityofAtlanta (opens in new tab) City Hall yesterday presenting PAD's quarterly briefing to @atlcouncil (opens in new tab) Public Safety \u0026amp; Legal Administration Committee. Check out our presentation ➡️ https://t.co/SGhmc6ERK9 (opens in new tab) pic.twitter.com/f460Vtuidu (opens in new tab)\n\u0026mdash; Policing Alternatives \u0026amp; Diversion Initiative (@PADatlanta) May 23, 2023 (opens in new tab)\nCall to action in Atlanta On the flip side in Atlanta there is an urgent need for funding and your support as constitutionally protected free speech is under assault. Three bail fund organizers were arrested and charged with financial offenses in a prosecution intended to suppress resistance to the construction of #CopCity, a massive, $90 million + police facility that will serve as a training ground for cops across the country and around the world in how to suppress protest and movements challenging the violence of policing.\nAs the Atlanta Press Collective reminds us, \u0026quot;Collective bail funds have existed since the dawn of the civil rights movement. When Dr. King was held in Birmingham Jail, churches and community groups including the NAACP came together to fund his $4000 bail - the equivalent of $39,000 today.\u0026quot;\nPlease keep your eye on what is happening in Atlanta. (opens in new tab)\nAnd consider supporting those groups leading critical work there:\nCommunity Movement Builders: (opens in new tab) https://communitymovementbuilders.org/ (opens in new tab) Atlanta Community Press Collective: (opens in new tab) https://atlpresscollective.com/ (opens in new tab) Community Justice Exchange Emergency Rapid Response Fund: (opens in new tab) https://secure.actblue.com/donate/atlantasolidarity (opens in new tab) Musical Interlude It\u0026rsquo;s summer! If you want an anthemic catchy jangly guitar song that includes a bit of social commentary, I recommend Hypersonic Missiles by Sam Fender. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t given Sam Fender a listen and you like Bruce Springsteen, well grab some headphones:\nAll the silver tongued suits and cartoons that rule my world\nAre saying it's a high time for hypersonic missiles\nThis is one of my favorite lines of political commentary in a song. It says so much, so quickly.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been on the road talking about how to read budgets OSF Opioid settlement budget advocacy training In May Civilytics was invited to present a training on how to read and monitor state and local budgets for a gathering of advocates working on the public use of opioid settlement dollars. The gathering was hosted by the Open Society Foundations (opens in new tab) at their New York office. It was something of a professional highlight for me to get to visit!\nWe were brand new to the opioid settlement issue so we were excited to learn more. In a nutshell, opioid settlements refer to a settlement of lawsuits between pharmaceutical opioid distributors and manufacturers and state governments, now totalling over $50 billion. Funds are already flowing and payments will continue for 18 years. The funds are earmarked for specific purposes identified as \u0026ldquo;opioid remediation\u0026rdquo; and there is a lot of variation in how states and local governments are interpreting, tracking, reporting, and of course spending these funds. This excellent website created by Christine Minhee has all the details you need to learn more about this issue. We saw a lot of parallels to this with the ways the ARPA state and local fiscal stabilization funds intersected with public budgets and how local officials interpreted the regulations (opens in new tab) around those funds. Combine this with varying extra-budgetary reporting requirements and no rules on how funds are described and reported within budgets, and you have a lot of different ways these funds can be spent and reported. Yale Liman Colloquium In April Civilytics was invited to present at the 26th Annual Liman Colloquium hosted by the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at the Yale Law School (opens in new tab). I led a training on \u0026ldquo;How to read a local and state budget\u0026rdquo; where I shared some key facts about public budgets, how to find discretionary spending, and walked participants through a hands-on exercise taking a look at the proposed New Haven, CT budget. Look closely, somehow I wound up front and center in this group photo through the combination of being not that tall and highly compliant with the instructions of the photographer to keep moving forward… The convening brought together attorneys, advocates, policy experts, and even state supreme court justices around a theme of \u0026ldquo;Budgeting for Justice: Fiscal Policy and Monetary Sanctions\u0026rdquo;. In my session I focused on how to put the scope and scale of monetary sanctions imposed by courts into the proper context of city and county budgets. The short answer is that the revenue courts and the criminal legal system generate are a fraction of their operating costs and an even smaller fraction of other sources of revenue available to city and county governments. This revenue is often so small it is not reported independently in budget documents. It was great to hear about the incredible gains advocates have made in reducing and eliminating fines and fees as a revenue source. I enjoyed learning about legal advocacy work and the ways it intersects with local fiscal policy and social science research and evidence. Thanks to the Liman Center for inviting me!\nInside baseball - a look at our microbusiness IT I recently took some time to seriously upgrade our data and computing infrastructure here at Civilytics. Running a microbusiness means wearing a lot of hats and one that I enjoy from time to time is finding, deploying, and connecting databases, applications, and compute resources to help us get our work done. I covered our basic infrastructure in a past newsletter. Check it out. (opens in new tab)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s still largely the same today with a few tweaks, upgrades, and a lot more resiliency. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in that side of things - give it a read!\nLink roundup A great presentation of small area estimation to illustrate COVID infection rates and uncertainty (opens in new tab)\nA great example of how to communicate a statistical model for decision-making. The statistical model incorporates a range of information to make estimates of the infection rate of COVID-19 in US counties. The important information is summarized with uncertainty shown on the homepage, and then users can zero in on specifics about individual county estimates including seeing the input data and comparing previous predictions to observed data. There\u0026rsquo;s a lot of great lessons here about how to communicate complex data analysis well.\nWhen forensic science is anything but science\u0026hellip; (opens in new tab)\nRadley Balko\u0026rsquo;s newsletter is always informative, but this issue deserves a special callout. Ballistics analysis, matching the pattern of a bullet to the gun that fired it, is a staple of crime and thriller storytelling and has a long history. Unfortunately, as Balko describes in a tour of the history of ballistic analysis, the \u0026ldquo;science\u0026rdquo; of forensic science is aspirational. Ballistic analysis is based on pattern matching and relies on untested assumptions about the uniqueness of ballistic markings and the consistency of pattern detection by ballistics analysts. Recently a judge denied the use of expert testimony from a forensic firearm analyst in a case in Illinois \u0026ndash; the first time such evidence has been barred outright. Over 100 years of legal precedence is being called into question.\nAs always, thank you for reading!\nJared\nThese are the 5th and 95th percentile events simulated from 10,000 draws of a binomial distribution with probability of 0.025 and 1,000 trials.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"June 2, 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/measuring-equity-equitably/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Early this year we were awarded a research grant from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grant Program funded by the National Science Foundation. Our proposal was titled: Equity analysis at a large scale: Using small area estimation to get the most from the CRDC school arrest data and Hannah and I will both be serving as Co-Principal Investigators.","title":"Measuring equity equitably","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"The steps you need when using data to contend with power\nOur main topic this month is critical: the importance of \u0026ldquo;defending your data\u0026rdquo; when you are using data to contend with power. There are so many ways to dismiss and undermine arguments that rely on data, and those in power know it. We wrote a short blog post featured on Tableau\u0026rsquo;s website, which outlines 5 steps that you can use to neutralize these criticisms. This is a bit breezier edition with some short thoughts and updates from us and one ask \u0026ndash; help us find the perfect person or team to spruce up our website!\nBefore we get started, welcome to all the new subscribers and thank you to everyone who has helped share our newsletter \u0026ndash; thanks to you all we recently passed 1,000 subscribers! (The Civic Pulse is free and you can always subscribe or unsubscribe from this monthly-ish newsletter, featuring a mix of editorial content and the latest updates from our work.) Help us keep growing and share the newsletter! In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nDefending your data A new resource for data advocates from Tableau Get mad, but get organized Musical interlude Help us get help! Our link roundup As always, thank you for reading. On to the topics.\nDefend Your Data At Civilytics, we've seen firsthand (opens in new tab) the higher burden advocates face when seeking to use data to make change. We encountered this ourselves, when we broke the news about the unequal allocation of fiscal stabilization funds across states. That's why we were excited to partner with the Tableau Foundation on creating a 5-step guide (opens in new tab) to #defendyourdata.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s me on the Tableau blog! This guide, created through Civilytics' work (opens in new tab) for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab), describes 5 steps to defend your data analysis from the most common threats to credibility:\nChoose the best data and use it to establish your credibility Prepare the data with care Build trust through transparency Frame your analysis Anticipate and address the audience\u0026rsquo;s questions For each step, the guide includes an example of a recent visualization showing the step in action. The guide was inspired in part by Lee Staples\u0026rsquo; Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing (opens in new tab). Staples identified 7 strategies that are used to resist change: deflecting, delaying, deceiving, dividing, denying, discrediting, and destroying. He wrote that to succeed in your campaign for change: \u0026ldquo;[Your organization]\u0026hellip; can take a number of steps to overcome efforts to discredit its campaigns. Obviously, its facts and figures should be accurate. Challenges can be expected, especially when the information is damning. The best defense will rest on solid research methodology and a good media strategy to carry your message to the general public.\u0026rdquo; The guide's (opens in new tab) five steps provide strategies to defend your data, analysis decisions, and conclusions and carry your message forward to change the status quo. We hope you\u0026rsquo;ll check it out! Data Advocacy Explorer We also wanted to share a new resource from Tableau, the Data Advocacy Explorer (opens in new tab). This tool was designed to assist small and medium-sized nonprofits, foundation grantees, organizations and individuals engaged in community and systems advocacy who have challenges finding, accessing, and using data in their advocacy efforts. It highlights the ART2 of data storytelling, walking through an Approach, Resources, Tools \u0026amp; Training (ART2) to help groups add more effective, persuasive data and visualizations to their advocacy efforts. If you work or volunteer for a community organization that uses Tableau, or that is simply interested in additional ideas for data storytelling, check out the Data Advocacy Explorer for guidance on\nHow to Approach a data advocacy project Links to Tableau Resources covering different approaches And free or low-cost Tools and Training Get mad, but get organized It is a volatile time. The Dobbs ruling by the Supreme Court feels horrifying and irreversible. The Biden administration forgiving $10,000 (and potentially much more) in student loan debt and rewriting the rules for repayment felt like a huge relief. It can be hard to feel grounded and not at the whims of greater forces.\nBut two things have kept coming back to me:\nWhere is the Equal Rights Amendment? Virginia ratified it and it should be settled and enshrined as Amendment 28. But it isn\u0026rsquo;t. Lyz Lenz has the fascinating scoop (opens in new tab) on what it would mean to enshrine equal rights for women in the Constitution. How can we build power in the face of massive inequality? When you aren\u0026rsquo;t a rich plutocrat, you can\u0026rsquo;t just directly reach a senator, engineer a court case, or relentlessly fund research to support your views. The rest of us have only one source of power \u0026ndash; each other. The process of moving from individual outrage to collective power is called organizing. Since many of us come from the education space, I found this portrait of teachers in Philadelphia (opens in new tab) organizing for better conditions in their schools to be a really good inside view of what this means in practice. These things are related! Grassroots organizers created and realized the plan (opens in new tab) for forgiving student loan debt in less than two decades. They won. We know we can win together (opens in new tab).\nAnd winning feels good!\nView tweet by @jknowles on X Musical interlude Music is a big part of my life, so Hannah suggested we add a newsletter section featuring music! Recently, I\u0026rsquo;ve been thinking a lot about how much music influenced my politics, particularly my understanding of abortion and women\u0026rsquo;s rights \u0026ndash; I learned about the National Organization for Women from grunge band endorsements when I was a teenager. Music is powerful \u0026ndash; especially at a certain age.\nAbortion on television, especially network television, is rare and misrepresentative (opens in new tab). In music, the narratives are more personal and diverse. For our musical interlude this edition, I give you \u0026ldquo;Pennsylvania Is\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; by Everclear.1 It is a very grunge-y lo-fi extremely 90s song, but for whatever its flaws, it paints a vivid picture of why access to abortion matters and which side the band is on. The line \u0026ldquo;hey man do you want a placemat or a wife?\u0026rdquo; stuck with me for a long time.\nHelp us spruce up our homepage I'm proud of the work we've done to bootstrap our own homepage at Civilytics, but the time has come to get some professional outside help. Our responsibilities are both growing and our time to care, maintain, and improve the website is shrinking. So we are looking for someone who can help us take our website to the next level.\nIf you know any Wordpress consultants who would be interested in this kind of work, please send along this description to them!\nHelp our growing data science firm improve the way we communicate our findings and engage with our audience. We have been self-managing our Wordpress site (www.civilytics.com (opens in new tab)) for 18 months now and it is time for an update and polish. If you are a designer who is familiar with the Wordpress platform, we'd love your help taking our website to the next level.\nWe have a strong existing brand identity and a lot of good content, but we are finding it hard to stay consistent and to make our site consistently have the look we want. We need help making good choices for some lesser used design elements, reviewing our existing design choices, and implementing better consistency.\nWe also need some quality of life updates to our website including a way to capture visitors' emails and some ways to consistently link readers to relevant content within the site.\nIf you want to help a value driven social science company better communicate its unique perspective to a wide set of audiences, let us know.\nLink roundup What kills people in our community says a lot more about us than we realize (part 1 (opens in new tab) and part 2 (opens in new tab))\nWe are learning so much about the ways long-term exposure to trauma, stress, poverty, and environmental pollution can shorten our lifespans. This is a great description of much of that growing evidence (the overly simplistic framing of America as \u0026ldquo;red\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;blue\u0026rdquo; aside).\nUrban forests are a great way to mitigate climate change, so of course Atlanta is considering replacing one with a police training facility (opens in new tab)\nGetting and staying organized features prominently in this story about community members imploring their city to think about how best to use a limited resource like urban greenspace. Ending mass incarceration means ending an industry and we need a plan for that (opens in new tab)\nThis article paints a portrait of how the decision to close a prison impacts people inside the prison and the town around the prison. Politicians, foundations, and local leaders need to start getting specific about how we can make a just transition away from prisons and toward strong, resilient communities.\nIt has been hot lately, and really hot in Phoenix (opens in new tab)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never been to Phoenix but hope to visit one day and am very familiar with the city\u0026rsquo;s budget. More than most communities, Phoenix is investing in strategies to abate the impact of extreme heat but the amount of investment doesn\u0026rsquo;t come close to meeting the growing need.\nSmall towns can be held absolutely hostage by their own police, even in \u0026ldquo;blue states\u0026rdquo; (opens in new tab)\nOur jaws hit the floor about 8 times reading this article and learning about the scale, longevity, brutality, and pettiness on display in the Stoughton Police Department just up the road from us. Not a read for the faint of heart.\nIf you read one more thing about Uvalde or are writing something about Uvalde \u0026ndash; read this first (opens in new tab)\nThis is how to cover policing in the U.S. With context. With fact-checking and skepticism about the claims made by the police and the DA. Uvalde wasn\u0026rsquo;t a failure of one police department but rather dozens that rushed to respond and then just didn\u0026rsquo;t.\nIt takes multiple solutions to unknot our housing crisis, and a community land trust is one that should be considered (opens in new tab)\nIf your community is facing rising housing prices and concerns about housing equity, then it should consider a community land trust or community-owned housing. Land trusts have along history in our communities \u0026ndash; it is time for a resurgence. As always, thank you for reading!\nJared\nI’m aware “Brick” by Ben Folds Five may have been a better choice from the same era. However, the lyrics weren’t blunt enough for me as a teenager so it went over my head. The Everclear song’s bluntness got through and stuck with me.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"September 12, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/defend-your-data/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The steps you need when using data to contend with power","title":"Defend your data","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Plus why the timesheet and benefits portals at your job are so bad\nAs I logged into two separate government \u0026ldquo;vendor portals\u0026rdquo; to submit invoices and type in the same business information I have input dozens of times before, I was reminded of how frustrating the software we are forced to use every day can be. For the most part, when we think or talk about Big Tech, we think of consumer technology companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. But there is another Big Tech \u0026ndash; Big Dull Tech (BDT) \u0026ndash; that is responsible for shaping the operations of tens of thousands of state and local governments (and many other orgs) across the country while billing the public billions and billions of dollars each year.\nIn this newsletter I want to show you how Big Dull Tech exerts a tremendous but invisible influence on how government agencies run. In a world increasingly dependent on data, the limited supply of Big Dull Tech vendors poses very real limitations on the capacity of government to meet our needs. In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nWhat you need to know about Big Dull Tech West Hollywood reimagines public safety by revamping its budget (with a small role by yours truly) Our link roundup As always, thank you for reading. On to the topics.\nWhat you need to know about Big Dull Tech What is big dull tech? Companies like Oracle, IBM, and SAP run everything from payroll and accounting to predictive analytics that determine aid eligibility for government programs across the country. In many cases, the software and staff of these IT vendors have replaced entire government departments.1 The software and database implementations sold by these companies silently constrain the policy decisions of agencies every day. What\u0026rsquo;s more, these constraints arise from decisions made by (mostly white, highly-paid) employees of IT vendors, located far from the communities where the data come from and where the resulting policies will matter.2\nRelatively little attention has been paid to effects of big government tech companies, their software, and their policies on the erosion of quality employment, self-determination, and innovation in communities or the associated impacts on racial equity.3 Government jobs in developing software have been replaced by service agreements with vendors who employ workers in distant cities with no connection, context, or accountability to local communities.\nBig dull tech in action: school districts Take the example of Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia. This award winning and innovative school district is a national leader in data use and data analytics with many talented data analysts and data engineers from and living in the county who support the work of a district serving 180,000 students. [Shout out to any of them who may read this newsletter!]\nYet even a school district with as much local talent as Gwinnett outsources much of its key technology infrastructure due to policy and budgetary constraints. These vendors are private companies whose predominantly white affluent shareholders and owners benefit from Gwinnett\u0026rsquo;s tax dollars. They are constantly looking for ways to shrink the market into a series of monopolistic choices that lock customers in and inhibit the flow of data, staff, and solutions within the public sector.4\nWhen locked into these proprietary systems, talented employees at a place like Gwinnett have to work around the limitations of their software and find it difficult to share and benefit from the talent of developers in neighboring or peer school systems across the country. A sketch of school district data systems I shared recently with a client. This is widespread and it enables structural inequality There are a thousand more examples across the country, places with the talent for an innovative public technology sector but instead beholden to tools sold by a shrinking pool of a few big companies. These compounding missed opportunities silently uphold many systemic drivers of racial inequality. The practice of contracting with big dull tech denies high-paying job opportunities as data engineers and software developers to local residents of color. It stifles more diverse pathways to enter IT professions through government jobs or entrepreneurial opportunities with the government sector. It extracts the data from these communities and puts the information in the hands of these vendors, in some cases to be commodified and resold.5 And it insulates the government, through abstract data systems, from local knowledge held by directly impacted communities, making such systems politically weak and ineffective.\nIs this the biggest driver of systemic racism in our institutions? Absolutely not. But, it is something that could be addressed, now, in thousands of departments and agencies nationwide. What is all this software the government needs? Software and data systems are quietly becoming the backbone upon which most social services rest. Here are some examples of the IT systems your local government probably uses and could choose to buy differently:\nEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems Student information systems (the backbone of K-12 education systems) Homelessness management information systems (used for case management) Case management systems (for other forms of case management) Record management system (used by, among others, law enforcement agencies) What can we do differently? Most of these applications are simply methods of inputting and then reporting back data in a distributed fashion. In software development terms, these are just variations on the classic Create Review Update Delete (CRUD) database application theme. There are hundreds of open-source CRUD applications built on open standards and made for interoperability. (We use some of them here at Civilytics! (opens in new tab)) Students in your local high school probably learn to code these applications in a high school computer science course. Yet the adoption of open versions of these systems in the public sector remains rare and radical. Software is infrastructure, why do we buy it so differently? Let me pause here and make a metaphor. Most communities have a bridge of some kind. There are tens of thousands of bridges in the country today. Similarly, almost every medium to large organization \u0026ndash; private or public \u0026ndash; needs an ERP system. There are hundreds of thousands of ERP installations in the country right now. If we built bridges like we build ERP systems, it would look something like:\nCommunity writes a request for proposal and solicits bids for the bridge expecting to receive 2-3 bids, all suspiciously close in price Community chooses 1 of the bidders, Bridge Tech Bridge Tech sends in a team of technicians from its corporate headquarters in San Francisco and tosses up a bridge quickly that looks like many other bridges it has recently built Community asks for changes to meet the original proposal requirements Bridge Tech says those changes are only available to customers using their new bridge process (Bridge 2.0), coming out next year Community modifies contract and purchases Bridge 2.0 Bridge Tech says it is easier to just build Bridge 2.0 from scratch instead of upgrading Bridge 1.0 Community asks for some small changes to Bridge 2.0, some community members still use Bridge 1.0\u0026hellip; Frustrated, community goes out to bid for a new bridge and expects to receive 2-3 bids\u0026hellip; the cycle continues Not only does the product suffer, but the imagination of even what can be done is constrained to what vendors are willing to put on the marketplace. This narrows our vision for what we can do collectively and constrains the ability of our government to solve emerging and novel problems.\nThe end result, bridge madness! So how did we get here? The dominance of specialized IT vendors is the result of policy, regulation, and funder practices. First, federal and philanthropic data initiatives incentivize vendor partnerships through short project timelines and limited one-time funds that cannot support ongoing staffing.6 Vendor subscriptions are more expedient, easier to justify in the budget, and often given little attention or scrutiny when reviewing applications or proposals.7\nAt the same time, political leaders and administrators often don\u0026rsquo;t see the geographic and racial equity impact of operating in this way and are unaware of the missed opportunity of building and maintaining their own tools. While some perceptive leaders may at least realize that outsourcing vendor contracts deprives the local community of skilled jobs, few realize that local positions would also create more opportunities for community voice to actually inform government administration as implemented in data and software.\nInteroperability and openness is how our democratic infrastructure needs to work Another way is possible. By promoting homegrown talent development, adopting open source and interoperable data solutions, and fostering cooperative software development, the public sector could create the space to keep tech jobs, tech funding, and tech knowledge in local communities. Many policies are worth exploring to break the hold of BDT companies and create more equitable employment opportunities and governance. Possible policies include:\nFunding transitions away from proprietary vendor-specific technologies toward open technologies with interoperability standards Encouraging local employment for many standard government data functions such as database administrators instead of relying on annual vendor support contracts employing remote staff Creating meaningful training and skill development programs to ensure a steady pipeline of local talent to fill government data jobs and support a more diverse ecosystem of service providers I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear from you Big Dull Tech is an area where I think we can have a unique impact at Civilytics. We are always on the lookout for efforts to change this paradigm. If you\u0026rsquo;ve had an experience where your organization replaced a BDT contract with homegrown talent and training, we\u0026rsquo;d love to hear about it. Just hit reply and send me an email.\nAnd, I know some of you may work at vendors like I am describing \u0026ndash; I\u0026rsquo;d love to have a dialogue about how vendors can be part of the solution as well. West Hollywood reimagines public safety by revamping part of its budget A broad coalition is working together to re-imagine community safety and social services in Los Angeles County (opens in new tab). In 2020, this group succeeded in passing a historic ballot measure that committed the county to invest in social services. Two years later, the county has continued to resist disbursing the funds, allocating only about a quarter of the required funds. The coalition has kept up the pressure, however, working on multiple fronts. One recent front resulted in West Hollywood scaling back its spending on the LA Sheriff Department\u0026rsquo;s (LASD) contract, instead expanding its non-armed security ambassador program. According to JusticeLA (opens in new tab), a coalition of grassroots groups, this is the first time in LA County history that one of the 42 cities contracting with LASD has successfully challenged rising costs. (opens in new tab) This fight was spearheaded by West Hollywood Public Safety Commissioner Nika Soon-Shiong, who uncovered documents showing that the cost the LASD charges West Hollywood for a deputy has vastly outpaced inflation (opens in new tab) and that the spending and staffing levels provided to WeHo have no correlation with incidents of crime. View tweet by @nikasoonshiong on X Working with Commissioner Soon-Shiong, we reviewed multiple rounds of documents from the LASD, many of which were not initially publicly available and which had conflicting statements about costs. Only with publicly agreed upon budget and crime numbers \u0026ndash; which represent the public\u0026rsquo;s money!\u0026ndash; could the city then begin to discuss whether that cost and investment was appropriate.\nView tweet by @nikasoonshiong on X In retrospect, the evening I spent waiting to testify to the West Hollywood city council instead of watching the championship game of the men\u0026rsquo;s NCAA tournament feels worth it. You can read a more in-depth recap of the whole WeHo story in one of my favorite Substack newsletters by Jessica Pishko. (opens in new tab)\nNext time on the Civic Pulse Hannah and I have been talking a lot about some recent major media failures \u0026ndash; how publicly invisible the Equal Rights Amendment has been, more important than ever after Dobbs, and how the arrest of 17 members of Congress for exercising their first amendment right didn\u0026rsquo;t even rate front page status on the Washington Post. We\u0026rsquo;ll have more to share about this in an upcoming issue. Link Roundup Are we committing real resources to alternative solutions to preventing violence or not? (opens in new tab)\nWith the midterms coming, Democrats are once again sure to be mired in internal debates about messaging, with \u0026ldquo;defund\u0026rdquo; being one of their favorite debates. Policy Research Associates has been looking at how much \u0026ldquo;defunding\u0026rdquo; has actually occurred (spoiler, not much) and how much communities are choosing to reinvest in violence prevention strategies (spoiler, sadly even less). The rhetoric has changed and the debate is fierce, but the budgets march on.\nSometimes the \u0026quot;information system\u0026quot; is just one tireless person (opens in new tab)\nHere is how one person is working to hold together a system of social services that has been underfunded and undervalued for too long.\nAn intimate and gripping view of why we need new solutions to public safety (opens in new tab) (and public transit, and housing, and healthcare...)\nSpeaking of hardworking individuals, this profile of Suna Karabay, a bus driver in Denver, is a portrait of patience, grace, danger, and how our interlocking crises are showing up every day. I could not stop reading this even though it broke my heart more with each paragraph.\nFacebook surveils applications for federal student aid (opens in new tab)\nBig Tech is also up to shenanigans, sometimes in unlikely places. Federal student aid intersects with Facebook surveillance (sometimes Big Tech\u0026rsquo;s reach seems unbelievable)\nDiesel exhaust is deadly and we can quantify it (opens in new tab)\nI really love a good application of data + modeling to make visible the invisible things that affect our quality of life. This one is a bummer, but it is fascinating to see how much we know about how and where long-term exposure to diesel exhaust is deadly. This interactive map measures how much diesel exhaust different areas are exposed to and estimates the toll on human life. The scam that is Medicare Advantage (opens in new tab)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve only recently become more aware of the array of benefits retirees and seniors try to navigate \u0026ndash; so I didn\u0026rsquo;t know this before but you may have: I guess Medicare Advantage is a backdoor to privatizing Medicare and it\u0026rsquo;s getting worse?\nHandy data tool alert for economic data (opens in new tab)\nData alert: If you were intrigued by the FRED data on wages and house prices in the March newsletter, good news\u0026ndash;you can get data from FRED inside of Excel. Excel isn\u0026rsquo;t all bad!\nMonopolies and license fees are coming to your junior and high school esports (opens in new tab)\nFinally, you may know that I enjoy watching esports. Unfortunately, even esports are impacted by monopolies. One company is trying to corner the market on junior and high school esports competitions by making schools pay to play. By the way, my preferred esport, Starcraft 2, is free to play and your school can set up and play tournaments today!\nPostscript to last issue Thank you everyone for the kind words you sent in response to the last issue dedicated to the memory of my dad (opens in new tab). I was truly touched that so many of you appreciated learning about him and shared your sympathy and thoughts. I know he\u0026rsquo;d be so proud about the connections I am lucky to have with so many of you. As always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. Thanks to those of you who have been doing so recently, our subscriber numbers have been growing! If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\nFor example, in Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks studies the impact that these decisions had as benefit agencies in Indiana lost control over eligibility determinations to a vendor contract.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nJamila Michener, in Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics, describes the impacts on our democracy and on participants when administrative decisions about government benefit programs are completely insulated from any voice or input of those they are intended to serve.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nRuja Benjamin’s The New Jim Code is a powerful exception, shining an important light on many of these and related issues.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nFor example, school districts rely on a core piece of software called a Student Information System to manage everything from grades and absences to standardized assessments and student medical information. There are now only two major vendors remaining: PowerSchool and InfiniteCampus. Staff trained in one must be retrained to use the other, at great expense.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nOne example here is the case of student college enrollment data collected by the National Student Clearinghouse, the canonical data collection on student college enrollment used in higher education policy and research, and entirely owned and operated by a private company despite huge investments of data into the system by state education agencies and colleges.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nSee the Bloomberg “Smart Cities” initiative and the Institute of Education Sciences State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grant program for examples of each.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nI have seen this firsthand as an SLDS grant reviewer for the US Department of Education.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"July 21, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/big-dull-tech/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Plus why the timesheet and benefits portals at your job are so bad","title":"The invisible tech monopolies holding back democracy","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"At Civilytics, we've seen firsthand the higher burden advocates face when seeking to use data to advocate for change. That's why we were excited to partner with Tableau on creating a 5-step guide (opens in new tab) to #defendyourdata.\nThis guide, created through Civilytics' work (opens in new tab) for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab), describes 5 steps to defend your data analysis from the most common threats to credibility. These steps are:\nChoose the best data and use it to establish your credibility Prepare the data with care Build trust through transparency Frame your analysis Anticipate and address the audience\u0026rsquo;s questions For each step, the guide includes an example of a recent visualization showing the step in action. For instance, here's Step 5: Anticipate and address the audience's questions.\nThe guide was inspired by Lee Staples\u0026rsquo; Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing (opens in new tab), originally published in 1984. Staples identifies 7 strategies that are used to resist change:\nDeflecting Delaying Deceiving Dividing Denying Discrediting Destroying Staples wrote that to succeed in your campaign for change:\n[Your organization]\u0026hellip; can take a number of steps to overcome efforts to discredit its campaigns. Obviously, its facts and figures should be accurate. Challenges can be expected, especially when the information is damning. The best defense will rest on solid research methodology and a good media strategy to carry your message to the general public. The guide's five steps provide strategies to defend your data, analysis decisions, and conclusions and carry your message forward to change the status quo. We've used these steps for the dashboards we created on prison gerrymandering and arrests in schools, dashboards created in partnership with Lovelytics (opens in new tab) for the Tableau Equity Hub.\nCheck out the guide here: https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/how-to-defend-your-data-for-data-advocates (opens in new tab)!\n","date":"July 11, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/defend-your-data-5-steps/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"At Civilytics, we’ve seen firsthand the higher burden advocates face when seeking to use data to make change. That’s why we were excited to partner with Tableau on creating a 5-step guide to #defendyourdata.","title":"5 Steps You Can Take to Defend Your Data","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"July 11, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/data/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Data","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"July 11, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tableau/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tableau","type":"tags"},{"content":"In memory of Jim Knowles\nContent warning: grief, loss of a parent\nA little over a month ago, on May 7th, my dad, Jim Knowles, passed away unexpectedly. He was 66 years old. For me, the world just kind of stopped. My dad and I were very close and I\u0026rsquo;m still figuring out my way forward. I\u0026rsquo;m breaking from our regular coverage at the Civic Pulse to talk about my dad. Regular issues of the Civic Pulse will return soon, though the schedule may be a bit slower the rest of this year. For now, thank you for reading. I hope this conveys why my dad meant so much to me. My dad was a problem solver. He was a deeply curious person who never stopped growing, changing, and discovering new solutions to the puzzles life gave him. To understand what I mean, you need to know a little more about his early life. My dad\u0026rsquo;s family was never good to him. I won\u0026rsquo;t air too many details, but, to illustrate, I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a relationship with my dad\u0026rsquo;s brother or parents. My dad\u0026rsquo;s childhood and early adulthood was full of criticism and bullying by his brother and mother. They spread rumors about my mom and were cruel to her family. They ridiculed and demeaned my dad for not being who they wanted him to be. If it happened today, we\u0026rsquo;d say my dad was subject to constant emotional abuse. This was perhaps the greatest problem my dad solved \u0026ndash; being the complete and total opposite kind of spouse and parent. And that wasn\u0026rsquo;t easy! The Knowles clan\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re more different than we are alike, and we all presented Dad with different challenges. The profoundness of our grief now is a reflection of his great success at solving those puzzles.\nThe man loved a good vista. I want to talk about how my dad solved the puzzle that is me. It starts with geography. I\u0026rsquo;m from Montana and, growing up, it seemed like there wasn\u0026rsquo;t a corner of the state my dad hadn\u0026rsquo;t touched. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t a hidden road he hadn\u0026rsquo;t taken. My dad loved taking a new road just to see what might be in the next valley or over the next mountain. I love the sly look on his face in this picture with his service truck. This was, in part, because his work required it. And when I think of my dad, I definitely think of hard work. And I mean hard. My dad was a field mechanic for the early part of his career. If an expensive piece of equipment broke at a construction site, logging camp, or mine in western Montana, they\u0026rsquo;d send my dad and his truck. He spent long hours on the road and longer hours crawling over and under huge machines to keep them running. It\u0026rsquo;s hard as a 6-year-old to imagine a cooler job than driving and fixing bulldozers, excavators, and loaders bigger than your house. It\u0026rsquo;s hard as an adult to imagine the determination to spend a 60-hour work week away from your family at a mine on some remote mountain, then drive home to your family every weekend. Often, he\u0026rsquo;d come home to a lawnmower that needed an oil change or a carburetor out of whack on the family car. I get tired just thinking about it. What a cool guy! I learned to drive on that little orange tractor. My dad was gone a lot when I was a kid but he always found ways to be present. Another puzzle he solved: in the mid 1990s, before cell phones, my dad found a way to make sure he could call us from his CB radio no matter where he was in the state and that we could call him. AT\u0026amp;T still hasn\u0026rsquo;t figured out how to pull this off. Later that decade he convinced his employer we needed a second phone line at home so he could fax in his time sheets, giving us access to always-on internet earlier than most people in the state. He also was one of the first field mechanics to replace service manuals with a laptop \u0026ndash; and if you guessed who benefited from using his laptop almost as much as he did, you\u0026rsquo;d be right. I picture my Dad now, driving his big service truck alone on some rutted out road, thinking about us. It\u0026rsquo;s so obvious that we were always on his mind and that he was always finding some new way to spend more time with us or connect with us. I could give you a million more stories, but I want to talk a bit about me and the challenge I was to my dad. To do that, you have to understand one of the biggest puzzles my dad had to solve: how he could get out of that service truck and home with us. He knew that working outside 60 hours a week in Montana\u0026rsquo;s bitterly cold winters and blistering hot summers wasn\u0026rsquo;t sustainable. A couple of knee surgeries and shortage of overtime led him to look for something more predictable and indoors. That led to us moving across the state so Dad could take a job advising field mechanics, not being one. That move across the state, away from my childhood friends to a new high school, made me angry with him. Now though I can see clearly that, even when I was a selfish teenager trying to be different from my dad, he was there supporting me no matter what. He judged debate tournaments. He drove me to a college visit 13 hours away that I desperately wanted to go to. He found me another vehicle after I wrecked the car I begged him to buy me. And he was always there encouraging me to do well in school, stay focused, work hard. But when I was 18 I thought we\u0026rsquo;d never have anything in common. To me, I was a booksmart, confident (maybe arrogant) teenager who wanted to see the world outside of Montana and never look back. My dad was a hardworking company man who didn\u0026rsquo;t see the appeal of much else beyond the Last Best Place. Mom, Dad, and I in Orlando my sophomore year of college Now, at 36 my heart is breaking thinking about not having him to talk about everything with anymore.\nWhat a turnaround.\nI left Montana like a rocket bent on breaking orbit \u0026ndash; going from Oregon, to Germany, to Wisconsin, and now to Massachusetts. Geography was a problem, but so was life. There was Dad (and mom too!) \u0026ndash; sending emails, talking on the phone every week, finding common ground. Texting. They even met up with me in a few random places \u0026ndash; Orlando for a debate tournament, Savannah a few years ago for a quiet beach Christmas. It hurts because I do feel like I was just starting to appreciate this about my dad. He died before I got the chance to ask him how some of these things looked from his side, how he did it, what it was like.I feel sad, even cheated I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to talk about it more with him. My dad was a meticulous, quiet guy. It would be easy to mistake the quietness for stillness, but there was nothing still about him. He was always solving the next puzzle, learning the next new thing. We found so many things to laugh about and think through together. Just a few of the topics I\u0026rsquo;ve been recalling that we talked about recently:\nThe utter bleakness of teaching a Zoom class to all black squares Whether reparations are politically possible Whether I should take the plunge and get an electric car or wait a bit longer How frustrating and tedious hanging drywall, door and window trim can be He did the same for my siblings and, in a way, learning about those things he talked about with each of us is bonding us now, just the way Dad always was doing.\nWhen I went home to be with my family a few weeks ago and sat down in his home office (which he called his Male Room\u0026ndash;he was also wickedly funny), everything was perfectly organized. All of his projects organized in his filing cabinet and in the folders on his computer. Everything labeled and in its place. Dad and I goofing off in Savannah in 2018 If you read this far, thanks for letting me share a little bit about my dad with you. It helps. He was so much of who I am. He was also an avid reader of the Civic Pulse so it feels right to celebrate him here. As I said on LinkedIn/Facebook: He became a kind and gentle man in a time and place where that was anything but easy. As a son, I\u0026rsquo;m very fortunate that my dad didn\u0026rsquo;t leave me with any big questions \u0026ndash; he always let me know he loved me and that he was proud of me. He just left me with a lifetime of little questions. And one big hole in my heart.\nYou can read more about him in the obituary my family put together here. (opens in new tab)\nThank you.\nJared\n","date":"June 17, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/thank-you-dad/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In memory of Jim Knowles","title":"Thank you, Dad","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"March 16, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/housing/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Housing","type":"tags"},{"content":" Or why we need to rescue the Rescue Funds I have a new habit when I\u0026rsquo;m brushing my teeth at night \u0026ndash; counting vacant houses. Last night I counted 6 vacant units visible out my window. This is in the middle of one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. Vacant houses are on my mind personally (I live in a home that was formerly vacant) and professionally as a shortage of housing sends prices skyward nationwide. The housing crisis is now so mainstream that it was featured in my favorite ad from this year\u0026rsquo;s Super Bowl.\nSo this week, let\u0026rsquo;s talk about housing. I want to show the macro-picture \u0026ndash; that the affordable housing crisis is pervasive and affects everyone. But I also want to note that the housing crisis is made up of many crises:\nracist lending and zoning practices (redlining) (opens in new tab) impossible post-release requirements for formerly incarcerated individuals (opens in new tab) failure to invest in transit (opens in new tab) regressive labor standards and mismanaged economic development (opens in new tab) And much more.\nThis year is a critical moment where all towns, cities, counties, and states have a powerful short-term policy lever to address the housing crisis \u0026ndash; $350 billion in American Rescue Plan Act fiscal stabilization funds (or ARPA dollars). These are local dollars controlled by your town and county, not a deadlocked Congress in DC, and they can be used in almost any way you can imagine to address housing (among other eligible uses). In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nHow housing and the Rescue Plan are related My recent appearances on a podcast and in a news story A link roundup As always, thank you for reading. On to the topics.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s start with the big picture, er, graph\u0026hellip; Data from the Federal Reserve show how housing prices have run away from incomes over the past twenty years. In the graph below, the top line (red) shows the CPI for primary residence rent in U.S. cities (aka average rent), the middle line (cyan) is the an index of nominal weekly earnings in the first quartile (though other quartiles are similar), and the bottom line (purple) is the CPI for all goods (the inflation rate, aka your cost of living). All of these values are indexed to equal 100 on January 1, 2001 so that the lines represent only the differences that have grown between them this century.\nThese facts should be the price of admission to any discussion about housing:\nEarnings have only recently kept up with inflation. Rent/housing costs have grown much faster than inflation and earnings Over this period weekly earnings grew about 70% (most of that only recently), while housing costs grew nearly 100%. What this means is that the cost of everything is rising but the cost of housing is rising much more. Incomes, while rising, are falling far off pace. This leaves all workers with higher and higher costs for essentials like food, shelter, and transportation and less to spend on anything else or save. When people say that affordable housing is their number one concern, this is the big picture for why.\nPeople want affordable housing (obviously) For a recent project at Civilytics, we reviewed 10-15 cities\u0026rsquo; and counties\u0026rsquo; plans for American Rescue Plan funds. These plans have a section on public engagement and, in the communities that solicited feedback, housing was consistently the number one issue that people wanted to address. But you don\u0026rsquo;t have to take our word for it. Our friends at The Southern Economic Advancement Project (opens in new tab) undertook a big effort to survey SNAP-eligible households across the South to ask them about the needs in their community and ARPA funds. The whole survey report is worth a read, but I want to highlight what people said was their top priority: Affordable Housing.\nIn fact, including shelter, heat and electricity, and food \u0026ndash; what we all would agree to be the bare essentials \u0026ndash; 52% of people identified these as the top priority for spending ARPA funds in their community. Compare that to how SEAP found communities are actually planning to spend their ARPA funds:\nWhile we see affordable housing as the number one concern for survey respondents, our ARP Local Funds Spending Tracker tells a different story about where local leaders are currently allocating funds. Funds allotted to revenue replacement or general government totaled slightly over $219 million in AL, GA, and MS in the first phase of our results. Housing assistance is only $10.9 million.\n— SEAP Let\u0026rsquo;s look at one potential reason why this mismatch occurs \u0026ndash; because people who benefit from the present crisis are politically powerful stakeholders.\nA crisis in affordable housing is a massive windfall for real estate investors While the housing purchaser (whether through rent or a mortgage) feels the economic pain of hyperinflationary price increases, landlords and property owners experience a windfall of high returns on their investments that beat just about every available alternative. This point is worth restating. In a period of skyrocketing housing prices, millions of consumers feel the pain, but property owners are seeing record profits. Too often the housing crisis is covered like a natural disaster with no one having agency over rising prices. If you take nothing else from this newsletter, I hope you take away that this is not true. Let\u0026rsquo;s take evictions. Evictions are presented in the press as something suddenly and passively happening to hundreds of thousands of people across the country. In reality, these evictions are deliberate actions initiated by people: landlords. An eviction happens when a landlord expels people from property he or she owns. Evictions are landlord-initiated involuntary moves that happen to renters\n— The Eviction Lab These are modern day Ebenezer Scrooges sending out eviction notices, supported by publicly-paid law enforcement and court employees, to ensure they profit off a surge in rental values. They could choose to see their tenants as people and not evict them \u0026ndash; no eviction moratorium needed. Some of them do. Many of them do not. (opens in new tab)\nThese people are politically powerful stakeholders who have optimized their operations to profit from the status quo. Any changes we try to make to improve housing affordability will cut into their profits and run counter to their interests. This poses one of the biggest barriers to addressing the crisis in affordable housing. Case in point, commercial real estate investors are behind the push in the Biden administration (opens in new tab) to \u0026ldquo;bring the office back\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; despite this being deeply unpopular.\nDecades of developer-friendly housing policy helped create this crisis It\u0026rsquo;s important to ask why our housing policy has failed to protect the public from skyrocketing costs over the past two decades and how real estate investors got the upper hand. One source I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading to learn about this is the Social Housing Chronicle (opens in new tab) by Paul E. Williams, which has a number of excellent articles on the history and mechanics of housing programs. I won\u0026rsquo;t purport to be an expert on this topic, but I\u0026rsquo;d like to share a few points that I think are key. First, the bulk of social housing spending in the U.S. occurs through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) via grants to regional and local governments. (Local or regional governments could also spend their own money to address the housing crisis; it\u0026rsquo;s just that, to a large degree, they currently don\u0026rsquo;t.) This spending represents our commitment \u0026ndash; going back to the Great Society \u0026ndash; to ensure access to affordable and safe housing for everyone. So let\u0026rsquo;s talk about HUD. Check out this graph from an article by Williams on the evolution of HUD spending (opens in new tab). In the past two decades (shown on the right side of the graph) the U.S. population grew by 47 million while housing spending as a share of GDP declined from 0.23% to about 0.19%. As our needs and means have grown in this period, our investment shrunk.\nJust as important is the shift in what HUD spends money on, specifically the relative growth of housing choice (opens in new tab) and project based (opens in new tab) vouchers at the expense of public housing. Housing vouchers (dark blue above) are money that goes to real estate owners on behalf of beneficiaries (renters who qualify for HUD support). Voucher programs are characterized by a devilishly complex mix of rules intended to \u0026ldquo;incentivize\u0026rdquo; certain behavior by tenants and landlords; a design pattern that leaves them open to grift (opens in new tab), waste (opens in new tab), and neglect (opens in new tab). For example, Section 8- (housing choice voucher) eligible properties are subject to \u0026ldquo;minimum standards of health and safety,\u0026rdquo; but tenants have very few direct avenues to initiate enforcement of these standards once they\u0026rsquo;ve moved in. Instead of empowering tenants with the freedom of choice (a laudable goal), the voucher policy has empowered large-scale real estate investors who can master the bureaucratic rules and regulations.\nHow do I know that? Rents are skyrocketing and evictions are up.\nTo be fair, voucher programs were a response to many failures in publicly owned housing developments, which had their own problems in terms of waste, neglect, and the criminalization and surveillance of residents. But publicly owned housing developments are a successful part of the housing mix across the world from Singapore to Sweden, so we know they can help in some shape or form. ARPA funds can help improve housing policy and protect against housing price increases The reality is that one single policy lever cannot fix our housing crisis. Multiple responses are needed and answers can and should be different in different communities. The good news is there are BILLIONS of unallocated ARPA dollars available locally to address affordable housing in bold new ways. We\u0026rsquo;ve been seeing a lot of interesting ideas across the country that I\u0026rsquo;d like to share in the spirit of diversifying the policy options on the table:\nView tweet by @civilytics on X View tweet by @civilytics on X View tweet by @civilytics on X We\u0026rsquo;ve also been working with organizations advocating for other ideas including:\ncreating a land trust, constructing new public housing, rethinking zoning rules, and providing publicly funded assistance for home ownership Additionally, as Paul Williams has written in Politico (opens in new tab), there\u0026rsquo;s plenty of room for federal expansion of housing spending including funding the Biden administration\u0026rsquo;s budget proposal for construction or rehabilitation of over 3 million homes within a decade (remember we added 20 million people to the country in the previous decade). Finally, something I\u0026rsquo;m still studying is this example from Montgomery County, Maryland (opens in new tab) where a small investment of public dollars is creating an ongoing fund for maintaining and building new affordable housing. This would be a great way to leverage one-time ARPA funds for sustainable housing investments in a community. Exactly how we do that without recreating the ills of the current system is something I\u0026rsquo;m still learning more about!\nOh and about those vacants I look at every night \u0026ndash; in my neighborhood I suspect they are the result of price speculation, but the causes in other neighborhoods may be different. People are looking at vacant property taxes as one possible solution, but that strategy is also complicated. (opens in new tab)\nSo the takeaways are:\nThe pinch you feel in your wallet from housing costs is real and pervasive Underinvestment and overcomplication in housing policy got us here People have a lot of great ideas of what we can do about it There\u0026rsquo;s an opportunity to make things better in your own backyard Learn a bit more about me through this recent podcast interview I had the chance to be interviewed for the FrontMatter (opens in new tab) podcast by LeanPub (opens in new tab). The interview came about because Wendy, DJ, and I chose to publish our book series, Education Data Done Right (opens in new tab), via LeanPub to give people a DRM-free, pay what you want option. The interview covered a lot beyond the book, including my personal journey to data analysis and the founding of Civilytics. If you\u0026rsquo;ve ever wondered about the origins of Civilytics and how I came to this work, this is a great place to start. You can listen or read the interview here (opens in new tab), or subscribe to the FrontMatter podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can read this short recap of the interview that Hannah wrote, which includes the picture below.\nMy love of calculations started pretty early Civilytics quoted on the problem of prison gerrymandering At the end of 2021, I was quoted in this Intercept article (opens in new tab) describing our analysis of the impact of prison gerrymandering on representation in U.S. state legislatures (opens in new tab). For Tableau\u0026rsquo;s Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab), we did a first of its kind deep dive into the data to measure the extent of the distorting effect of prison gerrymandering on representation in nearly every state lower house in the U.S. The state-level analysis is particularly important because, the smaller the population represented, the more sway the siting of a prison can have on drawing legislative boundaries. My quote and our analysis is based on the most comprehensive look possible with the best publicly available data (and with a huge assist from the fine people at the Prison Policy Initiative (opens in new tab) who do not shy away from data challenges).\nLink Roundup A New Publication on Local Politics (opens in new tab)\nWith the federal government mired in gridlock (except maybe about Daylight Saving Time (opens in new tab)?) and so many important policies decided at the local level, it\u0026rsquo;s more important than ever that we get involved in our county and municipal governments. If you want a steady stream of high quality stories that make this case clear, I highly recommend Bolts Magazine, a new publication dedicated to this work.\nCrisis Text Line and the Silicon Valleyfication of Everything (opens in new tab)\nTechno-solutionism is something we\u0026rsquo;ve talked about before but we found this article on how the Crisis Text Line began and how it evolved to be an important cautionary tale about incentives, temptations, and the vulnerable people caught in between.\nThe Police Aren't Out of Cash (opens in new tab)\nWell Joe Biden is not a fan of \u0026ldquo;defunding the police\u0026rdquo; but Jamelle Bouie has the facts that the Biden team is missing when calling for more funding of the police. This is one of the best evidence-based summaries of a debate that has too often drifted away from the facts. Highly recommend.\nAffordable Housing Means Strengthening Regional Governments (opens in new tab)\nThe Prospect has a great writeup on regional governments, which really vary across the country in their scope and strength and are worth learning more about. In many places regional planning is key to addressing the affordable housing problem instead of independent decisions municipality by municipality.\nhttps://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing-political-geography-of-covid-19-over-the-last-two-years/ (opens in new tab)\nFinally, my friend from graduate school Bradley Jones at Pew wrote an important summary of what we know about the impact of COVID-19 on the political geography of the country.\nAs always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"March 16, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-and-the-housing-crisis/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"I have a new habit when I’m brushing my teeth at night – counting vacant houses. Last night I counted 6 vacant units visible out my window. This is in the middle of one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. Vacant houses are on my mind personally (I live in a home that was formerly vacant) and professionally as a shortage of housing sends prices skyward nationwide.","title":"What my favorite Super Bowl ad says about Americans’ top domestic priority","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/arpa/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Arpa","type":"tags"},{"content":"The American Rescue Plan Act's (ARPA) State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) Program (opens in new tab) provide a huge influx of funds to cities, counties, and states. Understanding where the money is going can be challenging, but several groups have put together excellent spending trackers to help.\nThese trackers are great resources to learn how your city, county, and state are spending their ARPA funds. The trackers are also helpful to discover which local governments are using ARPA money for issues you care about, like affordable housing, violence prevention, or guaranteed income programs.\nBelow we highlight four trackers, providing some need-to-know information about each. Is there a useful tracker we missed? If so, please send it our way -- we'd love to know about it!\nWhy are multiple trackers necessary?\nBecause the SLFRF funds went to 50 states, around 3,000 counties, and about 20,000 cities, towns, and villages. That's a lot to keep track of!\nDifferent groups are tracking spending by different levels of government, in different categories, and at different levels of detail.\nUp first, a state-focused tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures.\n1. NCSL Provides the Only State-Focused Tracker National Conference of State Legislatures\u0026rsquo; Tracker Key features of this tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures (opens in new tab) (NCSL):\nIncludes data for all but 5 states Updated very frequently -- last time we checked, it had been updated only 3 days earlier Allows users to examine spending by category and by searching for specific words Links to specific text (press release, legislation, etc.) so users can learn more 2. NLC/NACo Tracker Includes 152 Cities \u0026amp; Counties National League of Cities\u0026rsquo; Tracker Key features of this tracker from the National League of Cities (opens in new tab) (NLC), National Association of Counti (opens in new tab)e (opens in new tab)s (opens in new tab) (NACo), and Brookings Metro (opens in new tab):\nAllows users to filter to cities, counties, or consolidated city-counties (like St. Louis and DC) Allows users to focus on specific spending categories, such as economic and workforce development or public safety Breaks out spending amounts so users can focus on the largest investments or investments over a certain $ threshold Includes fairly in-depth project overviews so users get a better sense of what each allocation actually means without having to do their own research as well One limitation of this tracker is that it doesn't include links to the original sources; if users want to learn more about a specific project or allocation, they will need to search outside the tracker. Another limitation is that it's not clear how frequently the tracker is updated, though the website does say the tracker will be updated as more information is available.\n3. Results for America Tracker Includes 149 Cities \u0026amp; Counties Results for America\u0026rsquo;s Tracker Key features of this tracker from Results for America (opens in new tab) and Mathematica (opens in new tab):\nLinks users directly to each location's ARPA plan Allows users to focus on specific spending categories, including some more detailed categories not highlighted by the trackers above, such as Guaranteed Basic Income, Emergency Rental Assistance, and Pilot Programs Includes information beyond allocation amounts and spending categories by highlighting which plans clearly invest in engaging communities, conducting evaluations, and/or ensuring equitable outcomes One limitation is that the dashboard is entirely focused on the Recovery Plan Performance Reports submitted by August 31, 2021. It is not clear if the dashboard will be updated with more recent data.\n4. SEAP's Tracker Goes Deep on 5 States Southern Economic Advancement Project\u0026rsquo;s Tracker This final tracker goes deep rather than broad, focusing on 5 states but aiming to include all cities with at least 20,000 residents. Key features of this tracker from the Southern Economic Advancement Project (opens in new tab) (SEAP):\nCovers 5 states: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Washington Allows users to filter by state and city Has a useful focus on government decision-making, highlighting whether decisions been made for none of the funds, the first half of funds, most/all of the funds, etc. Rates whether each local government sought any public engagement in ARPA spending process and/or included an equity component in their ARPA plan One limitation of this tracker is that users can't filter by spending category or search for cities that are using funds in a particular way, such as for premium pay or healthy childhood environments.\nKnow of Another Tracker? Please share it with us! If there is another tracker you have seen, we would love to know about it. Please reach out. We're trying to get the word out about useful trackers (and how cities are using their funds) on social media -- please follow us there!\nView tweet by @civilytics on X Want to Learn More? We've written a lot about ARPA, including a summary of what you should know about the final funding rules and ideas for how to use funds (plus even more ideas). Check out all of our ARPA coverage here: https://www.civilytics.com/public-finance/slfrp/ (opens in new tab)\n","date":"February 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-trackers/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Understanding how state and local governments are spending their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds can be challenging, but several groups have put together excellent trackers to aid in this quest. This post highlights key features (and a few limitations) of four trackers.","title":"Tracking ARPA Spending by State and Local Governments","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 28, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/treasury/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Treasury","type":"tags"},{"content":"Jared recently talked with Leanpub (opens in new tab) co-founder Len Epps (opens in new tab) on the podcast Frontmatter (opens in new tab). Below are 5 facts Jared shared in the episode, with an excerpt from the interview about each and some photos Jared's taken.1\nListen to the podcast:\nRead the transcript. (opens in new tab)\n1. Being From Montana Shapes Jared's Thinking Today Glacier National Park, from a trip with Jared\u0026rsquo;s parents in 2018 I think geography is a really big part of what I do now, and also my origin story. I was born and raised in Montana... I grew up in a small town , and I moved to a smaller town to go to high school. What I saw when I changed towns was how different the school system was. As a kid, you're very plugged into the school system, and so you can get a real sense of the differences between how adults in the school system are acting when you move.\u0026hellip; And I thought, \u0026quot;We're still in the same state, we're still generally the same kinds of people or the same economy. Yet these two towns had very different school systems.\u0026quot; It got me really thinking about politics and school boards.\n2. Jared Got His Start in Government as an Intern on WI's Race-to-the-Top Application A Madison beach in winter - no swimming! \u0026quot;[The] idea of getting to work in the governor's office, that sounded pretty interesting for me as a political scientist, a chance to see what it really looks like. I was just helping a team write an application. But I made a few graphs for the application, and they really liked that. They were like, \u0026quot;Oh, wow. These graphs are useful.\u0026quot; Looking back now, I could have done them in Excel or something -- it wasn't anything really fancy. But they liked that, and they said, \u0026quot;Why don't you come do an internship at the state education agency?\u0026quot;\nSo, I started off working part-time, and then I started working full-time and doing my graduate degree part-time, and just transitioned. But I always had my foot in both of those worlds -- which was a really interesting experience, and really did shape a lot of the way I think about what Civilytics does now, thinking about the importance of being a bridge between those two different worlds, and how they can help each other, and the ways they can lose track of communicating with each other.\n3. Learning R Involved Some Methods Courses...and a Lot of Self-Teaching Early attempts at R programming I did pursue several courses in my methods sequence, and then went beyond it, to keep taking courses...so that I could learn how to use R to do different things, like geospatial statistics, and multi-level models, and all kinds of different tools, that just allowed me that space to learn.\nI mostly used books [to learn R], some key books -- and a lot of hands-on time at work -- luckily my supervisors gave me the space to really solve a problem well, and use R to do it, and then learn from that experience.\n4. EDDR Coauthors Jared, DJ Cratty, and Wendy Geller Met at an IRL Conference Vermont\u0026rsquo;s state capitol building, photo from a subsequent visit to see Wendy in Montpelier We met at a conference. We're all trained as social scientists, in this very academic tradition, but found ourselves drawn to this very practical work of working in government.\nWe were at a meeting for government data analysts to share ideas and talk about data systems, and how we do our work. But the meetings mostly tended to focus around really IT stuff, which is critical, and we have a love letter to IT professionals in the first book...but there wasn't space to talk about how to be an analyst, including making friends with the IT department.\nSo we were coming out of this academic training, where the concept of data is like a dataset that has been carefully collected and manicured and perfectly laid out like a bonsai tree, that you would then analyze. The data we were dealing with is just like data that's coming off of these systems that are trying to work every day, and they have different conflicting definitions. So we were like, \u0026quot;We weren't really trained for this.\u0026quot;\n5. Jared Thinks the Policy Paradox Is the Greatest Political Science Book Ever Written There's a book by Deborah Stone called Policy Paradox, and I think it's probably the greatest political science book ever written. I really hope she hears me say that someday. Because you can open up to any chapter, and it talks about all of these issues about, well, when we want to try to measure performance, there's a political purpose to that, and there are people who are going to win and lose from that strategy. There are people who have legitimate complaints, and people who have like complaints that are made up -- that are false, that are crying crocodile tears.\nShe looks at these problems from many different lenses, and shows you how and why they are so difficult to disentangle, and why it does seem like what starts out as a well-meaning policy, which I think 90% of people would agree about -- like scam universities are a problem and we don't want to have them -- can be shaped and used to make [other] universities start to function in ways that we would not find optimal or useful or productive to society. I think that's also one of the big fundamental paradoxes of making decisions about public goods.\nCheck Out the Wide-Ranging Interview In the interview, Jared reminds us that we live in a republic not a democracy, shares why a simple graph takes 8 hours to get right, and more. We hope you'll check it out! Thanks very much to Len and Leanpub for the very engaging interview!\nPlus one photo from W.W. Norton publishers\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"February 22, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/podcast-facts/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Jared recently talked with Leanpub co-founder Len Epps on the podcast Frontmatter. This post has 5 fun facts Jared shared in the episode.","title":"Did You Know? 5 Facts about Jared from a Recent Interview","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 22, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/eddr/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Eddr","type":"tags"},{"content":"A retrospective on the use of data in the school closure debate\nThis edition of The Civic Pulse I want to talk about something close to my heart \u0026ndash; the debate about expertise, empiricism, and their role in public decision making. I\u0026rsquo;ll explore this topic through the public debate about school closures and COVID-19 because it serves as an excellent example of our current capacity (or lack thereof) to integrate data into fast-moving and hugely consequential policy questions. And, it\u0026rsquo;s a so-called wicked problem (opens in new tab) that most people have an opinion on. I think how it has unfolded highlights an important challenge for all of us as scholars, funders, publishers, and consumers of information \u0026ndash; how do we evaluate expertise? In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nAn essay on decisiveness, data, and who gets to be empirical What we\u0026rsquo;re reading this snowy winter As always, thank you for reading. On to this month's main event.\nA retrospective on the use of data in the school closure debate I recently had the chance to visit Harry Truman\u0026rsquo;s Little White House in Key West, Florida, and see where he spent about 10% of his presidency. Truman, of course, is famous among social scientists for having said:\nGive me a one-handed economist. All my economists say 'on the one hand...', then 'but on the other...\n— Harry Truman (Though whether he said it or not is an interesting read in and of itself, as it so often is with these types of quips.) The buck stopped often at this poker table The Little White House is also painted white The term \u0026ldquo;one-handed economist\u0026rdquo; was actually part of a widely circulating turn of phrase in the period where \u0026ldquo;one-armed\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;one-handed\u0026rdquo; referred to someone who was decisive and was applied to all kinds of members of the professional class \u0026ndash; lawyers, accountants, and even presidents themselves. In an age of great uncertainty and economic, geopolitical, and domestic crises there was a demand for decisiveness. Sound familiar?\nIt struck me, as the school closure, isolation timeline, and lockdown debate flared up with omicron, that we are awash with one-handed economists and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure President Truman would find it of much comfort. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to debate the merits of decisiveness itself, but I do want to unpack how we evaluate the sources of authority for the voices that get to be decisive in society today. Tressie McMillan Cottom\u0026rsquo;s recent essay on the expectation that we all become \u0026ldquo;experts (opens in new tab)\u0026rdquo; and why that is not good \u0026ndash; hell, it\u0026rsquo;s exhausting \u0026ndash; is a good starting point. From ugly leggings to a global financial crisis and back, all of these examples have the same social DNA: failing institutions, aspirational people and nefarious actors willing to exploit both….\u0026nbsp;\nIt is no wonder that so many of us think that we can parse vaccine trial data, compare personal protective equipment, write school policy and call career scientists idiots on Facebook. We are know-it-alls because we are responsible for knowing everything. And God forbid we should not know something and get scammed. If that happens, it is definitely our fault.\nInInstitutional failures, including our sometimes earned, and sometimes unearned, mistrust for others to be experts on our behalf, open the door for new actors with hidden agendas, one of which is a very old type (the oracle) wrapped up in fancy new clothes (empirical data analysis).\nMy objection is not with public figures making recommendations but with the claims of authority these new oracles derive from data. The modern version of the one-handed economist is probably most popularly represented in the contemporary hot-takeism of Nate Silver, something covered far better than I could in the best couple paragraphs of writing I have read in 2022 from Lyz Lenz’s Men Yell At Me newsletter:\nThe problem is, we have a society that cleaves to an idea that it is possible to have a dispassionate and purely rational view of anything. We foolishly believe that if only we could look at numbers, charts, graphs, we could rid ourselves of all this pesky other business like\u0026nbsp; sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, fat phobia… But those numbers, those questions, those polls, those charts are compiled by flawed human beings with biases and prejudices… this analysis is actually entirely ruled by passion and emotion that is unchecked, unfiltered, welded [sic] as a cudgel and hides behind the veneer of dispassionate analysis…\u0026nbsp;\n[T]he world is a mess. And it’s so hard. Anyone providing easy answers is selling you snake oil dressed up in the cheap language of scientific analysis.\nBut, while it is fun to dunk on Nate Silver, it’s important to see this as part of a broader problem – the problem of the data aesthetic used as a shortcut to authority. Which brings us to school closures, COVID, and Dr. Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University.\u0026nbsp;\nDr. Oster is a bestselling author and many people seem to find her recommendations useful for a range of topics far afield from economics (pregnancy, parenting, childcare, education, etc.). Dr. Oster’s brand, if you will, is making recommendations for her audience based on objective clear-headed analysis of the facts.\u0026nbsp;\nOster has published prominent op-eds weighing in on debates about school closures, school masking, and the risks of COVID. Much of this comes from a research effort Dr. Oster leads called “COVID Explained” which has this tagline:\nCOVID-19 is confusing. We are here with facts about the virus. How does it spread? How is it treated? Who does it affect most? Unbiased information to help you make good decisions.\nIf you read The Civic Pulse, that tagline likely sounds appealing to you – yes, I want facts and I want to make good decisions – sign me up! But, how do we distinguish “clear-headed analysis of the facts” from the data aesthetic, dressing up easy answers in “the cheap language of scientific analysis”? Well, a good place to start is to examine the evidence supporting those facts, and then look at who or what might be missing from the presentation.\u0026nbsp;\nFortunately, Rachel Cohen published a piece in The American Prospect in fall 2020 [wow, that was a long time ago] that checked the source of many of the “facts” that were supporting Oster’s op-eds and that were being circulated to news outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic.\nCohen’s article highlights one example op-ed with the headline “School Infection Rates Are Low Even in Areas With High COVID-19 Rates, According to Data on 550,000 US Students.” This example shows how a headline can be simultaneously accurate… and misleading. In the data on 550,000 students the infection rate reported is low. That is a fact. But implied in the headline, and the op-ed, is that we can generalize from this population to the broader U.S. (otherwise, why write the op-ed?). And it is in this slippery space between a true fact and broad conclusion that the aesthetic of data grants power to what is otherwise just another hot take.\u0026nbsp;\nI’ll let Cohen’s reporting take it from here:\u0026nbsp;\nHere are some additional facts about the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard dataset, as it existed on October 25 [2020]. There were 1,322 schools voluntarily reporting data, or about 1 percent of all K-12 schools in the country. It did not say how many school districts were reporting, though Oster told me last week they currently have “about 150.” There are 13,500 school districts across the United States. A more detailed look brought its glaring gaps into sharper relief. There was not a single urban traditional public school reporting data across 27 states in her dataset, including from Florida, Texas, New York, Minnesota, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Some states, like Colorado, Kansas, Ohio, and Alabama, had just one urban traditional public school reporting data. Oster told me they’re working to make their dataset “more representative” and conceded that those who opted to voluntarily report tended to be a “higher-income sample, and more suburban.” — (emphasis original, and heartily endorsed by me as well) One imagines that, if a student in one of Dr. Oster\u0026rsquo;s courses at Brown University used a non-random, voluntary, survey sample of less than 1% of the population to make a broad conclusion with wide-reaching policy impacts, they\u0026rsquo;d receive a polite note reminding them to review their textbook.\nBut it\u0026rsquo;s not just about the sample or the data collection (though a trained economist knows better), it\u0026rsquo;s about the context given to the facts; what is and is not said with the authority won through the combination of the academic credential and data collection. The tool initially published by Dr. Oster \u0026ndash; and, as these things go, the version that got almost all of the attention \u0026ndash; did not include any way to disaggregate data on those 500,000 students by race, ethnicity, or school Title I status \u0026ndash; something practically as natural to a researcher like Oster as breathing air. Again, from Cohen:\nOster\u0026rsquo;s story also said nothing about race. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s myopic. The piece of analysis that\u0026rsquo;s missing both in her Atlantic article and the dashboard is that Black and brown communities have been disproportionately hit hard by COVID,\u0026rdquo; said Constance Lindsay, an education policy researcher at UNC. Black (opens in new tab) and Latino communities (opens in new tab) have been contracting COVID and dying of it at higher rates, and while Oster targets Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston specifically for not reopening schools, there was no mention that these cities have higher concentrations of Black and Latino families\u0026hellip;\nLindsay adds that she\u0026rsquo;d feel a little better if Oster\u0026rsquo;s database broke out information about Title I schools and the percentage of Black and brown students at each school. Oster told me \u0026ldquo;that\u0026rsquo;s something we can certainly do, and I think those kinds of covariates are on our to-do list.\u0026rdquo;\nSo what is going on here? Dr. Oster and team filled a gap left by institutions that could not keep up, but they staked their claim of legitimacy on the data they had gathered \u0026ndash; not on the theory or context of the collection. The theory is left implicit, and all too often the people doing the research team and reporting on that research have the same theory. But the world is complicated, as Andrew Gelman, one of the best reads on quantitative analysis in the social sciences, recently discussed: (opens in new tab)\nThe real world is complicated. Take a generally true theory, gather lots of data, and you\u0026rsquo;ll see some patterns that appear to contradict the theory. Or, take a completely wrong theory, gather lots of data, and you\u0026rsquo;ll see some patterns that are consistent with the theory. That\u0026rsquo;s just the way things go\u0026hellip; Statistics has prestige, so it makes sense that people will try to use statistics as a convincer.\nThink for a moment. Would a Black-led research team have de-prioritized looking at the data by race? Would someone who lived in a multi-generational household, whose child had severe asthma, or whose child attended public school with predominantly students of color* collected, analyzed, and reported on data in the same way? (We don\u0026rsquo;t know which, if any of these apply to Dr. Oster, only that her children attend private school (opens in new tab) as did she.)\nView tweet by @Dr_ConstanceL on X Again, the problem isn\u0026rsquo;t the study \u0026ndash; the problem is that this work is leaning on the credentials of the scientific method without subjecting itself to the process of scientific inquiry and peer review. And, in so doing, it is taking the oxygen out of the room for alternative voices, it is shaping policy with prominent op-eds, and it is entrenching a specific set of implicit theories through the use of data as evidence. Science is an act of consensus, not fiat. The data aesthetic as it is deployed here is an attempt to take a shortcut past the messy process of accumulating scientific evidence in a race to make a point.\nUnfortunately, we are the losers in all this. When researchers step outside the consensus-building process of scientific peer review, we are forced to step in. To paraphrase Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, the peer review has been outsourced to us, which is, unfortunately, exhausting.\nBut when and where we can, we have to demand better standards of evidence before granting researchers authority on a particular topic, no matter their credentials. And we should demand our public discourse look around a little further than the nearest Ivy League economics department to find expert consensus on important topics.\nAs a data analyst I take this stuff to heart \u0026ndash; good data work is careful, deliberate, and subjective work that requires a lot of deliberation and consultation. I think a good start would be to pop up this quote from Deborah Stone, from her book Counting, every time a quantitative researcher opens Excel, Stata, or R: Above all, we shouldn’t use numbers to cover over our deep conflicts and ethical dilemmas.\n— Deborah Stone, Counting Good empirical science doesn\u0026rsquo;t cover these things over \u0026ndash; it states these conflicts and notes its limitations up front. In other words, \u0026ldquo;on the one hand\u0026hellip; but on the other hand\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re reading and thinking about: White scholars colonizing health disparities research - STAT News (opens in new tab)\nContinuing on the theme of this newsletter about who gets to be experts \u0026ndash; this is a must-read story about what is happening in the field of health disparities research (and I imagine is also happening in research on equity and racial disparities in many other fields). Here's a good quote:\nBut a STAT investigation shows a disturbing trend: a gold rush mentality where researchers with little or no background or training in health equity research, often white and already well-funded, are rushing in to scoop up grants and publish papers. STAT has documented dozens of cases where white researchers are building on the work of, or picking the brains of, Black and brown researchers without citing them or offering to include them on grants or as co-authors.\nCensus Mapper - BigLocalNews (opens in new tab)\nLots of people are putting out tools to understand the 2020 Census, but I wanted to give a particular shoutout to the folks at Big Local News. I\u0026rsquo;m a big fan of their whole approach \u0026ndash; providing data analysis and story development tools to local journalists through collaboration and open analysis. It\u0026rsquo;s no surprise that their Census Mapper delivers.\nCongressional Trading in 2021 - Unusual Whales (opens in new tab)\nLooking at a different kind of data from a different direction - I cannot stop staring at how well members of the U.S. House and Senate have done investing in 2021 as visualized in this report by Unusual Whales.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not exactly reading, but I wanted to give a special shoutout to the new ABC show \u0026ldquo;Abbott Elementary\u0026rdquo; (opens in new tab) - in a TV lineup full of cops, doctors, and even cop doctors (or doctor cops?), it\u0026rsquo;s good to see teachers making their way to on-screen representation.\nvia GIPHY (opens in new tab)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a funny, charming, and kind-hearted show about a public elementary school in Philadelphia \u0026mdash; two thumbs up.\nChicago's Deep Tunnel - Slate (opens in new tab)\nFinally, we\u0026rsquo;ve been reading a lot about water infrastructure lately as we are gearing up a #rescuetherescuefunds campaign \u0026ndash; infrastructure, especially climate change mitigation infrastructure, is another wicked problem, and this article on Chicago\u0026rsquo;s flood mitigation investments is a good in-depth look at how if the set of experts are narrow and they all agree, they can get it wrong.\nWe encourage you to follow along using the hashtag #rescuetherescuefunds (opens in new tab). We'll have more to say on Twitter and in an upcoming newsletter, so if you're not already, follow us on Twitter:\nView tweet by @civilytics on X As always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"February 7, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/the-danger-of-one-handed-economists/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"A retrospective on the use of data in the school closure debate","title":"The danger of Truman's one-handed economists","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Civilytics made 5 requests to Treasury in our comments on the Interim Rule this summer, and we were eager to see how they responded this month (opens in new tab). Below we share a recap of our original comments, Treasury's recent responses, and our takeaways.\nFor an overview of the changes from the interim to the final rule, read our analysis here. You can read the whole final rule here (opens in new tab). Overall, we were not surprised (or particularly pleased) by the responses, but we do credit the process for working as intended! 👍 Treasury received over 1,500 public comments and responded to them in a 437-page document, which was honestly kind of fun to read (at least in parts!).\nHow does the final rule do? 👎 On transparency We asked Treasury to publish the aid allocation estimates for NEUs, require public documentation of how funds are spent, and encourage communities to solicit public engagement in deciding how funds are spent.\nTreasury responded that they received many comments about program reporting and transparency...and basically that they weren't changing anything. They said:\nTreasury will continue to issue updated guidance prior to each reporting period clarifying any modifications to requested report content and will continue to consider how reporting can best support transparency and accountability while minimizing recipient administrative burden.\n— p. 339 Treasury notes that the interim final rule did not address the specific content and data elements required in reporting, the reporting portal or submission process, and the specific form of reporting (e.g., example templates, machine readability); comments on these topics are outside the scope of the final rule...\n— p. 371 Our reply: Let's start with the positive. 👍 Treasury has been publishing the Interim Reports and Recovery Plans (opens in new tab) it receives -- that's positive!\nBut the Final Rule includes a major blow for transparency in making the \u0026quot;revenue loss\u0026quot; category more generous than before. The Final Rule adds a $10M \u0026quot;standard deduction\u0026quot; for revenue loss, allowing governments to claim this amount of lost revenue without any documentation. The Final Rule also increases the expected growth rate for local governments' revenue to 5.2%. If revenue did not grow 5.2% over the selected time period, then the local government can use funds to make up any \u0026quot;shortfall.\u0026quot; These are blows for transparency because local governments using ARPA funds to replace \u0026quot;lost revenue\u0026quot; don't have to provide any specifics about how they use funds -- the use is simply \u0026quot;revenue replacement.\u0026quot; As a result, residents (and the federal government) have no idea how ARPA funds were spent in these communities.\nIt's unfortunate that, despite receiving \u0026quot;many comments\u0026quot; about transparency and reporting, Treasury declined to increase the public's ability to understand where these funds go. We will continue to monitor any updated guidance on reporting from Treasury, but it looks like most of the pressure to find out how money is spent will come from local residents and politicians, journalists and activists, not from the Treasury.\n👎 On distributing aid equitably among smaller local governments We asked Treasury to allocate the remaining aid so that smaller cities and towns (non-entitlement units or NEUs) receive the same amount per resident regardless of state. Treasury said:\nNeither the interim final rule nor the final rule addresses eligibility or allocations issues, and comments on these topics are outside the scope of this rulemaking.\n— p. 352 Our reply: Too bad they didn't seek public comment on the formula they created that resulted in some towns receiving $1k per resident and others receiving $100 per resident! We do understand the response, though, that this rulemaking is about how to use funds, not how much the funds are.\n🤷‍♀️ On treating individuals who are incarcerated fairly We asked Treasury to either require that funds allocated on a per person basis go at least in part to meet the health and safety of people who are incarcerated, or to adjust the population counts so that individuals who are incarcerated aren't counted toward funds they will not receive. Treasury said:\nNothing\nActually, this is partly covered by the response above -- allocation amounts are outside the scope of this rulemaking.\nOur reply: On a somewhat more positive note, Treasury did specifically state that local governments cannot build a new jail or prison using ARPA funds under the justification that it will reduce public health harms. It's a premature 🥂 though because jails and prisons can still be funded under the revenue loss provision. Because, in all cases, uses of SLFRF funds to respond to public health and negative economic impacts of the pandemic must be related and reasonably proportional to a harm caused or exacerbated by the pandemic, some capital expenditures may not eligible. For example, constructing a new correctional facility would generally not be a proportional response to an increase in the rate of certain crimes or overall crime as most correctional facilities have historically accommodated fluctuations in occupancy.\n— p. 199-200 👎 On applying the tax cut provision to local governments We asked Treasury to specify that, like states and territories, cities, counties, and towns cannot use ARPA funds to pay for tax cuts. They said:\nTreasury is finalizing its implementation of the [tax cut] offset provision largely without change. This approach is consistent with the text of the ARPA.\n— p. 322 Our reply: This one is a bummer. We weren't expecting much from the comments above, but this one seemed more promising. Using funding intended to respond to a health and economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude to instead subsidize tax cuts seems clearly contrary to the legislative intent. If funding tax cuts for states is antithetical to the legislative intent, why isn't that also true for cities and counties? Treasury never explains.\n👎 On keeping the focus on lower- or moderate-income workers We asked Treasury not to loosen the restriction that ARPA-funded premium pay go to workers who make no more than 150% of their county's or state\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage for all occupations. Treasury did not maintain this focus. They instead said:\nUnder the final rule, a recipient may also show that premium pay is responsive\nby demonstrating that the eligible worker receiving premium pay is not exempt from the FLSA overtime provisions. [...] With this addition, the final rule provides that premium pay is responsive to eligible workers performing essential work during the public health emergency if each eligible worker who receives premium pay falls into one of three categories: (1) the worker’s pay is below the wage threshold, (2) the worker is not exempt from the FLSA overtime provisions, or (3) the recipient has submitted a written justification to Treasury.\n— p. 229 Our reply: We thought the original focus on paying premiums to low- and moderate-income workers was really laudable but we were not surprised to see this particular change made. A lot of organized police and corrections staff and supporters campaigned for this change in the comments (and probably through more direct avenues too).\nOverall takeaway? That's democracy. We got to submit comments and, if you read Treasury's response, you can tell they actually read ours (and other people's!). That's something to celebrate even if none of their responses gets our 👍.\n","date":"February 3, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/treasury-responds/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Civilytics made 5 requests to Treasury in our comments on the Interim Rule this summer, and we were eager to see how they responded this month. Here we share a recap of our original comments, Treasury’s recent responses, and our takeaways.","title":"Civilytics Asks, Treasury Responds (Well, Kind Of)","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 3, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/neu/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Neu","type":"tags"},{"content":"The U.S. Treasury has published the Final Rule (opens in new tab) for the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, established under the American Rescue Plan Act.\nThe Final Rule further loosens and enumerates the eligible uses of funds and keeps the timeline and general reporting requirements the same.\nAs before, there are four eligible use categories for funds, which we'll briefly review with an eye toward changes since the Interim Rule (opens in new tab).\n1. Revenue replacement = use funds to provide any government services. For this category, recipients are not required to provide any specifics about use of funds, meaning they can fund business-as-usual with minimal documentation.\nThe Final Rule includes two changes that make the revenue replacement category even more generous than before. It:\nSets a higher expected growth rate of 5.2%. If the recipient\u0026rsquo;s revenue declined\u0026mdash;or did not grow 5.2% over the selected period1\u0026mdash;then recipients can use these funds to \u0026ldquo;make up\u0026rdquo; that lack of growth. Creates a standard allowance of $10M for revenue loss. This is entirely new and allows recipients to use up to $10M for revenue replacement regardless of whether revenue actually decreased.2 2. Premium pay for eligible workers performing essential work during the pandemic. Premium pay can be up to an extra $13 per hour or $25k per worker. The Final Rule clarifies who is eligible \u0026ndash; which is almost anyone who isn\u0026rsquo;t teleworking!\nWorkers in the sectors below are eligible if they\u0026rsquo;re regularly interacting with the public, co-workers, or items handled by others.\nAs noted in the Interim Rule, the pay for eligible workers should be no more than 150% of their state\u0026rsquo;s or county\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage but the Final Rule adds two options if this requirement is not met:\nThe recipient can submit written justification describing why the worker is essential and should be eligible The premium pay can go to eligible workers who are not exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime provisions 3. Water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure. The Final Rule broadens the projects that are eligible and gives more examples. Eligible projects include efforts to:\nconserve and reuse water reduce energy consumption at public plants harvest rainwater add green roofs repair culverts rehabilitate dams or reservoirs that have a role in the drinking water supply test for lead provide access to reliable broadband modernize cybersecurity and much more! 4. Respond to the pandemic's public health and economic impacts. This is the broadest category and the one where the most transformative new government activities can be funded. This category allows recipients to use funds to respond to the public health emergency; provide economic assistance to households, small businesses, nonprofits, or impacted industries; maintain the public sector\u0026rsquo;s capacity to deliver services and retain staff; and more.\nThe Final Rule adds to the list of eligible uses here including providing:\nsupport for childcare transportation to work assistance to start small businesses job training paid leave programs expanded health insurance coverage subsidies for internet access improvements to vacant lots programs to support long-term housing security assistance to industries like travel and tourism and much more! Previously, funds could be used to rehire public sector employees up to pre-pandemic levels\u0026mdash;the Final Rule extends this to allow hiring up to 7.5% above pre-pandemic levels.\nRecipients can also use funds for worker retention incentives and for payroll and benefits for public safety, health, and human services employees for the portion of their time spent responding to COVID.\nThe Final Rule also clarifies that recipients may use funds for capital expenditures within this category\u0026mdash;that is, capital projects related to the pandemic\u0026rsquo;s public health and economic impacts.\nRestrictions on Use As was the case before, recipients still cannot use funds to offset tax cuts, for deposits into pension funds, and for debt services. The Final Rule also states that:\nAllocations cannot be used to replenish rainy day funds, although they can be used to replenish unemployment insurance trust funds. Construction of new correctional or congregate facilities, convention centers, or stadiums will generally not be eligible. Timeline and Reporting The timeline remains the same: funds must be obligated by the end of 2024 and expended by the end of 2026. No noteworthy changes in reporting requirements seem to have been made\u0026mdash;if anything, some reporting requirements were slightly relaxed.\nLearn more (opens in new tab) about eligible uses (opens in new tab) of funds, the amount your government is receiving, and ideas (opens in new tab) for transformative ways to spend the funds!\nLocal governments can choose one of four periods for the revenue comparison.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nAs Treasury’s overview points out, for most, if not all, smaller cities and counties with \u0026lt;50k residents this will cover their entire award: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/SLFRF-Final-Rule-Overview.pdf (opens in new tab).\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"January 26, 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/slfrf-final-rule/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The final rules are now available for the American Rescue Plan Act’s Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. Here we briefly review changes in the final rules and what they mean for how local governments can use funds.","title":"What You Should Know about the Final Rule for ARPA's State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Showing our work and what\u0026rsquo;s in the lab This issue will skew a bit tech-heavy because in 2021 I spent a lot of time rethinking the tools we use to improve collaboration and scale to more than one employee. This will be the first in an annual issue of The Civic Pulse looking into our lab and sharing a bit about how we get things done. If you are curious about tech, thinking about business software solutions for your own work, or wonder a bit about what the day-to-day in a small data science company looks like \u0026mdash; I hope you enjoy! If you\u0026rsquo;re not interested in tech, tools, and software, you might want to skip this newsletter \u0026mdash; we\u0026rsquo;ll be back to our regular programming next month.\nIn this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nOpen source tools spurring our collaboration and securing our data Communication tools for sharing findings to very different audiences Statistical tools we\u0026rsquo;ve built or are building Tools we are learning about or in search of \u0026mdash; have an idea/recommendation/suggestion, let us know! Open source tools spurring our collaboration and securing our data In last year\u0026rsquo;s 2020 lookback I mentioned that I built a server to improve our data storage. Well in 2021 I put that server to work to support a more secure and collaborative set of software tools that align with our vision and goals. And I set up an offsite backup in Montana to keep our data secure \u0026mdash; my recently retired Dad graciously hosts it in his new home office. It is now hanging on the wall. I\u0026rsquo;m proud to say that our uptime this year has been better than Facebook. (opens in new tab)\nOne of my greatest technology frustrations is product updates that make the product worse, increase the costs, or take away features I rely on \u0026mdash; if you\u0026rsquo;ve used Microsoft OneNote, you\u0026rsquo;ll know what I mean. So I took this year as an opportunity to learn more about adopting open source tools that could give us predictable features and pricing and align with our values. Our biggest success has been adopting NextCloud (opens in new tab) as a replacement for Dropbox/OneDrive/Google Drive for synced and collaborative storage. We can share large files seamlessly with clients, sync files across our machines, search and tag files, and much more. It is lightweight, has mobile apps, and is easy to administer. I highly recommend it.\nOur second biggest hit has been using Mattermost (opens in new tab) for an internal collaborative group chat. I admit I mostly did this so I could send Hannah gifs but it has proven really useful even when we are in the same room! This one has not been as plug and play as Nextcloud but has given me fewer headaches than what it replaces - Slack. And there has been a smattering of others I want to highlight here:\nJoplin (opens in new tab) as a replacement for OneNote or Evernote. I was a very heavy OneNote user, but so far Joplin has been a lighter weight replacement with a much more streamlined set of features. Gitea (opens in new tab) as a private version of GitHub. GitHub is still great for publicly sharing code, but this gives us an internal code repository we can invite others to without our data leaving our drives. Very easy to set up. Zotero (opens in new tab) as an open source citation manager and citation sharing tool. DrawIO (opens in new tab) for drawing diagrams in the browser and wireframing dashboards. Tabula (opens in new tab) for extracting data from PDF files. Monica (opens in new tab) for contact management and searching. Wireguard (opens in new tab) for secure connection (VPN) back to the server when on the road. These are all managed as Docker containers (opens in new tab) and stored on our server\u0026rsquo;s ZFS storage cluster (opens in new tab). I\u0026rsquo;ve learned a ton from the self-hosted community (opens in new tab) about containerization, networking, reverse proxies, and configuration files which has been really rewarding.\nDespite all this I have to admit that a better email solution is elusive. After experimenting with Thunderbird and other solutions, we wound up pivoting back to Exchange/Outlook and are much happier. Sometimes enterprise software is the way to go :-)\nCommunication tools for sharing findings to very different audiences This year we\u0026rsquo;ve worked with many new-to-us stakeholder audiences, which pushed us to think carefully about the tools we use to communicate data. The right tool is the one that reaches the intended audience, so we\u0026rsquo;ve branched out. Google Sheets has advantages\nOur most popular data \u0026ldquo;dashboard\u0026rdquo; this year is actually a Google Sheet reporting the ARPA aid allocations for every city, town, and county in the U.S. We chose Google Sheets because it was familiar to our intended audience of community activists, it can be easily exported, and we were able to build and style it relatively quickly. Keeping it up to date was a downside, but fortunately we only had to update it 3 times before the Treasury finalized their numbers.\nFinding new roles for Shiny dashboards\nOur tool analyzing local governments\u0026rsquo; spending on social services and policing is available as a Shiny app (opens in new tab) embedded on a WordPress site, which allows users to engage with the dashboard from within the context of a site they trust. We worked with journalists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (opens in new tab) to publish two interactive Shiny applications to communicate the scale and scope of prison gerrymandering in communities across Wisconsin. We also used a Shiny dashboard to build an interactive prototype for our partnership project with REL Northeast and Islands focused on educator diversity in Connecticut. In this case the Shiny dashboard was helpful to make a rapid prototyping environment to quickly gather stakeholder feedback before building out design requirements in the more robust, but less nimble enterprise dashboard.\nStatistical tools we\u0026rsquo;ve built or are building By far the most popular thing I\u0026rsquo;ve ever written is a guide on how to fit and evaluate multilevel models in R. I co-developed and maintain a popular R package (merTools) (opens in new tab) that makes it easier to work with multilevel models. It\u0026rsquo;s the only non-MCMC way to get prediction intervals out of generalized linear multilevel models and the fastest way to get intervals for really big models. It\u0026rsquo;s increasingly hard to find the time to maintain and improve merTools (see the pending pull requests on GitHub (opens in new tab)), so if you know of a way I could find financial support to give the package some care and feeding, let me know!\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re looking to build your fluency with multilevel models and Bayesian estimation, I highly recommend Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath (opens in new tab) and Michael Clark\u0026rsquo;s excellent guide (opens in new tab) on multilevel estimation for Bayesian shrinkage (to account for small sample sizes). I used both as guides while working on new ways to generate credible intervals for rare event rates (like arrests in schools) and to make appropriate comparisons among subgroups of very different sizes. We\u0026rsquo;re still in the exploration phase of this work but I think it\u0026rsquo;s a promising approach to overcome some of the statistical challenges in equity analyses. Another statistical tool we\u0026rsquo;re developing is streamlined geospatial joins and spatial interpolation to accurately combine data at different geographies. I learned more about the tools for doing this from participating on the advisory board of the Python geosnap project (opens in new tab). We put these tools to work to provide a first-ever look at the impact of prison gerrymandering on state legislatures in all 50 states, which required us to make multiple complex spatial joins at different aggregations as described in our blog post.\nView tweet by @tableau on X Tools we are learning about or in search of Doing public data analysis requires lots of behind-the-scenes data preparation, and it\u0026rsquo;s still far too easy to make mistakes and far too hard to seamlessly document. But, we\u0026rsquo;re trying to get more deliberate, transparent, and accurate with our analysis and communication every day. Together we did a good job of leaning into the beginner mindset, trying our hand at new skills, and sharpening existing ones. Hannah watched and re-watched and watched again several R instructional videos I\u0026rsquo;ve recorded for various clients. Learning new tools is hard. It turns out some of those jokes in my instructional videos hold up to a rewatch though :-) And she took a class on JavaScript and CSS offered by a volunteer at our local library.\nOn top of that, we\u0026rsquo;re still learning more about:\nPython (django and geospatial interpolation) PowerBI and Tableau Javascript PostGIS and spatial databases And one of us is still slowly learning R... We still have quite a few unknowns in the lab where I haven\u0026rsquo;t found the right tool to support our work. I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear if you have any recommendations or suggestions on how we could solve the following problems with self-hosted or open source software:\nDigital Asset Management for a searchable database for managing our graphics, slides, videos, and other content (and an affordable stock photo marketplace) Data management to make our data archives searchable with metadata and even able to be queried and explored A good solution for self-hosting Shiny applications and API endpoints Keep in mind one of us is probably too early of an adopter and the other is a reluctant one 😉 But we both welcome your recommendations, just hit reply and let us know!\nOur next issue will be a review of our projects this year, a selection of our highlights, and a bit more about what you can expect from Civilytics and The Civic Pulse next year. As always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"November 29, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/getting-things-done-2021/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This issue will skew a bit tech-heavy because in 2021 I spent a lot of time rethinking the tools we use to improve collaboration and scale to more than one employee. This will be the first in an annual issue of The Civic Pulse looking into our lab and sharing a bit about how we get things done. If you are curious about tech, thinking about business software solutions for your own work, or wonder a bit about what the day-to-day in a small data science company looks like — I hope you enjoy! In this issue you’ll find:\nOpen source tools spurring our collaboration and securing our data\nCommunication tools for sharing findings to very different audiences\nStatistical tools we’ve built or are building\nTools we are learning about or in search of — have an idea/recommendation/suggestion, let us know!\n","title":"Getting things done at Civilytics (Jared’s version)","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Read Education Data Done Right Volume II now Civilytics\u0026rsquo; origin is in education data analysis and, though it makes up a significant share of our work, it\u0026rsquo;s often work that we can be less public about. So this month we\u0026rsquo;re excited to devote the newsletter to our education work! In this edition you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nAnnouncing our new book -- EDDR Volume II: Building on Each Others\u0026rsquo; Work! A preview of the chapters I contributed on data governance and early warning systems Updates on our other education work at Civilytics As always, thank you for reading. On to the topics.\nAnnouncing EDDR Volume II - Available Now First up, Education Data Done Right (EDDR) Volume II (opens in new tab) is now available for purchase! Read on to find out while you\u0026rsquo;ll want to pick up a copy. For this volume, I teamed up with 5 data analysts with expertise in public education agencies across the country to write a second volume for the Education Data Done Right (EDDR) series! The book is available now and we need your help spreading the word!\nThe EDDR series is intended for education agency data analysts, as well as data managers, strategists, and leaders seeking to improve how their agency operates. Many agency analysts come from a social science research background and the transition to work inside agencies can come with a lot of new challenges. The series is a guide through those challenges. It is a book by agency data analysts for agency data analysts. Behind the scenes, I can tell you that all of the authors have worked hard to bring this book to press from our initial project kick-off in late 2019. It took many late nights, even more apologies for delays, and a lot of decisions to get our DIY book written, designed, laid out, and listed online. I\u0026rsquo;m really grateful to the team and proud to be able to share their wisdom with the world. The new volume was written by Dorothyjean Cratty, LaCole Foots, Wendy Geller, Justin Meyer, Ellis Ott, and me. New chapters explain how to document work to ensure continuity of operation and transparency of agencies\u0026rsquo; important work; how early warning systems can be useful in agencies\u0026rsquo; work; why self-awareness of how identities shape the work is one of the most important skills data analysts must have; and much more.\nWe'd love to have your support! You can order a print copy, Kindle version, or a DRM free epub here:\nhttps://www.eddatadoneright.com/ (opens in new tab)\nThe suggested price is $18 but you can always get the PDF version for \u0026ldquo;pay-what-you-can\u0026rdquo; via LeanPub. If you find the book useful you can support the series in a number of ways: Share the book with your colleagues Write a review on Amazon for any book in the series Send us a testimonial to include on the LeanPub page or book homepage My Chapters in EDDR Volume II I contributed two chapters to this edition -- one co-authored with Wendy Geller about data governance and another about early warning systems.\nData Governance One of the questions I get asked the most is about what agencies and analysts should be doing to improve their data governance. In Chapter 5, Wendy and I define data governance as the set of policies, rules, and practices that determine how data are collected, stored, accessed, and used inside of an organization.\nThe key takeaway: Data governance isn\u0026rsquo;t a project to be completed. It\u0026rsquo;s an ongoing organization-wide duty.\nIt can be daunting to know where to get started with data governance, or what data governance tasks should be done first and by whom. To orient yourself to different governance challenges and identify the questions to focus on for each, one strategy we suggest is crossing your position in the organization with the development phase of the data system(s) you're working on.\nFrom EDDR Volume II: Chapter 5 Data Governance Once you \u0026ldquo;locate yourself\u0026rdquo; by development phase and position, Wendy and I provide a checklist with specific questions to ask. We also examine a few different angles leaders can take to evaluate their organizational needs and identify which data governance tasks are most urgent.\nI got my start in data governance work as the Pupil Data Privacy Officer on a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant. Every time I heard or talked about \u0026quot;data governance\u0026quot; in our project meetings, it felt smushy and vague. The strategies in this chapter are intended to help make your data governance tasks tangible and actionable while building a data culture.\nEarly Warning Systems In chapter 6, I provide a practical guide to Early Warning Systems (EWS). I\u0026rsquo;m probably best known in education research for the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System and the detailed step-by-step technical guide to its implementation that I published in the Journal of Education Data Mining (opens in new tab). This chapter covers what I have come to realize are the much more important aspects of any education analytic project -- the steps in the stakeholder design process. There are a lot of EWSs and other predictive analytics being built in education agencies and sold by vendors -- but many of these projects fail to have an impact because they were not developed through a process that engaged and gave voice to stakeholders. The chapter shows why stakeholder feedback is critical to success and gives a roadmap from design to rollout and maintenance for a successful system. The guide starts with questions to assess whether or not your agency actually needs and will benefit from an EWS. It next discusses the people, data, and support systems you need to have in place (or obtain) to capture the value of the EWS. Then, I give a consumer perspective to the major design elements of an EWS, focusing on how to know what\u0026rsquo;s important and what\u0026rsquo;s not in the technical design. I offer key questions to ask about each of the design elements (e.g., outcome, predictors, pre-processing, model training). Next, the guide provides a variety of suggestions about how to pilot and rollout an EWS successfully, finally concluding with important notes on ongoing maintenance and improvements you will need to invest in to keep deriving value from the system.\nIf you are starting to build a prediction system of any kind \u0026ndash; but especially predicting student data \u0026ndash; this chapter captures the best advice I have. In particular, the chapter talks a lot about opening up design decisions to a broader audience in order to build a system in a technically sound way that is also accountable and applied equitably.\nPS. When I was prototyping the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS), I thought the magic was in my machine learning approach. But as we moved forward from the prototype to production, my colleagues showed me that the real magic would come if we developed the system through a process that was transparent, built trust, and gave educators a voice in design decisions. The reason - only then would the system be used and have an impact. It worked! Here\u0026rsquo;s me receiving a government innovation award for DEWS. I was very happy...but should have fixed my nametag!\nUpdates on Our Other Education Work It hasn\u0026rsquo;t all been trying to push this book over the finish line! In the last month or so, we\u0026rsquo;ve also:\nAdded another What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) (opens in new tab) certification to our capabilities when Hannah completed the single-case design WWC certification. If you need a thorough, fast, and skilled reviewer for systematic reviews, let us know! Presented at an advisory board meeting for the Urban Institute Education Data Portal (opens in new tab) on known data errors in the Civil Rights Data Collection and their impact on equity analyses Presented about the barriers and benefits to establishing informal open-source collaborations around education analytics to the Student Leadership Network Wendy Geller and I gave a book talk on EDDR Volume 1 (opens in new tab) to Stanford\u0026rsquo;s Education Data Science Masters students and fielded a lot of great questions from future education data analysts. No link roundup this edition -- consider giving EDDR a read!\\\nAs always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media.\nAnd, we love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"November 8, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/new-book-on-education-data-available-today/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Civilytics’ origin is in education data analysis and, though it makes up a significant share of our work, it’s often work that we can be less public about. So this month we’re excited to devote the newsletter to our education work!","title":"New book on education data available today","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Plus our takeaways from an important new study on deaths due to police\nIf you've been reading this newsletter then you are probably familiar with gerrymandering, but are you familiar with \u0026quot;prison gerrymandering\u0026quot;?\nEach year more than 2 million people are imprisoned, often far from home. Prisons are highly concentrated pockets of people who are usually held in otherwise sparsely populated areas. The Census counts prisoners as residing at the prison, as opposed to their last home residence. The way that these facts combine to reduce the political power of more racially diverse urban areas and increase the political power of whiter rural areas is known as \u0026ldquo;prison gerrymandering\u0026rdquo; and we have two new resources -- a dashboard and news article -- related to this topic to share with you in this edition of the Civic Pulse.\nIn this edition, you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nOur new dashboard on prison gerrymandering A more detailed look at prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin Our takeaways from a landmark study about underreporting deaths due to police violence Applications are open for the Strategic Data Project A roundup of what we\u0026rsquo;re reading As always, thank you for reading. On to the topics.\nNew dashboard about prison gerrymandering We are very excited that our new dashboard (opens in new tab) created with Lovelytics for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub is now live! Please check it out along with our post introducing the dashboard and a second post explaining the data and methods (opens in new tab) in more detail.\nView tweet by @tableau on X The dashboard focuses on prison gerrymandering, which is the practice of counting prisoners where they are confined, often far from their home, for the purpose of redistricting. It couldn't be a more important time to understand this issue as states redraw their legislative districts using 2020 Census data. Decisions made now will affect political representation for the next decade -- and 11 states have resolved to end this practice!\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the fact we were most surprised to learn from the project: In 10 states, an entire state legislative district could be formed from prisoners. That is, in 10 states, if the incarcerated population were counted as a single district, they would elect their own state representative.\nWe also learned that:\nIn every single state, Black/African American people are a higher share of the prison population than the non-incarcerated population. In 26 state legislative districts, over 10% of the entire population is incarcerated. In 500 districts, more than 10% of all Black people in the district are incarcerated! 24 out of every 1,000 Black people were in prison in 2010 compared to only 4.5 out of every 1,000 White people. We do want to convey some hopefulness here, not about mass incarceration and racial disparities but about ending this particular form of gerrymandering. In the 2010 redistricting cycle, only a few states addressed prison gerrymandering but, this decade, 11 states have resolved to end the practice (and a 12th, my home state of Montana, might do so soon!).\nThe Prison Policy Initiative tracks the latest state developments very closely and has lots of great resources, including information on state-specific groups working to end prison gerrymandering. Check out their website (opens in new tab) to learn more. As we mention on the dashboard and in the posts, this analysis was inspired by and benefited greatly from the Prison Policy Inititative\u0026rsquo;s work, particularly Peter Wagner and Daniel Kopf\u0026rsquo;s 2015 report \u0026ldquo;The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration (opens in new tab).\u0026rdquo; The dashboard builds on PPI\u0026rsquo;s analysis to focus on legislative districts rather than counties and, thus, to focus on prison gerrymandering more directly (though it introduces some methodological challenges described in our post)!\nWe hope you\u0026rsquo;ll check it out both for the national patterns and to better understand the status of prison gerrymandering in your state.\nZooming in on prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin Listen up all you Badgers in the audience -- this one's for you:\nI'm very excited about this new story (opens in new tab) from Natasha Haverty in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Natasha explains where prison gerrymandering is happening in Wisconsin, who is working to change it (and who isn't), and what some strategies for change are. What I appreciate most about the article is the quotes from multiple legislators, both those who benefit and are harmed by the practice.\nPlease check out the story including the interactive charts I contributed for the story. And please share with your networks if you think they'd find it interesting!\nOur takeaways from a landmark study on underreporting deaths due to police violence Did you see this new article in The Lancet (a British medical journal) examining fatal police violence by race and state? The study found that official government death records did not correctly report over 50% of all deaths attributable to police violence. Over 30,000 people died from police violence in the last 40 years (1980-2018) but less than half of those deaths were officially attributed to police.\nhttps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01609-3/fulltext (opens in new tab)\nThe study found that rates of underreporting deaths due to police violence vary greatly across states. The 5 states with the highest underreporting rates were:\nOklahoma: 83.7% Wyoming: 79.1% Alabama: 76.9% Louisiana: 75.7% Nebraska: 72.9% In these states, more than 7 out of 10 deaths caused by police were miscategorized as attributable to another cause. The five states with the lowest underreporting rates were:\nMaryland: 16.4% Utah: 19.8% New Mexico: 26.4% Massachusetts: 32.5% Oregon: 36.3% Other findings include:\nRates of underreporting varied significantly by the victims\u0026rsquo; race/ethnicity. The greatest underreporting of deaths was for Black, non-Hispanic people. 59.5% of their deaths due to police violence were misreported. However, rates were above 50% for White, non-Hispanic people too. Deaths due to police violence declined for most groups of people from 1980 to 1990 but have remained relatively constant since then. The rate of police killings for non-Hispanic Black people is about 3.5 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic White people. We wrote a post summarizing the study\u0026rsquo;s data and findings and really encourage you to read the original study (opens in new tab) and/or our summary of it -- there are a lot of thought-provoking quotes and details covered. We wanted to highlight three of our takeaways from the study here:\nThere are lots of avenues to improve the government\u0026rsquo;s data collection on deaths due to police involvement. Pushing on multiple avenues will probably be more effective than only pursuing one. Possible directions include pushing all states to participate in the National Violent Death Reporting System, including a checkbox for police involvement on death certificates, and establishing the independence of forensic pathologists from law enforcement. Without accurately documenting how often people are killed by police, we can\u0026rsquo;t understand if any police reforms work. This is also why, in policy evaluations, the biggest \u0026ldquo;negative externality\u0026rdquo; of policing \u0026ndash; civilian deaths \u0026ndash; is unaccounted for in almost all studies of \u0026ldquo;police effectiveness.\u0026rdquo; The study could be extended in lots of useful ways, including by estimating the degree of underreporting in specific counties and cities over time. This might open up more avenues for individuals and groups to hold our local officials (coroners, medical examiners, and police and court officials) accountable for being accurate and honest in deaths due to police involvement. Applications are open for Strategic Data Project fellows and partnership organizations I really enjoy working with the Strategic Data Project (opens in new tab) (SDP) at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard -- which is why I want to encourage you or your organization to consider applying for the next cohort!\nFor fellows, SDP is a two-year program in which candidates become full-time employees of educational organizations for two years, working on key analytic projects for their org with training and support from SDP (including me!). SDP now offers both PK-12 and higher education placements -- I\u0026rsquo;m excited about SDP\u0026rsquo;s recent expansion into higher ed because I think the sector is ripe for a lot of the collaboration and sharing of resources and processes that SDP encourages. SDP is also seeking partner organizations at all levels of education.\nIn the last couple weeks, I presented sessions to the PK-12 Cohort 12 fellows on predictive analytics and data visualization and to the SDP Higher Education fellows on Data Governance. If you or your organization might be interested in joining SDP, check out the application.\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re reading and thinking about: New Report Highlights Milwaukee\u0026rsquo;s Police Pension Problem (opens in new tab)\nThe City of Milwaukee is on its way to becoming a police department and not much else. This new report from The African American Round Table is an honest accounting of that fiscal reality. @LiberateMke (opens in new tab) is one of the only voices putting solutions on the table and we always learn from them when we get a chance to contribute to their work.\nWhen a Nobel Is Not a Nobel (opens in new tab)\nEconomics was not one of the original Nobel prizes. The creation by a bank of an Economics Nobel Prize was an all-time brilliant marketing move. I've complained about this before, but this article captures the problem of branding economics as \u0026quot;more empirical\u0026quot; and superior to other social sciences. Economics has contributed a lot to our understanding of the social world, but the hubris it brings has also led to many damaging mistakes.\nWhen Kidney Donation Goes Viral (opens in new tab)\nOne of my absolute favorite reads is Rajiv Sethi - an economics professor who does not shy away from the moral and human in analysis of difficult topics. I learned a lot about the dynamics of organ donation from this piece plus a little bit about that whole \u0026quot;Bad Art Friend\u0026quot; thing too.\nA Poll Tax by Another Name (opens in new tab)\nIt was amazing when Florida voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of restoring voting rights to people who had served their court-mandated sentences. But unfortunately that was just another step in the long struggle to maintain the right to vote. Now people are being forced to repay the dizzying (and absurd) fines and fees accumulated while in the criminal justice system before being able to vote. This article captures the unfairness of it, including a case of someone who would have to pay $50,000 to vote.\nFast Company Recognizes the Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab)\nI was really pleased to see the Racial Equity Data Hub project from the Tableau Foundation featured in this roundup of projects lauded for their innovation in design for social good. A lot of the recognized projects looked really inspiring so check it out!\nAnd finally, something positive and close to my heart:\nSkateparks and the Real Montana (opens in new tab)\nNews coverage of my home state of Montana tends to focus on tourist-friendly vacation spots or the lives of the rich and famous. This photo essay is different. It depicts Jeff Ament's (bassist of a little band called Pearl Jam) effort to bring skateparks to as many towns big and small across the state as possible. Along the way you'll get a sense of a Montana that is much more familiar to me. Highly recommend.\n","date":"October 28, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/civic-pulse-mass-incarceration/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"More than 2 million people are imprisoned in the US; relocated and held in a community different from the one they reside in. The population relocation that is a direct result of mass incarceration shapes political power in every state. Learn more in the Civic Pulse.","title":"How Mass Incarceration Erodes Black Political Power","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"The British medical journal The Lancet recently published \u0026ldquo;Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980\u0026ndash;2019: a network meta-regression (opens in new tab).\u0026rdquo;\nThe tl;dr There is no official record of people killed by police in the U.S. (though there is an official record of deaths of law enforcement officers). A new (opens in new tab) s (opens in new tab)tudy (opens in new tab) finds that official government death records did not correctly report over 50% (55.5%) of all deaths attributable to police violence. Over 30,000 people died from police violence in the last 40 years (1980-2018) but less than half of those deaths were officially attributed to police.\nTo determine this, the researchers compared data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) (opens in new tab), which contains all death certificates in the U.S., to data from three non-governmental open-source databases on police violence: Fatal Encounters (opens in new tab), Mapping Police Violence (opens in new tab), and The Counted (opens in new tab). This was done to measure the degree of underreporting of police violence in the NVSS \u0026ndash; the official record of deaths in the U.S.\nWhy This Study Is Important This is a landmark study of state violence \u0026ndash; and underreporting of state violence \u0026ndash; in the U.S. The study:\nsheds light on how the lack of official statistics on police violence allows police killings to be underreported documents how this underreporting varies across states and by characteristics of those killed provides some insight into why such underreporting occurs (due to decisions by county medical examiners, some shaped by political pressure, and decisions about data collection methods). At Civilytics we strive to put social science in the hands of the public to make change. In that spirit, this is the first in a series of posts highlighting important social science research and explaining our take on how this research should shape the way we think about our communities and government.\nPolice killings of civilians are state violence. State violence means violence carried out by our government, which represents us, the public. In many countries, police killing civilians is almost unheard of but, in the U.S., police kill civilians every day. State violence should be heavily regulated, strongly controlled, and carefully reviewed. This is not the case in the U.S.\nPolice killings do not just represent individual tragedies (though they are). Police killings are also collective moral choices. How we identify, investigate, measure, and review them is a measure of our values. In the U.S., the public has no official accounting of how many people in our country, state, county, or city have been killed by the police. The U.S. does maintain official statistics on all deaths, including the \u0026ldquo;cause of death,\u0026rdquo; and these statistics are sometimes used to estimate how many people are killed by police (just as they\u0026rsquo;re used to estimate how many people die of heart disease, breast cancer, etc.).\nThis study shows that official cause of death determinations underreport by half how many people are killed by the police. This underreporting may, in many cases, be called a statistical cover-up.\nWe cannot reckon with the pervasiveness of police violence in the U.S. until we honestly confront it. This paper provides an important, accurate accounting of the lives lost to police violence.\nStudy Findings The study found that rates of underreporting deaths due to police violence vary greatly across states. The 5 states with the highest underreporting rates were:\nOklahoma: 83.7% Wyoming: 79.1% Alabama: 76.9% Louisiana: 75.7% Nebraska: 72.9% In these states, more than 7 or 8 out of 10 deaths caused by police were miscategorized as having no police involvement. Put another way, for every 3 deaths correctly attributed to police, another 7 or more were misattributed to something else.\nThe five states with the lowest underreporting rates were:\nMaryland: 16.4% Utah: 19.8% New Mexico: 26.4% Massachusetts: 32.5% Oregon: 36.3% Even in the \u0026ldquo;best case\u0026rdquo; states, police killings are underreported. However, \u0026ldquo;statistical coverups\u0026rdquo; of state-inflicted deaths are occurring much more frequently in some states than others.\nRates of underreporting also varied significantly by the victims\u0026rsquo; race/ethnicity. The greatest underreporting of deaths was for Black, non-Hispanic people. 59.5% of their deaths due to police violence were misreported. However, rates were above 50% for White, non-Hispanic people too.\nFigure 1 copied below from the article shows the percentage of police violence deaths that were misclassified. Warmer colors indicate a higher percentage of misclassified deaths. For example, in Wyoming, around 75% of White non-Hispanic deaths due to police violence were classified as due to another cause.1\nFigure from article. (opens in new tab)\nThe study also shows that deaths due to police violence declined for most groups of people from 1980 to 1990 but have remained relatively constant since then. This is illustrated by the graph below, excerpted from Figure 4 in the article, which shows mortality rates due to police violence for different racial/ethnic groups over time.\nFigure from article. (opens in new tab)\nEvidence suggests that there have been some successful reforms to reduce police violence from 1970 to 1985; 50 cities with populations larger than 250000 residents halved their fatal police violence from 353 to 172 per year, primarily through banning shooting of non-violent fleeing suspects\u0026hellip;.However, \u0026hellip; body cameras, implicit bias training, de-escalation, and diversifying police forces have all failed to further meaningfully reduce police violence rates\u0026hellip;.[F]atal police violence rates and the large racial disparities in fatal police violence have remained largely unchanged or have increased since 1990. (p. 1251)\nThe study also describes some other patterns that have been well-documented elsewhere but are clearly illustrated in these data as well. For example, the authors report that:\nThe rate of police killings for non-Hispanic Black people is about 3.5 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic White people. The rate of police killings for Hispanic people is about 1.8 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic White people. For men of all race/ethnicities, deaths due to police violence are highest for those ages 20-50, and particularly for those ages 20-35. 95% of people killed by police are men. Study\u0026rsquo;s Conclusion The study concludes with a very powerful paragraph stating:\nAlthough it might seem drastic to many in the USA to defund, disarm, or abolish militarized police, there are many places where living without militarised police is already a reality. 19 nations, including Norway and the UK, do not arm their police officers or only arm select officers. The difference these practices have on loss of life is staggering: no one died from police violence in Norway in 2019, and three people were recorded to have died in England and Wales from police violence between 2018 and 2019. To respond to this public health crisis, the USA must replace militarised policing with evidenced-based support for communities, prioritise the safety of the public, and value Black lives. (p. 1252)\nThree Implications This is a study with a lot of important implications and takeaways. Here are some of ours:\n1. The paper points out that there is a government data collection effort, the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) (opens in new tab), that would be better than the National Vital Statistics System in trying to account for all deaths due to police violence. However, not all states are participating in it. Some states started participating in the NVDRS as early as 2003 but others are still not participating. And, importantly, the NVDRS does not seem to have very good coverage of non-firearm police killings.\nThere are lots of ways forward within the government data systems, such as pushing all states to participate in the NVDRS, including a checkbox for police involvement on death certificates rather than relying on mention of it in a text field, and establishing the independence of forensic pathologists from law enforcement.\nWe are big fans of open-source data and analysis but our moral value should also be that the state accurately report how many people are killed by state agents each year. Obviously nongovernmental data has been crucial for exposing the extent to which these deaths are underreported, but we need to push for state data systems \u0026ndash; not just volunteers \u0026ndash; to accurately track these incidents.\n2. Without accurately documenting how often people are killed by police, we can\u0026rsquo;t understand if any police reforms work. This is also why, in policy evaluations, the biggest \u0026quot;negative externality\u0026quot; of policing \u0026ndash; civilian deaths \u0026ndash; is unaccounted for in almost all studies of \u0026ldquo;police effectiveness.\u0026rdquo; Better data, better studies.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s been a lot of media coverage of this study and this has been one of the takeaways highlighted in most of the stories. (Most of the stories we\u0026rsquo;ve read talked to the same sources and had the same things to say so we haven\u0026rsquo;t found any story particularly useful. However, for a selection of coverage, here are gift links from The Washington Post (opens in new tab) and New York Times (opens in new tab). And this Bloomberg City Lab (opens in new tab) article was also perhaps better than average.)\n3. An interesting extension of the paper could look at underreporting of deaths due to police in specific counties and cities. The study shows that there's variation across states in the degree to which medical examiners\u0026rsquo; rulings deny police involvement in deaths. This also undoubtedly varies by county too, and it could be useful to use the data and methods from this study to estimate the number of underreported police killings in specific counties and cities over time. We can all hold our local officials (coroners, medical examiners, and police and court officials) accountable for being accurate and honest and let them know that this information matters.\nData Details For those interested, here are some key points to understand about the data sources used in the study:\nDeath certificates (including cause of death) are filled out by a medical examiner or coroner for homicides and cases of suspected \u0026ldquo;foul play.\u0026rdquo; Although systems like NVSS (opens in new tab) \u0026ldquo;are considered to be reliable sources on causes of death, they present a potential conflict of interest for deaths from police violence, since the same state responsible for violence is also responsible for reporting it\u0026rdquo; (p. 1240). Regarding the 3 non-governmental data sources: Mapping Police Violence (opens in new tab) tracks police killings from 2013-present. The Counted (opens in new tab), a project of The Guardian newspaper, tracked people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in 2015 and 2016. Fatal Encounters (opens in new tab) covers a longer timeframe (2005 \u0026ndash; present) but includes all people killed during encounters with the police. The researchers excluded 22% of deaths in the Fatal Encounters dataset, explaining: \u0026ldquo;we assumed that any death in FE with cause listed as \u0026lsquo;Vehicle,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;Drug overdose,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;Undetermined,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;Medical emergency,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;Other,\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Unknown\u0026rsquo; would be less likely to involve direct violence perpetrated by the police, and therefore excluded them. [\u0026hellip;] A major limitation of this assumption is that in cases where there are no eyewitnesses, even the open-source methodology relies on police and autopsy reports, which incorrectly over-emphasise the role of drugs and medical emergencies through medically contested conditions like \u0026ldquo;excited delirium,\u0026rdquo; which may be rooted in racial stereotypes.\u0026rdquo; (Appendix p. 6). The authors also acknowledge that deaths involving Tasers, asphyxiation, and other non-firearm mechanisms are heavily contested, with police statements and autopsy reports sometimes claiming that drug use and medical conditions are responsible for death. This likely leads to some undercounting of deaths due to police violence across all four data sources included in the study. According to the study, previous research has found that, for police violence deaths that are misclassified, the most common coded cause of death is civilian assault.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"October 15, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/underreporting-deaths-due-to-police/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"A new study finds that official government death records underreport by more than 50% how many people are killed by police. This post summarizes the study’s findings and data and offers our take on how this research should shape the way we think about our communities and government.","title":"New Study Illuminates Underreporting of Deaths due to Police","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"We hope you\u0026rsquo;ve seen our new dashboard (opens in new tab) on prison gerrymandering created with Lovelytics (opens in new tab) for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab). If not, please check it out along with our previous post explaining why now is such an important time to understand what prison gerrymandering is and where change is happening.\nView tweet by @tableau on X We wanted to share details of the analysis for those interested in the data and methods. As we\u0026rsquo;ve mentioned elsewhere, this analysis was inspired by and benefited greatly from Peter Wagner and Daniel Kopf\u0026rsquo;s July 2015 report, \u0026ldquo;The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration (opens in new tab),\u0026rdquo; published by the Prison Policy Initiative (opens in new tab). The main difference in our analysis is the focus on legislative districts, rather than counties. Legislative districts illustrate prison gerrymandering more directly but require adding another geographic layer to the analysis.\nData Sources Most data for this project comes directly or indirectly from the Census. We start with the Census Bureau\u0026rsquo;s Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) files. (opens in new tab) These contain geographic entity codes (GEOIDs) for many types of geographies, including upper- and lower-house state legislative districts, but do not contain demographic data. We use the 2013 TIGER files which contain the legal boundaries as of January 1, 2013, which is long enough after the 2010 Census for all states to have completed the redistricting process and drawn their legislative boundaries for the 2011-2021 decade.\nFor the population of each state legislative district, including residents\u0026rsquo; race/ethnicity, we get the 2010 Census Summary File 1 (opens in new tab) (SF1) block file, which contains population data for each census tract, block, county, etc., using the \u0026ldquo;get_decennial\u0026rdquo; function in the tidycensus package in R. The state legislative districts included in this file are from the 2006 election cycle boundaries since this file is prepared in part to aid in the redistricting process. Therefore, this file must be matched to the geography file at the block, not legislative district, level. As the graphic (opens in new tab) below shows, Census blocks are the smallest level of data collection and form the basis for all larger aggregations of Census data, including state legislative districts.\nNext, data on the number of people incarcerated and their race/ethnicity comes from PPI, who have prepared, analyzed and made available data (opens in new tab) from the U.S. Census Bureau\u0026rsquo;s 2010 Group Quarters collection at the block level. According to PPI (opens in new tab), the Census Bureau does not directly publish counts of people in \u0026ldquo;group quarters\u0026rdquo; by facility type (e.g., \u0026ldquo;correctional facilities\u0026rdquo; for adults vs. student housing) or by race/ethnicity.1 Therefore, we thank PPI for the hard work of preparing these files and especially for making them publicly available. The files include state legislative district boundaries but they are again prior to the 2010 redistricting so we again need to match using Census blocks.2\nThe Census defines group quarters (opens in new tab) as \u0026ldquo;places where people live or stay in a group living arrangement that are owned or managed by entities or organizations providing housing and/or services for the residents.\u0026rdquo; Group quarters include prisons, military barracks, college student housing, residential treatments, nursing facilities, and more.\nThe last data source that we link to the legislative districts is the Open States Bulk Data API (opens in new tab), which reports what political party represents each district. Current party membership was as June 28, 2021 (the data we accessed it). The Open States district number was used to match up with the number in the US Census boundary files.\nThe final data source (opens in new tab), which is at the state- not district-level, is information about which states have taken action to end prison gerrymandering. The Prison Policy Initiative groups states into three categories: those that have ended prison gerrymandering at the state level for the current redistricting cycle, those that have ended it at the state level for future cycles only, and those where some local jurisdictions — but not the state itself — have taken steps to address it. As of the most recent update to this post, the picture looks like this:\nStatus States Ended prison gerrymandering (current cycle) California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Washington Ended prison gerrymandering (future cycles only, e.g. 2030) Illinois Local action only — some cities/counties, no statewide reform 200+ cities and counties across other states; PPI does not publish a definitive state-by-state breakdown of local-only action Source: Prison Policy Initiative (opens in new tab). PPI maintains the canonical, continuously updated list — check there for the current status.\nFor an interactive, map-based view of this data alongside the legislative-district-level analysis described in this post, explore the dashboard on the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub → (opens in new tab)\nPotential Data Issues or Errors In this case, the main potential source of error comes from properly locating the 2010 blocks into their legislative districts. Spatial merging should, in theory, be perfect, but in practice differing resolutions and irregularities in the source shape files can lead blocks to be misplaced. We discuss above how we address this issue and the small number of (possibly erroneous) legislative districts we excluded. PPI has meticulously published the race/ethnicity of correctional populations (incarcerated populations) in each block, including their sources and methodology. If you are interested in examining a particular location in more detail, we recommend you view the data details on PPI\u0026rsquo;s website (opens in new tab).\nData on the political party control of legislative districts was obtained through the diligent work of the OpenStates project. Due to inconsistent identifiers used in the TIGER/Line files, not all legislative districts were able to be matched with the OpenStates data. Future work could reconcile these unmatched districts manually, but, for now, where no party control is shown on Tab 6, it is due to the limitations of the original TIGER file identifiers.\nAnalyses As Jared often discusses (opens in new tab), data preparation is usually the most essential part (and 90%) of the work. After completing the data acquisition and preparation described above, most of the analyses shown on the dashboard are pretty straightforward. We do want to share some analysis notes though, especially to highlight sample restrictions where applicable.\nFirst, the dashboard often uses the following categories: Black, Hispanic, White. These represent people who, according to the Census, identified as: Black alone; Hispanic; White alone, non-Hispanic. That means the Black and Hispanic categories are not mutually exclusive. It also means people who identify as two or more races are included in any counts of the total population (e.g., for the denominator when calculating the share of the free population who are Black) but are not included in either the Black or White category.3\nThe first tab, Mass Incarceration, shows the share of the prison population who is Black (or Hispanic, depending on which category is selected) compared to the share of the free (non-incarcerated) population from that group. The \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; population is not given by the Census \u0026ndash; we calculate it by subtracting the population in \u0026ldquo;correctional facilities\u0026rdquo; from the total population.4 The remaining calculations on this tab are straightforward (e.g., calculating incarceration rates per 1,000 members of a racial/ethnic group).\nThe second tab, Political Power and Prisons, introduces our first exclusion rule. The tab focuses on states\u0026rsquo; lower-house legislative districts so Nebraska with its unicameral legislature is excluded. The tab requires a variety of calculations, including (1) the number of lower-house legislative districts per state, identified by Civilytics from the website of each state's legislature;5 (2) the average number of residents per lower-house district in each state, calculated by taking the total population and dividing it by the number of seats; and (3) the number of districts that could be formed from people in prison, calculated by summing each state\u0026rsquo;s population in \u0026ldquo;correctional facilities\u0026rdquo; and then dividing by the state\u0026rsquo;s average district population size above. On the tab, states are grouped into the four Census regions (opens in new tab).\nThe third tab, Big Picture, shows how many legislative districts have a certain share of residents incarcerated (e.g., at least 10% of residents). This is calculated simply by dividing the number of people incarcerated in the district by the total population of the district. Because most districts do not have a prison (and, thus, do not have people counted as imprisoned within them), the chart focuses on districts that have at least some residents who are incarcerated.\nOn the fourth tab, Variation across Districts, a few sample size restrictions are added to help ensure that conclusions aren\u0026rsquo;t drawn based on very small numbers of people. Specifically, the chart is restricted to legislative districts where the free (non-incarcerated) population is at least 4,000 and the number of incarcerated people from the selected subgroup (Black; White, non-Hispanic; Hispanic) is at least 100. The second restriction is based on the approach used by the 2015 PPI report (opens in new tab) on which this analysis is modeled.\nOn the fifth tab, Pick Your State, the state-specific information on the right-side of the tab is not available for NE, which is again excluded because of its unicameral legislature, or for NH and VT because of misalignment with their legislative district data shape files (as mentioned above). Data are shown for some states that have ended prison gerrymandering but it\u0026rsquo;s important to remember for those states that the presence of large numbers of incarcerated residents in a district, while troubling, does not give a particular political party an apportionment advantage going forward. Legislative districts with 0 people incarcerated are shown in gray and labeled as \u0026ldquo;no prison\u0026rdquo; while those with fewer than 5 people incarcerated from the selected race/ethnicity and/or fewer than 50 non-incarcerated people from that race/ethnicity are shown in white and labeled as \u0026ldquo;insufficient data.\u0026rdquo;\nFor the bar chart in the lower right, incarcerated residents are coded as being in the racial minority if their selected race/ethnicity is less than 50% of the total population (including incarcerated individuals).\nFinally, the sixth tab, Party Control, shows what political party represented districts in 2021. The graph is restricted to district where at least 2% of residents are incarcerated. NE is excluded due to its unicameral legislature. For a few states (MA, NH, VT), party affiliation of the current legislators from Open States was not able to be matched to the district names in the Census files and so is not shown.6\nAdditional Thoughts: Why Publish This Post? We think it\u0026rsquo;s important to make analyses and the data preparation behind those analyses as open, public, and reproducible as possible. That means publishing the statistical scripting on git or other platforms when possible. It also means explaining the process in plain language so that someone who doesn\u0026rsquo;t read a specific type of code (R in this case) can still understand what was done and approximately how they might reproduce the work in a different programming language (something akin to literate programming (opens in new tab)).\nUnfortunately this adds more work \u0026ndash; as we discussed in this post about why we were the only fools who sunk unpaid time into understanding and documenting inequities in the ARPA funding for smaller cities and towns. But, when we can put forth the time to do this, we want to because we believe it\u0026rsquo;s critical to advancing transparent work on important issues facing the public.\nWe hope to see more groups and companies discussing why this matters and taking this approach.\nWe only include what PPI classifies as “institutionalized adult, correctional.” This excludes juvenile facilities and non-institutionalized forms of incarceration (e.g., home monitoring).\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWe dropped 6 legislative districts that had no proper name in the TIGER files and were matched with 0 Census blocks. In two states there were Census blocks that had no overlap with a legislative district, but this resulted in only 1 incarcerated person being excluded from the analysis.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nRace/ethnicity itself is complicated, and so is working with the race/ethnicity data in the Census. We would like to contribute to more clearly specifying what decisions we made in using the race/ethnicity categories and what limitations result.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWe use the adult incarcerated population because prison gerrymandering is affecting this group the most. However we use the total population of the district because legislative districts are drawn proportional to the whole population, not the voting age population.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nFor states with multi-member districts – that is multiple representatives elected for the same physical boundary (i.e., AZ, NH, NJ, SD, WA) – we included the number of people per representative, not per legislative district. For more information about states with multi-member districts, see https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_chambers_that_use_multi-member_districts (opens in new tab).\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nParty ID was also missing for 1 district in WI, 1 in OH, 1 in MI, 1 in ME, 1 in MD, 1 in LA, and 2 in AL.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"October 12, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/prison-gerrymandering-data-methods/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This post describes the data sources and methods used to create our dashboard on prison gerrymandering for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub.","title":"Prison Gerrymandering Dashboard: Data \u0026 Methods","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Prison gerrymandering\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a concept most people are familiar with. We hear about \u0026ldquo;regular\u0026rdquo; gerrymandering before every congressional election and after every decade\u0026rsquo;s Census. And we probably vaguely remember from school that the term \u0026ldquo;gerrymandering\u0026rdquo; was coined because the original \u0026ldquo;gerrymandered\u0026rdquo; district looked like a salamander and was drawn by a Massachusetts governor with the last name of Gerry.\nGraphic from Washington Post 2015 (opens in new tab)\nBut what is prison gerrymandering and why does it matter? To answer this question, a new dashboard (opens in new tab) created for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab) by Lovelytics (opens in new tab) and Civilytics Consulting (opens in new tab) starts with some building blocks many people already know.\nPrison gerrymandering is the practice of counting prisoners where they are confined, often far from their home, for the purpose of redistricting. Using prison gerrymandering, states can draw legislative districts that distort the \u0026ldquo;one person one vote\u0026rdquo; principle by taking advantage of the location of prisons to give residents of some districts more voting power and those of other districts less.\nThe first building block is mass incarceration and specifically racial disparities in mass incarceration. Over 2.2 million people were incarcerated in 2010. Black/African-American and American-Indian individuals were much more likely to be imprisoned than White, non-Hispanic people. For instance, in Maryland, 68% of people in prison were Black compared to only 29% of non-incarcerated Marylanders. In every state, Black/African-American people are a much greater share of the incarcerated population than the \u0026quot;free\u0026quot;1 population, sometimes by a ratio of 5 to 1 or more.\nCheck out the live dashboard (opens in new tab)!\nHow does mass incarceration connect with political representation? Many people know that, in most states, people in prison cannot vote ​(Lewis 2019)​. Fewer realize that people in prison count toward the population of the community where they\u0026rsquo;re incarcerated, not toward the population of their home community.\nSince the first U.S. Census, incarcerated people have been counted as residents of the prison, rather than at their last home address ​(Wang and Devarajan 2019)​. This affects political representation especially for the most local legislative districts.\n10 states incarcerate so many people that, if incarcerated people were counted together as a single district, they would elect their own representative to the state house.\nPrisons are disproportionately located in less densely populated rural areas, meaning that counting incarcerated people as residents of a prison tends to increase representation for rural communities and decrease representation for urban communities.2 Because of racial segregation and disparities in mass incarceration, this can result in large disparities between the racial/ethnic makeup of incarcerated residents of a district versus free residents.\nConsider states\u0026rsquo; lower legislative houses \u0026ndash; every state except Nebraska has one. Just as the U.S. House of Representatives has more seats than the Senate, state legislatures have more seats in their lower house, with each lower house legislator representing a smaller district and fewer constituents.\nLegislators almost always focus their efforts on free constituents and very rarely think of incarcerated people as part of their district \u0026ndash; even when incarcerated people make up 10% or more of the district ​(Wang and Devarajan 2019)​.\nBecause of prison gerrymandering, the race/ethnicity of people incarcerated in a district is often very different from that of the district\u0026rsquo;s free residents. For example, in 521 legislative districts, more than 10% of all Black people in the district are incarcerated! On the dashboard (opens in new tab), you can explore how many districts in what states have exceptionally large disparities between the incarcerated and free population.\nGo to the dashboard (opens in new tab) to learn more.\nSome states are taking action to end prison gerrymandering The dashboard shows that 11 states have eliminated prison gerrymandering and two have a change pending. For states that haven\u0026rsquo;t ended prison gerrymandering, users can drill down to specific legislative districts to see which have large racial disparities between free and incarcerated residents. For example, you can see which districts in a given state have over 10% of Black/African-American people in prison.\nWhy now? Redistricting is underway in state legislatures across the country.3 Decisions made in this redistricting cycle will affect political representation for the next 10 years.\nBy walking through how prison gerrymandering occurs \u0026mdash; from racial disparities in mass incarceration to counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison to locating prisons predominantly in rural areas \u0026mdash; this dashboard hopes to break down a complicated issue into clear components. The dashboard focuses on state lower-house legislative districts, but the issue affects all representative districts including county supervisors, upper-house districts, and the U.S. Congress. The smaller the district, the greater the distortion from prison gerrymandering ​(\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t Count on the Census\u0026rdquo; 2020)​.\nStates and their residents are increasingly recognizing the issue and taking steps to address it, so now is a great time to learn more about prison gerrymandering and get involved. The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) (opens in new tab) has lots of great resources, including up-to-date information about the status of prison gerrymandering in each state and state-specific groups working to end the practice.\nLearn More We also published an in-depth discussion of how the data and analysis for this dashboard came together. Sign up for our newsletter to get monthly updates on our work and get more in-depth data analysis highlighting major issues in equity across the country.\\\nBackground on data and authors This dashboard is based on 2010 Census data because districts haven\u0026rsquo;t yet been drawn using the 2020 data \u0026ndash; that\u0026rsquo;s the impetus for creating the dashboard now! The dashboard was inspired by and benefited greatly from PPI\u0026rsquo;s 2015 report \u0026ldquo;The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration (opens in new tab).\u0026rdquo; This dashboard was created by Jared Knowles of Civilytics Consulting (opens in new tab) and Chantilly Jaggernauth of Lovelytics (opens in new tab).\nData on incarcerated populations comes from the U.S. Census Bureau\u0026rsquo;s Group Quarters collection. These data (opens in new tab) were prepared, analyzed, and made available at the Census-block level by PPI. Census TIGER 2013 (opens in new tab) files were used for state legislative district boundaries, and 2010 Census Population data for state lower house legislative districts came from the Decennial Census SF1 Summary File. Current party membership of state legislative districts was provided by the Open States Bulk Data API (opens in new tab). The number of seats in every state legislature were collected and recorded by Civilytics.\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t Count on the Census.\u0026rdquo; 2020. Reveal. February 1. https://revealnews.org/podcast/dont-count-on-the-census/ (opens in new tab).\nLewis, Nicole. 2019. \u0026ldquo;In Just Two States, All Prisoners Can Vote. Here\u0026rsquo;s Why Few Do.\u0026rdquo; The Marshall Project. June 11. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/11/in-just-two-states-all-prisoners-can-vote-here-s-why-few-do (opens in new tab).\nWang, Hansi Lo, and Kumari Devarajan. 2019. \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Your Body Being Used\u0026rsquo;: Where Prisoners Who Can\u0026rsquo;t Vote Fill Voting Districts.\u0026rdquo; Code Switch - NPR. December 31. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/12/31/761932806/your-body-being-used-where-prisoners-who-can-t-vote-fill-voting-districts (opens in new tab).\nThis dashboard and post use \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; to refer to everyone who is not in prison. That includes over 4 million people who are on probation, parole, or in local jails. A more precise term might be \u0026ldquo;non-incarcerated\u0026rdquo; but we use \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; to emphasize the distinction between this group and those who are in prison, potentially far from home and counting toward another community\u0026rsquo;s political representation. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html (opens in new tab)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nLegislators sometimes further increase prison gerrymandering by drawing district boundaries in strategic ways to maximize the advantage of having a prison located within the boundaries.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nAlso the number of people in prison, racial disparities in imprisonment, and the locations of prisons haven’t changed much over the past decade.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"October 7, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/prison-gerrymandering-dashboard/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"A new dashboard created for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub examines prison gerrymandering across states. Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated people where they are imprisoned for the purpose of redistricting.","title":"New dashboard visualizes scope of prison gerrymandering, points to opportunities for change","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" A look back, a look forward, and STATS-DC This year marks the 5th anniversary of Civilytics Consulting (founded 8/28/2016). Five years is undoubtedly a milestone \u0026ndash; one that most of the times I was sure I\u0026rsquo;d make it to but not always! When I founded Civilytics, it was with a five-year plan in mind. My plan was to build a sustainable practice tackling projects that reflected my values for how data and social science should inform policy. And we\u0026rsquo;ve done that. So in this newsletter I\u0026rsquo;d like to share a bit about that journey and what comes next. In this edition of the The Civic Pulse you\u0026rsquo;ll find: Some highlights from our work over the past 5 years A preview of what we\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to in the next 5 years A recap of my recent presentation about inverting the dashboard development process for STATS-DC New posts on our website about city and police budgets and how to frame numbers for greater understanding A link roundup Happy Birthday Civilytics! I wanted to use the occasion to reflect on some of my highlights from each year since Civilytics\u0026rsquo; founding. 2016, year 0 Started a fruitful and long-running partnership with the Strategic Data Project (SDP) at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard (opens in new tab) University. Working with SDP has provided a wonderful opportunity to stay in contact with my roots as an agency education data analyst while also having an opportunity to problem-solve and support the best education data analyst training program in the country. 2017, year 1 Built our first dashboard prototype using a process we use today Helped launch OpenSDP (opens in new tab) Began cataloging open and authoritative public data sets 2018, year 2 Advised and developed predictive analytics systems and a training curriculum around prediction in education 2nd prize in a Kaggle Competition (opens in new tab) for automating geospatial analyses of police calls for service data 2019, year 3 First work resulting in a major publication (opens in new tab) for the Reveal podcast on the Census and prison gerrymandering Co-authored Education Data Done Right (EDDR) (opens in new tab) volume 1. Volume 2 of EDDR is right around the corner, watch this space. Began meeting with community advocacy organizations to learn about policing and safety 2020, year 4 First major self-publication, Policing the American University (opens in new tab) Built partnerships with education and city budget advocacy organizations across the country Presented to and supported many organizations in integrating public data sources to answer social questions 2021, year 5 Advisor to the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab) Hired a new employee (opens in new tab) Caught a $5 billion disparity in ARPA aid That\u0026rsquo;s a whirlwind tour. Some projects aren\u0026rsquo;t included because of confidentiality agreements \u0026ndash; so if we\u0026rsquo;ve worked together and our project isn\u0026rsquo;t listed, that\u0026rsquo;s probably why!\nSwings and misses Civilytics\u0026rsquo; five year journey has not been a straight path from one successful project to another. I\u0026rsquo;ve had many unsuccessful grant applications, contracts that have fallen through at the last minute, ideas I thought were great that no one else did (writing Excel dashboards programmatically via R), or that someone else executed 1000x better than me. Some projects got much more attention and success than I ever anticipated and others I wish had more impact than they did (I\u0026rsquo;m looking at you ARPA funding disparity). And the old-adage about self-employment definitely has applied much of the time: \u0026ldquo;Working for yourself gives you so much flexibility, you can choose which 50 hours you work each week.\u0026rdquo;\nThe Next Five Years If you\u0026rsquo;ve been reading The Civic Pulse these past 2 years, then I think you\u0026rsquo;ve really got a flavor for where Civilytics is going and what I want us to be working on over the next five years. We are hitting our stride in terms of our capacity, skills, partners, and clients to have the impact that I hoped for. We will be doing more projects that allow us to do data analysis in the social world and we will be sharing what we learn as we walk that path ourselves. This will mean creating technical tools and training to make sure public data is used well and communicated well. It means doing translational research that is contextualized by the social forces that shape the data and models, and setting an example by keeping our data analysis and research projects democratic and accountable in a world where power is more and more concentrated. And, of course, The Civic Pulse will continue. What started out as the only way I could think of to spread the word about EDDR has grown into one of the most enjoyable and important parts of our work. Thank you for reading.\nSTATS-DC Presentation 91 people joined our Friday morning STATS-DC presentation, Using Data to Improve Educator Diversity and Understand Students\u0026rsquo; Access to Teachers of Color (opens in new tab). It was great! A recording of the presentation will be available soon - follow us on social media to stay up to date!\nThis project is a great example of dashboard development in service of policy and practice changes that are focused and stakeholder driven. The Talent Office at the Connecticut State Department of Education supported by REL Northeast and Islands began by doing a lot of excellent work with stakeholders. When I came onto the project, I knew we had to take advantage of that existing knowledge and work and carry the needs, advice, worries, and excitement stakeholders had through the design process.\nI call this \u0026ldquo;Inverted Dashboard Development\u0026rdquo; where a prototype is used to identify and make concrete the needs of stakeholders, and the program area responsible for the dashboard synthesizes that feedback and presents it to the developers. The key here is that the prototype is a more free and creative space than the final product design (which will be limited by time, tech, and funds) but the initial design phase with stakeholders helps identify which tradeoffs to make as needed in the final product design. The process worked out wonderfully in this case as we were able to quickly and decisively work with Connecticut\u0026rsquo;s IT team to identify our top priorities and find ways to align the production system with the elements of the prototype that stakeholders found most valuable. If you are developing dashboards in your organization, I really recommend you check out the video and think about your process. Also, if you are working on educator equity, the rest of the project is a great example of how to approach strategies for diversifying the educator workforce in a thoughtful and holistic way.\nPosts on City and Police Budgets I was invited to present on local budgets to a convening of experts who were focused on a related issue (court fines and fees), and I took the opportunity to test and set some expectations about how local budgets align and misalign with our expectations. Myths \u0026amp; Realities of Local Budgets + The Cost of Policing\nI also talked about how the scales of budgets can be disorienting and hard to contextualize. We try to present budget numbers in multiple ways (nominal, relative, rate, and human) so that the numbers can be used in whichever way best supports analysis, public information campaigns, messaging, and political education efforts. These four different frames are useful no matter what numbers you are trying communicate!\nFour Ways to Look at Spending\nWe drew on the presentation for the two posts linked above - check them out if you\u0026rsquo;re interested. Epidemiology Music Video Before the usual link roundup, I want to highlight an essential piece of YouTube viewing brought to you by my friend (and avid Civic Pulse reader), the talented Dr. Paul Creswell. (opens in new tab) In an era filled with armchair epidemiologists, Paul, a credentialed epidemiologist, has given us all a delightfully funny song and music video about the father of modern epidemiology.\nWithout further ado, the Ballad of John Snow:\nPaul shared this video with me a few months ago and I hope it brings you the smile it has brought me ever since! Link Roundup On the reasons Economics is everywhere (opens in new tab)\nOne of my guilty intellectual pleasures is the philosophy of science and understanding the role sciences play in our social world. Here\u0026rsquo;s an interesting, and more empirical than most, look at the incentives leading the field of Economics to push seemingly far afield into other disciplines and what it may mean for policy-relevant social science moving forward. Where is all that ARPA money going? (opens in new tab)\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an initial look at a unique dataset about how some cities are planning to spend their ARPA dollars. It is early days, but cities are inventing processes for allocating the funds on the fly and looking at one another for ideas, so this kind of coverage is critical. What the experts say on academic impacts of COVID-19 (opens in new tab)\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a lot of discussion about \u0026ldquo;learning loss\u0026rdquo; due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. My conceptual issues with the terminology aside, this short article by The Center for Assessment is really useful in understanding and communicating the magnitude of the effects on achievement scores (highlight: 2-4x the impacts found from Hurricane Katrina in 2006). History never stops being uncovered (opens in new tab)\nOn September 5, 1791 a much wealthier contemporary of James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson walked into a courthouse in Northumberland County and freed more than 500 of his slaves in the largest act of emancipation until the Emancipation Proclamation seventy years later. This story has a number of fascinating twists and challenges a lot of our accepted history about the relationship of the founding fathers to slavery. Learning a little more about deep learning (opens in new tab)\nThis short review of three papers focuses on how deep learning performs with tabular data (rows of observations and columns of variables as opposed to images, audio, video or other data) compared to other common approaches (linear models, generalized additive models, etc.). The conclusion matches what I\u0026rsquo;ve found in my work on education prediction systems: deep learning does not provide more than a marginal benefit for many problems and, in some cases, is handily beaten by methods with fewer tunable parameters and assumptions. As always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media. And, we love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"September 13, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/happy-birthday-civilytics/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This year marks the 5th anniversary of Civilytics Consulting (founded 8/28/2016). Five years is undoubtedly a milestone – one that most of the times I was sure I’d make it to but not always! When I founded Civilytics, it was with a five-year plan in mind. My plan was to build a sustainable practice tackling projects that reflected my values for how data and social science should inform policy. And we’ve done that. So in this newsletter I’d like to share a bit about that journey and what comes next.","title":"Happy birthday Civilytics!","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"September 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/building-an-accurate-statewide-dropout-early-warning-system/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Article in the Journal of Educational Data Mining describing the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS), a predictive model of student dropout risk for students in grades 6-9. Explains how DEWS’ publicly available software modules can be applied to new data and outcomes.","title":"Building an Accurate Statewide Dropout Early Warning System in Wisconsin","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"As I mentioned in a prior post, I recently presented to a group of academic researchers on local budgets and police spending. In the presentation (and elsewhere (opens in new tab) ), I talked about 4 different way to look at and present police expenditures. Trying out each approach is important because different frames or lenses can be more powerful or resonate more with different audiences.\nI'm going to walk through some examples of each frame and why each may be powerful in a given case.\n1. Nominal This frame can be especially helpful in cases where police spending in the budget is shockingly large. For example:\nLA County plans to spend $6.4B on \u0026ldquo;law and justice\u0026rdquo; offices with over half of this -- $3.4B -- going solely to the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s department in FY22. Miami-Dade County spends more than $1.1B a year on police and corrections ($765M on police and $384M on corrections in FY21). Atlanta plans to spend $317M on police, corrections, and courts in FY22. The vast majority of that, $276M, will go to police. 2. Relative This frame can be helpful for illustrating how police budgets can choke city spending. Cities\u0026rsquo; and counties\u0026rsquo; general (discretionary) funds support most services except those paid for through enterprise funds (like water, sewer, garbage). But a substantial share of most general funds go to police and other law enforcement, with the percentage ranging from 25% of general fund spending in Salt Lake City to 55% of general fund spending in Stockton.\nAnother way of looking at relative spending: For every $1 St. Louis spends from their general fund on police, they spend less than a penny on Health and Hospitals and less than a penny on Human Services -- a ratio of 100:1.\n3. Rate Showing how much the city's spending on the police department has grown can be powerful, especially when compared to other cities (chart 1 below) or to spending on other city services (chart 2).\nExplore the data here: https://jknowles.shinyapps.io/fisc_shiny/ (opens in new tab)\n4. Human Finally, the per person cost of policing can be powerful. Would you be surprised to learn that:\nDC spends $750 per resident on police each year Boston spends $620 per resident on police Nashville spends $321 per resident on police and $140 per resident on the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s office The per person cost is particularly powerful when compared to spending on other city services, as in the case of Orlando's spending below.\nExplore the data here: https://jknowles.shinyapps.io/fisc_shiny/ (opens in new tab)\nSo what do you think? Do you find one frame for looking at police expenditures more powerful or surprising than another?\nLearn More Civilytics has many resources to help you understand your local budget, including a prior post on 3 key items to understand about the budget and a more in-depth guide (opens in new tab) to reviewing and changing the police budget in your community.\nThe American Rescue Plan provides an unprecedented expansion of federal funding to support local communities, making local choices about how to spend discretionary funding more important than ever. We encourage you to get involved and let your local leaders know that people are watching the budget closely. Below are some resources to help!\nFederal aid (ARPA) resources (opens in new tab) Community programs to build safe and healthy communities (part 1) (part 2) ","date":"September 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/4-ways-to-look-at-expenditures-on-police/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"As I mentioned in a prior post, I recently presented to a group of academic researchers on local budgets and police spending. In the presentation (and elsewhere ), I talked about 4 different way to look at and present police expenditures. Trying out each approach is important because different frames or lenses can be more powerful or resonate more with different audiences.","title":"Four Ways to Look at Police Spending","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"I recently presented to a group of academic researchers on the myths and realities of local budgets and police spending and staffing. These are some of the lessons learned (opens in new tab) from reading and analyzing dozens of city and county budgets in the past 2 years.\nI wanted to share some of the presentation takeaways with all of you.\n3 Key Elements of Local Budgets: Revenue, Expenditures, and Positions The first two elements are pretty self-explanatory:\nRevenue is how much the city or county takes in and from what sources. Expenditures are how they spend the money. Unfortunately, we often can't track the revenue or understand expenditures nearly as well as we'd like! For instance, while we might want to know how much of our property taxes fund drug enforcement, most local governments do not track dollars at this level of detail. Instead, revenue dollars flow into funds, money from funds is allocated to departments, and department activities are not linked to revenue sources (or often linked to specific funding amounts either).\nMost Revenue Comes from Local Taxes The majority of most cities' and counties' revenue comes from local taxes with other revenue coming from local fees for water, sewer, and/or solid waste; fines, licenses, and forfeitures; state revenue sharing or state grants; and federal grants.\nWhich local tax provides the largest share of revenue varies across place -- it's sometimes property tax, sometimes sales tax, and sometimes occupational or earnings tax. (Other local taxes include hotel, gas, utility, franchise, business, alcohol, etc. but don't usually make up as large of a share of revenue).\nHere are two examples from recent budgets: almost all of Boston's revenue comes from property taxes, while property taxes make up a smaller share of Miami-Dade County's budget.\nTwo Key Questions about Expenditures Can Take You Far I think community groups can get a good understanding of the impact of policing on their local budget just by answering 2 key questions about expenditures:\nHow much city or county money is spent on policing? How much does 1 police officer cost? Defining the Share of Police Spending Answering the first question requires defining the numerator (what money is spent on \u0026quot;policing\u0026quot;) and the denominator (what money is \u0026quot;city/county money\u0026quot;)?\nThere are reasonable options to define both in ways that differ from the frame the budget uses.\nFor example, many local budgets count employee benefits and fleet expenses outside of the \u0026quot;home department.\u0026quot; Here are two examples from Durham County (left), which counts employee benefits as \u0026ldquo;General Government,\u0026quot; and Atlanta (right), which counts employee benefits as \u0026quot;Non-departmental.\u0026quot; Both obscure how much is spent on staffing in general and policing in particular.\nIn terms of what money is flexible, discretionary local money -- budgets often include \u0026quot;proprietary\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;enterprise\u0026quot; funds as part of the denominator, but these are raised through user fees and service charges and can only be used to provide that service. Including as part of the denominator funds from water and sewer charges (which simply come in for these services and go out to provide them) gives a misleading picture of how much of a city's discretionary money is spent on policing.\nIn most cities, all or nearly all of the revenue supporting the police department comes from the city's general fund.\nIdentifying the Cost per Officer It's important to start with the basic fact that almost all police departments spend 80 to 90% of their budget on staff.\nIn addition to salary and overtime wages, costs for benefits (including healthcare, sick leave, pensions, SSI/Medicare/Medicaid, equipment allowances, and education bonuses) often add around 50% to the cost of a police officer.\nAs mentioned above, the cost of benefits can be hard to find since they're accounted for in many different ways: a separate department may pay the benefit costs for all city employees, departments may pay another department a lump sum for benefits, etc.\nAfter accounting for benefits, we've seen total costs of an average officer varying from $46k in Shreveport, Louisiana, to over $150k in Los Angeles.\nStaffing/Positions: The Hidden Budget Understanding the PD org chart, including how many authorized and filled positions the PD has, is a crucial third element of budget analysis.\nThe first thing to understand here is that a \u0026quot;position\u0026quot; is a budget term for the authority to hire staff.\nA department that has $ but no position authority cannot hire. A department that has a vacant position but does not have $ cannot hire. Departments need both $ and position authority to hire. Right now, many police departments are unable to hire all the positions they have authority and money for, creating a surplus of funding (that is then spent on overtime, bonuses, etc.). Vacant positions with funding allocated for them tie up discretionary spending money that could be put to better use elsewhere in the community. The position allocations in your local city and county budget can help you identify when this occurs.\nPositions Are Priorities If you can learn how staff are allocated across the department, you can get a sense of how the PD is spending its time and what activities are prioritized.\nUnfortunately, non-descriptive division, bureau, and unit names can impede this, as can a lack of staffing data by unit. For example, Miami-Dade's largest division is simply called \u0026ldquo;Police Services,\u0026rdquo; making up 50% of the department\u0026rsquo;s budget and 54% of the department\u0026rsquo;s staff. Miami-Dade's second largest division is simply called \u0026ldquo;Support Services.\u0026rdquo; No further details about activities or units within these divisions are provided.\nIn contrast, one of the best case scenarios is Phoenix, which has a large police department with a clear organizational structure (see below). Even in this best case scenario though, a lot of questions are left unanswered about the role of different bureaus. And that doesn't even account for patrol, which is almost always the largest bureau/unit and has nebulous responsibilities.\nPosition Types: Sworn Officers and Civilians One final note about staffing is the distinction between the two types of positions in PDs: sworn officers and civilians. Civilians are covered by the regular city employee union, have less generous benefits, and do \u0026quot;support\u0026quot; tasks like taking 911 calls, managing data collection, etc. Sworn officers -- cops -- have arrest and search authority and bargain through the police union or Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP). In many cities and counties across the country sworn officers are assigned duties, like IT, records management, etc. that civilians can do.\nLearn More With just these key ideas, you are on your way to understanding how your local budget operates and what public services are backed up by public dollars. Civilytics has more resources, including a guide to reviewing and changing the police budget in your community, here (opens in new tab).\nThe American Rescue Plan provides an unprecedented expansion of federal funding to support local communities, making local choices about how to spend discretionary funding more important than ever. We encourage you to get involved and let your local leaders know that people are watching the budget closely. Below are some resources to help!\nFederal aid (ARPA) resources (opens in new tab) Community programs to build safe and healthy communities (part 1) (part 2) ","date":"August 23, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/myths-and-realities-of-local-budgets-and-the-cost-of-policing/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"I recently presented to a group of academic researchers on the myths and realities of local budgets and police spending and staffing. These are some of the lessons learned from reading and analyzing dozens of city and county budgets in the past 2 years.","title":"Myths \u0026 Realities of Local Budgets + The Cost of Policing","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Plus catch my presentation at STATS-DC later this month! There's been lots of discussion of \u0026quot;crime waves\u0026quot; in the past few months. One thing I cannot emphasize enough is how detached these conversations are from both the empirical evidence and the lived experience of violence in the U.S. Whether you are interested in data and measurement, or concerned about how we make safer communities, we'll talk about the issue from both angles in this edition of The Civic Pulse.\nIn this newsletter you'll learn:\nHow to unpack the discourse around crime and resources to help understand the debate and people's real needs How to catch my upcoming presentation at STATS-DC on the dashboard prototyping process How ARPA aid continues to roll out to local governments and what you need to know A link roundup Also a quick note of thanks to all of you who read, shared, and replied to our last newsletter. As we said then, getting media coverage of our work is a pretty big challenge, so we really appreciate all the kind words and help raising awareness of our work!\nOn to the topics.\nCrime \u0026quot;waves\u0026quot; and defunding the police The past couple months have brought lots of hot takes on how rising crime rates are related to defunding police -- and other similar arguments. These hot takes are based on preliminary data from a basket of cities that saw increases in gun violence and homicide in 2020. The dominant narrative that's emerged from these glib reads of the data, and that's been reinforced and repeated by the Biden administration, is that more and better trained police are needed to meet this challenge. In a new guide (opens in new tab), co-authored with and informed by community organizers around the country, we look at this claim in great depth.\nThe guide covers some major issues with this narrative including that:\nFirst, the evidence for a \u0026quot;wave of violent crime\u0026quot; is based on incomplete data and is overgeneralized. Much of the coverage is based on data from fewer than 100 cities, and doesn't include prominent cities in this discussion like NYC and Chicago. And, the data and discussions ignore the reality that violence is usually a neighborhood by neighborhood phenomena. Whether the national crime rate is rising or falling is of little comfort or concern depending on whether you live in an area experiencing an outbreak of violence or not. 1\nSecond, the social science evidence does not support the conclusion that police prevent violence for a few reasons:\nThe most rigorous available studies of the effect of police on rates of violent crime, and particularly on homicide rates, are inconclusive The very real negative impacts of policing -- surveillance, property seizure, and killings that too often go unpunished (opens in new tab) -- are not included in crime statistics or in policy evaluations of policing If you are interested in social science research, I encourage you to look at the guide's appendix (opens in new tab) for a recap of the flaws in the studies cited by \u0026quot;experts.\u0026quot; Third, as this chart from the guide shows, we've been doing the policy experiment on investing more and more money in policing (after adjusting for inflation) while failing to invest in or actively defunding other important public services. There are a lot of policy options we haven't tried to stop violence, like investing more in other public services.\nAnd, even with all the funds spent on policing , I encourage you to look at how few homicides (opens in new tab) in the U.S. are solved annually -- arguably, police's most important job. Over the last decade, 40% of homicides have gone unsolved (that's 60,000 people's deaths). The Washington Post did a heartbreakingly detailed investigation (opens in new tab) into how murder goes unsolved in low-income communities of color in cities across the country.\nFinally, it's important to keep in mind that the institution of policing is about enforcing the law, not about preventing crime (officially, police are known as law enforcement officers, not crime prevention officers). In our work on local budgets this year, we've typically seen cities spend less than 1/100th of what they spend on policing on violence prevention programs (if they have such programs at all), despite the fact that violence prevention programs have fewer negative externalities, create community trust, and have been shown to be effective.\nView tweet by @JohnKRoman on X We know what stops violence: stable housing, meaningful employment opportunities, access to healthcare and education, stronger community bonds, and mediators to address disputes. Community leaders have been showing up at city council and county commissioner meetings demanding these solutions -- it's time to listen.\nPresenting at STATS-DC on Educator Diversity and Dashboards Are you interested in Using Data to Improve Educator Diversity and Understand Students' Access to Teachers of Color (opens in new tab)? Or in creating public education dashboards? If so, you may want to check out my upcoming presentation with Meg Caven from REL Northeast \u0026amp; Islands and Christopher Todd from the Connecticut Department of Education Talent Office.\nOn Friday, Aug. 20, at 11 Eastern, we'll be discussing how we are designing and implementing a tool to help schools and districts understand and measure the access their students have to teachers of color.\nOne part of the project I've enjoyed is developing a prototype using available public data (with some unit-record data simulation for good measure!) so we can work through the design with content experts without worrying about pupil privacy. This approach has allowed us to focus first on the most important pieces of information to share with users consider how to make the dashboard compelling and easy to use from the start.\nThe 2021 STATS-DC Data Conference is completely virtual and free to attend. You can register for the event at the conference website. (opens in new tab)\nFor me, this is a bit of a return home since I have fond memories of many STATS-DC presentations about open data and applied research within education agencies from my time at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. I hope to see some familiar faces and catch some great sessions at this year's event!\nMore on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) We enjoyed reading some of public comments submitted to Treasury (opens in new tab) about the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds during the open comment period. (You can read our public comments here.) We'll be updating our guidance and FAQs (opens in new tab) when the final regulations are published in the next month or two.\nIn the meantime, we published 7 more ideas for how communities could use ARPA funds along with some back-of-the-envelope pricing for each idea. Our goal in publishing these is to encourage communities and organizers to think bigger and bolder about how to use ARPA funds, not to say these are the \u0026ldquo;best\u0026rdquo; ideas for a given community.\nOne of the ideas is to improve access to public restrooms!\nI also presented at a teach-in presented by the People's Coalition for Safety and Freedom (opens in new tab) on how federal funding works. You can view their teach-ins on YouTube. (opens in new tab) I spoke about what makes ARPA aid unique: that it's largely unrestricted, is a tremendous amount of money, and has few restrictions on the process of allocating the money or requirements for reporting on its use after the fact.\nThe most important message to get across is that the funds are not yet spent. Local officials may have strong ideas of what they want or need to spend the money on, but until the checks have cleared, you still have time to make your voice heard.\nIf you are looking for a place to get started, Cortney Sanders (opens in new tab) of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shared two great papers at the Teach-In that I highly recommend:\nThree Principles for an Antiracist Equitable State Response to COVID-19 (opens in new tab) Priorities for Spending ARPA Fiscal Recovery Funds (opens in new tab) What we\u0026rsquo;re reading and thinking about: Five Strategies for Using One-Time Funds on School Staffing - WestEd (opens in new tab)\nIf you work in education and are looking for ideas on how to leverage one-time funding from ARPA or other sources to address structural underfunding and personnel shortages, this brief guide has five great strategies. One I was glad to see was engaging with community organizations to think creatively about investing in capacity long-term.\nResults from a National Survey on Public Education's Response to COVID-19 (opens in new tab)\nAIR put together an excellent set of reports and infographics detailing the results of a national survey on how public schools adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. This kind of comparison is critical to understand different choices communities made and why, and to help think about what school will and should look like moving forward.\nA View of the Louisville Police from the Ground (opens in new tab)\n\u0026quot;If racism is a public health crisis, then the Louisville Metro Police Department is a tumor. And a tumor can\u0026rsquo;t cure itself.\u0026quot; ~ Shauntrice Martin. This entire essay is worth your time to get a glimpse at the lived experience in many communities across the country. I'm lucky enough to have learned a lot from Shauntrice, who among many other talents, runs a Black owned grocery store serving Louisville's biggest food desert!\nAcademic Corruption and the Facade of Objectivity (opens in new tab)\nJuul, the vape company, bought an entire issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior (AJHB). The company paid $51,000 to place 11 studies they funded linking vaping to smoking cessation. FDA regulators often look at studies published in venues like AJHB to inform their decisions, and the FDA is currently reviewing Juul's products. While the Juul case is a more flagrant example of the facade of objectivity, the article describes how the practice is more common, and less blatant, than you would think. But, hey, at least Juul paid extra to put the research outside of a paywall.\nA Deep Dive Into the Nitty-Gritty of Our Crime Stats Infrastructure (opens in new tab)\nFirst, if you don't follow Rajiv Sethi's recent work on police and violence, you should, immediately. Second, you know I love a good deep dive through administrative data and all of the twists and turns that arise due to reporting requirements, data entry procedures, input errors, and other glitches. This carefully written roadmap through available data on policing in the U.S. is eye opening and a critical read for anyone wanting to work in this space.\nFewer Low-Level Arrests = Lower Crime and Fewer Police Shootings (opens in new tab)\nAn interesting analysis at FiveThirtyEight that looks at how different choices in cities about how many low-level offense arrests to make affects crime rates and shootings by police officers. We need much more descriptive work like this.\nhttps://www.watertownmanews.com/2021/07/30/local-data-consultant-discovers-line-in-federal-law-that-cost-watertown-millions-in-pandemic-relief/ (opens in new tab)\nFinally our local online newspaper did a write-up on Civilytics and our recent work on the disparity in ARPA aid affecting our town among many of others.\nAs always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media. We appreciate every bit of help spreading the word.\nAnd, we love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\nFor a fuller critique of this cyclical discourse on crime and police spending, see this excellent essay by Alec Karakatsanis: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-crime-isnt-the-question-and-police-arent-the-answer (opens in new tab)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"August 4, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/crime-waves-and-public-safety-cp/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"There’s been lots of discussion of “crime waves” in the past few months. One thing I cannot emphasize enough is how detached these conversations are from both the empirical evidence and the lived experience of violence in the U.S. Whether you are interested in data and measurement, or concerned about how we make safer communities, we’ll talk about the issue from both angles in this edition of The Civic Pulse.","title":"What you should know about crime waves and public safety","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"In sharing these ideas, we are trying to encourage communities and organizers to think bigger and bolder about how to use ARPA funds. We do not intend to say these are the \u0026quot;best\u0026quot; ideas for your community or the most impactful options. Instead, we want to collectively brainstorm and share ideas about how to use funds in ways that do not reproduce the status quo. For other ideas from community organizers across the country, check out this fact sheet from the Community Resource Hub. (opens in new tab)We will have one more post in this series detailing how to estimate employee costs for programs and projects you want to complete with ARPA funds. In the meantime, this tool from the Community Resource Hub that we helped create (opens in new tab) has details on how to estimate employee costs.\nWe previously shared 5 impactful ideas for how communities could use American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Now we're back with 7 more:\nStart a land bank or trust to support affordable housing, green space, or other community goods Invest in public broadband Improving the appalling public bathrooms and drinking fountain situation Give education stipends so low-income folks can afford to rethink their careers too Plant trees to reduce heat disparities Invest the money in a trust and use the dividends to pay for something in perpetuity Set up or contribute to a bail fund We've even done some back of the envelope pricing for each idea, and referenced the ARPA text supporting each use. Check out the ideas below!\n1. Start a land bank or land trust to support affordable housing, green space, or other community goods Land banks and trusts convert private or underdeveloped land to uses that benefit the community and help ensure housing affordability especially in cases where residents might otherwise be priced out of the neighborhood. Land banks and trusts acquire vacant, abandoned, or tax-delinquent property, or receive grants of land purchased by the government or nonprofits. This land is then resold or held in \u0026ldquo;trust\u0026rdquo; for specific community-oriented purposes. For instance, the land trust model often involves the trust owning land and \u0026ldquo;leasing the ground\u0026rdquo; to individuals who can then own the houses/apartments on that ground for below-market rates and with restrictions on reselling to maintain affordability over time. From https://community-wealth.org/content/infographic-community-land-trusts (opens in new tab)\nAccording to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (opens in new tab), the first modern community land trust in the US was established out of the civil rights movement in Albany, GA, to enable African-American farmers to access, build on, and farm land. Today, the largest community land trust is the Champlain Housing Trust (opens in new tab) in Burlington, VT, which was started in 1984 when Bernie Sanders was Burlington\u0026rsquo;s mayor. Other examples can be found in Boston (opens in new tab), Albuquerque (opens in new tab), and 200+ other cities across the country. In contrast to land trusts (which hold the land), land banks usually resell it, after perhaps some rehabilitation, but can still accomplish some of the same goals. An issue brief from the TN Housing Development Agency describes differences between the land bank and trust models. Land banks have been started in Memphis, Atlanta, Genesee County (Flint), MI, and elsewhere.\nARPA money could provide excellent \u0026ldquo;seed\u0026rdquo; funds to purchase land for a bank or trust and begin the process of deciding how that land could better support community goals from affordable housing to urban gardening to parks. The Grounded Solutions Network has a lot of tools and resources (opens in new tab) to help communities get started!\nHow much might this cost? The price of land varies greatly across the country. A 2015 analysis by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (opens in new tab) found that the average price per acre for developed land is $106k but that state averages range from $7k per acre of developed land in South Dakota to over $450k in NJ and CA.1 One acre typically comprises 5 residential lots. The table below shows how much acquiring the necessary land might cost in different scenarios. There may be other costs, such as cleaning up the land to be used for residential purposes, but the building or renovating of houses and apartments on the land is usually financed, with those costs then passed onto or paid over time by future residents.\nNumber of Lots Acres (Lots ÷ 5) Price Per Acre Total Cost 300 60 $50,000 $3.0M 300 60 $400,000 $24.0M 600 120 $250,000 $30.0M Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We think the following language supports these uses. However, if you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to send a question to Treasury asking them to clarify. We\u0026rsquo;ve seen a lot of public comments about specific uses of these funds and Treasury is keeping their FAQs updated.\nP. 22-23 of the Interim Final Rule addressing disparities in public health outcomes says funding for \u0026ldquo;housing services to support healthy living environments and neighborhoods conducive to mental and physical wellness\u0026rdquo; is an eligible use. More here. If funds are deployed in a qualified census tract or other disproportionately impacted community, this could also be justified under the eligible uses of \u0026ldquo;Build stronger communities through investments in housing and neighborhoods\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;promote healthy childhood environments.\u0026rdquo; See more here.\n2. Invest in public broadband The importance of fast, reliable Internet has never been clearer than after this year of so much online schooling, remote work, and need to connect with family and friends digitally. There were far too many stories of students struggling to get reliable Internet for school, workers having to use smart phones to apply for jobs or unemployment benefits, and families struggling with kids, parents, and others competing for the Wi-Fi.\nBroadband infrastructure is one of the uses of ARPA funds that Treasury specifically recommends. Treasury highlights universally accessible, high-speed, reliable, and affordable broadband coverage as critical to help recover from the pandemic and protect communities in the future. Internet hotspots that families can borrow, Internet access in libraries and community centers, and other efforts to make Internet access possible were and continue to be crucial\u0026hellip;but they\u0026rsquo;re band-aids. Communities should think big picture about using these funds for affordable, long-term, fast broadband access. Chattanooga provides an incredible model here \u0026ndash; here\u0026rsquo;s a teaser from a great article (opens in new tab) about it in the Prospect:\nThere exists a place where a government entity, bolstered by public funds, laid more than 600 miles of fiber-optic cable, connecting to every home and business in its service area. For more than a decade, this network has provided internet, voice, and video services to customers. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the fastest internet service providers in the world, with speeds up to 10 gigabits per second. It has enhanced local economic development, while offering no-cost service to families who need it most. At this point, you no doubt believe we are talking about some utopia far from our shores, in Korea or Scandinavia. But no, this place exists right here in the United States, in the heart of \u0026ldquo;red\u0026rdquo; America: Chattanooga, Tennessee.\nHow much might this cost? Chattanooga\u0026rsquo;s broadband network cost $500M for the city to build over a period of 10 years. Given that Chattanooga had 167,674 residents when the project began in 2010, this works out to a cost of $298 per resident per year for 10 years -- less than residents would probably pay to a private Internet provider each year. According to one study (opens in new tab), the value realized by Chattanooga\u0026rsquo;s broadband network exceeded the costs of the project by a factor of 4.42, or over $2.20B. The project quickly became revenue positive, suggesting that ARPA funds may only be necessary to fund some of the initial construction and capital expenses and may help jumpstart future revenue through broadband fees, enticements for employers to move to or stay in the area, cost savings to the government for providing their own Internet rather than paying an external provider, etc.\nCost Per Resident Per Year Residents Project Length Total Cost $300 170,000 10 years $510M $150 250,000 12 years $450M $500 400,000 7 years $1.40B Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Yes, we've got to admit this is not a bold idea -- it's very clearly encouraged by the legislation. See here for what ARPA has in mind with respect to broadband programs (Chattanooga appears to be a model). See here for the definition of infrastructure broadband meets. See here for the specifications of what qualifies as broadband under this program.\n3. Improve the country\u0026rsquo;s appalling public bathroom and drinking fountain situation Even before the pandemic, public access to bathrooms was a well-known issue for people experiencing homelessness, people of color, and those lacking a discretionary few dollars to spend on coffee just to use the bathroom. But, by closing more of the public restrooms, Covid-19 brought the issue of safe, clean public restrooms into even starker view.\nThe availability and cleanliness of public drinking fountains is perhaps related, though it gets a bit less attention. The number of public water fountains appears to have declined (opens in new tab) over the past few decades, which is bad for the environment (more plastic bottles), people\u0026rsquo;s health (dehydration and more sugary drinks), and expensive.\nSo why not use ARPA funds to invest in public bathrooms and drinking fountains, whether that means building new ones, refurbishing old ones, or devoting funds to pay for their upkeep going forward? The maintenance and cleaning of these public resources going forward is crucial, as many of these articles (opens in new tab) make clear. Cities should consider innovative solutions so that public bathrooms and fountains do not quickly become unusable or unsafe. One option some cities have tried is contracting with community organizations to clean public facilities and monitor for overdoses or provide other services. This model can create jobs in communities of need, provide stable funding to community organizations, and improve the accessibility and infrastructure of neighborhoods.\nHow much might this cost? This one depends on how many public water fountains or toilets are needed and how much constructing each costs. This 2013 analysis for the Salt Lake City Council (opens in new tab) looked across 7 public bathroom projects in 5 states and found that the average cost for a four-bathroom building was about $209k. Adjusting for inflation, that\u0026rsquo;d be about $245k today. (In case it\u0026rsquo;s useful: the analysis also provided some info about how the cost might vary for larger or smaller bathrooms and what percentage of the cost comes from the materials themselves, labor, utilities, etc.) In terms of public drinking fountains, the city of Cambridge, MA, (opens in new tab) estimated that each one costs $10k. Your community might also want to set aside ARPA funds to keep the bathrooms and drinking fountains clean and operational for a certain period of time \u0026ndash; the estimates below are just the initial costs.\nQuantity Cost per Bathroom/Fountain Initial Cost 5 new 4-bathroom buildings $245k $1.2M 15 new 4-bathroom buildings $245k $3.7M 10 new public drinking fountains $10k $100k Can we really do this with ARPA funds? This certainly seems eligible under the eligible use of disease mitigation to respond to COVID-19: \u0026quot;adaptations to public buildings to improve communicable disease mitigation, such as ventilation systems, heating and cooling upgrades, filtration systems.\u0026quot; These investments also may be eligible under the provision for building stronger communities through investments in housing and neighborhoods or promoting healthy childhood environments. And see Section 2.18 of the Treasury FAQ about improvements in parks (opens in new tab). ARPA funds are eligible to distribute to non-profits and businesses (see here). Another idea could be to compensate them for providing public restroom access or drinking water.\n4. In a time of rethinking jobs, give education stipends so low-income folks can afford to rethink their careers too There has been a ton of media attention paid to the record number of people quitting their jobs this spring and summer. Some have left for higher wages, some to pursue a new career (see Civilytics\u0026rsquo; newest employee for example 😊), and for many other reasons as well. Biden\u0026rsquo;s American Families Plan (opens in new tab) includes two years of free community college, which could make a real difference for many students. However, students, advocates, and researchers have long recognized that it\u0026rsquo;s not necessarily tuition costs that impede low-income students\u0026rsquo; completion \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s all the other costs of students\u0026rsquo; lives: transportation, food, housing, childcare.\nJuggling work and other responsibilities with classes can force students to take fewer classes at a time, potentially drop or fail a course, prolong time to degree, and ultimately lead some students to \u0026ldquo;stop out\u0026rdquo; or dropout. But, if students have the breathing room that sufficient funds can provide, they may be able to persist in their education and earn a degree that leads to a better job. Santa Fe recently announced a pilot program (opens in new tab) to provide $400 monthly stipends to community college students with children. Why not use ARPA funds to provide stipends to returning community college students \u0026ndash; investing in their future and the longer-term future of the community?\nHow much might this cost? This one depends on how many people are eligible and interested and how large a stipend your community wants to offer.\nAccording to the Community College Research Center (opens in new tab), nearly 10 million students enrolled in community colleges sometime during the 2017-18 school year. That\u0026rsquo;s about 1 in 33 people. About two-thirds of community college students (opens in new tab) have family incomes less than $50k. Say your community wanted to give a stipend to everyone who enrolled in community college and had a family income below $50k. Then say, based on the stats above, that 1 in every 50 people in your community are eligible and you provide a stipend of either $500 or $1,000 per month.\nTotal Population Estimated Eligible Community College Population Stipend per Student per Month Total Cost 50,000 1,000 $500 $6M 50,000 1,000 $1,000 $12M 250,000 5,000 $500 $30M Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We think the following language supports these uses. However, if you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to send a question to Treasury asking them to clarify.\nFor people in qualified Census tracts or other disproportionally impacted communities, addressing educational disparities is an eligible use and the disparities of public health outcomes provision would also seem to allow this. Job training is eligible under the negative economic impacts eligible uses and supports to enable job training would seem to fall under that use as well. Cash assistance is also explicitly eligible.\n5. Plant trees to reduce heat disparities in metropolitan areas across the country Concrete and asphalt radiate heat significantly more than green spaces, and lower-income neighborhoods in urban areas have significantly fewer trees and green spaces than their wealthier counterparts. As temperatures rise due to climate change, the effect of this disparity is becoming more and more pronounced.\nhttps://www.treeequityscore.org/map/#9.23/33.572/-112.0365 (opens in new tab) American Forests (opens in new tab), a conservation group, found that neighborhoods with a majority of people of color have 33% less tree canopy on average than majority-white communities. Chris David, from American Forests, said in a Boston Globe article (opens in new tab): \u0026ldquo;What we know is that trees make cities more climate-resilient, improve health outcomes, and that they haven\u0026rsquo;t been equitably distributed. They should be considered as important as any infrastructure, and the federal government should be helping cities pay for them.\u0026rdquo; Consider using ARPA funds to plant trees and \u0026ndash; if needed buy a truck to water them and endow a government position responsible for doing so. After all, we don\u0026rsquo;t want to plant them and have them die next year! Phoenix has pledged (opens in new tab) to reach \u0026ldquo;tree equity\u0026rdquo; by 2030. Use ARPA funds to get your city onboard with this pledge too! Then learn from Detroit\u0026rsquo;s experience (opens in new tab) to make sure a diverse set of community organizers and members is involved in the initiative so residents have a say about whether and how trees are planted in their neighborhood.\nHow much might this cost? Boston, MA has 160,000 trees managed by the city at a cost of $1.7M annually (opens in new tab). Using this as an example we can estimate the cost per tree at $10.63 annually. Boston has an area of 89.63 square miles, so about 1,785 trees per square mile.\nFor this estimate, we can take the number of trees per square mile we would like to have and multiply it by the square mileage of our city to get the total number of trees. We can then multiply the total number of trees by the cost per tree to calculate the ongoing maintenance costs for a fully-funded tree management program.\nCity Area (in Square Miles) Trees per Square Mile Number of Trees to Manage Total Cost per Tree Total Cost 89.63 1,785 160,000 $10.63 $1.7M 89.63 3,000 268,890 $10.63 $2.8M 40.0 4,000 160,000 $15.00 $2.4M Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We think the following language supports these uses. However, if you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to send a question to Treasury asking them to clarify.\nThese investments are likely eligible under the provision for building stronger communities through investments in housing and neighborhoods or promoting healthy childhood environment. And see Section 2.18 of the Treasury FAQs (opens in new tab) about improvements in parks.\n6. Invest the money in a trust and use the dividends to pay for something your community needs in perpetuity Let\u0026rsquo;s say Baltimore invested all of its ARPA funds \u0026ndash; $526M \u0026ndash; into a trust. How much could that generate each year? Probably at least $21M, possibly as high as $53M, with perhaps $32M being a \u0026ldquo;safe bet.\u0026rdquo; These numbers come from assuming a conservative 4% rate of investment (=$21M), the 10% average from the stock market (=$53M), and a middle 6% rate often recommended by investment groups for making predictions.2\nSo what could Baltimore get for the \u0026ldquo;middle\u0026rdquo; number, $32M? Probably about 320 social workers a year forever. Or Baltimore could more than double the amount spent on temporary housing for the homeless (opens in new tab) every year ($21M for FY22) and have enough left over to increase the amount spent on community recreation centers by 60% ($19M in FY22). Basically the city could get a lot\u0026hellip;forever\u0026hellip;if it made sense to invest the money and only spend the returns each year, rather than spending it all in the next 2-5 years.\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t know if that makes sense for Baltimore \u0026ndash; or your community. Maybe you need the money now. Maybe you need some of it now and could invest some in a trust to ensure the continued funding of important resources every year forever. That should be up to you and your community members to decide. However, it could be worth considering examples of how governments have invested proceeds into funds that continue to pay off for future generations. One example is the Montana coal trust fund (opens in new tab), started in 1975 and which pays for renewable energy development, local infrastructure, regional water systems, and part of the state\u0026rsquo;s general fund. Do you have others? If so, send them our way! We\u0026rsquo;d love to add more examples here.\nHow much might this cost? This one doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a specific cost \u0026ndash; your community\u0026rsquo;s annual return on the investment would just depend on how much was invested (and the rate of return). See below for example.\nPrincipal Investment Low Return High Return Annual Income Range $500M 4% 10% $20 – $50M $100M 4% 8% $4M – $8M $50M 5% 12% $2.5M – $6M Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We think the following language supports these uses. However, if you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to send a question to Treasury asking them to clarify.\nOn p. 103 of the Interim Final Rule, Treasury appears to foresee longer-term investments with ARPA funds:\nFor these reasons, Treasury believes it will be appropriate for a majority of recipients to adapt their plans as the recovery evolves. For example, a faster-than-expected economic recovery in 2021 could lead a recipient to dedicate more Fiscal Recovery Funds to longer-term investments starting in 2022. In contrast, a slower-than-expected economic recovery in 2021 could lead a recipient to use additional funds for near-term stimulus in 2022.\nSimilarly, section 10.1 of the SLFRP FAQ (opens in new tab) answers the question:\nMay governments retain assets purchased with Fiscal Recovery Funds? If so, what rules apply to the proceeds of disposition or sale of such assets? Yes, if the purchase of the asset was consistent with the limitations on the eligible use of funds. If such assets are disposed of prior to December 31, 2024, the proceeds would be subject to the restrictions on the eligible use of payments.\n7. Set up or contribute to a bail fund in your community The National Partnership for Pretrial Justice (opens in new tab) estimates that almost half a million people are held in jail pre-trial every day, often because they can\u0026rsquo;t afford bail. Cash bail essentially turns the presumption of innocent until found guilty (opens in new tab) on its head since many low-income and even middle-income people cannot afford bail (exceptions are DC, NJ, and NM, where money bail is rarely imposed). Reforming cash bail and the broader criminal \u0026ldquo;justice\u0026rdquo; system has to be the longer-term solution, but \u0026ndash; in the meantime \u0026ndash; bail funds can help mitigate a lot of negative impacts on lower-income defendants and their families while also reducing the amount that communities spend incarcerating people.\nImage from the Bail Project 2020 Annual Report (opens in new tab)\nOver 70 percent of people in local jails are held pretrial (opens in new tab), meaning they haven\u0026rsquo;t been convicted of a crime. Cash bail creates a strong incentive to plead guilty (opens in new tab), especially for defendants who have children or jobs at risk. Under the cash bail system, most defendants have to pay a commercial bail bondsman a nonrefundable 10% fee to post bail \u0026ndash; money they can never get back. And it costs the community from $50 to $500+ per person per day (opens in new tab) to incarcerate people who would otherwise be released pretrial if they only had money available for bail. Overall, the U.S. spend about $14B a year incarcerating people who haven\u0026rsquo;t been convicted of any crime.\nSo, again, we need to end mass incarceration now\u0026hellip;but, at the same time, bail funds can make a tremendous difference to individuals, their families, and communities.3 The Bail Project (opens in new tab) and National Bail Fund Network (opens in new tab) have a ton of great resources on this topic.\nHow much might this cost? Honestly, it probably would cost less than your community is spending to incarcerate people pretrial (opens in new tab). If you just reallocated the money spent per day to incarcerate people, you could probably create a bail fund.It\u0026rsquo;s very important to understand that, at the end of the case, when a person has made all their court appearances, the bail is repaid, allowing the money to be used again and again.\nMore generally, it depends how many people are held in pre-trial detention in your community and how much their average bail is. For this estimate, let\u0026rsquo;s use some numbers from Durham, NC, where in 2016, 1,700 people were held pretrial (opens in new tab) on cash bails of less than $5k. That\u0026rsquo;s roughly 1 in 125 Durham residents at that time. Most sources seem to indicate that about 90% of people bailed out show up for their court dates (so their bail is returned). We\u0026rsquo;ll use that percentage to determine how much of the funds would be funneled back into the bail fund. You\u0026rsquo;d probably also need a certain overhead cost \u0026ndash; maybe just one staff member\u0026rsquo;s salary, benefits, and supplies to start \u0026ndash; which would not be \u0026ldquo;returned.\u0026rdquo;\nCommunity Population Estimated Pretrial Population Median Bail of People Bailed Out Initial Cost + $100k for Overhead \u0026ldquo;Unreturned\u0026rdquo; Funds 50,000 400 $2000 $900k $180k 50,000 400 $5000 $1.8M $360k 250,000 2,000 $2000 $4.1M $500k Can we really do this with ARPA funds? Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We think the following language supports these uses. However, if you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to send a question to Treasury asking them to clarify.\nOn p. 41 of the Interim Final Rule, the U.S. Treasury recognizes the need to use funds to build stronger communities:\n[The funds]\u0026hellip; provide resources to not only respond to the immediate harms of the pandemic but also to mitigate its longer-term impact in compounding the systemic public health and economic challenges of disproportionately impacted populations. Treasury encourages recipients to consider funding uses that foster a strong, inclusive, and equitable recovery, especially uses with long-term benefits for health and economic outcomes.\nKeeping people out of jail who have not been convicted of a crime but are simply unable to afford a \u0026ldquo;modest\u0026rdquo; bail amount is an important step toward building stronger more resilient communities.\nOf course, in expensive urban areas, the price per acre can easily be more than $1 million. As shown in the example table, the cost of starting a community land trust really depends on how expensive it is to acquire the necessary land.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThese investment strategies are sometimes called Local Government Investment Pools and you can read more about them in this explainer from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA): https://www.gfoa.org/materials/local-government-investment-pools (opens in new tab)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe Bail Project has a tremendous amount of resources for communities interested in learning more, including information on their campaign to Bail Out the South, a history of cash bail, a roadmap for reimagining pretrial justice, and information about important pretrial supports, like court reminders, transportation assistance, and voluntary referrals to community services to help ensure individuals attend their court date and get any assistance needed. You can learn more about other bail funds by state on the National Bail Fund Network\u0026rsquo;s site.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"July 29, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/7-bold-ideas-for-how-to-use-arpa-funds/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In sharing these ideas, we are trying to encourage communities and organizers to think bigger and bolder about how to use ARPA funds. We do not intend to say these are the “best” ideas for your community or the most impactful options. Instead, we want to collectively brainstorm and share ideas about how to use funds in ways that do not reproduce the status quo. For other ideas from community organizers across the country, check out this fact sheet from the Community Resource Hub.","title":"7 Bold Ideas for How to Use ARPA Funds","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" About the guide How to Take Back the Budget is a guide for anyone in a community seeking to understand their city or county budget for policing and how it can be changed. It gives practical steps to quickly translate public budget jargon into real-world information.\nThis guide was produced in collaboration with the Community Resource Hub (opens in new tab). It is based on lessons learned from budget reviews of police budgets in cities and counties — big and small, nationwide — done by Civilytics in collaboration with local organizers. It is available for free.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s inside How to gather the budget documents in your city How to set your budget review goals and expectations How to gather comparisons to put the budget in context How to analyze the overall city budget How to dig into the details of the police budget How to propose alternatives and sustain wins The guide is structured around the annual budget cycle, with practical advice on what to look for and where to find it, guidance for working through the math, and a calendar for engaging at key points.\nWho it\u0026rsquo;s for Whether you are in a major city, a smaller town, or a rural county, this guide was written to help you take action over how public funds are raised and spent in your community. The guide pairs well with the #Defund Toolkit (opens in new tab), which helps communities identify concrete steps toward divestment from policing and investment in community safety.\n","date":"July 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/how-to-take-back-the-budget/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Free guide to help communities review and change the police budget in their city or county. Produced in collaboration with the Community Resource Hub. Provides practical steps to translate public budget jargon into real-world information.","title":"How to Take Back the Budget","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"~ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ~\nBoston, MA \u0026ndash; June 30, 2021 \u0026ndash; A new analysis by Civilytics Consulting shows how 5 words in a Senate amendment led to $5 billion in ARPA funds shifting between states. As a result, local governments in some states can receive 10x as much aid per resident as their counterparts in other states. Rachel M. Cohen at The Intercept used Civilytics\u0026rsquo; analysis to get the Treasury, Senate Finance Committee, and other power brokers on the record about how this disparity came to be. (opens in new tab)\nFrom the article:\nFirst identified by the data consulting firm Civilytics, the change in terminology established a new aid formula that shifted $5 billion, or 25 percent of the total program, creating sharp disparities depending on how states classify their communities.\nCivilytics uncovered this disparity while trying to help community organizers across the country understand how much fiscal recovery money their community would receive. When Treasury declined to publish timely aid estimates, Civilytics produced our own, first publishing tools to look up your community\u0026rsquo;s projected allocation in March, then updating these tools with each new, but incomplete, release of information from Treasury.\nWhile trying to understand some of Treasury\u0026rsquo;s more recent information about allocations to smaller local governments \u0026ndash; called non-entitlement units or NEUs \u0026ndash; Civilytics uncovered that a Senate amendment led NEUs in some states to be eligible for 10 times as much aid per resident as those in other states.\nCivilytics has published articles on the extent of the disparity across states, how five words shifted the allocations, and how we overcame data-related barriers to publicly replicating Treasury\u0026rsquo;s behind-the-scenes calculations.\nCivilytics Consulting is a small independent data science firm based in Watertown, Massachusetts. One line of our work is helping local and state governments analyze and publish data in a transparent, equitable way. We believe people shouldn\u0026rsquo;t need extensive Excel skills or insider knowledge to learn how much federal funding their community will receive. With 27,000+ towns, 100M+ people, and billions of dollars affected, we have higher expectations for the transparency and clarity of communication from our federal government.\nHopefully, Treasury will publish estimated aid allocations for the full list of non-entitlement units they\u0026rsquo;ve deemed eligible (opens in new tab). Until then, communities can use Civilytics\u0026rsquo; tools to look up aid allocations or estimates for any county, city, town, or village in the country.\nTo stay up to date on this story and learn more about how Civilytics is working to improve the way data is used to make decisions about our communities and lives, subscribe to our newsletter, The Civic Pulse (opens in new tab). If you have questions about this story, including how it impacts local governments in your area, our contact information is below.\nHannah Miller, Ph.D.\nhannah@civilytics.com | www.civilytics.com (opens in new tab) | O: 617-600-1832 | @civilytics (opens in new tab)\n","date":"June 30, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/civilytics-analysis-uncovers-5-billion-inequality-in-arpa-neu/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"~ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ~","title":"Civilytics’ analysis uncovers $5 billion inequality in aid program for 100M Americans","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Analysis featured in major story\nWe\u0026rsquo;re thrilled to share this Intercept article by Rachel Cohen (opens in new tab) featuring our analysis uncovering a $5 billion change to how ARPA aid is distributed.\nFrom the article:\nAccording to Civilytics researchers Jared Knowles and Hannah Miller, in states that have large populations living in unincorporated areas \u0026mdash; places outside the bounds of local or municipal jurisdiction, governed only at the county, state, and federal levels \u0026mdash; local governments will now receive much higher per capita funding than those in states without them. We\u0026rsquo;re going to dedicate this edition of The Civic Pulse to telling you how this story came together, why it matters, and what you can do about the disparity the analysis uncovered. Aid to over 27,000 small cities and towns and over 100 million people is affected by this change.\nIn this newsletter you\u0026rsquo;ll learn:\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the big deal with ARPA aid to small towns? How did Civilytics find this out? Digging into the data: What makes it so hard to get right? Why did Civilytics uncover this when no one else did? What can be done now? If you read no further, let us just say that this story was a (free) labor of love. Civilytics\u0026rsquo; mission is ensuring that, in a world where policy increasingly relies on data, data work is done carefully and accurately and in ways that democratize information rather than reinforcing the power of gatekeepers and insiders. We saw a hole in the data work around this incredibly huge aid program\u0026mdash;and the more we dug into it, the more we realized that no one else (at least publicly) was recognizing the impact of this 5-word change. We think this is a great example of how we\u0026rsquo;re trying to do public data analysis differently at Civilytics and we need your help raising awareness about why that difference matters. So, to help us out, if you found this story interesting, please share our newsletter, the article in the Intercept (opens in new tab), or our press release with your networks.\nFor more details on the story and a behind-the-scenes look at how we put our best data skills to work (no, not multilevel modeling; just matching Excel files by hand), read on:\nOK, so what\u0026rsquo;s the big deal with ARPA aid to small towns? So what\u0026rsquo;s the article say (opens in new tab)? Here\u0026rsquo;s the tl;dr:\nFirst identified by the data consulting firm Civilytics, the change in terminology established a new aid formula that shifted $5 billion, or 25 percent of the total program, creating sharp disparities depending on how states classify their communities.\nYou can read more details of our analysis and its implications on our website (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). The point is that a seemingly small 5-word change in a Senate amendment made it easier to calculate how money would be allocated to states on behalf of their NEUs but perhaps unintentionally resulted in a distortion in the per-resident aid NEUs receive across states. This distortion is large: NEUs in some states will receive 10x as much per resident as those in others. For some communities, this means missing out on millions of dollars.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s great for [Maryland small towns], they\u0026rsquo;re going to get a lot of money,\u0026quot; said Marc Nicole, deputy secretary at the Maryland Department of Budget and Management. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m going to say some of them are going to do a great job [with the funding] and will have really good ideas, and for some of them, it\u0026rsquo;s going to overwhelm them. We have one municipality that has a population of 15. They\u0026rsquo;re going to get like $14,000.\nIf that seems like a big deal, it is! This aid program affects thousands of towns and cities, tens of millions of people, and billions of dollars. The details really matter.\nSenate sources said the change came at the behest of officials at the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The thinking, they said, was that the shift to \u0026ldquo;non-metro\u0026rdquo; populations could provide a more expedient way to distribute funds than using NEUs\u0026hellip;. But that doesn\u0026rsquo;t explain why the Treasury Department then published guidance restricting which NEUs could receive funds, taking flexibility away from states that could otherwise have directed some money to unincorporated areas.\nThe article explains that there may still be time do something about this. Keep reading for ideas on how this might occur.\nWe also want to reiterate that getting our work into a national publication takes a lot of effort \u0026ndash; we don\u0026rsquo;t have the name recognition or extensive network that makes that easy. Instead, we had to pitch and pitch and pitch again, and make sure we had every detail of the analysis right and could explain the implications clearly. In the end, that was a big investment of our time, and we are thrilled that a talented investigative journalist, Rachel Cohen, was able to use our work to ask the right questions of the people in the position to do something about this. While you\u0026rsquo;re here, consider subscribing to her newsletter (opens in new tab) as well.\nHow did Civilytics find this out? For our newsletter, we want to share how the story unfolded from our seat because we think it illustrates what Civilytics is all about.\nAs the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) neared passage, Civilytics began helping community organizers understand how much money their community would receive so that they could begin building momentum and pressure to publicly discuss how to use funds. When timely aid estimates weren\u0026rsquo;t available, Civilytics produced our own, first publishing tools to look up your community\u0026rsquo;s projected allocation in March. Then we updated those tools with each new, but incomplete, release of information from Treasury.\nAt the end of May, a community health organizer contacted us about a difference between our estimates and new information available from the Treasury about aid to smaller cities, towns, and villages \u0026ndash; called \u0026ldquo;non-entitlement units\u0026rdquo; or NEUs by the law. When updating our estimates, we discovered that, while Civilytics had assumed an equal distribution of aid based on the text of the House bill, a Senate amendment led NEUs in some states to be eligible for 10 times as much aid per resident as those in other states.\nAnd then we started digging\u0026hellip;\nDigging into the data: What makes it so hard to get right? This inspired us to dig into the extent of the disparity and how it resulted from using two non-equivalent population definitions (first post on the topic). We learned that Treasury was allocating aid to states based on their \u0026ldquo;non-metro population\u0026rdquo; but instructing them to pass-through the aid based on \u0026ldquo;non-entitlement populations.\u0026rdquo; In some states, the two populations are synonymous (or nearly so), but, in other states, it\u0026rsquo;s a difference of 5 million people or more. The result is that, for example, an NEU of around 50,000 people in California will get $12 million in aid, or $239 per resident, while one in Connecticut will get less than half as much, about $5.6 million in aid, or $101 per resident.\nCount, then count again. This was a head scratcher \u0026ndash; at first, we didn\u0026rsquo;t believe it. So next we tried to understand why the law didn\u0026rsquo;t use the same population in both places. We learned that the House version of the bill did, allocating aid states based on their NEU population and instructing states to pass-through the aid based on the same populations. However, a Senate amendment changed that (second post). We couldn\u0026rsquo;t find any public discussion of why this change occurred, but we did look into how much it mattered.\nWe found that NEUs in at least 13 states are now getting 40% less aid than they would have under the House version. For example, PA lost around $689M from this change and OH, NY, and IL all lost around $500M or more. In contrast, Nevada, Maryland, and Virginia are getting more than 4 times as much aid (up to $1k or more per NEU resident) thanks to the change.\nThen we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be Civilytics if we didn\u0026rsquo;t also write a third postabout our methodology. The data folks in our audience may particularly enjoy this post about our efforts to merge files with no unique identifiers and use Excel workbooks that had rows organized by color (horror!). Those of you who write administrative data rules may enjoy the opportunity to shake your head about how some aspects of this were rolled out: allocations but not populations published for metro cities, populations but not allocations published for NEUs, etc.\nWhy did Civilytics uncover this when no one else did? We\u0026rsquo;d like to think it\u0026rsquo;s because we\u0026rsquo;re so sharp but more likely it\u0026rsquo;s because:\nWe\u0026rsquo;re very excited about ARPA\u0026rsquo;s promise to help address longstanding systemic inequalities. We want to see the program implemented in a way that meets its laudable goals. We are working with groups that aren\u0026rsquo;t political insiders and didn\u0026rsquo;t have \u0026ndash; but really needed \u0026ndash; information about their city\u0026rsquo;s allocation. We tried to replicate Treasury\u0026rsquo;s numbers to understand them. Being able to understand where the numbers are coming from and how they\u0026rsquo;re produced \u0026ndash; not just viewing a PDF of what they are (opens in new tab) \u0026ndash; is a critical part of transparent, democratic data analysis and communication. We know that this is hard and complicated work. We\u0026rsquo;ve seen that rolling out intergovernmental aid requires careful data and communication work (hat tip to Brian Pahnke and John Johnson at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for teaching us this). We understand that federal data on local governments has limitations (no census of populations served by local govts in the U.S.!) and were curious to see how Treasury resolved these limitations. And we know that data sources and business rules really matter for government agencies (Jared wrote a book on this!) Also, and this is no small part of it we\u0026rsquo;re sure, we were willing (mostly) to sink 2+ weeks of \u0026ldquo;public service\u0026rdquo; (aka donated time) into understanding the story inside and out. And maybe other organizations overlooked this because:\nNEUs are small and dispersed (27,000+ of them), so they get less attention from media orgs, data analysts, funders, and advocates. Replicating aid allocations is not as much fun as making proclamations about how to use the funding (which we've also done and are going to do again soon). Or maybe others did and chose not to make it public \u0026ndash; knowledge is power, after all. What can be done now? For your community: Treasury is seeking comments on these regulations until July 16 \u0026ndash; submit yours here (opens in new tab). (You can read a draft of our comments here.) If your state is receiving less aid per resident due to this Senate amendment, we encourage you to contact your senator to learn more about why this change was made without any public discussion. We honestly don\u0026rsquo;t think many (or any?) senators understood the impact of this change.\nMost of all, regardless of where you live, please \u0026ndash; if you can \u0026ndash; get involved in deciding how these once-in-a-lifetime funds are used in your community. (Our next post with more ideas on how to spend ARPA funds reflects some of the funding choices we\u0026rsquo;re trying to encourage our community to make.)\nTo help us out: If you\u0026rsquo;ve made it this far, thanks! We are so grateful for our newsletter readers!\nWe believe our public institutions\u0026rsquo; data teams need to walk (that is, count right and publish auditable and authoritative data) before they run (i.e., build complex statistical model pipelines). And need to publish their data accessibly and communicate it well to avoid data being used to insulate gatekeepers and privilege incumbents. We love statistical models too but counts matter. Even more importantly who gets the information when matters. We hope this serves as a case study for how and why government needs to do better \u0026ndash; for all of us. If you agree, sharing stories like this really helps. Only if these stories get attention can they become case studies for how we can do better in the future.\nSo again, please take the time to share this newsletter and the story (opens in new tab) with your networks.\nOur next newsletter will be back to our regularly scheduled set of topics, reporting on some of the other work we\u0026rsquo;re doing and links we\u0026rsquo;re excited to share. See you in a few weeks!\n","date":"June 30, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/cp-neu-arpa-in-the-news/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Analysis featured in major story","title":"We uncovered a 5-word change to ARPA worth $5 billion","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Here at Civilytics we sunk way more time into understanding ARPA aid allocations than we initially expected to. The more we learned, the more we wanted to know \u0026ndash; and we got a little obsessed. We justify this to ourselves and to you by reiterating that this is $19.53 billion, affecting 27,000+ local governments across the country, and at least 100 million people.\nWe think understanding the data and methods we used \u0026ndash; and how you can reproduce them yourself \u0026ndash; may be of interest to other data analysts, open government advocates, and more. So here goes:\n1. Why isn\u0026rsquo;t calculating aid allocations easy? {#0-1-why-isn%E2%80%99t-calculating-aid-allocations-easy-} Treasury didn\u0026rsquo;t publish ARPA aid allocations (or aid estimates) for smaller cities, towns, and villages -- called \u0026ldquo;non-entitlement units\u0026rdquo; or NEUs under the law. We hope they will but that\u0026rsquo;s another story. For now, Treasury published a PDF with the aggregate allocations to states for distribution to NEUs (opens in new tab) and an Excel file with 59 tabs (opens in new tab) providing a list of local governments and their respective (nonexclusive) populations.\n2. Ok, you can\u0026rsquo;t just look up the allocations so what do you do first? {#1-2-ok-you-can%E2%80%99t-just-look-up-the-allocations-so-what-do-you-do-first-} For 42 states, it\u0026rsquo;s straightforward. You go to the correct state tab in the spreadsheet and sum the column with the 2019 population estimate. Then you take the state allocation from the PDF, divide it by the summed population, and get the per resident allocation for that state. (You can, of course, then multiply that by any listed NEU\u0026rsquo;s population to get the estimated aid for that city, town, or village \u0026ndash; but, again, that\u0026rsquo;s a little beside the point.) What you will quickly notice is that many states have per resident allocations around $100 while others have allocations up to $1000 per resident (or more). If you are us, you will wonder why this is.\nSpoiler: It\u0026rsquo;s not. Complication 1: What about those other 8 states? According to Treasury, these eight states have \u0026ldquo;minor civil divisions that typically perform less of a governmental role.\u0026rdquo; Treasury provides rules about how states should determine whether or not their minor civil divisions (MCDs) are eligible for the aid. In the meantime, we don\u0026rsquo;t know what the eligible NEU population is (and neither does Treasury).1\nFor these states, Treasury\u0026rsquo;s spreadsheet has two tabs: one with MCDs and one without.\nWe can think of the population excluding MCDs as likely a lower bound. For example, Illinois\u0026rsquo; summed NEU population on the tab excluding MCDs is 5,459,441 people. We would hope that the tab that includes MCDs would provide a corresponding upper bound. Unfortunately, data do not care about hopes.\nIf we sum the NEU population estimate on that tab for Illinois, we get 11,229,950 people. But we know only 12.6 million people live in Illinois, and more than 2 million of them live in Chicago. So 11.2 million is too high to be the upper bound for Illinois\u0026rsquo; NEU population. The problem is we can\u0026rsquo;t tell what the correct upper bound is because Treasury\u0026rsquo;s spreadsheet doesn\u0026rsquo;t include unduplicated populations. In fact, the tab just uses color coding to show different possible combinations of sub-populations. Different city sub-populations can appear multiple places on the spreadsheet \u0026ndash; check out \u0026ldquo;Abingdon city\u0026rdquo; for example or Monroe township below.\nScreenshot from the spreadsheet. So the best we can hope for these states is to get a range of population estimates and corresponding allocation amounts.\nComplication 2: Doesn't ARPA restrict NEU funding to 75% of the NEU's annual budget? Yes, it does but NEUs' budgets are not available to us or to Treasury, so we cannot account for this regulation in our analysis. We expect the 75% cap to primarily affect the smallest towns in the states with the highest per capita allocations. For example, not all NEUs in Nevada may receive $1300 per resident. However, to return to some of our examples: Azusa, CA, will still receive twice as much per resident as Milford, CT, despite having fewer residents, and the wealthy DC suburb of Vienna, VA, will still receive over $1k per resident. These cities\u0026rsquo; annual budgets all far exceed their ARPA allocations and are not affected by the cap (see older budgets for them here: Azusa (opens in new tab), Milford, Vienna (opens in new tab)). Also, even if some towns exceed the cap, the money is returned to Treasury, not redistributed across states to remaining NEUs to address the disparity.\nThe bottom line is that: (1) Without looking up each NEU\u0026rsquo;s budget, we can\u0026rsquo;t adjust our analysis for this regulation and (2) While this will likely attenuate the greatest disparities, large disparities affecting thousands of NEUs, millions of people, and at least a couple billion dollars will still remain.\n3. Now I\u0026rsquo;m curious what the allocations would look like under an equal aid approach. How can I figure that out? {#4-3-now-i%E2%80%99m-curious-what-the-allocations-would-look-like-under-an-equal-aid-approach-how-can-i-figure-that-out-} Sum the NEU populations for each state, which you got earlier using Treasury\u0026rsquo;s spreadsheet. (As a reminder, for the 8 states with MCDs, you\u0026rsquo;ll have two different population estimates.) Take the total aid allocated to this program ($19.53B) and subtract the aid for Hawaii and U.S. territories since they do not have any NEUs listed in the spreadsheet Treasury provided. (Lacking other information, we assume their aid is fixed.) That leaves $19,319,674,715 to allocate among states. Divide that by the population estimates to get an estimate of the amount per resident under an equal allocation approach.\nOur calculations indicate that, under an equal approach, every small city and town would receive between $166 and $193 per person. Using the population that excludes MCDs (100,296,504) results in a higher amount \u0026ndash; by definition, it\u0026rsquo;s fewer people to divide the funds among.2\n4. So why are small towns in some states getting $104 per person and those in other states getting $1000 per resident? To get to the bottom of that, we have to understand how the law directed Treasury to determine the state allocations. The original text of the bill that became the America Rescue Plan Act (H.R. 1319 (opens in new tab)) stated that NEU aid to states should be distributed based on the NEU population:\n“B) Allocation and Payment. From the amount reserved under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall allocate and pay to each State an amount which bears the same proportion to such reserved amount as the total population of all\u0026nbsp;nonentitlement units of local government\u0026nbsp;in the State bears to the total population of all\u0026nbsp;nonentitlement units of local government\u0026nbsp;in all such States.” — H.R. 1319 Sec 602 (2) (B) (emphasis added by author) But, in the final law, the language for the same section was changed:\n“(B) Allocation and Payment. From the amount reserved under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall allocate and pay to each State an amount which bears the same proportion to such reserved amount as the total population of all\u0026nbsp;areas that are non-metropolitan cities\u0026nbsp;in the Statebears to the total population of all\u0026nbsp;areas that are non-metropolitan cities\u0026nbsp;in all such States.” — Public Law 117-2, cited by Treasury, (emphasis added by author) The distortion in the amount of funding per NEU resident arises from this change.\nSo what is the \u0026ldquo;total population of all areas that are non-metropolitan cities\u0026rdquo; nationally and in each state? Buckle your seatbelts because this is where it really gets tedious.\nUnfortunately, Treasury chose not to publish this information directly. Instead they note in several places (e.g., here (opens in new tab)) that they\u0026rsquo;re using the 2019 population estimates and include a footnote (footnote 3) in one PDF (opens in new tab) pointing to a CSV file with the populations by city, NEU, and state. Make sure to scroll over to column V for the 2019 estimate! If you don\u0026rsquo;t want the data for all 50 states in one file, you can use this vintage site (opens in new tab) to look up each state.\nThe file doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a unique identifier (!!) and doesn\u0026rsquo;t identify which are the metro cities vs. NEUs, so now you\u0026rsquo;re going to need to match the list of metropolitan cities Treasury identified (opens in new tab) to the populations from this file mostly by hand. (We did try some automated name matching, but given the high stakes we couldn\u0026rsquo;t be confident enough in the accuracy \u0026ndash; even 1 mismatch could distort the estimates for every state. So, we sorted alphabetically and typed in by hand \u0026ndash;a painstaking approach for 2021 but one that necessitated by the limits of the data Treasury chose to provide.)\nEven after you\u0026rsquo;ve hand-matched most of the 1166 metro cities across files, there will still be plenty of places where you cannot determine what population Treasury used. For example, see this screenshot of Honolulu\u0026rsquo;s data, which has two records for the Urban Honolulu CDP (census-designated place) \u0026ndash; duplicates perhaps? Plus Honolulu County and Balance of Honolulu County. Having never been to Honolulu, we personally don\u0026rsquo;t know anything about its local government organization and which of these populations are part of the \u0026ldquo;metro city.\u0026rdquo;\nOr take Nashville (next screenshot).\nOf course, we could do more sleuthing for these two examples \u0026ndash; and many others \u0026ndash; but ultimately we might not be able to determine the \u0026ldquo;correct\u0026rdquo; population \u0026ndash; that is, the one Treasury used, in each case.\nTreasury has the metro and non-metro populations they used \u0026ndash; why not publish them? It shouldn\u0026rsquo;t require an in-depth understanding of local governments\u0026rsquo; structures and Census designations, solid Excel skills, and copious amounts of \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; time to understand how this aid is allocated.\nAnyway, now we\u0026rsquo;ve tried our best to hand-match the list of metro cities to the population file and determine which population to use in ambiguous cases. Next, we need to sum up the populations for all metro cities in each state and subtract that from the total state population. Thedifference is the non-metro population, the basis for these allocations.\n5. How does using the \u0026quot;non-metro population\u0026quot; lead to this distortion? Take the non-metro populations you calculated and compare them to the NEU populations you summed all the way back in step 2. You\u0026rsquo;ll readily see that, for some states, the two populations are nearly identical and, for others, they differ by more than 5 million people!\nAs we explained in Part I and Part II, the difference arises from people living in unincorporated places \u0026ndash; which is no one or almost no one in some states but over half the population in others.\n6. Wait, what\u0026rsquo;s an unincorporated place? {#7-6-wait-what%E2%80%99s-an-unincorporated-place-} We got this question a lot when telling people about this story. An unincorporated place is a place without the equivalent of a town or city government. Everyone resides within a county, but some people reside between the boundaries of other local governments. In fact, about 80 million people, nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, live in such places. And it isn\u0026rsquo;t just in rural areas like where we both grew up \u0026ndash; a large segment of Miami-Dade County is unincorporated. The decision is often related to a preference for fewer government services and lower property taxes.\nIt is important to note that, neither the Senate nor the House language would disburse funds to people living in unincorporated places through the NEU program.\n7. So what would you like to see happen? Intergovernmental aid allocations must be done using publicly available and reproducible data so all stakeholders have access to the information at the same time and so that the allocations can be understood and confirmed. To that end, we would like Treasury to publish their aid allocation estimates for NEUs or the tools necessary to reliably recreate them. The residents of tens of thousands of communities need to know how much money their community is getting before it\u0026rsquo;s too late and the money is already spent by insiders.\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t think the program\u0026rsquo;s intention to distribute funds based on how different states\u0026rsquo; residents self-organized (or didn\u0026rsquo;t) into local governments decades ago, so we\u0026rsquo;d love to see the distortion addressed in some way \u0026ndash; by allocating the second tranche of NEU funds in a more equitable manner or encouraging states/NEUs in areas with large unincorporated populations to consider how the NEU aid could be spent in a way that benefits residents of unincorporated places as well.\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t know what the options are here but publishing the data should be a minimum.\n8. Why does Civilytics care? Well, this is kind of what we do (not the allocating billions of dollars in aid part, but the part about working with Census data, making public data transparent and public analyses reproducible, and communicating administrative data to stakeholders in an accessible way).\nBut more importantly, for any program to really give communities a say in how to address their own needs, the information needs to be transparent and accessible. Otherwise, in many communities, political insiders make most of the decisions and other residents find out about the funds too late, if at all. To \u0026ldquo;build back better\u0026rdquo; in an equitable way, there must be a targeted effort to inform communities \u0026ndash; not just their mayors and town councils but community organizers and the residents who were most affected by the pandemic \u0026ndash; about the amount of the money and the rules around that (like we\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to do at Civilytics). We are thrilled to see some communities holding listening sessions, doing resident surveys, and seeking feedback on how to use funds! But we also know that some communities are just circulating the information and calculations internally, and, by the time community groups hear about the funds, the money will already be, in effect, spent because those who were in the know made the decision long before.\n9. Are you anti-ARPA or anti-State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds? Absolutely not. We think the program\u0026rsquo;s goal to \u0026ldquo;help turn the tide on the pandemic, address its economic fallout, and lay the foundation for a strong and equitable recovery (opens in new tab)\u0026rdquo; is laudable. We just want to see the program executed in ways that meet these laudable goals. A small, but crucial detail, is equity in who knows how much money their community is receiving, and how those amounts were calculated. Get that wrong, and a lot of more equitable funding uses are jeopardized.\nWe think government can and must do better to ensure equitable access to information - especially with billions of dollars on the line.\n10. Why are you the only ones who did this analysis? Probably because we\u0026rsquo;re the only fools willing to sink several weeks of unpaid work into it. Sigh.\nAt first, we were just going to produce a tool for communities to look up estimates of their aid allocations. Since we work with advocates and organizers who could use this information to try to influence their local governments\u0026rsquo; spending, this was at least adjacent to our funded work. But with each new, incomplete release of information, as we updated our estimates, we found ourselves hooked.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not the machine-learning, neural network, Data Science that attracts investors and HBR covers (we do that type of work too (opens in new tab)!). It is the kind of careful, detailed data work Civilytics thinks our modern government needs to execute well in order to have a positive impact on an increasingly data-driven world.\nPS. Later this summer, partly inspired by these events, we\u0026rsquo;ll be launching a series of posts about just these kinds of statistics \u0026ndash; humble stats \u0026ndash; that need to be done well for any other analysis to succeed and which can answer plenty of important questions and drive decisions \u0026ndash; like how to give out $19.53B in funding \u0026ndash; all on their own.\nIn fact, the federal government does not maintain up to date data on operating local governments and the resident populations they serve. The Census of Governments, a valuable data collection but one that only occurs every five years, is not linked to the population estimates.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWe use a figure of $178 in our graphs in Part 2 because we prefer to give an estimate closer to the middle since the final amount would depend on how many NEUs are ruled eligible.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"June 29, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-data-methods/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Here at Civilytics we sunk way more time into understanding ARPA aid allocations than we initially expected to. The more we learned, the more we wanted to know – and we got a little obsessed. We justify this to ourselves and to you by reiterating that this is $19.53 billion, affecting 27,000+ local governments across the country, and at least 100 million people.","title":"How You Too Can Become Obsessed with Understanding ARPA Aid Allocations (Part III – Data and Methods)","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Updated 7/15/21 to reflect the final comments Civilytics submitted to Treasury\nWe submitted the following comments about the U.S. Treasury's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds administrative rule (opens in new tab). Comments on administrative rules are an important part of the lawmaking process, giving the public the opportunity to be heard on important administrative details that agencies must resolve to carry out the language of an enacted law, in this case, the America Rescue Plan Act.\nOur comments are focused on the five topics below. We invite you to crib from our language and submit your own comment, let us know what you would comment differently and why, or submit your own comment on another aspect of the ARPA Interim Final Rule! Comments are due by July 16.\nTreasury should publish the aid allocation estimates for non-entitlement units (NEUs). There are over 100 million people living in more than 27,000 NEUs across the U.S. We are some of them. We should be able to publicly look up approximately how much ARPA funding is coming to our communities.\nTreasury published the aid allocations for metro cities but not the allocations or allocation estimates for NEUs. This leaves ordinary NEU residents in the dark unless their local government officials are exceptionally communicative and transparent.\nIntergovernmental aid should be allocated using transparent, public data and formulas, with the results easily accessible. This is important on principle \u0026ndash; for government transparency \u0026ndash; but it\u0026rsquo;s also important for equity.\nTo \u0026ldquo;build back better\u0026rdquo; in an equitable way, there must be a targeted effort to inform communities \u0026ndash; not just their mayors and town councils but community organizers and the residents who were most affected by the pandemic \u0026ndash; about the amount of money and the rules around it. Otherwise, in many communities, information is circulated internally, decisions are made behind closed doors, and residents find out about the funds too late, if at all.\nWe are very happy to see some communities holding listening sessions, conducting resident surveys, and seeking feedback on how to use funds. To encourage efforts to spend funding in an equitable way that truly gives communities a say in how to address their own needs, we ask Treasury to:\nPublish the allocation estimates for NEUs so all residents of small cities, towns, and villages can see how much aid their community is likely to receive. Require public documentation of how funds are spent so that the public, not just Treasury, can see how funds are spent. Encourage communities to hold listening sessions or solicit residents\u0026rsquo; feedback on how to use funds to help ensure that the funds contribute to \u0026ldquo;building back better\u0026rdquo; from residents\u0026rsquo; perspective, not just politicians'. Laudable commitments to transparency and equity need to be backed up by the implementation of this important program.\nTreasury divided the $19.53 billion for \u0026ldquo;non-entitlement units of local government\u0026rdquo; (NEUs) among states based on each state\u0026rsquo;s share of the national non-metropolitan city population. But the non-metropolitan population does not equal the non-entitlement population in many states due to people living in unincorporated areas.\nDistributing aid based on the non-metro population but instructing states to pass through funds based on NEU populations greatly distorts how much funding per resident NEUs in some states will receive.\nIn many states, including ours, NEUs are receiving about $104 per resident in ARPA aid. But, in other states, equivalent governments may receive much more \u0026ndash; up to $1,300 per resident \u0026ndash; because of the large share of residents living in unincorporated areas in these states. (This can be clearly documented using the state NEU funding amounts and NEU populations published by Treasury, as explained here: \u0026lt;/newsletter/arpa-data-methods/\u0026gt;).\nWe urge Treasury and legislators to correct this disparity in some way given that the law\u0026rsquo;s intention did not seem to be to privilege NEUs in some states over others.\nOne option to partially address the disparity might be to recalculate each state\u0026rsquo;s NEU aid for the second tranche based on the state\u0026rsquo;s share of the national NEU population, a more appropriate denominator. Interpreting the \u0026ldquo;non-metropolitan\u0026rdquo; population to mean the NEU population would correct the distortion in funding and distribute funds more equitably. We recognize this may not be possible within the limits of Treasury\u0026rsquo;s rulemaking authority.\nAlternatively, we urge Treasury to consider providing guidance that encourages states with large allocations per NEU resident to consider how a share of their funds could benefit unincorporated areas and their residents. We are aware that the legislation specifies funds go only to non-entitlement units but we encourage more creative thinking on this matter given the size of these disparities.\nAt least 5 states (CA, FL, GA, TX, and VA) have more than 5 million residents living in unincorporated places, and a substantial number of states have more than half their \u0026ldquo;non-metro population\u0026rdquo; living outside NEUs. Under the current guidance, unincorporated places will receive $0 per resident and, in states with large shares of their population living in unincorporated places, NEUs will receive much more aid per resident than equivalent governments in other states. People living in unincorporated areas are still receiving and using services provided by local governments impacted by the COVID-19 health crisis. In many cases, their county may provide more services than would otherwise be needed if there was another local government in place. Perhaps aid that is intended for \u0026ldquo;non-metro\u0026rdquo; residents who do not live in \u0026ldquo;NEUs\u0026rdquo; would be more appropriately allocated to provide county services, rather than used to further increase some NEUs\u0026rsquo; aid amounts.\nFinally, the provisions of the NEU aid program mean that some funds will be returned to Treasury in the case that the allocation an NEU receives exceeds the 75% budget threshold. Treasury should provide a report on how much funding is returned under this provision and consider reallocating those funds to NEUs impacted by the disparities described above.\nThe 2019 Census population estimates that Treasury used count individuals who are incarcerated in the places where they are jailed, not in the communities they are from and will likely return to. Especially in rural areas, counting individuals who are incarcerated as part of the local population greatly inflates the population numbers. Despite this, individuals who are incarcerated are rarely thought of or treated as part of the community where they are incarcerated (see this story from Wisconsin for example: https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/lake-effect-segments/2020-02-25/how-prison-gerrymandering-in-wisconsin-will-impact-the-census (opens in new tab)).\nTreasury should use the Census group quarters data to adjust the population numbers and remove incarcerated populations from the local government counts. This would ensure that the population counts more accurately reflect the number of people who will actually benefit from the ARPA aid in each community.\nAlternatively, Treasury could direct communities to be sure that some of the aid they receive by virtue of incarcerating people goes to provide services to those people. We know that COVID was devastating for people who are incarcerated (see the Marshall Project\u0026rsquo;s reporting on this issue, for example: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/23/how-we-survived-covid-19-in-prison (opens in new tab)).\nIf population estimates are left as is, counting incarcerated people as part of the community where they are incarcerated, then money should go toward improving the conditions in jail/prison and after release of people who are currently incarcerated. After all, cities, counties, and NEUs are receiving between $100 - $1000 per resident, including per incarcerated resident. How can these funds benefit incarcerated residents and their futures too?\nTreasury should specifically state that cities, counties, and NEUs, not just states, cannot use ARPA funds to pay for tax cuts. As Treasury notes, the Fiscal Recovery Funds are intended to meet pandemic response needs; rebuild a stronger, more equitable economy; and prevent austerity measures. Therefore, just as tax cuts by States and territories are antithetical to the legislative intent, so too are tax cuts by cities, counties, and NEUs.\nTreasury should specify that ARPA funds cannot be used for this purpose by local governments. This is especially important because tax relief is perhaps the easiest-to-implement potential use of the funding.\nWe applaud Congress\u0026rsquo;s and Treasury\u0026rsquo;s focus on providing premium pay that \u0026ldquo;prioritize[s] compensation of [the] lower income eligible workers that perform essential work.\u0026rdquo;\nWe urge Treasury to maintain and enforce the rule that disallows premium pay that would increase a worker\u0026rsquo;s total pay above 150 percent of their residing state\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage for all occupations or their residing county\u0026rsquo;s average annual wage. There are many essential workers who make far too little. American Rescue Plan funds for premium pay should prioritized these workers.\nWe also urge Treasury to explicitly specify that police and corrections officers are not eligible for this funding when they primarily did their regular jobs during the pandemic. The CARES Act already provided funding for these workers while far too many essential workers were ineligible for that previous round of aid.\n","date":"June 19, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/slfrf-treasury-comment/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Updated 7/15/21 to reflect the final comments Civilytics submitted to Treasury","title":"Civilytics' Comments on the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Interim Final Rule","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Update (6/29/2021): We've published our full methodology in part 3 including how you can recreate this analysis using official data sources and why it took so long to figure out.\nIn Part I we showed that the decision to allocate non-entitlement unit (NEU) funding based on the non-metro population rather than the NEU population led states with large unincorporated populations (like Nevada and California) to receive more funding per NEU resident than other states with no one or almost no one living in unincorporated areas (like New York and Massachusetts).\nIn fact, the original text of the bill that became the America Rescue Plan Act (H.R. 1319 (opens in new tab)) stated that NEU aid to the states should be distributed based on the NEU population:\n\"(B) Allocation and Payment. From the amount reserved under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall allocate and pay to each State an amount which bears the same proportion to such reserved amount as the total population of all nonentitlement units of local government in the State bears to the total population of all nonentitlement units of local government in all such States.\"\n— H.R. 1319 Sec 602 (2) (B) (emphasis added by author) But, in the final law, the language for the same section was changed:\n\"(B) Allocation and Payment. From the amount reserved under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall allocate and pay to each State an amount which bears the same proportion to such reserved amount as the total population of all areas that are non-metropolitan cities in the State bears to the total population of all areas that are non-metropolitan cities in all such States.\"\n— Public Law 117-2, cited by Treasury, (emphasis added by author) It appears this change came via Senate Amendment 1398 (opens in new tab) (pdf pages 111-116) proposed by Senator Schumer (D-NY) together with Senators Wyden, Murray, Brown, Peters, Cardin, Cantwell, Stabenow, Tester, Menendez, Schatz, Carper, Leahy, and Sanders as part of the reconciliation process with HR 1319.\nChanging these 5 words led to over $5 billion (25% of the total allocation for NEUs) shifting between states.\nWe'll now look at the consequences of this change from the House bill language to the final enacted law.\nAs we mentioned in Part I, in NY, MA, PA, CT, and many other states, NEUs are set to receive about $104 per resident in ARPA funds. In VA, MD, and NV, NEUs are set to receive over 10 times as much per resident. Other states are somewhere in the middle as shown in the graph below from Part 1.\nHouse Approach: Equal Amount for all NEU Residents Under the House approach, each NEU would have received the same amount per resident regardless of state. The House bill distributed funds based on the share of NEU residents in each state, rather than the share of non-metro residents. This approach kept the populations consistent at both the state and local level -- federal funds would be allocated based on NEU populations and then states would pass those funds through to local governments based on NEU populations. Under this approach, each NEU would receive about $178 per resident, regardless of state.1\nUsing the NEU populations provided by Treasury, we can easily calculate the alternative funding allocations had ARPA not been amended to change the allocation method.\nLet's take our three example cities from the prior post. Under the House approach, they'd all receive the same amount per resident -- which means Milford, CT, would receive much more than under the Senate approach (the enacted law), and Azusa, CA, would receive much less.\nCity Population Senate Approach: Total Aid Senate Approach: Aid Per Resident House Approach: Total Aid House Approach: Aid Per Resident Milford, CT 54,747 $5.6M $101 $9.5M $178 Azusa, CA 49,974 $12.0M $239 $8.6M $178 Stillwater, OK 50,299 $8.8M $174 $8.7M $178 How Does This Shift $5 Billion? States that are above the dotted line in the graph below would benefit from the alternative \u0026quot;flat\u0026quot; (House) approach. PA would benefit the most, receiving almost $689M more to distribute to NEUs than under the current formula. NY, OH, and IL would also benefit substantially, receiving $500M - $600M more for their NEUs.\nFL would lose the most, over $900M, though NEUs in FL would still be receiving the same amount per resident as those in other states (rather than 5 times more per resident).\nOn a per resident basis, the House approach fixes the distortion we discussed in Part I. Now every NEU resident \u0026quot;counts the same\u0026quot; and their government receives an equal amount of aid for them (while residents of unincorporated areas are no longer included in the aid distribution formula).\nAt the state level, the implication is that states where every non-metro resident lives in an NEU would get more funds, while those with many residents living in unincorporated areas would get less.\nAt the local level, small cities and towns in some states with few NEUs (particularly in NV, VA, and MD) would lose a significant amount of funding per resident, while many, many, many small cities and towns in some states would get around $70 more per resident.\nA final way to look at fund shifts is to look at the percentage change in funding for each state between the House version and Senate (final) version. The graph below shows that, in at least 13 states, NEUs are now getting 40% less aid than they would have received under the House version. For example, CT would have received about $345M under the House version but only receives $203M under the Senate version. PA would have received $1,672M under the House version but only receives $983M under the Senate version.\nAnd, as we've said before, NEUs in 3 states (NV, MD, and VA) get 4 times more aid under the Senate version than they otherwise would have under the \u0026quot;flat rate\u0026quot; House approach.\nIn all, more than $5 billion in funding -- or 25% of the total amount for NEUs -- is reallocated between the two approaches.\nA huge difference in funding based on a small change in wording.\nYou can get a table of all the allocation changes between the two methods at the bottom of this post.\nCan Anything Be Done Now? Maybe! Treasury is seeking comment on all aspects of the Interim Final Rule until July 16. Share your comments at the official regulations.gov portal. (opens in new tab) Civilytics is planning to submit our own comments based on our work so far, which you can find here.\nYou can also contact your senator or representative to ask them why NEUs in some states should get 10x more per resident as those in other states. Or, alternatively, if you prefer the allocation the way it is, you can let them know you appreciate that the formula accounts for unincorporated populations when making state allocations.\nEither way, we hope you'll weigh in on how these important funds are distributed to and used by communities across the country.\nIf you or your organization share your thoughts, please let us know via email/tweet/etc.! We'd love to hear your thoughts on both how these funds are distributed and how they should be used locally!\nHow much the Senate change affected NEU aid in every state Search 49 rows State Final Allocation, Senate (millions) Allocation under House Formula (millions) Allocation Change (millions) % Change from House Version AL $356 $267 $89 33.4% AK $43 $32 $11 35.6% AZ $227 $121 $106 87.5% AR $216 $187 $29 15.7% CA $1,218 $907 $311 34.3% CO $265 $188 $77 41.1% CT $203 $345 -$142 -41.3% DE $91 $30 $61 203.2% FL $1,416 $504 $913 181.3% GA $862 $411 $451 109.7% ID $108 $89 $19 20.8% IL $742 $1,241 -$499 -40.2% IN $433 $738 -$305 -41.4% IA $222 $265 -$43 -16.3% KS $167 $285 -$117 -41.2% KY $324 $223 $101 45.4% LA $315 $152 $164 107.7% ME $119 $201 -$82 -40.7% MD $529 $96 $433 453.3% MA $385 $655 -$270 -41.2% MI $644 $1,096 -$452 -41.2% MN $377 $635 -$258 -40.6% MS $268 $194 $74 38.1% MO $450 $448 $3 0.6% MT $86 $60 $26 43.4% NE $111 $136 -$25 -18.1% NV $151 $20 $131 654.4% NH $112 $191 -$79 -41.2% NJ $578 $984 -$405 -41.2% NM $126 $91 $35 38.8% NY $774 $1,315 -$541 -41.1% NC $705 $394 $311 79.0% ND $53 $81 -$28 -34.1% OH $844 $1,435 -$591 -41.2% OK $238 $243 -$5 -1.9% OR $248 $199 $49 24.7% PA $983 $1,672 -$689 -41.2% RI $58 $99 -$41 -41.2% SC $435 $156 $279 179.6% SD $65 $89 -$24 -27.0% TN $438 $263 $175 66.6% TX $1,386 $996 $390 39.1% UT $187 $281 -$94 -33.5% VT $59 $100 -$41 -41.2% VA $634 $109 $525 482.6% WA $443 $282 $160 56.8% WV $162 $66 $97 147.8% WI $412 $700 -$289 -41.2% WY $48 $49 -$1 -2.6% ← Previous Page 1 Next → Source: Civilytics analysis of Treasury allocations and the House-passed formula. Revision on 6/24/2021: Our previous version of the table and third figure above had unclear labels for the percentage change. We revised to focus consistently on the percent change from the House version, that is the equal allocation approach (i.e., House estimate as denominator). The alternative using the Senate allocation as the denominator can be easily calculated from the table above and represents the hypothetical % change from the current law.\nThe range is from $161 up to $200 per resident depending on the final population of NEUs ruled eligible from Treasury\u0026rsquo;s list.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"June 19, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/5-words-5-billion-neu-aid/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Update (6/29/2021): We’ve published our full methodology in part 3 including how you can recreate this analysis using official data sources and why it took so long to figure out.","title":"How 5 Words Shifted $5 Billion Dollars (ARPA Aid to Small Towns Part II)","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"June 19, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/rule-comment/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rule-Comment","type":"tags"},{"content":"Part 2 is out now showing the impact of the Senate amendment on allocations between states.\nRead now{.wp-block-button__link}\nUpdate (6/29/2021): We've published our full methodology in part 3 including how you can recreate this analysis using official data sources and why it took so long to discover the problem.\nTreasury recently released aid estimates for all non-county, non-metropolitan city governments, so-called \u0026quot;non-entitlement units.\u0026quot;1 When we originally published our aid estimates for these 20,000+ local governments, we assumed the $19.53 billion allocated to this group would be divided up evenly among the \u0026quot;non-entitlement units\u0026quot; on a per capita basis. This was incorrect.\nWe set about identifying why we were incorrect, and found that the reason for the discrepancy highlights a major distinction with wide-reaching consequences for the amount of aid received by thousands of local governments.\nTreasury divided this $19.53B evenly among states based on their non-metropolitan population, as directed by the legislation. But the aid only goes to \u0026quot;non-entitlement units.\u0026quot; In many states, a substantial share of the population lives in unincorporated areas so \u0026quot;non-metro population\u0026quot; ≠ \u0026quot;non-entitlement population\u0026quot; in many states.\nThe seemingly small decision about how to count the population this aid is targeted toward has a big impact on how much aid towns across the country will ultimately receive.\nThe gap results in some local governments receiving 13x as much aid per resident as others.\nHow do you count the non-metro population? Treasury's method, which we'll call the subtractive method, takes the state population and subtracts the population of cities eligible for separate metro aid. In other words, Treasury's method divides each state's population into city and non-city populations and distributes the \u0026quot;non-entitlement unit\u0026quot; (NEU) aid proportional to the state's share of the national non-city population.\nHowever, in most states, there are 3 distinct populations: people living in metro cities, people living in small cities or towns eligible for aid (NEUs), and people living in unincorporated areas. This pot of ARPA aid is targeted at small local governments (NEUs), putting to the side unincorporated places without a local government. So an additive method of calculating the population eligible for this aid would sum up the population living in incorporated areas and exclude those living in unincorporated areas (which aren't receiving funds). We used this additive method in our early aid estimates.\nThe subtractive method ignores the 24% of the US population living in unincorporated areas.\nThe bigger the difference between the population living in unincorporated areas and \u0026quot;small\u0026quot; (i.e., non-metro) incorporated areas, the more the subtractive method leads to distortions in funding.\nWhy does the method of counting people matter? The Treasury allocates aid to states based on their non-metro population, but states will allocate aid to local governments based on the population living in each government's jurisdiction. Unincorporated populations are counted in the state's allocation, but are not counted when states allocate the money to localities. This means that local governments in states with a large unincorporated population will receive a much higher per capita funding amount than local governments in states with no unincorporated population.\nBecause the formula for state funding counts the population one way and the formula for towns counts it another, distortions emerge at the state and local level. To begin to see how this works, let's look how the U.S., populations is distributed among metropolitan cities, other incorporated places (NEUs), and unincorporated places.\nTotal Metro City Small Town Unincorporated U.S. Population 331,102,660 144,220,328 108,622,690 78,259,642 % 100% 43.5% 32.8% 23.6% Author calculations using Treasury data identifying metropolitan cities, NEUs (\u0026quot;small towns\u0026quot;), and state populations. \u0026quot;Small town\u0026quot; estimate is the average of the two methods of counting NEUs that Treasury provided.\nNationally around one-quarter of the population lives in unincorporated areas. But this is an estimate because determining the scope and powers of a local government -- and whether there is one -- is technically difficult due to state variation in the definitions of and relationships among local governments and the lack of federal data on this topic.2 **\nTreasury partially addresses this issue by providing 2 different methods (opens in new tab) for counting local governments in some states. One method, the more expansive approach, treats \u0026quot;minor civil divisions\u0026quot; or MCDs, which are weaker local governments, as NEUs. The \u0026quot;stricter\u0026quot; or narrower approach omits MCDs, focusing on stronger local governments. The two approaches result in a range of estimates for the share of the population living in small towns/NEUs versus unincorporated areas. The table above uses the average from the two methods.\nWhile nationally around one-quarter of people live in unincorporated areas, this varies greatly across states. 10 states have no residents living in unincorporated place. In other states, the majority of non-metro residents live in unincorporated places rather than \u0026quot;small towns\u0026quot; (NEUs).\nStates and their residents may choose to leave places unincorporated for a variety of reasons -- to keep property taxes low, because they're very rural, or because no one felt like doing the paperwork. But now this decision will affect the distribution of $19B in federal aid.\nHow much does the aid shift? Civilytics' estimates using the list of NEUs provided by Treasury coupled with the aid per state shows that the impact of this approach is substantial. Local \u0026quot;small town\u0026quot; (NEU) governments in Nevada may receive over $1,300 per resident compared to the $104 per resident received by local governments in 10+ states with no unincorporated population.\nWhy does the amount vary so much across states? In 10 states, all non-metro residents live in NEUs so these NEUs get the intended non-metro per resident allocation: about $104 per person. In other states, many non-metro residents live outside NEUs and so the NEUs in the state are dividing up a bigger pie relative to the population they serve (since unincorporated areas don't receive funds).\nLet's look state-by-state at the population living in metro cities, non-entitlement units (\u0026quot;small towns\u0026quot;) and unincorporated areas to further illustrate how this funding pattern arises.\nSeven states -- New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine -- do not have unincorporated places or have less than 1% of their population living there (see graph below). Nine more states -- Minnesota, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana -- also join the list of states with 1% of their population or less living in unincorporated areas when using the broader definition of local governments (i.e., including weak MCDs).\nAt the other end of the scale, California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia each have more than 5 million residents living in unincorporated places (which don't have a local government and thus don't receive this funding).\nSmall local governments (NEUs) in states with large unincorporated populations benefit from the \u0026quot;subtractive method\u0026quot; of allocation because the pool of money available to them is inflated by residents of areas that are not eligible to receive aid. The funding allocated to unincorporated populations will be redistributed proportionally among local governments that are incorporated, even if they do not provide services in those areas. This benefits local governments in states like Nevada and Virginia, which have the largest proportion of non-metro residents living in unincorporated areas.\nWhen aid is distributed on a per capita basis to local governments in states with large unincorporated areas, unincorporated places will receive $0 per resident and non-metro incorporated places will receive much more than $104 person. In other words, local governments in these states will receive more (sometimes much more) per resident than an equivalent government in New York or Vermont.\nUnderstanding the scale To understand how much this matters for some communities, take 3 cities of around 50,000 people each.\nMilford, CT, has 54,747 residents and is expected to receive about $5.6M in aid, or $101 per resident. Azusa, CA, has fewer residents (49,974) but is expected to receive over twice as much in aid: $11.95M or $239 per resident. Stillwater, OK, is in the middle in terms of the amount of aid with 50,299 residents and a projected $8.78M or $174 per resident in aid. This difference, over $5M in some cases, is quite substantial for a city of only 50,000 residents.\nOne more thought about why this matters This doesn't just matter to NEUs that are receiving less per resident than comparable governments in other states. People living in unincorporated areas -- and the governments that serve them -- are also shortchanged. Residents of unincorporated areas still receive and use services provided by local governments, just not necessarily by a town, village, or small city. In many cases, their county may provide more services than would otherwise be needed if there was another local government in place. While county governments are receiving a flat per capita aid of about $200 per resident, those dollars will probably go further in a county with fewer residents living in unincorporated places. Thus, another consequence of this funding decision is to advantage and disadvantage different county governments.\nWhat can be done about it now? There's still time to smooth out some of this disparity. ARPA gave states the responsibility to identify and certify local governments eligible for aid. (Perhaps because a federal agency would be unable to do so in a timely fashion.) To make the funding more equitable within states, states could consider the following remedies:\nRule as many local governments eligible as possible. Treasury has already identified that some states, like Kansas, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, will have to decide how to treat \u0026quot;minor civil divisions'\u0026quot; (MCDs) aid eligibility. As shown above, the more local governments ruled eligible (i.e., treated as NEUs), the smaller the distortion in per capita funding. (This does nothing to resolve the possible funding discrepancy between states but we'll save that for another post.) Assist unincorporated areas in becoming towns that are eligible to receive ARPA aid. Consider establishing temporary municipalities to transfer funds to county governments in recognition of the services county governments provide to unincorporated residents. (We're not lawyers so mileage may vary.) (Treasury has issued updated guidance (opens in new tab) that makes it clear only NEUs on the list published by Treasury are considered eligible.) Appeal to Treasury for guidance on how to better address the unincorporated population. Treasury is seeking comments until July 16: https://www.regulations.gov/document/TREAS-DO-2021-0008-0002 (opens in new tab) The Fiscal Stabilization Funds are flowing, but they will keep flowing for the next 12 months -- which gives everyone time to adjust. In the meantime, you can use our tools to find an up-to-date estimate of funding for all localities identified by the Treasury, both per capita and overall.\nWhy did this happen, and how could it been done differently? We have tackled that question now in part 2.\nFor now, a teaser...\nThe legislation was amended by the Senate to change the formula to use the non-metro population instead of the NEU population. It is unclear why this change was made, but the result is a $5 billion shift in allocations among states due to a change in just five words in the provision. Treasury chose not to publish populations for metro cities or the funding amounts for NEUs, which hinders efforts to understand the implications of the allocations and to replicate or analyze Treasury's funding rules. (We spent a week doing just this.) How can I check your work? It's easy! It took us a while to figure out what to do and how but now you can easily replicate the results yourself. This Treasury document (opens in new tab) has each state's total allocation for its non-entitlement units, and this Treasury spreadsheet (opens in new tab) has the list of eligible NEUs and their population for each state. Simply sum the NEU population for each state, then divide the state's NEU allocation by that number to determine the per-resident NEU aid for that state.\nCalled this because they are not entitled to direct disbursement of funds from Treasury, but instead will receive funding after certification from their state or territorial government.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe federal government collects a Census of Governments that does not allow it to map those governments onto residents and it collects a Census of residents that does not include information on the governments those residents belong to.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"June 4, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-aid-to-small-towns/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Treasury divided this $19.53B evenly among states based on their non-metropolitan population, as directed by the legislation. But the aid only goes to “non-entitlement units.” In many states, a substantial share of the population lives in unincorporated areas so “non-metro population” ≠ “non-entitlement population” in many states.\nThe seemingly small decision about how to count the population this aid is targeted toward has a big impact on how much aid towns across the country will ultimately receive.\n","title":"ARPA Aid to Small Towns","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" And fun updates like, we have a new website and my birthday! Today is my birthday which is usually cause for a good deal of celebrating - I usually try to fit in a summer blockbuster, ice cream, and some lawn games. Now, however, the day shares the tragic anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and calls for introspection. It looks like our federal government is not going to meet President Biden\u0026rsquo;s deadline to pass police reform legislation. This was always going to be a crisis that requires work in city after city and town after town.\nAs I look back on the past year I\u0026rsquo;m proud that Civilytics has helped dozens of community leaders organize and advocate around their local budgets to scale back the harmful effects of policing and promote proven alternatives that work. And, I\u0026rsquo;ve enjoyed listening to those leading that work and sharing back what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned to friends, family, colleagues, and peers \u0026mdash; including through this newsletter. The work continues and I\u0026rsquo;m very fortunate to be doing it together with community leaders city by city, town by town. Being able to do something good, that you\u0026rsquo;re passionate about, and that brings you moments of joy is truly something to celebrate. With all that said, our work continues at Civilytics. In this edition, you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nArrests in schools, and what we can do to reduce them Urban Institute's Education Data Explorer Updates on American Rescue Plan aid Civilytics\u0026rsquo; new website A roundup of what we\u0026rsquo;re reading Schools, arrests, and making a difference We recently released a new tool (opens in new tab) that allows you to look up the number of referrals to law enforcement and arrests for every school district in the country. This dashboard is a collaboration between Civilytics and Lovelytics and was produced for the Tableau Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab), where Jared serves as an advisor. Over 221,000 student referrals were made to law enforcement in K-12 schools in 2017-18, and these resulted in over 51,500 student arrests. These referrals are intentional policy decisions \u0026mdash; you can read the blog post announcing the tool (opens in new tab) to learn how some districts are working to eliminate or minimize these types of disciplinary referrals. Many of these referrals are for relatively minor infractions that could potentially be dealt with through school-based mechanisms.\nView tweet by @tableau on X You can use this new dashboard to find the numbers for your own district, learn how wide the racial disparities in students referred to law enforcement are, and look at which districts refer the most and least students. We have some really exciting enhancements planned for version 2.0, including a personal passion of mine, a better way to meaningfully compare rates in the presence of small populations. Stay tuned. Are you a district or school leader who could use this tool? We are actively seeking partnerships and feedback around what the next iteration of this tool will include. Email us to get connected to the team behind this work at Tableau.\nThe dashboard design starts at the state level and zooms you in, focusing on disparities at each step. Urban Institute Education Data Explorer The Racial Equity Data Hub is not the only data initiative we contribute to and advise. We are also proud to serve on the advisory board for the Urban Institute\u0026rsquo;s Education Data Explorer (opens in new tab). If you use data from the U.S. Department of Education, you are going to love this new tool. The team at Urban Institute has taken the hodge-podge of flat files, build-a-table tools, and links to data sources on the ED homepage and put them into an API (opens in new tab) and interface that encompasses K-12 and higher education data sources. Whether you need a standard and repeatable way to query IPEDS data, want to download some quick summary statistics on education by state, or are looking to do longitudinal analysis of school-level demographic changes over time, the Data Explorer has you covered. (opens in new tab)\nWe are especially excited to announce that they have just added the Civil Rights Data Collection to the API, and while we weren\u0026rsquo;t able to use it for the project we did with Tableau above, the project will be much easier to maintain now that we can use the Data Explorer instead of the source data. Update on ARPA Aid $350 billion of federal aid is now flowing (opens in new tab) from the Treasury to state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments across the country. All told, including separate provisions for school districts, local governments are receiving an influx of $1,000 per resident or more. (See the updated tables on our homepage to find out just how much is coming to your state, county, and town).\nThe Treasury has officially established the State and Local Fiscal Stabilization Fund program (FSF) and issued its Interim Final Rule (opens in new tab) clarifying the legislative language on how the funds will be distributed and monitored, and what uses are allowed. And I read all 150 pages of regulations so you don\u0026rsquo;t have to!\nWe are continuing our coverage of this unprecedented fiscal stimulus on our website, but here are some key things to know about this program that will be with us through 2026:\nTreasury has kept the funds pretty unrestricted and particularly encourages local governments to use funding in lower-income communities (specifically Qualified Census Tracks (opens in new tab)) emphasizing that there will be additional flexibility and fewer reporting requirements if funds are spent in these communities. Fiscal Stabilization Funds are intended for broader use than the previous CARES Act funds. The FSF goal is to prevent austerity and spending cuts in local services, and to reshape government programs to address economic and public health disparities that contributed to some of COVID-19\u0026rsquo;s devastating impacts. To learn more and get details on the types of uses Treasury recommends or specifically supports, check out our FAQs. (opens in new tab)\nTreasury has also provided updated amounts of aid that communities are eligible for \u0026mdash; use our updated tools to look up the final amounts. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty pleased that, in most cases, our aid estimates were much closer to the mark than those published by the Senate Democrats\u0026rsquo; staffers. Our ARPA Aid Calculators are all updated with the new Treasury allocations and more details. If you can get involved in your community to make sure this rare opportunity of abundance is put to use in ways that meet what your community needs, please let us know how it goes! We have a new website Speaking of ARPA aid \u0026ndash; we are proud to unveil our new website, which we built to better communicate and keep the public up-to-date about the ARPA FSF program. It was a busy month at Civilytics, including realizing that we needed a new website to make it easier for us to quickly update people on the rules, regulations, and uses of fiscal stabilization funds in their community. So, we put together a fresh new design, moved our content to the new platform, and tested and tweaked until it was ready to go live. Admittedly, there was one somewhat sleepless night spent editing configuration files when we moved to a new server, but now everything is running smoothly.\nIt was worth the all-nighter! We\u0026rsquo;d love it if you took a look. And be sure to let our webmaster (me) know if you see anything wrong!\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re reading and thinking about: Reform faces the reality of many small police departments (opens in new tab)\nMaybe someone at the WaPo reads the Civic Pulse? This article uses a less timely dataset than we prefer to use but paints a good picture of how many police departments there are nationally and how small they are.\nI read the book review but not the book on the lenses we view the Census through (opens in new tab)\nThe Census data are rolling out this year, spawning 1,000 takes on what it all means and how America is changing. This one is worth your time because it puts those narratives into the context of the never-ending struggle over meaning-making and framing.\nData visualizations of equity that are driving real change (opens in new tab)\nWe worked with a group of community leaders in LA (shoutout to Reimagine LA) who were using and visualizing data in really powerful ways to highlight the need for LA County to think big about how it spends its ARPA funds. If you like data visualization and racial equity - spend some time on this site and be inspired and educated.\nOn punishment, need, and pencils (opens in new tab)\nI was in a workshop about breaking out of the punishment mindset where this essay was shared - I had never read it before, but it is a really quick, thought-provoking read. Instead of feeding our impulse to lecture and punish, we should just fill the need.\nA 2020 election deep dive that includes data analysis (opens in new tab)\nIf you want a deep-dive retrospective on the 2020 election grounded in data and evidence, you would have a hard time doing better than this.\nAnd finally:\nIf you are into data visualization, infographics, or want to learn a lot about the problems of mass incarceration, you will really enjoy this thread:\nView tweet by @RachelEllisPhD on X As always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe. If you subscribe, send it to a friend, or share it on social media. We appreciate every bit of help spreading the word.\nAnd, we love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"May 25, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arrests-in-schools-and-what-to-do/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In this edition of the Civic Pulse you’ll find: Arrests in schools and what we can do to reduce them, Urban Institute’s Education Data Explorer, updates on ARPA, our new website, and more.","title":"Arrests in schools and what you can do","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nIn this edition of the Civic Pulse you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nEffective ways to use local ARPA aid The geography of policing and how it impedes change Grassroots reports on policing that Civilytics contributed to Efforts to use community data to identify barriers to student engagement A roundup of what we\u0026rsquo;re reading Effective ways to spend your ARPA aid Following up on our story last issue about the magnitude of the transformative federal aid to state and local governments, we wanted to share an exciting new resource that outlines ways to use ARPA aid to build resiliency and safety in your community. ARPA aid is very different from CARES aid (the prior pandemic aid package), and is much less restrictive. Being thoughtful and creative in deploying it is one of the biggest policy challenges facing local decision-makers.\n(opens in new tab)\nClick here to access the full resource. Our own Dr. Hannah Miller also wrote an in-depth review of 5 creative ways your community could deploy its upcoming ARPA aid to meet the moment.\nGive essential workers a raise Pay the rent Support your schools (the LeBron way) Eliminate water debt Provide grief and trauma counseling Read her excellent write-up for these ideas which include examples of programs in place that your city could copy and use today. In most places ARPA aid will be enough to fund multiple ideas so it\u0026rsquo;s time to get creative.\nAlso, check out how much rent debt is impacting your community with this new resource from PolicyLink:\nView tweet by @policylink on X The geography of policing Editor\u0026rsquo;s Note: Everything below was written before the Columbus Police Department shot and killed Ma\u0026rsquo;Khia Bryant, a teenage girl, less than an hour before the guilty verdict was announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin. The death of Ms. Bryant, who was in foster care, is a terrible tragedy and an indictment of the systems we put in place to control and criminalize instead of to protect and uplift families, particularly Black families.It was also written before the tragic killing of Daunte Wright by the Brooklyn Center Police Department outside of Minneapolis, MN.The point illustrated is all the more relevant \u0026ndash; Black people have to exist everywhere in America, not just in major cities that are the sites of active campaigns to rethink policing. The project of unknotting the harmful and racist institutional features of policing from our communities will not be finished until it is done in every county, city, village, and town.\nI want to give you a little peek behind the scenes at some of the longer-term work we\u0026rsquo;re doing at Civilytics. We\u0026rsquo;ve been working for a while on building a geo-referenced cross-discipline data system to enable high-quality, rigorous descriptive analyses of local conditions. The key question that sparked me to set out on this work was \u0026ldquo;How many people from how many different jurisdictions could legally pull me over on a typical commute?\u0026rdquo; Of course, I don\u0026rsquo;t actually commute anywhere but\u0026hellip;\nThe U.S. has averaged about 2 to 2.5 police officers per 1,000 people for the past 10 years. (opens in new tab)\nThis means that, for a city of 100,000, you could expert a police force with between 200 and 250 officers. Hidden in that average is a lot of variation. And that variation can be accounted for by a lot of factors, one of the most important being the racial makeup of the community.\nBut what is also striking is that, in a city of 100,000 people, plenty of people live in independent municipalities outside of the city boundaries. And in many cases these small towns also have a police force. And so might the local university. And the state highway. So while I live, vote, and pay taxes in the town of 100,000 and my police department is nominally accountable to the leadership of that city, I can still be pulled over and arrested, searched, detained, or served a warrant by an array of police forces who are not accountable to me or the local officials I elect.\nThis may sound theoretical so let\u0026rsquo;s look at Columbus, Ohio. Using the FBI\u0026rsquo;s Crime Data Explorer API (opens in new tab), we can get a list of every currently operating police department within a 10 mile radius of the center of Columbus, a distance we might cover running some local errands and visiting family and friends across the metro area.\nOn our Saturday drive around the Columbus metro area, we could cross into the jurisdiction of no less than 28 unique law enforcement agencies:\n21 municipal police departments The Franklin County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office The Ohio State Highway Patrol The Ohio State University - Columbus Police Department The Columbus State Community College Police Force The Port Columbus International Airport Police The Ohio State Investigative Unit and Department of Natural Resources (yes, they\u0026rsquo;re law enforcement) Not all of these law enforcement agencies report employment data annually to the FBI, but for those that do (~ 2 out of 3), the officers per 1,000 residents ranges from under 1 to over 9 with the median being right in line with the national ratio of 2.1. That is a lot of variation in this small region!\nA quick example of what we’re talking about. There are thousands of police officers working in the Columbus metro area every day. As you move across the metro area, you move through the jurisdiction and authority of hundreds of officers who have no line of accountability to you. You cannot influence their policies or procedures, budgets, or staffing levels. But they can search your vehicle or person and put you in custody, or kill you.\nIn December of 2020, police from two different police departments in the Columbus metro area shot and killed black men who were just going about their daily lives.\nFirst, Casey Christopher Goodson, was shot and killed by a Franklin County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputy (opens in new tab), when he was returning home after getting Subway for his family. Then Andre Maurice Hill was shot and killed by a Columbus Police Department officer (opens in new tab) in his friend\u0026rsquo;s garage while holding a cell phone. There may be some political pressure on those two departments to reform or become more accountable, but 20+ other police departments in the region are isolated from those efforts due to the local control that communities have over policing.\nThroughout the year we\u0026rsquo;ll be working on ways to describe and illustrate how changing policing is an incredibly serious game of whack a mole. We hope very soon for you to be able to explore how many police departments and which ones you would pass through on any point-to-point route in the U.S. and how the number of police officers employed varies by the race of each community and its neighbors.\nCivilytics contributes to APTP and Poder in Action reports In response to this summer\u0026rsquo;s nationwide protests demanding new approaches to community safety, many cities are creating community task forces to identify priorities to reform their police forces. Like all local political efforts, the influence of these task forces and how democratically they operate depends a lot on who receives an invitation to the table and what the ground rules are.\nIn Oakland and Phoenix, grassroots organizations have taken the initiative and issued their own detailed research reports with proposed changes to how their city provides public safety. These are creative, bold, visionary documents that are worth your time.\nIn addition to being great examples of participatory research in action, these reports present a detailed and thorough account of what policing and safety looks like in America\u0026rsquo;s cities. Civilytics is happy to have contributed some research and analysis to each of these reports, such as the map below.\nMapping OIS shootings and communities of color in Phoenix Read Poder in Action\u0026rsquo;s report for Phoenix. https://www.poderinaction.org/community-research-report (opens in new tab)\nRead the Anti Police-Terror Project\u0026rsquo;s report for Oakland. https://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/oakland-is-ready-to-reimagine-public-safety (opens in new tab)\nAmerica\u0026rsquo;s cities are spending far too much money chasing criminal offenders after the fact and manufacturing criminal charges through drug enforcement. Real safety strategies like housing, economic stability, and childcare are much more affordable and proven to work.\nPresenting to The National Student Engagement and Attendance Center I serve as a subject matter expert for the Student Engagement and Attendance Center (SEAC) (opens in new tab) which supports states and districts in efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism and increase student engagement.\nRecently, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of state and local education agency staff about the benefits of integrating aggregate data from content areas outside of education with education data systems. We all know that students\u0026rsquo; experiences are affected by a whole host of factors outside the education system. Existing, publicly available data on community contexts can help identify and then begin to address some structural barriers to student engagement and success.\nConsider spatial linkages in your data integration workflow. Since my days working on cutting up ACS estimates into school district boundaries for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (in the days before ACS-ED maps, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/maped (opens in new tab)), I\u0026rsquo;ve championed the benefits of bringing rich and granular education data together with publicly available community data to provide context for education decisions.\nI co-presented for the SEAC with Roland Richard, the Director of Data Analytics at Gwinnett County Public Schools outside of Atlanta. He\u0026rsquo;s one of the best R programmers I know and worked on a really innovative application of this concept by using a basket of Census measures to create a community context index to better understand the needs of families served by schools in the Atlanta region.\nI am hoping to see school data systems integrate a wider variety of data sources, like some of those below, to understand and plan for community needs.\nSome data sources I’ve reviewed for linkage with education sources. What we\u0026rsquo;re reading On Derek Chauvin, movements, and where we go next (opens in new tab)\nHarold Myerson at The Prospect says it better than anything I can.\nWater utilities are being privatized and purchased around the country. (opens in new tab)\nA water bill that looks like my internet bill? No thanks\u0026hellip;\nCOVID-19 was the 3rd leading cause of death last year, and other causes of death did not drop very much. (opens in new tab)\nI have been reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic with these sobering numbers on the eve of my first vaccine dose.\nA data visualization visionary from 1900, what can\u0026rsquo;t DuBois do? (opens in new tab)\nData viz in 1900, shockingly modern visualizations of racial inequality from W.E.B. DuBois and his team.\nPrison gerrymandering in the New York Times. (opens in new tab)\nCensus releases are going to start coming out and we cannot lose sight of this administrative decision that can help restore Black political power:\nA great new resource on how to measure civic readiness in communities (opens in new tab)\nMore and more we\u0026rsquo;re realizing that it may be more important for students to learn how to be informed democratic participants than to memorize the periodic table or learn what a derivative is. This new resource looks like a good help.\nAs always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe.\nWe love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"April 21, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/cp-police-geography/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In this edition of the Civic Pulse, you’ll find: ideas for effective ways to use your community’s ARPA aid, a behind-the-scenes look at our longer-term work on the geography of policing, exciting grassroots research reports on policing and safety in Oakland and Phoenix, and more.","title":"How the Geography of Policing Affects Your Life","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provides large direct payments to local governments to address the fallout from the COVID-19 global pandemic and its economic ramifications. The federal government is providing these funds with far fewer restrictions than in the previous pandemic aid package, the CARES Act.\nYour local government can use the funds not just to stock up on emergency supplies or make up for lost sales tax, but instead can deploy the funds to address the wide range of gaps in the social safety net that were exposed by the pandemic.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve crunched the numbers, reviewed the rules, and talked to organizers and advocates in cities and counties across the country. Here is the first in an ongoing series helping us expand our collective policy imagination to take full advantage of this opportunity to reimagine the role local government can play in our lives.\nGive essential workers a raise Pay the rent Support your schools (the LeBron way) Eliminate water debt Provide grief and trauma counseling 1. Give essential workers a much-deserved bonus This one\u0026rsquo;s simple. Give bonuses to grocery store workers, home health aides, hospital orderlies, janitors, cleaners, and other essential workers who kept showing up in-person for their jobs while many of us were fortunate enough to work from home.\nARPA lists four broad permissible use of funds and one is providing premium pay for essential workers (and this pay can be awarded retroactively for service during the past 12 months). Aid can be used to provide additional pay up to an extra $13/hour and up to $25k per worker. Funds can be used not just for government workers but also passed on to private employers for this purpose. Did you know only 20% of healthcare workers are doctors or nurses ​(Kinder 2020)​? An extra $13 an hour would double (even if temporarily) a lot of essential workers\u0026rsquo; hourly pay.\nAs a bonus, these programs are easy to administer, put money in the pockets of the community, and publicly acknowledge the sacrifice and hustle that kept our communities on life support during the crisis. In most communities ARPA aid would be more than enough to cover meaningful bonuses for these essential workers and leave plenty of funds left over for the other ideas on this list.\n2. Keep people in their homes In some cities, as many as 1 in 10 renting households are evicted each year. Nationally, 2 to 3% of renters, nearly a million households, are evicted annually ​(Eviction Lab, n.d.; Brancaccio and Long 2018)​.1 Many households are evicted for less than $600 of unpaid rent; the median amount owed is around $1,200 ​(Badger 2019)​. During the pandemic, a nationwide eviction moratorium banned evictions (with some caveats), though evictions still continued to varying extents in different cities. Some estimates suggest that, when the eviction moratorium ends, as many as 11 million households may be behind on rent ​(Capps 2020)​.\nImage from https://evictionlab.org/ One solution: Pay off rent debt owed. Help people start fresh.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take Richmond as an example for a back-of-the-envelope calculation. In 2019, Richmond had 8,451 formal evictions. Let\u0026rsquo;s assume the median amount owed was $1,259, the median for Virginia in 2020 ​(RVA Eviction Lab Staff 2021)​. That\u0026rsquo;d be about $10.6 million to wipe out rent debt for everyone likely to be evicted from Richmond in a year. That\u0026rsquo;s less than one-tenth of the ARPA aid Richmond is estimated to get!\nAffordable housing is a huge issue that will require many complementary strategies to solve. Looking longer-term, laws and policies addressing different stages of the eviction crisis, from decreasing evictions to lessening the severity of an eviction, can make a big difference ​(Rogers and Demarest 2019)​, and increasing the supply of low-cost and affordable housing is clearly important as well.\nYou can find out how much rent debt impacts your community with this dashboard from PolicyLink:\nView tweet by @policylink on X But cities could help those who need it now, avoid a preventable wave of homelessness, and give residents the time and break they need to get back on their feet while also looking to the future. Check out Philly\u0026rsquo;s example taking advantage of the prior pandemic aid! Working with housing nonprofits, Philly was able to disperse $61.8 million in CARES Act rental assistance and start an Eviction Diversion Program. (opens in new tab)\n3. Learn from LeBron LeBron James is good at many things, and one of them is helping at-risk, struggling students succeed.\nEveryone should read (or reread!) this article about LeBron\u0026rsquo;s I Promise School (opens in new tab), which educates some of Akron\u0026rsquo;s most at-risk third through sixth graders. Part of Akron Public Schools, the I Promise School meets students\u0026rsquo; basic needs (uniforms, transportation, meals) and provides year-round social services and resources for families, including a food pantry and GED and job placement services.\nSomeday I hope to thank him in person, but this was great. What\u0026rsquo;s perhaps most inspiring about LeBron\u0026rsquo;s approach is that, in addition to building on prior family- and community-centered models like the Harlem Children\u0026rsquo;s Zone, it seems to be truly rooted in listening and responding to participants\u0026rsquo; challenges and issues. For example, after learning that some students were struggling at school due to housing instability, the foundation launched I PROMISE Village to provide rent-free transitional housing. Then the Foundation announced plans for a 50-unit affordable housing project and giant community center.\nEarly results for the I Promise School are very promising indeed, with students\u0026rsquo; test scores increasing much more than their peers\u0026rsquo; and praise coming from both sides of the ideological spectrum ​(Poiner 2019; Spauster 2018)​. So give the money to LeBron! Or at least follow his lead.\nYour community could adopt the I Promise model by investing in community initiatives that provide the wraparound services your local schools and the families they serve need. This could involve setting up a nonprofit that collaborates with your schools to adapt and provide resources in response to changing unmet needs of students and families. Or you could fully fund and support existing community nonprofits like a Boys and Girls Club to scale up and support all of the families in your schools.\n4. Wipe out water debt One member of the Civilytics staff frequently grouses about our office water bill. Why is it so high!? But at Civilytics we\u0026rsquo;re just complaining. Across the country, people seriously struggle to pay for a basic necessity: clean running water.\nBetween 2010 and 2018, the cost of water and sewer increased by an average of 80%, or $527 a year, across 12 diverse cities ​(Lakhani 2020b, 2020a)​. A 2016 study found that 1 in 20 households had their water shutoff due to nonpayment ​(Food \u0026amp; Water Watch 2018)​. Rising costs are driven by declining federal aid, aging infrastructure, deferred maintenance, and costs to comply with safety and environmental standards.\nSource: https://www.consumerreports.org/personal-finance/millions-of-americans-cant-afford-water-as-bills-rise-80-percent-in-a-decade/ Longer-term we hope President Biden\u0026rsquo;s infrastructure bill will help address the problem of water and sewer affordability. But in the immediate term, we\u0026rsquo;re inspired by the Detroit Water Project/Human Utility (opens in new tab), a nonprofit (501c3) started to get people\u0026rsquo;s water turned back on by helping with their bills. We\u0026rsquo;ve been monthly contributors for the past 18 months or so and encourage you to consider donating as well.\nPaying off water debt with ARPA funds is a simple thing to do, will cost only a fraction of the total aid allowance, and will allow people to wash their dishes and flush their toilets while cities move forward to address the structural imbalances and rising costs of water from a solid financial footing. So cities: why not use ARPA money to start upgrading your sewer system and pay off delinquent water bills at the same time?\n5. Provide public trauma and grief counseling and support Even before COVID-19, the U.S. had a mental health care crisis, with millions of Americans reporting an unmet need for mental health services ​(Altiraifi and Rapfogel 2020)​. Now COVID has wreaked havoc on people\u0026rsquo;s physical and mental health. Over 560,000 Americans have died from COVID (with the number still climbing of course). It was the third leading cause of death in 2020, behind only heart disease and cancer ​(Ahmad and Anderson 2021)​. And even for those who were spared the worst heartache, three times as many Americans as usual report being anxious or depressed ​(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.)​.\nSource: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/ Many of the things that make grieving a little less hard \u0026ndash; being able to visit loved ones in the hospital, having friends and family by your side, having time to process what\u0026rsquo;s coming \u0026ndash; were impossible during the pandemic. When things go back to the \u0026ldquo;new normal,\u0026rdquo; there will still be an epidemic of COVID-caused grief and stress ​(Reja 2021)​.\nSo what about using ARPA funds to supports to ensure access to mental health treatment? Local governments could guarantee every member of their community who wants counseling three sessions with a mental health provider and a fourth session with a social worker to try to find longer-term care when needed. ARPA aid allows for a transfer of fund to community nonprofits. Communities could contract with nonprofit mental-health providers to create walk-in hours and issue community vouchers for no-questions-asked, no-bill mental health and grief counseling sessions with qualified and licensed mental health providers, counselors, and social workers.\nSo what do you think? Would you like to see your local government use ARPA aid for any of the above? Do you have other ideas for ways local governments could take advantage of these funds to reimagine community supports? Send us your ideas and any instances of your local government discussing creative possibilities! We\u0026rsquo;d love to hear and may feature in a second installment of this series next month\nAhmad, Farida B., and Robert N. Anderson. 2021. \u0026ldquo;The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020.\u0026rdquo; JAMA, March. American Medical Association (AMA). doi:10.1001/jama.2021.5469 (opens in new tab).\nAltiraifi, Azza, and Nicole Rapfogel. 2020. \u0026ldquo;Mental Health Care Was Severely Inequitable, Then Came the Coronavirus Crisis.\u0026rdquo; Center for American Progress. September 10. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/disability/reports/2020/09/10/490221/mental-health-care-severely-inequitable-came-coronavirus-crisis/#fn-490221-18 (opens in new tab).\nBadger, Emily. 2019. \u0026ldquo;Many Renters Who Face Eviction Owe Less Than $600.\u0026rdquo; The New York Times. December 12. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/upshot/eviction-prevention-solutions-government.html (opens in new tab).\nBrancaccio, David, and Katie Long. 2018. \u0026ldquo;Millions of Americans Are Evicted Every Year \u0026mdash; and Not Just in Big Cities.\u0026rdquo; Marketplace. April 19. https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/09/eviction-desmond-princeton-housing-crisis-rent/ (opens in new tab).\nCapps, Kriston. 2020. \u0026ldquo;U.S. Renters Could Owe $70 Billion.\u0026rdquo; Bloomberg CityLab. December 10. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/u-s-households-may-be-70-billion-behind-on-rent (opens in new tab).\nCenters for Disease Control and Prevention. n.d. \u0026ldquo;Mental Health - Household Pulse Survey.\u0026rdquo; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/mental-health.htm (opens in new tab).\nEviction Lab. n.d. \u0026ldquo;The Eviction Lab.\u0026rdquo; The Eviction Lab. https://evictionlab.org/ (opens in new tab).\nFood \u0026amp; Water Watch. 2018. \u0026ldquo;Shocking Study: 15 Million U.S. Residents Had Water Shut Off in 2016.\u0026rdquo; Common Dreams. October 25. https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2018/10/25/shocking-study-15-million-us-residents-had-water-shut-2016 (opens in new tab).\nKinder, Molly. 2020. \u0026ldquo;Meet the COVID-19 Frontline Heroes.\u0026rdquo; Brookings. May. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/meet-the-covid-19-frontline-heroes/ (opens in new tab).\nLakhani, Nina. 2020a. \u0026ldquo;Revealed: Millions of Americans Can\u0026rsquo;t Afford Water as Bills Rise 80% in a Decade.\u0026rdquo; The Guardian. June 23. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/23/millions-of-americans-cant-afford-water-bills-rise (opens in new tab).\n\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;. 2020b. \u0026ldquo;Millions of Americans Can\u0026rsquo;t Afford Water, as Bills Rise 80% in a Decade.\u0026rdquo; Consumer Reports. July 10. https://www.consumerreports.org/personal-finance/millions-of-americans-cant-afford-water-as-bills-rise-80-percent-in-a-decade/ (opens in new tab).\nPoiner, Jessica. 2019. \u0026ldquo;So Far, LeBron\u0026rsquo;s I Promise School Is Keeping Its Promise.\u0026rdquo; Thomas B. Fordham Institute. October 23. https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/so-far-lebrons-i-promise-school-keeping-its-promise (opens in new tab).\nReja, Mishal. 2021. \u0026ldquo;A Hidden Pandemic: Grief in the African American Community.\u0026rdquo; ABC News. February 2. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/hidden-pandemic-grief-african-american-community/story?id=75613917 (opens in new tab).\nRogers, Woody, and Leah Demarest. 2019. \u0026ldquo;Comparative Law and Policy Analysis for Addressing Evictions in Richmond, Virginia.\u0026rdquo; RVA Eviction Lab. October. https://cura.vcu.edu/media/cura/pdfs/cura-documents/ResearchBrief_EvictionLawsandPolicies_Oct2019.pdf (opens in new tab).\nRVA Eviction Lab Staff. 2021. \u0026ldquo;Quarterly Data Report, 4th Quarter 2020: October to December .\u0026rdquo; RVA Eviction Lab. January 29. https://rampages.us/rvaevictionlab/wp-content/uploads/sites/33937/2021/01/RVAEL_2020-Q4-data-report.pdf (opens in new tab).\nSpauster, Patrick. 2018. \u0026ldquo;LeBron James\u0026rsquo;s I Promise School Puts a Public Face to the Evidence-Based Approach of Whole-Family Intervention.\u0026rdquo; Urban Institute. August 14. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/lebron-jamess-i-promise-school-puts-public-face-evidence-based-approach-whole-family-intervention (opens in new tab).\nThe Eviction Lab has tons of great data and resources on both the national eviction crisis and which cities rank highest in evictions. The 2018 Marketplace interview with the Eviction Lab founder and MacArthur genius grant winner Matthew Desmond is also worth revisiting.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"April 19, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-aid-spending-top5/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The American Rescue Plan provides large direct payments to local governments to address the fallout from the COVID-19 global pandemic and its economic ramifications. Here are five ideas for impactful ways cities could spend this aid.","title":"5 Impactful Ways Cities Could Spend Their ARPA Aid","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" And we\u0026rsquo;re back\u0026hellip; In our last newsletter I promised a \u0026ldquo;coming next\u0026rdquo; follow-up...but instead, we just dove head first into 2021. We\u0026rsquo;ve been working on a lot of inspiring, big, new projects and are excited to share what we\u0026rsquo;re learning with all of you. What was I thinking?\nIn 2021 you can expect to hear from us about:\nThe facts and data we learn about in our work that are changing how we see the world The dynamic fiscal conditions cities, counties, and states face this budget season and how it impacts you as a resident! National data sources and efforts to raise awareness about the impacts of structural racism across the United States New visions of public safety and how together we can recalibrate what it means to be safe in our homes, in our communities, and with one another Spotlights on community organizations doing the work of building a safer tomorrow and doing the research to find strategies that really work And much much more In this edition you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nCivilytics publishes American Rescue Plan aid estimates for all local governments Introducing the Racial Equity Data Hub, an exciting new project from Tableau Civilytics announces its first hire A roundup of what we\u0026rsquo;ve been reading and thinking about lately American Rescue Plan Act Local Aid Estimates The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021. ARPA provides $1.9 trillion in economic relief through direct payments (stimulus checks), expanded child tax credits and unemployment benefits, small business loans, and aid to local and state governments.\nARPA allocates $350 billion in aid for state and local governments. This is in addition to the aid previously allocated under prior coronavirus relief efforts (the CARES Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act). Unlike aid in the previous supplemental act, aid in ARPA is largely unrestricted.\nThis is a serious amount of funding that will be part of your community budget until 2024. Most communities will receive around $200 per resident at both the county and the town/city level. We encourage you to participate in reimagining how your community can use these funds to build a safer, stronger, more resilient future. Some interesting possibilities for these funds include:\nEviction protection and water and housing debt payoffs for all unpaid bills in your community Building and funding free community broadband Grants to all local employers employing grocery workers and other essential workers to give bonus pay for work during the past year Supporting and growing violence prevention programs run by local non-profits that defuse neighborhood conflicts before they become dangerous We\u0026rsquo;ll be sharing more ideas we come across in a future newsletter \u0026ndash; and we\u0026rsquo;d love to hear yours. Reply and let us know what you\u0026rsquo;d like to see your community invest in.\nUse Civilytics\u0026rsquo; aid estimates to learn more and find out how much your city, town, or county will receive today.\nBuilt by Hannah!\nIntroducing the Racial Equity Data Hub I\u0026rsquo;m excited to be one of five inaugural advisors for the Racial Equity Data Hub, a new initiative led by the Tableau Foundation. If you know me and my passion for R, then you know that it must be a really amazing project if I\u0026rsquo;m teaming up with Tableau, and it is!\nThe Racial Equity Data Hub is an ambitious and exciting new initiative that has great potential to advance the use of data to empower communities across the country \u0026ndash; which happens to be Civilytics\u0026rsquo; mission. From the website:\nTableau Foundation is hosting the Racial Equity Data Hub to share insights from leading experts at the intersection of data and equity issues, and to inspire anyone to effectively and ethically use data to advocate for change.\nHey it\u0026rsquo;s me!\nIn addition to being an advisor to the Hub, Civilytics will also provide data, analytics, and design guidance to support the Hub\u0026rsquo;s four core focus areas:\nAchieving Equitable Education Advancing Equitable Justice Building Economic Power Building Political Power Our first big contributions will be around the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) and the FBI\u0026rsquo;s arrest data but more is in the works in the coming months.\nLearn more about this exciting project by reading the introductory blog post (opens in new tab) by Channing Nesbitt that describes the Hub. Visit it today: Racial Equity Data Hub (opens in new tab). And stay tuned for updates throughout 2021.\nCivilytics is growing Civilytics is proud to introduce our first ever hire \u0026ndash; Dr. Hannah Miller. Dr. Hannah Miller\nDr. Miller brings ten years of experience in data analysis, research technical assistance, and program evaluation to Civilytics. She previously worked as a project director and researcher for Abt Associates, where she led multiple federally-funded contracts and conducted research for the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other clients. Her work included randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies, and descriptive and implementation studies. Dr. Miller completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she worked for the Institute for Research on Poverty and Wisconsin Center for Education Research.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s an avid consumer of baked goods...and TV.\u0026hellip;and loves swapping tips on must-experience bakeries, restaurants, and streaming content.\nPlease join me in welcoming Hannah to Civilytics! As many of you know, I also happen to be married to Hannah and could not be happier that she has signed on to the work of Civilytics. Working together has been something we hoped could happen someday and instead of writing a paper together, we\u0026rsquo;ve gone all-in and share a home office! This means Civilytics has more capacity to support clients, especially in the education space!\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re reading Why Am I Always Being Researched? A Guidebook for Community Organizations, Researchers, and Funders to Help Us Get From Insufficient Understanding to More Authentic Truth. (opens in new tab)\nI am reading pieces of this excellent guidebook from Chicago Beyond (opens in new tab) every week. It challenged my training as a social scientist, broadened my horizons as an advocate for evidence, and pushed me to imagine new and better ways to collaborate with community organizers to produce knowledge.\nPrisoner access to vaccines is uneven and not easy to track (opens in new tab)\nThis NYT article captures a lot of what I\u0026rsquo;m hearing from community organizers I\u0026rsquo;m working with about uneven access to the vaccine in some of the most vulnerable places.\nThe Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration (opens in new tab)\nWith the Census data getting ready to be released soon, it is always a good time to remind people that mass incarceration distorts the racial geography of America. Mass incarceration results in undercounts of the populations of many cities and overstates the diversity of rural communities that house prisons.\n1 Million Experiments (opens in new tab)\nEvery day I talk with people who have experience in building safer communities and I learn how they are being proactive about preventing violence. Now you can too, with 1M Experiments \u0026ndash; an ever expanding list of community safety programs being used around the world.\nThe cable lobby hates it\u0026hellip; (opens in new tab)\nFinally, a personal thing, but any plan to expand broadband in America that the cable lobby says they \u0026ldquo;hate\u0026rdquo; is probably the best plan we\u0026rsquo;ve had in awhile. Our broadband access, speeds, and prices are a drag on our economy, community, and lives. Let\u0026rsquo;s get that fixed too.\nAs always, we appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, please subscribe below.\nWe love to hear from you! If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a project you think Civilytics can help with or a question, do get in touch. With gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"April 5, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-and-you/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In this edition of the Civic Pulse, you’ll find: estimates for how much $ local governments will receive through the American Rescue Plan, an intro to Tableau’s new Racial Equity Data Hub, an intro to Civilytics’ first hire, and more.","title":"How the American Rescue Plan Affects Your Community","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Update: Treasury has published official population figures for non-metropolitan cities (non-entitlement units). The aid calculator for cities has been updated to reflect the new list of non-entitlement units and their populations. Read our analysis of the impact of these changes.\n— June 3, 2021\nUpdate: The official aid figures have been published by Treasury for all state, Tribal, territorial, county, and metropolitan cities. Non-metropolitan city estimates have not been published.\n— May 10, 2021 Update: Looking for effective and creative uses of ARPA aid to make your community better? Read our explainer and share your ideas with us. We\u0026rsquo;ll keep more updates coming as we have them.\nThe American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021. ARPA provides $1.9 trillion in economic relief through direct payments (stimulus checks), expanded child tax credits and unemployment benefits, small business loans, and aid to local and state governments.\nARPA allocates $350 billion in aid for state and local governments. This is in addition to the aid previously allocated under prior coronavirus relief efforts (the CARES Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act). Unlike aid in the previous supplemental act, aid in ARPA is largely unrestricted.\nHow can the funds be used? Both state and local governments are required to submit to Treasury a certification from the governor or other authorized officer of the state attesting that the state, or local government, needs federal assistance for the purposes below.\nRespond to the COVID-19 pandemic by addressing its economic effects, including aid to households, small businesses, nonprofits, and industries such as tourism and hospitality; Provide premium pay to essential employees or grants to their employers. Premium pay cannot exceed $13 per hour or $25,000 per worker extra; Provide government services affected by a revenue reduction resulting from COVID-19; and/or Make necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. How much is the funding? Counties will receive about $195 per resident Larger cities (approx. 50,000 residents or more) will receive an average of $200 to $300 per resident (the funding formula for this category takes into account city need) Smaller municipalities will receive ~$104 per resident For comparison, in a typical year, the federal government disburses about $250 per resident in aid to all local governments serving that resident (e.g., city, county), not including federal pass-through education aid. ARPA aid more than doubles that amount ​(\u0026ldquo;Fiscally Standardized Cities\u0026rdquo; 2017; Chernick, Copeland, and Reschovsky 2020)​.1\nWhen will the funds come? Half the funds will be paid by May 10. The other half will be paid no sooner than 12 months later (May 10, 2022).\nARPA Aid Allocations for 200 Largest Cities Use the table below to look up the aid allocations for your city. Remember the aid amount below will come in two payments. If your city is not listed here, you can find the full aid allocations or estimates for all municipalities in the U.S. below.\nSearch 200 rows City State Treasury Allocation Aid Per Resident Population New York New York $4,259,566,740 $511 8,336,817 Los Angeles California $1,278,900,928 $321 3,979,576 Chicago Illinois $1,886,591,388 $700 2,693,976 Houston Texas $607,769,139 $262 2,320,268 Phoenix Arizona $396,080,366 $236 1,680,992 Philadelphia Pennsylvania $1,087,606,822 $687 1,584,064 San Antonio Texas $326,919,408 $211 1,547,253 San Diego California $299,714,755 $210 1,423,851 Dallas Texas $355,426,891 $265 1,343,573 San Jose California $212,280,152 $208 1,021,795 Austin Texas $188,482,478 $193 978,908 Jacksonville city Florida $157,663,110 $173 911,507 Fort Worth Texas $173,745,090 $191 909,585 Columbus Ohio $187,030,138 $208 898,553 Charlotte North Carolina $141,618,325 $160 885,708 San Francisco California $453,586,783 $515 881,549 Indianapolis Indiana $232,410,707 $265 876,384 Seattle Washington $232,341,627 $308 753,675 Denver Colorado $166,796,658 $229 727,211 District Of Columbia District of Columbia $372,859,344 $528 705,749 Boston Massachusetts $424,179,607 $612 692,600 El Paso Texas $154,345,135 $226 681,728 Nashville-Davidson Tennessee $124,981,265 $186 670,820 Detroit Michigan $826,675,290 $1,234 670,031 Oklahoma City Oklahoma $122,507,590 $187 655,057 Portland Oregon $207,895,373 $318 654,741 Las Vegas Nevada $130,568,739 $200 651,319 Memphis Tennessee $161,061,490 $247 651,073 Louisville-Jefferson County Kentucky $239,362,213 $388 617,638 Baltimore Maryland $525,891,651 $886 593,490 Milwaukee Wisconsin $394,226,649 $668 590,157 Albuquerque New Mexico $108,810,857 $194 560,513 Tucson Arizona $135,696,763 $248 548,073 Fresno California $170,808,029 $321 531,576 Mesa Arizona $105,515,724 $204 518,012 Sacramento California $112,313,331 $219 513,624 Atlanta Georgia $170,928,821 $337 506,811 Kansas City Missouri $194,776,376 $393 495,327 Brookhaven Town New York $55,026,837 $114 480,763 Colorado Springs Colorado $76,039,132 $159 478,221 Omaha Nebraska $112,591,455 $235 478,192 Raleigh North Carolina $73,292,365 $155 474,069 Miami Florida $137,639,417 $294 467,963 Long Beach California $135,753,078 $293 462,628 Virginia Beach Virginia $49,027,529 $109 449,974 Oakland California $188,081,700 $434 433,031 Minneapolis Minnesota $271,192,484 $631 429,606 Tulsa Oklahoma $87,826,517 $219 401,190 Tampa Florida $80,373,543 $201 399,700 Arlington Texas $81,498,709 $204 398,854 New Orleans Louisiana $311,742,151 $799 390,144 Wichita Kansas $72,422,555 $186 389,938 Bakersfield California $94,517,089 $246 384,145 Cleveland Ohio $511,721,590 $1,343 381,009 Aurora Colorado $65,424,806 $172 379,289 Anaheim California $106,630,239 $304 350,365 Honolulu Hawaii $196,954,703 $571 345,064 Santa Ana California $128,360,813 $386 332,318 Riverside California $73,535,189 $222 331,360 Islip Town New York $47,551,642 $144 329,610 Corpus Christi Texas $67,553,894 $207 326,586 Lexington-Fayette Kentucky $58,409,570 $181 323,152 Henderson Nevada $37,368,428 $117 320,189 San Juan Municipio Puerto Rico $175,854,727 $552 318,441 Stockton California $78,052,072 $250 312,697 St Paul Minnesota $166,641,623 $541 308,096 Cincinnati Ohio $279,590,123 $920 303,940 St Louis Missouri $439,692,690 $1,463 300,576 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania $335,070,222 $1,116 300,286 Greensboro North Carolina $59,430,051 $200 296,710 Lincoln Nebraska $45,949,074 $159 289,102 Anchorage Alaska $47,376,742 $165 288,000 Plano Texas $36,424,316 $127 287,677 Orlando Florida $58,032,405 $202 287,442 Irvine California $56,433,217 $196 287,401 Newark New Jersey $176,667,606 $626 282,011 Durham North Carolina $51,881,733 $186 278,993 Chula Vista California $57,535,251 $210 274,492 Toledo Ohio $180,948,591 $663 272,779 Fort Wayne Indiana $50,815,327 $188 270,402 St Petersburg Florida $45,413,871 $171 265,351 Laredo Texas $85,558,888 $326 262,491 Jersey City New Jersey $139,971,935 $534 262,075 Chandler Arizona $34,560,795 $132 261,165 Madison Wisconsin $47,197,155 $182 259,680 Lubbock Texas $56,575,324 $219 258,862 Scottsdale Arizona $29,244,706 $113 258,069 Reno Nevada $51,519,997 $202 255,601 Buffalo New York $331,356,932 $1,298 255,284 Gilbert Arizona $24,159,871 $95 254,114 Glendale Arizona $59,516,611 $236 252,381 North Las Vegas Nevada $46,340,548 $184 251,974 Winston-Salem North Carolina $51,732,065 $209 247,945 Chesapeake Virginia $28,469,568 $116 244,835 Norfolk Virginia $106,991,262 $441 242,742 Fremont California $44,211,563 $183 241,110 Garland Texas $53,513,994 $223 239,928 Irving Texas $54,277,494 $226 239,798 Hialeah Florida $66,834,253 $286 233,339 Richmond Virginia $110,120,336 $478 230,436 Boise Idaho $36,904,682 $161 228,959 Spokane Washington $80,991,104 $365 222,081 Baton Rouge Louisiana $79,966,896 $363 220,236 Tacoma Washington $60,969,952 $280 217,827 San Bernardino California $77,656,407 $360 215,784 Modesto California $45,897,056 $213 215,196 Fontana California $50,257,113 $234 214,547 Des Moines Iowa $94,824,614 $443 214,237 Moreno Valley California $48,481,233 $228 213,055 Santa Clarita California $35,148,685 $165 212,979 Fayetteville North Carolina $40,427,539 $191 211,657 Babylon Town New York $27,770,292 $132 210,141 Birmingham Alabama $141,272,354 $675 209,403 Oxnard California $59,540,662 $285 208,881 Rochester New York $202,141,319 $983 205,695 Port St Lucie Florida $24,739,425 $123 201,846 Grand Rapids Michigan $92,279,500 $459 201,013 Huntsville Alabama $34,402,593 $172 200,574 Salt Lake City Utah $85,411,572 $426 200,567 Huntington Town New York $22,209,010 $111 200,503 Frisco Texas $16,638,254 $83 200,490 Yonkers New York $87,486,480 $437 200,370 Amarillo Texas $39,676,317 $199 199,371 Glendale California $43,521,005 $218 199,303 Huntington Beach California $29,606,925 $149 199,223 Mckinney City Texas $23,115,761 $116 199,177 Montgomery Alabama $41,639,442 $210 198,525 Augusta-Richmond County Georgia $43,012,121 $217 197,888 Aurora Illinois $35,221,280 $178 197,757 Akron Ohio $145,337,626 $736 197,597 Little Rock Arkansas $37,713,401 $191 197,312 Tempe Arizona $45,869,312 $234 195,805 Columbus-Muscogee County Georgia $40,456,205 $207 195,769 Overland Park Kansas $18,581,302 $95 195,494 Grand Prairie Texas $36,709,655 $189 194,543 Tallahassee Florida $46,468,128 $239 194,500 Cape Coral Florida $25,439,699 $131 194,495 Mobile Alabama $58,203,265 $308 188,720 Knoxville Tennessee $42,453,411 $226 187,603 Shreveport Louisiana $48,240,338 $258 187,112 Worcester Massachusetts $110,617,389 $597 185,428 Ontario California $45,609,291 $247 185,010 Vancouver Washington $33,135,869 $180 184,463 Sioux Falls South Dakota $25,415,071 $138 183,793 Chattanooga Tennessee $38,640,506 $211 182,799 Brownsville Texas $65,194,854 $357 182,781 Ft Lauderdale Florida $38,133,766 $209 182,437 Providence Rhode Island $131,373,965 $730 179,883 Newport News Virginia $31,981,891 $178 179,225 Rancho Cucamonga California $26,835,530 $151 177,603 Santa Rosa California $34,637,465 $196 176,753 Peoria City Arizona $20,769,706 $118 175,961 Oceanside California $32,346,514 $184 175,742 Elk Grove California $21,944,605 $126 174,775 Salem Oregon $34,127,916 $196 174,365 Pembroke Pines Florida $25,463,361 $147 173,591 Eugene Oregon $35,908,037 $208 172,622 Garden Grove California $48,374,570 $282 171,644 Cary North Carolina $16,476,072 $97 170,282 Fort Collins Colorado $28,118,971 $165 170,243 Corona California $29,158,725 $172 169,868 Bayamon Municipio Puerto Rico $53,127,043 $314 169,269 Springfield Missouri $40,276,290 $240 167,882 Jackson Mississippi $42,098,330 $262 160,628 Alexandria Virginia $28,666,813 $180 159,428 Hayward California $38,465,994 $242 159,203 Clarksville Tennessee $25,531,478 $161 158,146 Lakewood Colorado $21,581,066 $137 157,935 Lancaster California $36,340,561 $231 157,601 Salinas California $51,567,313 $332 155,465 Palmdale California $35,445,019 $229 155,079 Hollywood Florida $29,390,502 $190 154,817 Springfield Massachusetts $93,848,687 $611 153,606 Macon-Bibb County Georgia $46,115,570 $301 153,159 Kansas City Kansas $55,383,872 $362 152,960 Sunnyvale California $28,154,030 $184 152,703 Pomona California $45,366,413 $299 151,691 Killeen Texas $29,117,907 $192 151,666 Escondido California $38,808,509 $256 151,625 Pasadena Texas $40,199,596 $266 151,227 Naperville Illinois $13,308,689 $90 148,449 Bellevue Washington $20,110,630 $136 148,164 Hoffman Estates Illinois $5,634,310 $38 147,344 Joliet Illinois $22,207,675 $151 147,344 Carolina Municipio Puerto Rico $43,674,914 $297 146,984 Murfreesboro Tennessee $24,106,035 $164 146,900 Midland Texas $24,988,224 $171 146,038 Rockford Illinois $54,822,355 $377 145,609 Paterson New Jersey $64,668,166 $445 145,233 Savannah Georgia $55,591,247 $385 144,464 Bridgeport Connecticut $82,662,800 $572 144,399 Torrance California $24,074,277 $168 143,592 Mc Allen Texas $41,922,103 $293 143,268 Syracuse New York $123,076,929 $865 142,327 Surprise City Arizona $15,545,984 $110 141,664 Denton Texas $23,290,438 $165 141,541 Roseville California $17,644,859 $125 141,500 Thornton Colorado $21,001,371 $148 141,464 Miramar Florida $22,053,169 $156 141,191 Pasadena California $52,625,975 $373 141,029 ← Previous Page 1 Next → Source: US Treasury. The 200 largest cities by Treasury allocation. ARPA Aid Estimates for 200 Largest Counties Use the table below to look up the aid allocations for your county. Remember the aid amount below will come in two payments. If your county is not listed here, you can find the full aid allocations for all counties in the U.S. below.\nSearch 200 rows County State Treasury Allocation Estimated Per Resident Estimated Population Los Angeles County CA $1,949,978,847 $193 10,081,570 Cook County IL $1,000,372,385 $192 5,198,275 Harris County TX $915,508,128 $197 4,646,630 Maricopa County AZ $871,239,088 $201 4,328,810 San Diego County CA $648,431,468 $196 3,316,073 Orange County CA $616,840,943 $195 3,168,044 Miami-Dade County FL $527,733,745 $195 2,699,428 Dallas County TX $511,918,088 $196 2,606,868 Kings County NY $497,231,149 $192 2,589,974 Riverside County CA $479,874,599 $199 2,411,439 Queens County NY $437,785,496 $191 2,287,388 King County WA $437,576,495 $199 2,195,502 Clark County NV $440,282,817 $202 2,182,004 San Bernardino County CA $423,455,955 $197 2,149,031 Tarrant County TX $408,388,891 $199 2,049,770 Bexar County TX $389,166,877 $199 1,952,843 Santa Clara County CA $374,462,651 $194 1,927,470 Broward County FL $379,304,234 $197 1,926,205 Wayne County MI $339,789,370 $193 1,757,299 Alameda County CA $324,636,065 $196 1,656,754 New York County NY $316,357,047 $194 1,631,993 Middlesex County MA $313,053,637 $196 1,600,842 Philadelphia County PA $307,685,862 $195 1,579,075 Sacramento County CA $301,469,072 $198 1,524,553 Suffolk County NY $286,812,434 $193 1,483,832 Palm Beach County FL $290,730,026 $198 1,465,027 Bronx County NY $275,470,084 $192 1,435,068 HillsBorough County FL $285,912,528 $201 1,422,278 Nassau County NY $385,003,440 $284 1,356,509 Orange County FL $270,661,716 $201 1,349,746 Franklin County OH $255,764,417 $198 1,290,360 Oakland County MI $244,270,949 $195 1,253,185 Cuyahoga County OH $239,898,257 $192 1,247,451 Hennepin County MN $245,875,163 $197 1,245,837 Travis County TX $247,450,630 $202 1,226,805 Allegheny County PA $380,998,452 $312 1,221,744 Fairfax County VA $222,894,638 $195 1,145,862 Contra Costa County CA $224,058,903 $196 1,142,251 Salt Lake County UT $225,401,283 $199 1,133,646 Mecklenburg County NC $215,673,636 $201 1,074,475 Wake County NC $215,946,541 $202 1,069,079 Montgomery County MD $204,083,827 $196 1,043,530 Fulton County GA $206,657,290 $199 1,036,200 Pima County AZ $203,421,668 $198 1,027,207 St. Louis County MO $193,112,666 $194 996,919 Honolulu County HI $189,297,438 $192 984,821 Fresno County CA $194,063,657 $197 984,521 Collin County TX $200,984,172 $206 973,977 Westchester County NY $187,926,698 $194 968,890 Pinellas County FL $189,381,543 $196 964,666 Marion County IN $187,358,746 $197 951,869 Milwaukee County WI $183,696,189 $193 951,226 Fairfield County CT $183,231,182 $194 943,926 Shelby County TN $182,033,509 $194 936,374 Duval County FL $186,032,681 $199 936,186 Bergen County NJ $261,035,747 $281 930,390 DuPage County IL $179,266,585 $193 929,060 Erie County NY $178,447,094 $194 919,355 Gwinnett County GA $181,855,587 $199 915,046 Prince George\u0026#39;s County MD $176,626,110 $194 908,670 Hartford County CT $173,206,156 $194 893,561 Kern County CA $174,853,685 $197 887,641 Pierce County WA $175,781,756 $200 877,013 San Francisco County CA $171,230,559 $196 874,961 Macomb County MI $169,758,815 $195 870,325 New Haven County CT $166,026,527 $194 857,513 Hidalgo County TX $212,973,405 $249 855,176 Ventura County CA $164,326,748 $194 847,263 El Paso County TX $163,012,143 $195 836,062 Denton County TX $172,329,559 $207 833,822 Baltimore County MD $160,706,923 $194 828,018 Middlesex County NJ $160,258,621 $194 825,920 Worcester County MA $161,338,586 $196 824,772 Montgomery County PA $161,395,498 $196 823,823 Hamilton County OH $158,784,547 $195 813,589 Multnomah County OR $157,887,555 $196 804,606 Snohomish County WA $159,679,985 $200 798,808 Suffolk County MA $156,149,511 $196 796,605 Essex County NJ $155,191,527 $195 795,404 Oklahoma County OK $154,892,206 $197 787,216 Essex County MA $153,260,605 $196 783,676 San Mateo County CA $148,897,819 $194 767,423 Jefferson County KY $148,933,559 $194 767,419 Fort Bend County TX $157,660,879 $206 765,394 Cobb County GA $147,648,478 $197 751,218 DeKalb County GA $147,484,541 $197 749,323 Monroe County NY $144,080,127 $194 743,341 San Joaquin County CA $148,038,314 $199 742,603 Lee County FL $149,675,549 $203 737,468 Denver County CO $141,252,212 $200 705,576 Lake County IL $135,293,758 $193 701,473 Norfolk County MA $137,282,758 $196 700,437 El Paso County CO $139,929,837 $200 698,974 Jackson County MO $136,551,645 $196 696,216 District of Columbia DC $137,083,470 $198 692,683 Will County IL $134,168,730 $195 689,315 Davidson County TN $134,829,335 $196 687,488 Polk County FL $140,779,436 $205 686,218 Bernalillo County NM $131,911,293 $195 677,858 Hudson County NJ $130,604,069 $195 670,046 Jefferson County AL $127,920,085 $194 659,680 Kent County MI $127,605,807 $197 648,121 Tulsa County OK $126,556,338 $196 646,419 Arapahoe County CO $127,534,910 $198 644,560 Providence County RI $124,104,857 $195 635,737 Bucks County PA $122,034,082 $195 626,806 Monmouth County NJ $120,193,675 $193 621,659 Baltimore City MD $115,278,475 $189 609,032 Utah County UT $123,581,190 $204 605,490 Ocean County NJ $117,938,762 $198 596,415 Johnson County KS $117,009,332 $198 591,506 Washington County OR $116,852,194 $198 589,481 Brevard County FL $116,920,177 $200 585,507 Jefferson County CO $113,217,801 $197 574,798 Montgomery County TX $117,978,581 $206 571,949 Anne Arundel County MD $112,509,414 $197 571,275 Delaware County PA $110,083,961 $195 564,554 Bristol County MA $109,786,776 $196 561,037 Douglas County NE $110,973,572 $198 560,617 New Castle County DE $108,531,220 $195 556,165 Union County NJ $130,591,801 $236 554,033 Williamson County TX $114,707,609 $209 547,604 Ramsey County MN $106,893,403 $196 544,442 Stanislaus County CA $106,959,250 $197 543,194 Summit County OH $105,085,433 $194 541,334 Lancaster County PA $106,000,489 $196 540,999 Volusia County FL $107,468,931 $200 536,487 Dane County WI $106,189,095 $198 536,078 Montgomery County OH $103,273,967 $194 531,670 Kane County IL $103,413,041 $195 531,376 Guilford County NC $104,339,752 $198 527,868 Pasco County FL $107,597,711 $205 524,602 Chester County PA $101,972,959 $196 519,560 Plymouth County MA $101,237,378 $196 515,303 Sedgwick County KS $100,235,109 $195 513,375 Greenville County SC $101,691,896 $201 507,003 Camden County NJ $98,376,054 $194 506,738 Spokane County WA $101,547,383 $201 505,505 Adams County CO $100,502,964 $199 504,108 Passaic County NJ $97,473,818 $194 503,637 Sonoma County CA $96,018,973 $192 499,772 Morris County NJ $95,535,125 $194 493,379 Lake County IN $94,301,324 $194 485,707 Polk County IA $95,208,028 $199 479,612 Richmond County NY $92,485,196 $195 474,893 Clark County WA $94,835,091 $200 473,252 Hampden County MA $90,587,294 $194 467,871 Onondaga County NY $89,452,165 $193 462,872 Tulare County CA $90,552,914 $196 461,898 Prince William County VA $91,357,060 $198 461,423 Seminole County FL $91,646,669 $199 461,402 Knox County TN $91,352,787 $198 461,104 Washoe County NV $91,587,038 $200 456,936 Ada County ID $93,542,629 $205 456,849 Virginia Beach City VA $87,402,174 $194 450,201 Burlington County NJ $86,503,822 $194 445,702 York County PA $87,224,252 $196 445,565 Santa Barbara County CA $86,727,196 $195 444,829 East Baton Rouge Parish LA $85,476,302 $193 443,763 Solano County CA $86,949,405 $197 441,829 Jefferson Parish LA $84,006,695 $193 434,850 Monterey County CA $84,311,261 $195 433,410 Pinal County AZ $89,891,338 $208 432,793 Lucas County OH $83,201,577 $193 431,102 Cameron County TX $82,194,452 $195 421,666 Dakota County MN $83,332,300 $198 421,453 Sarasota County FL $84,249,299 $201 419,496 Berks County PA $81,806,170 $196 418,025 Mobile County AL $80,261,198 $194 414,114 HillsBorough County NH $81,002,217 $196 413,035 Richland County SC $80,756,312 $196 411,357 Clackamas County OR $81,227,922 $198 410,463 Genesee County MI $78,824,418 $193 407,875 Charleston County SC $79,910,793 $199 401,165 Waukesha County WI $78,510,723 $196 400,475 Loudoun County VA $80,324,909 $203 395,134 St. Charles County MO $78,088,061 $198 394,290 Pulaski County AR $76,124,117 $194 392,967 Orleans Parish LA $75,780,898 $194 390,845 Placer County CA $77,370,739 $201 385,512 Manatee County FL $78,327,168 $204 384,213 Orange County NY $74,770,082 $197 380,085 Butler County OH $74,419,288 $196 380,019 Forsyth County NC $74,256,322 $198 375,195 Lane County OR $74,212,036 $199 373,340 Allen County IN $73,674,384 $198 372,575 Stark County OH $71,985,871 $193 372,404 Collier County FL $74,762,701 $201 371,453 Mercer County NJ $71,368,970 $194 367,922 Washtenaw County MI $71,402,185 $195 367,000 Lehigh County PA $71,735,692 $197 365,052 Madison County AL $72,433,202 $200 362,276 Nueces County TX $70,371,362 $195 361,540 Hamilton County TN $71,441,615 $198 360,919 Brazoria County TX $72,696,394 $202 360,677 Marion County FL $71,009,435 $201 353,526 Westmoreland County PA $105,319,216 $299 352,590 Osceola County FL $72,985,227 $207 351,955 Anoka County MN $69,327,720 $198 350,253 Bell County TX $70,493,732 $202 348,574 ← Previous Page 1 Next → Source: US Treasury. The 200 largest counties by Treasury allocation. Get Full Estimates Here Civilytics is publishing aid allocations (when available from Treasury) or aid estimates (for smaller municipalities for which Treasury published populations but not allocations) for 20,000+ local governments in a searchable database available as a public Google Sheet. Access this free resource below:\nCity Aid Allocations (opens in new tab)\nCounty Aid Allocations (opens in new tab)\nTotal Aid to States and Territories To understand the scale of these funds, it may be helpful to consider the total aid each state or territory is receiving as part of the American Rescue Plan and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, which provided aid to state and local education agencies (among others).\nThe following table combines the ARPA allocations published by Treasury with the education allocations published by the U.S. Department of Education (opens in new tab) to show the total aid to each state. This includes:\naid for the state/territory itself aid for smaller municipalities within the state (disbursed to the state, which will then allocate by municipalities' population) aid to \u0026quot;metropolitan cities\u0026quot; (disbursed directly to those cities as explained above) aid to counties (also disbursed directly), and aid to state and local education agencies. The table shows aid for each level of government with all numbers in millions.\nSearch 57 rows State State Aid Non-Metro Cities Metro Cities Counties Education Agencies Total AL $2,120 $356 $431 $952 $899 $4,759 AK $1,012 $43 $53 $142 $160 $1,410 AZ $4,183 $227 $1,003 $1,414 $1,150 $7,976 AR $1,573 $216 $209 $586 $558 $3,142 CA $27,017 $1,218 $7,005 $7,675 $6,710 $49,624 CO $3,829 $265 $551 $1,119 $519 $6,283 CT $2,812 $203 $661 $693 $492 $4,861 DE $925 $91 $64 $189 $183 $1,451 DC $1,802 $0 $373 $137 $172 $2,484 FL $8,817 $1,416 $1,518 $4,172 $3,134 $19,056 GA $4,854 $862 $576 $2,072 $1,892 $10,256 HI $1,642 $46 $197 $275 $184 $2,343 ID $1,094 $108 $124 $347 $196 $1,869 IL $8,128 $742 $2,726 $2,461 $2,251 $16,308 IN $3,072 $433 $848 $1,308 $888 $6,548 IA $1,481 $222 $339 $613 $345 $2,999 KS $1,584 $167 $260 $566 $370 $2,947 KY $2,183 $324 $395 $868 $928 $4,699 LA $3,011 $315 $589 $903 $1,160 $5,979 ME $997 $119 $122 $261 $183 $1,682 MD $3,717 $529 $619 $1,174 $869 $6,908 MA $5,286 $385 $1,665 $1,339 $815 $9,489 MI $6,540 $644 $1,823 $1,940 $1,656 $12,604 MN $2,833 $377 $644 $1,111 $588 $5,554 MS $1,806 $268 $101 $578 $725 $3,478 MO $2,685 $450 $831 $1,192 $871 $6,029 MT $906 $86 $50 $208 $170 $1,420 NE $1,040 $111 $176 $376 $243 $1,946 NV $2,739 $151 $292 $598 $477 $4,257 NH $995 $112 $86 $264 $156 $1,613 NJ $6,245 $578 $1,190 $1,828 $1,231 $11,071 NM $1,752 $126 $171 $407 $436 $2,892 NY $12,745 $774 $6,041 $3,900 $4,002 $27,462 NC $5,439 $705 $668 $2,037 $1,603 $10,453 ND $1,008 $53 $41 $148 $136 $1,386 OH $5,368 $844 $2,175 $2,270 $1,991 $12,649 OK $1,870 $238 $316 $769 $665 $3,858 OR $2,648 $248 $437 $819 $499 $4,652 PA $7,291 $983 $2,335 $2,841 $2,225 $15,675 RI $1,131 $58 $273 $206 $185 $1,853 SC $2,499 $435 $191 $1,000 $940 $5,066 SD $974 $65 $38 $172 $170 $1,420 TN $3,726 $438 $517 $1,326 $1,108 $7,115 TX $15,814 $1,386 $3,377 $5,676 $5,530 $31,784 UT $1,378 $187 $290 $623 $274 $2,751 VT $1,049 $59 $21 $121 $127 $1,377 VA $4,294 $634 $618 $1,658 $939 $8,143 WA $4,428 $443 $770 $1,479 $825 $7,945 WV $1,355 $162 $168 $348 $339 $2,373 WI $2,533 $412 $780 $1,131 $686 $5,542 WY $1,068 $48 $21 $112 $135 $1,385 American Samoa $479 $5 $0 $11 $495 Guam $554 $18 $0 $33 $604 Northern Mariana Islands $482 $5 $0 $10 $498 Puerto Rico $2,470 $125 $801 $620 $1,321 $5,337 Virgin Islands $515 $11 $0 $21 $547 Total $199,800 $19,530 $45,570 $65,100 $54,311 $384,311 ← Previous Page 1 Next → Source: US Treasury and US Department of Education. All values in millions of dollars. Methodology Updated 6/3/21: Treasury has published detailed guidance (opens in new tab) on how aid will be allocated to non-entitlement units. All of our aid estimates have been updated to reflect the new information from Treasury. The only remaining difference will be in how states certify non-entitlement units and the final population of residents living in those NEUs. As a result, we have removed our methodology statement as it no longer applies to the published estimates. You can read the methodology for the old estimates here (opens in new tab). We have also removed the text on how our estimates contrasted with Senate aid estimates as neither set of estimates is relevant now.\nUpdated 5/18/21: Funding amounts for states, counties, and metropolitan cities now come from the official Treasury allocations (opens in new tab). Funding amounts for smaller cities (\u0026quot;non-entitlement units\u0026quot;) are still estimated by Civilytics based on the methodology described below because Treasury is not disbursing these funds directly and, thus, did not provide funding estimates for these municipalities.\nChernick, Howard, David Copeland, and Andrew Reschovsky. 2020. \u0026ldquo;THE FISCAL EFFECTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON CITIES.\u0026rdquo; National Tax Journal, September. University of Chicago Press, 699\u0026ndash;732. doi:10.17310/ntj.2020.3.04 (opens in new tab).\n\u0026ldquo;Fiscally Standardized Cities.\u0026rdquo; 2017. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/research-data/data-toolkits/fiscally-standardized-cities (opens in new tab).\nData from 2017 Fiscally Standardized Cities database and authors’ calculation. See also Chernick, Howard, David Copeland, and Andrew Reschovsky. 2020. “The Fiscal Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cities: An Initial Assessment,” National Tax Journal 73, No. 3, (September): 699-732)\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"March 31, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/arpa-local-aid/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The American Rescue Plan allocates $350 billion in aid for state and local governments. Look up how much your city or county is estimated to receive (it’s generally a lot!) and learn more about how and when the funds can be used.","title":"Local Government Aid Estimates for the American Rescue Plan","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"March 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/prison-gerrymandering-on-reveal/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Podcast from the national radio show Reveal featuring analysis from Civilytics on prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin, which distorts communities’ political representation because of residential segregation and disparities in incarceration.","title":"Prison Gerrymandering on Reveal","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"","date":"February 1, 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/effect-of-english-proficiency-classification-on-student-outc/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Article in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (Carlson \u0026 Knowles, 2016) examining English Language Learner reclassification policies using a regression discontinuity framework. Finds that being reclassified as fully English proficient has positive effects on Wisconsin students’ ACT scores, high school graduation, and postsecondary enrollment.","title":"Effect of English Proficiency Classification on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Wisconsin","type":"portfolio"},{"content":"The Year that Lasted a Decade\nThis is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nAs 2020 comes to a close, we end our year at Civilytics by wishing you and your friends and families peace, comfort, and joy. In this issue of the Civic Pulse we\u0026rsquo;re looking back at 2020 (grateful to put it in the past) and highlighting the hope that carried us through 2020 and into 2021.\nIn this newsletter you\u0026rsquo;ll find Civilytics\u0026rsquo; 2020 in\nNumbers Simple Joys Gratitude Civilytics\u0026rsquo; 2020 in Numbers In 2020 we:\nPublished 10 issues of the Civic Pulse newsletter (thank you for reading!) 2 new reports on policing and police budgets (opens in new tab) 5 blog posts 2 new products (MAP and Pricing Policing in Your City) Our homepage has made some great strides this year! Taught Over 100 people how to analyze and advocate for their city and county budgets More than 24 virtual training sessions on R programming, Shiny dashboard development, city and county budgets, and political action Getting ready to go live on Zoom! Built 6 interactive computational web applications / dashboards A home wired network with 1,200 feet of Cat-6a cabling Software: 46,152 lines of R code and 20 lines of Python (guess which took me longer) Hardware: 1 new server with 16 terabytes of secure, cloud-free storage Yes, it is in the basement behind the washing machine! Collaborated On 17 city and county budget reviews with community organizers across the country With 10 new clients to navigate the uncertainty of 2020 for schools, communities, and workers On 3 bids for big projects in 2021 and beyond! Civilytics\u0026rsquo; 2020 in Simple Joys In a year with so little within our control, I found myself cultivating and holding on to the people and things that brought joy into my life. Joy was more important than ever as we awkwardly managed meetings from alternate locations (I used no less than 6 semi-permanent office locations this year), learned what all the buttons on Zoom do together, and juggled our emotions as personal and national breaking news jostled our lives each and every day.\nIt was a year for simple joys like:\nZoom backgrounds. So many creative people found an outlet through their Zoom backgrounds, and although I stuck with my office wall behind me, I enjoyed seeing tropical islands, busy conference rooms, and a number of other funny and smart backgrounds. Walks in the sunshine. As someone who has worked from home since 2016, I got a lot of questions when the pandemic began about how to adapt to the work-from-home lifestyle. My number 1 advice is get a good monitor/mouse/keyboard (ergonomics are crucial), but number 2 is walk in the sunshine. I was lucky to take a lot of walks in the sunshine this year and to take them together with my wife. Many of my best ideas came to me on these walks, and a lot of bad ideas got filtered out. Music. So much great music was released in 2020, no matter your preferred genre, and for me music accompanied the big wins, powered me through the late nights, and pushed off the Monday morning fog week in and week out. My most listened to song of 2020 was The Killers\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;My Own Soul\u0026rsquo;s Warning.\u0026rdquo; I even dusted off my old guitar\u0026hellip; Friendships. It was probably my busiest year ever at Civilytics and I found myself pulled in a million directions. I was so fortunate to have friends who made the time to catch up for a socially distanced beer, an after-work Zoom, or a phone call or text. Civilytics\u0026rsquo; 2020 in Gratitude 2020 also brought a renewed need to focus on things to be grateful for. At Civilytics, a few of these are:\nNew connections and new perspectives. At the end of 2019, I set a goal of working with more community organizers in 2020, and boy did that happen! I met at least 100 community organizers through the power of Zoom this year and learned so much from them. I am amazed at the people who, despite facing entrenched and organized opposition, roll up their sleeves and try to make their voices heard each and every day. Pandemic or not. I\u0026rsquo;m so grateful to have been able to share hope, sorrow, setbacks, and successes with many community organizers this year. Mutual Aid organizations. As politicians have failed to respond to people\u0026rsquo;s needs this year, mutual aid organizations sprung up to fill the gap. I joined mine in the past few months and am so grateful for the hard work the organizers put into place to make supporting each other safe and effective. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t joined a mutual aid organization in your community you can find one here. (opens in new tab) The open-source software community. In 2020 Civilytics increasingly took our work to new places and new challenges, and so much of that was possible thanks to open source software. From Docker containers, to Linux utilities, to R and Python, these are tools that made it possible for us to keep up with the rapidly changing pace of 2020. Our new office! Moving offices to a place with more peace and quiet and less interruption has been life-changing and I wake up each day grateful for it! Now, to just make it look a little nicer\u0026hellip; Readers and friends of Civilytics. Thanks so much to all of you who took the time to write and share our newsletter or your ideas and feedback through the year. I am so grateful for these quick notes of encouragement, support, and perspective - it is really gratifying to know people are reading, people care, and people are interested. Thank you for closing the gap in this year of social distancing. It\u0026rsquo;s a work in progress\u0026hellip; Civilytics Wishes You the Best for 2021 We\u0026rsquo;ve got big plans for both Civilytics and the Civic Pulse in 2021 and we look forward to sharing more with you very soon.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re closing up shop for 2020 and will be back in 2021, rested, and ready. We send you our best holiday wishes and hope you are able to stay healthy, safe, and connected in the new year.\nHappy holidays from me to you! ","date":"December 30, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/year-in-review-2020/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In this edition of the Civic Pulse, you’ll find Civilytics’ 2020 in numbers, simple joys, and gratitude.","title":"Civilytics Looks Back at 2020","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nThe election is over. If 2020 was one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history, then the coming year will be one of the most important for public policy. If the election is to \u0026ldquo;mean something,\u0026rdquo; we must make it. That means communicating our priorities clearly to local, state, and national representatives \u0026ndash; early and often. If you would like, you can modify the letter I shared with you back in June and send it again. (opens in new tab)\nThe catch phrase is to build back better, but as always, the question is what are we building back, for whom, and how will it be better. In 2021 let\u0026rsquo;s commit to elevating the voices of communities impacted most by police violence, economic inequality, racism, and more. Let\u0026rsquo;s open our eyes to their visions for the future.\nIn this newsletter I will cover a small piece of that vision, violence prevention without police. Inside you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nSeven research-backed policy proposals that prevent violence without increasing police budgets Some good down ballot election news for criminal justice reform The latest education resources from Civilytics Next month\u0026rsquo;s newsletter will recap what happened at Civilytics in 2020 and where we\u0026rsquo;re going in 2021. As always, I\u0026rsquo;m thankful for all of you who read and share. This has been (and still is) a trying time. Please take care of yourselves.\nSeven ways to stop violence without police I\u0026rsquo;ve spoken with many of you about the need to make our communities safer and more resilient and to change our attitudes about the role of policing in public safety. With violence and homicide rates spiking nationwide in cities like Philadelphia and Minneapolis, one of the most important questions I\u0026rsquo;ve heard is: what alternatives can my city deploy to reduce violence?\nThe answer is that there are many common sense (i.e. inexpensive, popular, and easy to implement) investments communities can make today to become radically safer. But don\u0026rsquo;t take my word for it: An excellent new report \u0026ldquo;Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence\u0026rdquo; by a group of leading national scholars on community safety details seven research-backed investments communities can make to become dramatically safer:\nImprove the Physical Environment Strengthen Anti-Violence SOcial Norms and Peer Relationships Engage and Support Youth Reduce Substance Abuse Mitigate Financial Stress Reduce the Harmfull Effects of the Justice Process Confront the Gun Problem Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence. John Jay College Research Advisory Group on Preventing and Reducing Community Violence (2020). New York, NY: Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Our political system is often tilted in favor of interventionist action, instead of investment in preventative action (h/t John Roman). (opens in new tab) Let\u0026rsquo;s change that.\nI am highlighting this report in part because there has been a lot of dangerous tsk tsking from \u0026ldquo;policing experts\u0026rdquo; who claim that people demanding safer streets, better youth services, and community-based anti-violence programs are somehow amateurs who don\u0026rsquo;t have evidence to support their claims. I agree that:\nView tweet by @avitale on X Part of the mission at Civilytics is to help refute this anti-democratic technocratic elitism by taking the best parts of social science research and bringing them together with the best parts of democratic problem-solving and community voice. I\u0026rsquo;m happy to say I will have some big announcements around the next phase of this work very soon.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll add one other thing to this report, which is that there is growing momentum around taking police out of the role of enforcing traffic. Read Philip V. McHarris\u0026rsquo;s excellent essay (opens in new tab) recounting a traffic stop he was subjected to and the routine issues raised by how traffic enforcement is done in the United States.\nGood down ballot election news for criminal justice reform Daniel Nichanian and Anna Simonton published an excellent review of the election and its impacts for criminal justice reform. (opens in new tab) A few highlights from their article at the Appeal:\n4 states legalized recreational marijuana (including my home state of Montana by a double-digit margin!) California became the 19th state to restore voting rights to anyone not presently incarcerated Prosecutors pledging to reduce jail populations by refusing to prosecute many drug crimes won victories in Travis County (TX), Orange and Osceola counties (FL), Jefferson and Larimer counties (CO), Pima County (AZ), Washtenaw County (MI) and more. Many of these challengers are former public defenders. Pro-ICE sheriff incumbents were defeated in Cobb and Gwinnett counties (GA) and Charleston County (SC), which will end the ICE 287(g) program deputizing \u0026ldquo;law enforcement to act like federal immigration agents within county jails.\u0026rdquo; Challengers pledging to end the presence of police officers in schools (school resource officers) ousted incumbents in a school board race in Gwinnett County (GA). The latest education resources by Civilytics This year Civliytics released two big education products. Please check them out!\nMapping Admissions Prospects (MAP) Civilytics created a new mapping tool (opens in new tab) for college admissions offices to develop a recruitment plan based on their institution\u0026rsquo;s objectives. MAP offers an easy, efficient way to identify public high schools using customizable filters including college readiness indicators, student demographics, and household income. It was developed in collaboration with colleges seeking a user-friendly tool they could adapt to their recruiting plan.\nTo spread the word I taught myself some video editing skills and made this demo video that shows how the tool works and all its features:\nhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/raW1PSo_hAc (opens in new tab)\nChange demands change. Many colleges have relied on purchasing student information from admission test vendors - a practice that is not an option this year due to less testing, and has been criticized. Now, some colleges are starting to abandon or reduce the influence of the SAT/ACT in the admission process due to criticisms about the equity and fairness of these assessments. These are big changes in the landscape of higher education recruiting and, with MAP, Civilytics seeks to be at the forefront of that change.\nPolicing the American University I announced this report in a newsletter all the way back in February, but it has become increasingly relevant as the world is changing around us. Read an updated blurb about it below and access the report online:\nColleges and universities are wrapping up a fall term unlike any other. COVID-19 has affected decisions about classroom instruction and impacted college budgets. A summer of historical mass demonstrations against police violence has given more attention to calls to defund city police departments. Recently, editorial boards and campus student groups have connected these two events, questioning the need for campus police departments. Campus police departments are now under increased scrutiny at a time when budgets are tight and policing is viewed as a potential threat to \u0026ndash; rather than a solution for \u0026ndash; safety.\nNearly 7.5 million students attend a college with a campus police department (CPD), according to a new report from Civilytics Consulting. This report provides a first-ever look at CPD staffing levels and arrest patterns and trends for over 800 colleges. The report combines data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u0026rsquo;s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the U.S. Department of Education to explore where CPDs are found and their role on campus.\nMy brilliant editor (and spouse) Hannah told me the title should use the word whom, but it sounded too pretentious for me. ","date":"December 2, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/build-back-better-for-who/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In this edition of the Civic Pulse, you’ll find seven research-backed policy proposals that prevent violence without increasing police budgets, some good down-ballot election news for criminal justice reform, and the latest education resources from Civilytics.","title":"Build Back Better - But for who?*","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"What the book means to me and what\u0026rsquo;s next.\nI co-authored a book on education data analysis, Education Data Done Right (opens in new tab), with two wonderful people. It has been great to share it with people and hear from so many readers. But one question I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten from a lot of people, which I wasn\u0026rsquo;t prepared for, was this good one: Does the book include R code as a way to tackle education data problems?\nIf I\u0026rsquo;m known for anything in the education data world it\u0026rsquo;s my application of R to solve many technical challenges that education agencies face. I\u0026rsquo;ve been pushing education agencies to adopt R since at least 2012 (opens in new tab). I\u0026rsquo;ve trained over two hundred data scientists in education. I wrote one of the first popular tutorials of R for education data analysts (opens in new tab) and one of the most popular tutorials on how to fit HLM (opens in new tab) and latent variable models in R (opens in new tab). I\u0026rsquo;ve spent a lot of my professional career helping other education data scientists solve tricky problems. And I\u0026rsquo;ve long been outspoken about the barriers inside of organizations that make it hard for individual analysts to get the skills they need. So, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a lot to say on R and how analysts can harness it to get at our biggest challenges for quite some time now.\nAnd so here\u0026rsquo;s what may surprise the readers of our book, my answer to that common question we\u0026rsquo;ve been getting: we don\u0026rsquo;t get into R code at all.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re perplexed, let me explain.\nI never felt the need to write a book about these things because technical content on how to use R to solve problem X in the field never seems to be lacking, and always seems to be changing \u0026ndash; which doesn\u0026rsquo;t fit the type of book I\u0026rsquo;d like to write \u0026ndash; my R bootcamp is now out of date, and thankfully so, because so much about R has improved since I wrote it.\nSure, some people could benefit from updating their technical skills from SAS to R. Or others could benefit from learning about a statistical technique they haven\u0026rsquo;t used. We all, as professionals, have a need to keep improving and adding to our toolbox. In my experience, talking to hundreds of education data analysts over the years, most analysts are perfectly capable of learning the skills they need from existing materials.\nIn my teaching and my consulting work I have always found, without fail, that the only significant barrier for an individual analyst to learn a new data analysis skill is a lack of interest, motivation, or the time and space to learn.\nAnd, as I ran into this same barrier time and time again, it was easy for me to empathize with data analysts who didn\u0026rsquo;t see a point in learning a \u0026ldquo;Shiny\u0026rdquo; new tool. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t increase the chance their work impacted organizational decision making (Rule #1 - no one cares how you made it), and it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make their day to day job more enjoyable (because learning something new is frustrating, especially when you have plenty of existing expertise. How many R evangelists are jumping to Julia?)\nThen Wendy, DJ and I got to talking. What we observed was a market where analysts with incentives to learn had an abundance of resources that seem to serve them very well. The need was elsewhere, on the topics where there were no resources. So what if we wrote a book that that focused on the frustrating parts of the job that no one writes down, and gave readers tools to tackle those challenges.\nWhat if we wrote a book that gave data scientists the supporting tools they need to create that organizational demand for analytics and incentivized their organizations to make investment in data science skills worthwhile through better, more efficient, and more advanced analytic work?\nThat was a book I had motivation to write. A book that identified what we saw as the root challenge to increasing analytic capacity in education agencies and tackled it head on. A book that taught the the shadow curriculum of that agency data analysts need. A book about the big issues of data governance and of agency politics. A book that spoke about the craft of agency analytics and gave readers advice on how to streamline and perfect undervalued tasks like data requests and descriptive analysis.\nWe knew we had to write a book that addressed those topics because it\u0026rsquo;s the book people need. And people have let us know that was exactly the case!\nView tweet by @DBetebenner on X It was a tall order, which is why we\u0026rsquo;re calling this book Volume 1. There\u0026rsquo;s a lot more to come.\nCheck out EDDR today! (opens in new tab)\n","date":"October 10, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/why-eddr/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In co-authoring a book for education data analysis, I wanted to provide tools to tackle the frustrating parts of the job and increase agencies’ analytic capacities, describe the shadow curriculum that agency data analysts need, and give advice on how to streamline and perfect undervalued tasks like data requests and descriptive analysis.","title":"Why Write Education Data Done Right?","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nA Brief Word on the Election Friends and Colleagues,\nWhen I started Civilytics four years ago my motivation was to help put power back in the hands of the people. Elections are a critical form of public accountability so at Civilytics we\u0026rsquo;ll be writing letters encouraging as many of our fellow citizens to vote as we can to make their voices heard. Vote Forward is a platform you can use to send individual letters to voters to encourage them to vote - and it\u0026rsquo;s proven to increase turnout in multiple studies.\nhttps://votefwd.org/ (opens in new tab)\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re looking for a way to get out the vote from home that is proven to work, consider Vote Forward.\nBut, I know times are busy, so please just make sure you have a plan for how you\u0026rsquo;ll vote this year - this year planning is more important than ever. I\u0026rsquo;m voting by mail which I also did for the primary this fall \u0026ndash; it was easy and convenient.\nIn Memory of Breonna Taylor I try to write these newsletters in advance, but things move so fast these days. I can\u0026rsquo;t in good conscience ignore the most recent injustice in Breonna Taylor\u0026rsquo;s case. By now you\u0026rsquo;ve heard about the failure to indict the officers who killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville.\nImage from Invest/Divest Louisville I don\u0026rsquo;t really have the words to describe the injustice that the only criminal charges will be brought against the officers are for the property damage their stray bullets did, and not for the killing of Ms. Taylor. If you read about this event, I just ask that you listen to those who are describing what it feels to live in a city, state, and country that upholds those values through the law.\nIf you are moved to get involved and take some action in support of those seeking justice for Breonna, this website has all the information you need to get started:\nhttps://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://www.investdivest.org/breonnataylor/ (opens in new tab)\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s inside On to the newsletter. This issue I\u0026rsquo;m going to do a round-up of good resources related to policing and civic budgeting and announce a new resource on budgets produced in partnership between Civilytics and the Community Resource Hub. (opens in new tab)\nIn the next newsletter I\u0026rsquo;ll be pivoting back toward some more education focused resources and announcing the next organization to be featured in the Grassroots Spotlight.\nHow To Take Back the Budget I\u0026rsquo;m proud to announce a project I have been working on most of the summer \u0026ndash; a guide on how to read your city or county budget, interpret it, and critically evaluate the cost of policing. I\u0026rsquo;m really excited that this is now available and I\u0026rsquo;d love if you would help spread the word about this new resource.\nBy way of an introduction, allow me a brief story:\nPublic budgets can be intimidating and obtuse and if we think about them at all it is often when we are told that the budget is \u0026ldquo;tight\u0026rdquo; or in a crisis. I was talking to a friend recently and the topic of childcare came up and how expensive it is and how COVID-19 has shown how essential it is for the well-being of our communities. \u0026ldquo;If only our government could afford to offer public childcare.\u0026rdquo;\nMaybe you\u0026rsquo;ve felt like this. And the truth is, your community can afford to offer childcare to every family. That\u0026rsquo;s because city, county, and state budgets are just like our household budgets, a collection of choices. It\u0026rsquo;s true most cities and counties spend every dollar they take in, but it is also true that they choose to spend 30-50% of public dollars on police officers. And if we include police adjacent activities like jails, prisons, and courts the percentage begins to balloon.\nThose are funds that could easily pay for childcare. And that\u0026rsquo;s one of the many reasons people across the country are rolling up their sleeves to take back their budgets. Read the official statement on the release of this new resource below:\nHow to Take Back the Budget is an introductory guide to city and county budgets released by the Community Resource Hub (opens in new tab) to help communities engaged in campaigns to #DefundPolice and invest in community needs.\nLearn more about the guide here. (opens in new tab)\nAlso, h/t, the design of this guide was put together by the great folks at Brocade Studio. (opens in new tab)\nAnd, one more point on budgets:\nIf you are interested in more resources on the influence of corporations and big money donors on public budgets, public spending, and policing, you should check out the resources put out by ACRE and Little Sis.\nView tweet by @BrittanyA___ on X Good Reads on Policing in America Now, here are some good reads about the changing conversation around policing happening across the country:\nUp first, parents and students in schools across the country are demanding to replace police officers with school counselors in their schools. Santa Cruz recently voted to disband its police department and replace them with school counselors. U.S. schools face a crushing shortage of school counselors.\nThe research backs up ending SRO programs as the great folks at Research For Action have summarized here:\nhttps://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED608041.pdf (opens in new tab)\nH/T to my friend Alyn Turner at Research for Action for bringing this to my attention:\nView tweet by @alynmarie on X Up next, the Boston Globe wrote an editorial (opens in new tab) calling for the end of campus policing. It\u0026rsquo;s well worth the read, but here is my favorite passage:\nThe full extent of campus police abuses isn\u0026rsquo;t known because, as private agencies, their actions are often shrouded in greater secrecy than those of municipal police departments. Across the country, private campus police departments are not subject to the same public record compliance that public police agencies are. In other words, many aren\u0026rsquo;t required to publicly disclose full records of any incident, even in cases like minor traffic stops, which creates a gap in knowledge of how campus police units operate.\nThe problem described in this paragraph is exactly what got me started in gathering the information for my own report on campus policing (opens in new tab), published earlier this year.\nMany cities are responding to calls to defund police departments by promising an array of reforms intended to reduce the brutality of policing. That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s a great time to read this excerpt (opens in new tab) from Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar. This piece challenged me to think more critically not just about police reform, but about all policy reforms, instead of just presuming that any change from the status quo is good.\nPolicing has continually reinvented itself over the past 20-30 years to persist in the face of reforms, and the result of those changes is a dramatic expansion of police presence in many communities. Yet, as we have seen, this hasn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily made us safer.\nJust as an example, I recently did some analysis of the growth in dispatched police calls in Portland, OR. Almost all of the increase from 2012 to 2019 was explained by police responding more often to calls related to welfare checks, suspicious activity, or reports of an unwanted person.\nIn the graph above I show the growth in police calls by the \u0026ldquo;priority level\u0026rdquo; the police label them with (low, medium, or high). Most of the growth comes from low and medium priority \u0026ldquo;checks\u0026rdquo; on people or places.\nPolicing is changing to meet a demand that was historically met in other ways. And could be again.\nFinally, my collaborator and friend, Natasha Haverty spent the past several months covering the crises unfolding in New York State prisons where the dual cruelties of COVID-19 and tough-on-crime life sentences have intersected. Read the moving story of the people in prison and the healthcare crisis they face. (opens in new tab)\nAs always, I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you like what you\u0026rsquo;ve read, consider (opens in new tab) e (opens in new tab)ncouraging others to subscribe. (opens in new tab)\nTimes are challenging. I know many of you are facing demands for your attention on multiple fronts. Please take care of yourselves and each other.\nAnd please make that plan to vote.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"October 2, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/the-peoples-money/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome","title":"Police, Budgets, and the People's Money","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"A New Guide for Police Budget Advocacy From the Community Resource Hub\nHow to Take Back the Budget is an introductory guide to city and county budgets released by the Community Resource Hub (opens in new tab) to help communities engaged in campaigns to #DefundPolice and invest in community needs.\nThe guide draws on the expertise, dedication, and momentum of grassroots groups across the country, and of Jared Knowles of Civilytics Consulting, who brings over a decade of experience with public budgets and has analyzed police budgets in partnership with organizers in over a dozen cities over the past six months.\nThe guide includes an overview of how to:\nfind the right budget documents gather comparisons to put the budget in context analyze the overall budget review the budget details related to policing and propose alternatives and sustain wins The guide pairs with the #DefundPolice Toolkit (opens in new tab), released by Interrupting Criminalization (opens in new tab), which outlines concrete steps toward divestment from policing and investment in community safety, potential roadblocks on the path to change, and along with examples of community based safety strategies, and current campaign demands.\nLearn more about the guide here. (opens in new tab)\n","date":"September 22, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/take-back-your-budget/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"A New Guide for Police Budget Advocacy From the Community Resource Hub","title":"Take Back Your Budget!","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nFriends and Colleagues,\nPolice violence and our response to it is again in the spotlight after the awful shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin this week. Mr. Blake was doing the hard work of creating a safe community by deescalating a conflict between neighbors. But, then the police arrived, and instead of the situation stabilizing, the police shot and grievously wounded Mr. Blake in the back as he tried to peacefully disengage. Communities across the country have been saying all summer that police are not a solution to end violence, but in fact are perpetrators and invite that violence. The case of Mr. Blake illustrates this fact in heartbreaking clarity.\nNow the WNBA, NBA, and even some MLB teams are on strike demanding public officials make meaningful change. (opens in new tab)\nBut what can we do? We can demand our communities give police a limited or non-existent role in serving as first responders and replace them. Policing is a local issue and we can make great change in our community by demanding our town or county changes its approach to public safety. Policing composes anywhere from 25-50% of discretionary city government spending - let\u0026rsquo;s learn what researchers, grassroots organizers, and progressive city leaders have proposed spending those funds on instead.\nIn this issue of the Civic Pulse you\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nPublic safety alternatives to policing Links to some of the best writing on public safety and policing An exciting new tool from Civilytics to help you learn about police spending in your community A new resource on best practices for boosting student engagement and attendance in the face of COVID-19 Public Safety Without Police Image from Mapping Police Violence I\u0026rsquo;ve been studying the work of people who have spent decades imagining different models of public safety that do not involve police and replace criminalization with care. I\u0026rsquo;d like to share some of their ideas with you. First, I\u0026rsquo;d like to share a quote from this excellent piece by Amna A. Akbar in the NY Times last month: (opens in new tab)\nDefunding, part of a strategy to eventually abolish the police, challenges the prevailing logic of police reform: the idea that police brutality is caused by individual bad apples acting without sufficient oversight and training. This idea undergirds the familiar panoply of reforms: body cameras, community policing, implicit bias workshops. If officers are properly equipped and controlled, there will be less violence, its proponents argue \u0026mdash; despite no significant evidence to back that up. Defunding \u0026hellip; challenges the power, the resources and the enormous scope of the police. Whether they are responding to a mental health emergency or deployed to a protest, their training and tools are geared toward violence.\nMs. Akbar continues, explaining that alternative models of public safety should be grounded in \u0026ldquo;contact theory\u0026rdquo; - the only way to reduce police violence is to reduce contact between police officers and the public. Let\u0026rsquo;s highlight three that I\u0026rsquo;ve come across repeatedly in conversations with organizations across the country:\nCAHOOTS Violence Interruption Programs Civilian investigators CAHOOTS CAHOOTS (opens in new tab) stands for Crisis Assistance Helping Out on The Streets and is a mobile crisis intervention team that began two decades ago in Eugene, OR. CAHOOTS diverts up to 20% of 911 emergency calls away from police to paired teams of a trained crisis worker and a medic who respond to non-criminal crises like mental illness problems, substance abuse issues, homelessness, or intoxication.\nMuch of police work currently is responding to issues around homelessness, mental health, or addiction that would be better resolved by trained professionals. If your community has such a program or is thinking of starting one - lend your help so it can be sustained and thrive.\nViolence Interruption Violence interruption programs focus on mediating conflicts, mediating disputes, and working with victims of violence to prevent retaliation. They treat violence as a public health problem by t identifying high-risk individuals helping them to change their behavior by connecting them to resources like drug treatment, employment, or counseling services to help them leave gangs. These organizations transform communities by changing norms and rebuilding social ties.\nCure Violence is one such program that has been studied and replicated in a variety of contexts and has shown great results. Visit their informative homepage to learn more. (opens in new tab) Organizations I have worked with in Dallas and Philadelphia have both proposed the Cure Violence as an alternative to their police gun violence taskforces.\nCivilian Investigators This idea comes from Poder in Action, a community advocacy organization in Phoenix, AZ. They noticed that a lot of officer activity is responding to incidents after they have happened \u0026ndash; for things like theft or a traffic accident. Often the sole purpose of these calls is to generate a police report for insurance purposes.\nReplacing these duties with civilian investigators would reduce police presence in communities, often by a lot! And, by the way, public opinion is rapidly moving in favor of placing traffic enforcement in the hands of civilians as well:\nView tweet by @theappeal on X What about the research? If you are interested in all of the ways we can end violence in communities without involving the police, researcher Anna Harvey has put together this very informative thread recapping most of the best evidence available:\nView tweet by @annalilharvey on X There are also community-created resources to learn more about promoting a new vision of true public safety. I\u0026rsquo;ll say more about these in my next newsletter:\nThe Defund Toolkit (opens in new tab)\nThis is a one-stop shop that contains many more examples of successful alternative safety programs across the US. Transform Harm (opens in new tab)\nA resource hub with essays, curricula, audio-visual materials and more that you can use to learn and share with others all of the ways we can work together to end violence. Budget Tools I\u0026rsquo;m proud to announce we just published a new tool that allows you to look up police spending in 150 metro areas across the US.\nThis tool is for anyone who wants to understand the services their city and community prioritizes spending public dollars on. Use this tool to learn how much your city spends now, and has spent historically, on public services.\nWhat should I ask using this tool?\nThis tool presents five different looks at spending on public services.\nYour city\u0026rsquo;s trend in per capita police spending compared to similarly-sized cities Your city\u0026rsquo;s past spending compared directly to its current per capita police spending Your city\u0026rsquo;s per capita spending on 7 categories of public services, including policing The long-term trend in per capita spending in 5 categories of public services How much your city has spent over the last several decades on policing compared to public health, libraries, and other vital public services You can export all of the charts as PDFs and also send a link to a specific city and time period to share your results with others! Check it out, along with our ever growing library of budget tools (opens in new tab) you can use to understand the spending on policing in your community, today.\nEngaging Students Virtually During COVID-19 During the past several months, I served as a subject matter expert for the team that wrote this promising practices brief. I can tell you that the authors and other reviewers put a lot of thought and care into finding out what schools are doing about engagement and attendance and what is working during this challenging time. If you are looking to get a quick scan of what other education agencies have been doing to address student engagement in this time - this resource is worth a read. Below is a description from the authors:\nThe COVID 19 epidemic has led to unprecedented school closures, creating a previously unseen level of activity in the online learning space. This move towards distance learning has created questions about if attendance should still be taken, how to measure attendance during distance learning, and the importance of meaningful remote engagement that leads to learning.\nIn Promising Practices Brief: Improving Student Engagement and Attendance During COVID-19 School Closures (opens in new tab), we share an overview of the research on engagement and attendance in online environments, and the findings from our conversations with five districts across the country about their efforts to support student attendance and engagement.\nAs always, I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate your help spreading the word about this newsletter. If you like what you\u0026rsquo;ve read, consider encouraging others to subscribe. (opens in new tab)\nWith gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"August 28, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/public-safety-alternatives/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome","title":"Public Safety Without Police","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nFriends and Colleagues,\nPublic opinion has shifted incredibly quickly in support of a reimagining of policing in the United States. (opens in new tab) The hard work of translating that public opinion into policy change is next. Many cities have just completed their spring budget cycle (another wave of cities will be doing budgets in September and October) and some modest changes to American policing have been made.\nIn this issue of the Civic Pulse I want to share some of what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned doing reviews of police budgets for grassroots police defund campaigns in 12 cities this past month. I also want to update you on the education projects we have going at Civilytics and the outlook for the rest of 2020.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s begin with four myths about police department budgets that must be addressed to unlock real change in our cities:\nUnion contracts prohibit cities from cutting police jobs Police departments are mostly funded by state and federal grants Police budgets are filled with expensive equipment Police officer compensation is low Union Contracts Police unions are among the most powerful unions in the U.S. (opens in new tab) They\u0026rsquo;ve used their negotiating power to win big victories like severely restricting disciplinary actions against officers, limiting public access to disciplinary records, and enforcing qualified immunity. But, perhaps their greatest victory has been in constructing the perception that police unions have created that their contracts preclude cities from cutting police officer jobs. In nearly every city I have worked with, city council members have asked if cutting police jobs was even legal under the city\u0026rsquo;s collective bargaining agreement with the police department.\nThat is power.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a complete myth too! Here\u0026rsquo;s a sample clause of the language in the union contract for the Seattle Police Department and the City of Seattle. (opens in new tab) Article 15 states the rights of the Management (city hall):\n\u0026ldquo;15.4 - Employer reserves the right\u0026hellip; C) To determine methods, means, and personnel necessary for departmental operations; D.) To control the departmental budget\u0026hellip; F). To take whatever actions are necessary in emergencies in order to assure the proper functioning of the department\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; (p.67-68 in text, PDF page 72-73)\nCities must have clauses like these to be able to borrow money. City borrowing depends on creditors being confident that, if the city experiences a fiscal downturn, it can always cut costs and raise taxes to meet its debt obligations.\nIt may be politically difficult to cut police jobs, but it is not illegal.\nState and Federal Money Another common misperception is that police budgets cannot be significantly shrunk in major cities because most of their funding is from restricted grant funds from their state and the federal governments. This is so far from the truth! Almost all police department funding is in the form of unrestricted tax revenues (author's calculation 2020).\nWhen city police departments do have restricted funds, it is commonly for 911 service charges (most cities have the police department operate their 911 call center) or for a public airport. Departments do receive state and federal grants for specific purposes, but these often add up to less than 10% of their total budget. Federal law enforcement is active in most American cities, but its collaboration with local police departments is usually outside of the budget and less transparent to the public.\nOfficer Compensation Another myth is that officers are poorly compensated. While rural departments may not pay their officers well, being a police officer in a major American city is a fairly compensated job. Police officers often have starting salaries higher than teachers, and almost always higher than childcare workers.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s more: police officer compensation reaches far beyond salary. Officers receive other forms of cash compensation like OT and detail work (extra shifts at construction sites and large events) which are spread throughout the budget. These really add up \u0026ndash; in Boston, some officers made over $300,000 last year. (opens in new tab) That\u0026rsquo;s a lot of cheddah \u0026ndash; even here.\nAdditionally, non-cash benefits like pension plans, sick leave, administrative leave, and healthcare are often more generous for police than for other city employees. In all, 80 to 90% of the cost of a police department to a city is employee compensation, and sworn law enforcement officers cost 20-40% more than a comparably trained civilian employee of the city ​(Goodman 2019)​.1\nIt is true that, in many rural parts of the country, police officers are poorly paid, poorly trained, and poorly treated. But, in cities with more than 200,000 residents, that\u0026rsquo;s generally not the case.\nEquipment Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii • Richard.Tsong-Taatarii@startribune.com Police equipment gets the headlines, (opens in new tab) for good reason. Equipment is highly visible and the image of a police officer firing gas canisters or driving a military-grade assault vehicle jars our sensibilities.\nPolice departments get much of their equipment free via the military or through private donation and gifts. The small portion of a police department budget that is devoted to equipment is largely spent on things much more mundane than MRAP vehicles or tear gas canisters \u0026ndash; it is often spent on cars and computers. Taking equipment out of the police budget may be important for symbolic reasons, but it won\u0026rsquo;t structurally change the nature of policing and it won\u0026rsquo;t free up funding for cities to reimagine public safety with policing alternatives. That doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean taking away equipment is unimportant, just that\u0026rsquo;s it\u0026rsquo;s a small part of the budget story.\nPolice Abolition Reads If this all sounds a little small government, Grover Norquist (opens in new tab) that is not my intention. Everyone who knows me knows that I think we should have government services, that their workers should be paid well, and that unions essential to the well-being of middle-class workers. But these myths are real barriers to politicians making the changes we need to move to a new and better future \u0026ndash; a future where safety is created in ways that everyone benefits from.\nMy next newsletter will tackle what some of those new and better uses of funds could be.\nIn the meantime, here are some of the best things I have been reading about police abolition this week:\nFrom Derecka Purnell: a powerful and moving piece (opens in new tab) on what police meant growing up in East St. Louis and her personal journey to abolition.\nFrom New York Magazine, a look at opinion polling around police reforms in the U.S. showing public resistance to police divestment. (opens in new tab) As you read it, remember that MLK died with a 75% disapproval rating and rarely had approval above 50% of the U.S. population in his time. (opens in new tab)\nChanging public opinion is part of what this newsletter is about these days. One way to do that is to learn about the historical development of police budgets. This article by Olivia Paschal (opens in new tab) is an excellent analysis of a dataset (opens in new tab) that I use all the time to understand long-term trends in civic budgets.\nFinally, a look at how criminologists are measuring crime rates (opens in new tab) and thinking about crime during COVID-19. It includes a discussion on the limits of crime rates as measures of safety.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had great feedback from so many of you about how you are getting involved. And I am learning more every day about places you can go to find out how to help in your town. Here\u0026rsquo;s a map you can use (opens in new tab) to identify grassroots organizations that need your support near you, made by the Community Resource Hub. (opens in new tab)\nEducation Work Some of you may be wondering with all this talk of policing and budgets, is Civilytics still working on education projects? The answer is yes, we\u0026rsquo;re busier than ever! The past few months I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing a lot of virtual training. I took a few moments to write up what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned from that work and my unique approach. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in professional development and training, take a look.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also been doing a lot of enrollment forecasting work for colleges and universities. Enrollment forecasting is more important than ever, but also more uncertain than ever. I\u0026rsquo;ve written some thoughts on how data analysts can help ground conversations around future planning, even in an environment where there is no historical precedent (and no data) to work from. I\u0026rsquo;ll be publishing those on the blog very soon.\nIn Memoriam On a final personal note, my grandmother passed away at the age of 87 last week. I was unable to travel to Montana to be with her or my family due to the pandemic. My grandma was a tough independent woman and very political: a proud anti-war, pro-union, pro-marijuana Democrat in a deeply Republican city and state. I know she believed that the only way to get democracy back was to take it. She\u0026rsquo;d have marched in the streets this past month if there were marches in her city and if her health had allowed. I\u0026rsquo;m proud of that. And, I know I do what I do because of the values she passed down to my mother (hi Mom!) and to me.\nPlease be kind to one another and stay safe out there.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\nGoodman, Matt. 2019. \u0026ldquo;You Can Now Read KPMG\u0026rsquo;s Long Awaited Study on Dallas PD\u0026rsquo;s Staffing Levels.\u0026rdquo; D Magazine. August 23. https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2019/08/you-can-now-read-kpmgs-long-awaited-study-on-dallas-pds-staffing-levels/ (opens in new tab). This range comes from efficiency studies of police departments that I have read in the course of analyzing PD budgets. An example is cited here.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"July 14, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/police-budget-myths/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome","title":"Four Myths About Police Budgets","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"In the past few months I have led lots of online trainings for education data analysts. The topics have varied:\nhow to transition a team of analysts from Stata to R, analysis for a quasi-experimental evaluation building and using enrollment forecasts in college admissions planning Shiny dashboard development and deployment many many more Training is one of the core services we provide at Civilytics and I wanted to share four lessons we\u0026rsquo;ve learned about doing technical training online.\nDefine success Keep it short Focus on the project Give generous feedback Define Success I begin every training engagement by listening to what the learners want to achieve and asking them what barriers they see to getting there. If your organization is working with us, our job is to help you overcome those barriers. So, together, we discuss the goals, barriers, and timeline and come up with a clear set of expectations about how we will know we have succeeded.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s tempting to jump right in with a how-to guide to install RStudio and start working with data. But in doing so, you may rush past parts that are critical to the success in the course or miss an opportunity to connect the content to existing expertise. Working professionals have many different goals when learning a new technical skill, and they have a lot of competing time pressures. Staying focused on their goals (by first helping them define them), and not your content as an instructor, leads to better outcomes.\nFocus on a Project Defining success often revolves around a project or task that the learner cannot complete without the training. The entire training needs to keep focused on that project. Working professionals need to see real returns on their learning, as soon as possible. Data analysts in education are busy juggling many competing priorities. Learning is asking them to take a step back in productivity, with the promise of a leap forward. Keeping focused on a project that is immediately relevant and yields productivity returns is critical to helping maintain motivation.\nTo be the most successful, then, you can\u0026rsquo;t just use the same training material over and over. I mean, you can and companies have built big businesses on it, but this model only serves the most engaged learners, with extra time to learn, and often does not result in that knowledge being applied to their actual work.\nTo overcome this, I plan the training content only after working together with the learners to define success and understand their projects. This also gives learners a voice in what they learn and allows us to develop an asset-based curriculum that focuses on existing strengths. Learning something like R is frustrating, but it is doubly so when it is presented as something completely disconnected from the other skills professional data analysts already have.\nKeep it Short Don’t do it. Professionals are busy and it can be hard just to find the time to bring them together for a training session. There is a temptation to try to package all the training into as few meetings as possible \u0026ndash; to simplify the calendaring. But this doesn\u0026rsquo;t work well for a couple of reasons.\nFirst, even in the best of times, long meetings don\u0026rsquo;t work. Interruptions happen. Attention gets divided. Patience grows short. This is natural and human and even the most motivated and dedicated learners will feel this after a couple of hours. Yes, you can push through. Yes, you can schedule breaks. But, you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t. Because this is not the best of times. Learning new things is hard and it is important to be attentive to our limitations as we learn.\nSecond, a few long intensive online learning sessions are not how you learn a new craft. Think about any skill you are really masterful at. You did not get that way after a few 8 hour instructional videos and some practice. You got there by lots of practice, lots of feedback, and time to reflect and apply what you just learned.\nShorter and more engaged instructional sessions work best \u0026ndash; especially now that everyone is living at work. (opens in new tab)\nGive Generous Feedback I learned to play guitar when I was 12, before there was YouTube. My parents were against it so I never had lessons, I was self-taught, and, pretty good, I thought.\nRockstar This year I picked the guitar back up for the first time in 10 years. To get started, I watched a couple of YouTube videos. Instantly, I learned about ten things I had been doing wrong my whole life.\nThe last time I learned guitar, I was never able to watch someone good play or listen to them explain what they were doing (and no one ever watched me). It seems obvious \u0026ndash; but this is also how most data analysis is taught and learned in the public sector. We may learn how to know if we have the right number (the right note), but we are never given feedback on how to get to that answer (the technique).\nTo be successful, learners need feedback and they need to see how to write their code, not just learn which code to write. This is where a project-based approach really shines because it keeps some focus on the things the learner is an expert at (the substance of the project) and positions learning the new skill as in service of that project (not central to the learner\u0026rsquo;s sense of efficacy or skill at their job). This creates a much more comfortable environment for feedback, and positions the instructor not as an all-knowing expert, but as a coach, helping the learner do their best.\nOf course, there are other things that go into a successful professional training environment \u0026ndash; but as many teams are working online together for the foreseeable future, I wanted to share some of our best tips for success to help you in your own professional learning.\nIf you or your team are looking for training to help you execute a challenging project, transition to a new set of data tools, or streamline your existing work, get in touch with us (opens in new tab) about how we can help coach you to success.\n","date":"July 12, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/virtual-learning-lessons/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"In the past few months I have led lots of online trainings for education data analysts. The topics have varied:","title":"Four Lessons for Delivering Online Learning to Professionals","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"July 12, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/training/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Training","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"July 12, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/virtual-learning/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Virtual-Learning","type":"tags"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nFriends and Colleagues,\nI usually do not send these newsletters so frequently, but every day feels like a week these days. I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing municipal budget analysis and strategy work with grassroots organizations in a number of cities (Phoenix, Philadelphia, Providence, Baltimore, New Orleans, Dallas and more) and I wanted to share out some of what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned from this work.\nI have heard from many friends and family who started following and supporting some of the community organizations I referenced in my last newsletter - thank you! I want to thank you for the conversations that has sparked. I also want to speak to the discomfort some of us might feel when hearing terms like \u0026ldquo;divest from policing\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;abolish the police.\u0026rdquo;\nTo understand the police abolition movement, it helps to begin by thinking of the demands around policing in America as a continuum with 4 positions. I want to talk about each of these, give you some resources to learn more about them, and share with you how I\u0026rsquo;m thinking. I hope you find this helpful in finding your own place along the continuum.\nReform: Make police less bad. Accountability: Watch the police closely and constrain their behavior. Divest/Invest (#defund): Reduce the role of police in a society and replace some policing with community approved alternatives. Abolition: Eliminate policing and replace it with social services and enforcement by other means. Reform Reform has been the dominant position taken by policing scholars, critics, and politicians in the last 20 years and policing as a field has responded to public criticism by proposing ways to be better. Advocates of reform tend to focus on research-based approaches showing how rules, norms, and policies can constrain police and reduce incidents of violence against civilians.\nThe current best example of this position is the #8cantwait campaign (opens in new tab), which proposes a set of policies that promise to reduce officer-initiated violence and purport to be backed up by research. However, as Philip V. McHarris and Cherrell Brown, sociologists and scholars I deeply respect write (opens in new tab), the proposal is backed up by bad science and promotes policies that have already been adopted in places where police continue to commit acts of violence, including Minneapolis. One of the policies, by the way, is to require officers to notify civilians before firing on them \u0026ndash; what good would that do for someone like Tamir Rice? (opens in new tab)\nReform is important but I implore you to be bolder and think bigger in this moment. We do not need iterative \u0026ldquo;data-driven\u0026rdquo; solutions. One of my favorite writers about our current moment has a way of cutting right to it:\nView tweet by @Chris_arnade on X There\u0026rsquo;s a special kind of privilege in always asking for new information and \u0026ldquo;evidence\u0026rdquo; before making a policy recommendation - a lack of urgency when it is not your life, family, property at stake. It\u0026rsquo;s also a rejection of other ways of knowing - of lived experiences and trauma.\nBut, even were that not the case, we also have a decade of evidence that \u0026ldquo;proven reforms\u0026rdquo; have not made our system safer. This evidence is summarized in two excellent Twitter threads I recommend you read below:\nOne from John Roman:\nView tweet by @JohnKRoman on X One from Mike Shor:\nView tweet by @MikeShor on X This leads others to take a different position on the continuum, demanding not just reform, but for us to change the contract between communities and police departments through new accountability rules.\nAccountability Cops do not investigate cops. District attorneys do not charge cops. And judges do not sentence cops. This lack of police accountability is on full display right now. Police brutality while police are in the spotlight is continued evidence that police believe they can disregard their written policies and act with impunity - across the country. This belief is the result of years of little to no oversight. This is why accountability is needed.\nAnd we know how to do that. We can take the responsibility for holding police accountable away from district attorneys (DAs) and police departments and put it in the hands of a dedicated state agency with power to subpoena records, license police officers, investigate them, and set department standards. Empowering that state agency to revoke the license of any officer who violates the code of conduct is critical: officers without a license would no longer be eligible to serve as police officers in the neighboring town \u0026ndash; just as is the case with teachers, lawyers, doctors, and barbers.\nThis is where I began my journey and I have thought a lot about why K-12 education accountability is a good model to build upon. A group of law enforcement professionals have proposed another interesting accountability framework; give it a read. (opens in new tab)\nYou don\u0026rsquo;t hear about accountability because it isn\u0026rsquo;t the demand of the moment. The Movement for Black Lives (opens in new tab) and many Black, Latinx, and indigenous community organizations have a broader goal: defunding police departments to shrink their size and limit their scope. These organizations have been in this struggle for decades.\nDefund or Divest Police budgets are historically untouchable, even in the steepest sharpest of economic downturns. The strongest accountability mechanism that city governments have to change behavior is budgetary - but that mechanism is all but gone for policing. Here is the municipal spending on several public services across the largest 150 cities in the U.S. Look at how we have doubled per resident police spending while barely increased our spending on other critical services like public health, housing, income support, and public libraries (all $ expressed in 2017 dollars so these are real changes in purchasing power):\nBudgets are about priorities The Upshot did another analysis of the same data. (opens in new tab)\nDivestment does not mean simply imposing austerity measures on police, though. Divestment means opening up reinvestment in communities to meet residents\u0026rsquo; unmet needs. On Friday evening I was working with community organizers in Philadelphia to get a reinvestment proposal in front of the city council. The proposal fully funded many housing, violence prevention, and economic development programs (opens in new tab) that had substantial political support, but for which money was never able to be found. The proposal showed that all of these programs could be funded by a 7% reduction in the number of police officers.\nDivestment is not just an argument we need to hear because it\u0026rsquo;s our democratic responsibility to listen to Black voices, it is also a fiscal and economic argument we need to confront as we face one of the biggest budgetary crises ever. Budgets will be tight this year and next. Our memories of George Floyd, Ferguson, Tamir Rice, and all the others need to be long.\nDivestment is not about punishing police - it\u0026rsquo;s about boldly reshaping our society.\nAbolish the Police When I first met with the Racial Justice Action Center in Atlanta as I was beginning this work, they told me about a grassroots study they conducted to understand the needs of their communities. When they asked about residents\u0026rsquo; biggest safety concern, residents\u0026rsquo; overwhelming response was: the police. The police presence was the danger. Not gangs. Not guns. Not drugs. If you are Black, the police are dangerous. If you are Black and trans, the police are even more dangerous. Read their report - it will break your heart. (opens in new tab)\nSo when another organizer told me their goal was the \u0026ldquo;abolition of policing\u0026rdquo; I was able to set aside my first reaction \u0026ndash; what will replace them? how will you pass it? \u0026ndash; and listen. And I kept hearing this as the goal. And I kept listening and thinking about it.\nAnd then it clicked.\nI realized abolishing the police wasn\u0026rsquo;t that radical at all.\nYou see, I live a police-free existence. Many of you do as well.\nThe only time I encounter a police officer is at a large event or when I am driving. Police do not walk down my street. They do not regularly drive down my street. If an officer carried a rifle down my street I would call the city and demand (and get) an explanation. And police do not stop me \u0026ndash; in the Boston metro area I am not sure what I would have to do driving to warrant a traffic stop but I can assure my car is not capable of achieving it.\nFor me, police are functionally abolished, yet my life is not full of crime and violence. I\u0026rsquo;m safe.\nThe demand of police abolitionists is in fact quite simple \u0026ndash; they want what I, and most of you, have. A police-free existence. Yet, these voices are not being heard in the rush to reform policing.\nBlack lives matter means Black voices on police presence in our communities matter. White voices have led to decades of uninterrupted investment, militarization, and paper-only reforms that have not abated the violence.\nWhen George Floyd was murdered and you said you would listen - is abolition what you heard? If it isn\u0026rsquo;t, please, give it a listen and consider it. You may see it\u0026rsquo;s not as radical as you first thought. But don\u0026rsquo;t take my word on it, read Mariame Kaba\u0026rsquo;s powerful words on what abolition means. (opens in new tab)\nThank you. Please give money to your local racial justice advocacy groups (opens in new tab)\n","date":"June 15, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/policing-reform-to-abolition/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome","title":"Policing From Reform to Abolition","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome (opens in new tab)\nFriends and Colleagues,\ntl;dr\nIf you are outraged about the murder of George Floyd and wondering what can be done, join me in pledging to take these steps and to recommit to these steps again in a few months:\nFind the organization(s) in your city working on policing issues. Just Google \u0026ldquo;racial justice + my city\u0026rdquo; and you\u0026rsquo;ll find an organization. Join their mailing list. Donate. Amplify the voices of those impacted most by racism. Raise them up. Write your legislators and demand that they pledge to hold police accountable. Police accountability cannot be left to cities and counties - states need to intervene. We need legislation to support that. Practice calling out racism more often. It can feel charged or judgmental at first, but the murder of George Floyd and the police response to peaceful protests are the result of racist policies and racist actions. Name it. To find out why these steps are important and to learn more about my commitment to them, please read on:\nYesterday, as I was cleaning and doing my weekend chores, I found myself feeling like most of you reading this probably feel: angry and upset about another police department executing another black person in another city. As people rise up across the country in an effort to say enough is enough I keep thinking about spring 2015 when police in the \u0026ldquo;ultra-liberal\u0026rdquo; city I lived in, Madison, WI, entered a private residence and murdered Tony Robinson less than 1 mile from where I worked. It stunned me. \u0026ldquo;How could this happen here?\u0026rdquo;\u0026quot; And, when inevitably nothing was done to punish the department or the officer involved, my heart sank. Since then, I have been shifting more of my work toward police accountability. This has been motivated by a question at the intersection of what have become my two worlds: education and policing.\nAddressing the 2015 protest after Tony Robinson’s killing Will we hold cops as accountable as teachers? Teachers are accountable to the public for their salary, for the training they receive, for the ways they discipline their students, and for the amount their students learn (\u0026ldquo;student growth\u0026rdquo; to use the term du jour). We demand this accountability because the teachers represent us - our commitment to the children in our community and our values.\nPolice also represent us and that same commitment to our community, and I\u0026rsquo;m outraged at what they are doing in our name. I\u0026rsquo;m also outraged how little accountability we ask of them. Try to find out how many arrests each officer in your town made last year. Try to find out how many crimes the police \u0026ldquo;solved\u0026rdquo;. More often than not, you can\u0026rsquo;t. (opens in new tab)\nCops are not accountable. I know many of you follow me for my work on education and many of you work in education. You know that we know how to hold public employees accountable. We know what political and technical systems we need to make that work. We, as a society, can do it when we have the will to do so. This is not a question of how - this is a question of will.\nWill cops be accountable? The answer depends on us. I know many of you are looking for actions you can take. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent time the past few years working on this issue and want to offer some lessons I have learned. These are steps me and you, my peers \u0026ndash; mostly white, mostly economically secure, mostly living in progressive places \u0026ndash; must take so that things will change.\nBefore we begin, I need you know something that will sound radical coming from me:\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t need more data and statistics for this problem. We don\u0026rsquo;t need freakonomics or another ggplot. We need to listen and we need to demand action. I have learned that needing data to understand the realities of policing in America was a sign of my immense privilege. No one I have met who lives or works in policed communities needed data - they have lived with this reality for generations.\nNow is the time to unmarginalize their voices by amplifying them and backing their solutions.\nTo do that, we need local, political, and social action. Here is what I am doing:\nHelp hold cops accountable locally I\u0026rsquo;ve been working with local organizations to change police behavior in their cities. These organizations and people are heroes. Police accountability work attracts virtually no philanthropic support, yet in many poor neighborhoods in the U.S., it is one of the most important issues for residents. Over the past 18 months, I have learned that these organizations exist in almost every community, but they are marginalized \u0026ndash; fighting for media coverage, funding, and political access.\nFind your local organization working on police reform and community justice. You can find them by Googling \u0026ldquo;racial justice + my city\u0026rdquo; - it\u0026rsquo;s that simple. I found over 100 organizations just using this search approach. Join their mailing list. Give them money. If you have time and energy, volunteer. Here are some great organizations I\u0026rsquo;ve worked with in the past year:\nPoder in Action (opens in new tab) (Phoenix, AZ) Chispa (opens in new tab) (Santa Ana, CA) PrYSM (opens in new tab) (Providence, RI) Racial Justice Action Center (opens in new tab) (Atlanta, GA) Wisconsin Voices (opens in new tab) (Milwaukee, WI) Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Here’s me visiting the RJAC last year. Remember traveling? Support those amplifying these local organizations:\nThe Community Resource Hub (opens in new tab) gathers resources that community organizations can use to strengthen their advocacy and win police reform campaigns. Color of Change (opens in new tab) works to support local movements across the country, and president Rashad Robinson (opens in new tab) is an excellent voice to follow. The Communities Transforming Policing Fund at the Borealis Foundation (opens in new tab) is one of the few philanthropic efforts dedicated to police reform (not the broader and more popular criminal justice reform; full disclosure, I consult for them). Let those who fund these organizations know that they are valuable. Especially now. The Community Resource Hub is great The main goal of much of this work is public divestment from police departments and reallocation of funds toward evidence-based alternatives. Phillip McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris describe this movement and its goals in this powerful op-ed. (opens in new tab) Listen. Many of these alternatives to policing are covered in-depth in the End of Policing by Alex Vitale, which Verso Books has made freely available. (opens in new tab)\nIf you live in a town without an existing organization write your city council and your police chief. Ask them what steps they are taking to ensure that your police department is accountable, honorable, and equitable.\nDemand legislation to hold cops accountable Next, I am pledging to write to my elected representatives in the state legislature and Congress demanding they establish independent agencies to audit, investigate, and monitor police departments. (If you want, you can use the same letter I am using. (opens in new tab)) Cities and counties have proven they are not up to the task of accountability so we need a new approach. I will point elected officials to the California Police Scorecard (opens in new tab) and the excellent resources assembled by the team at Campaign Zero (opens in new tab) who created this model accountability framework. You can learn more about Campaign Zero in this article (opens in new tab), which has some additional ideas you may find inspiring.\nHold ourselves accountable Finally, I pledge to act socially. At the heart of the endless cycle of police violence is racism. Racism was here from the beginning, and wherever we fail to oppose it, it persists and flourishes. As Dr. Ibram X. Kendi says, it is not enough to be \u0026ldquo;not racist.\u0026rdquo; We must actively fight racism. That starts with listening to and amplifying the voices of those impacted by racism. Please share a few of my favorites:\nKareem Adbul-Jabbbar (opens in new tab) Ibram X. Kendi (opens in new tab) Anand Giridharadas (opens in new tab) (IMHO: one of the best Twitter feeds around) Andrea Ritchie (opens in new tab) (NYC based, who I\u0026rsquo;ve learned a lot from in a short period of time) We have to look at our lives and challenge ourselves to find the ways we can fight racism. A few years ago I very intentionally set a goal to transform myself from a passive \u0026ldquo;non-racist\u0026rdquo; to an ally. This has meant changing the media I consume, seeking out new voices, and pushing myself to see and talk about the racist underpinnings of policies. It has been a challenging, awkward, and provocative intellectual journey. This article describes it better than I can (opens in new tab) and I urge you to give it a read. And, for the list-lovers among you, I thought this list had some great ideas of new things I can do to support racial justice. (opens in new tab)\nIf this cycle is going to end, we have to pledge to make this fight a priority in our lives. And we have to keep this tragedy in our hearts long after the media cycle subsides. We have to carry this anger and frustration with us and tap into it when we vote, when we make political contributions, when we support charities, and when we eat, work, and play.\nBut to start, we just have to pledge to do one thing differently. That\u0026rsquo;s a good place to start.Will you join me in demanding cops be held accountable?\nWith Gratitude,\nJared Knowles\nP.S.\nI will be resending this newsletter in a few months - ahead of the election - as a reminder to hold myself accountable to all of you, and perhaps to hold you accountable as well, for taking these actions and continuing this work.\n","date":"June 1, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/police-accountability-next/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"This is a repost of my newsletter, The Civic Pulse, which I am crossposting to the blog. If you like the newsletter, subscribe here: https://civilytics.substack.com/welcome","title":"Policing, Accountability, and What Comes Next","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Friends and Colleagues,\nOver 7.5 million students attend a college with a campus police department. This is just one of the key facts included in Civilytics\u0026rsquo; new publication Policing the American University the first-ever look at staffing levels and arrest patterns and trends of America\u0026rsquo;s campus police departments.\\\nIn this issue of the Civic Pulse you\u0026rsquo;ll learn about this and more:\nCivilytics publishes its first public research report, Policing the American University (opens in new tab), available now online.\nAccompanying the report is the Campus Policing Toolkit, a tool for communities to better understand campus policing in their community.\nCivilytics president Jared Knowles recently gave a webinar training community organizations around the country in reading city budgets and comparing police department spending and performance across cities.\nEducation Data Done Right (EDDR) hits the road with co-authors Wendy Geller and Jared Knowles giving a talk to CCSSO's ASR Winter Meeting in New Orleans\nCivilytics is dedicated to restoring our democracy by elevating people\u0026rsquo;s voices with data analysis. We do this through consulting, training and education, and public research.\nYou can learn more about all of these at: www.civilytics.com (opens in new tab)\nOn to this month\u0026rsquo;s topics!\nPolicing the American University released Civilytics has published a new in-depth study on police departments that serve American colleges. Policing the American University represents the culmination of work that began when Civilytics was founded - building tools to understand police department performance. After conversations with funders, community organizers, journalists, and researchers it was clear that one gap in police accountability conversations was found on college campuses.\nCivilytics has invested heavily in ensuring the report is visible, useful, and speaks to multiple audiences. In addition to the report and its over 20 figures and tables, there is a Press Release, Fact Sheet (opens in new tab), and social media campaign on Twitter (opens in new tab) and LinkedIn (opens in new tab) to support the report.\nThe report has been distributed to over 100 news outlets. And you can help spread the word:\nGrab the fact sheet (opens in new tab) and email it to your friends, family, or student organizations.\nFollow us on social media at Twitter (opens in new tab) and LinkedIn (opens in new tab) to support the report.\nShare this email with everyone you know.\nAs a small independent public research firm we depend on you and your support to help us get our work into the world.\\\nCampus Policing Toolkit available now Research reports are great for providing an overview of a sector of policing like campus policing, but they can be hard for communities to use directly. That\u0026rsquo;s why we\u0026rsquo;ve created the campus policing toolkit which provides communities with a number of additional resources they can use to understand their specific campus police department:\nA dataset of staffing and arrest data for all campus police departments present in the 2016 (most recent) FBI Uniform Crime Report\nA detailed data dictionary for all the data and links to original data sources and other sources of policing data\nA User Guide which gives advice on how to use the data and how to foster local conversation about campus policing\nA fact sheet providing an overview of campus policing nationally\nIf you or anyone you know is interested in learning about campus police in your community, pick up the Campus Policing Toolkit today. (opens in new tab)\\\nPolice Budget and Performance Webinar Civilytics was invited by the Borealis Foundation to present a webinar on police budgeting, comparing police budgets across the country, and police accountability measures. The foundation\u0026rsquo;s grantees are community organizations making pushes for greater police accountability in their cities. Grantees had requested assistance in producing their own evidence to be used in city budget deliberations.\n\\\nThis work is directly aligned with Civilytics mission of providing public research to help communities make democratic decisions that include all voices.\nWe will have more updates on this front soon - but needless to say this is a new partnership we are very excited about.\\\nEDDR Presentation to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) We continue to be grateful for the positive response EDDR has received - most recently on February 19th at CCSSO\u0026rsquo;s ASR in New Orleans where co-authors Jared Knowles and Wendy Geller presented their top takeaways from the book as well as a preview of Volume 2.\nWe are already busy putting together Volume 2 which includes important contributions from many new voices - focusing on case studies of hard-earned successes by people working in agencies across the country. We hoped Volume 1 would be a beacon to gather news of all the good work happening in this field, and we are happy to report we\u0026rsquo;ll be sharing that back out with you soon.\nPick up your copy of EDDR at www.eddatadoneright.com (opens in new tab) - and remember the digital version is always available for free!\nUpcoming Events Next on the horizon is publishing updated accountability tools related to municipal police departments and county sheriff's offices and their budgets. Civilytics will also be moving its headquarters just up the road in the next several weeks. We are also looking forward to announcing more partnerships related to both our efforts to improve analytics on policing and to make more education data analysis resources available.\nMore on all of that very soon.\nWith Gratitude,\nJared\n","date":"February 26, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/civilytics-publishes-first-ever-analysis-of-campus-police-departments-nationwide/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Friends and Colleagues,","title":"Civilytics publishes first ever analysis of campus police departments nationwide","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 25, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/police/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Police","type":"tags"},{"content":"The report by Civilytics Consulting covers the history of campus police departments and describes where campus police departments are located, how many people they employ, what kind of arrests they make, and how they compare to city police departments. The report is accompanied by resources to inform community discussions about police accountability.\nDownload the report now. (opens in new tab) Boston, MA \u0026ndash; February 26, 2020 \u0026ndash; Nearly 7.5 million students attend a college with a campus police department, according to a new report from Civilytics Consulting. Over 800 colleges operate a campus police department and this report provides a first-ever look at their staffing levels and arrest patterns and trends. The report combines data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u0026rsquo;s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the U.S. Department of Education to explore how common campus police departments are and the role they play on campuses.\nMost campus police departments have jurisdiction beyond the boundaries of the campuses they serve \u0026ndash; giving officers the authority to police adjacent housing, public spaces, and roads. Where do members of the public turn to get information on campus police activity? To file grievances? And who is responsible when the actions police take violate the values and norms of the community they serve?\nThe truth is that reliable public information about police forces in the United States is limited, but, by looking at the measures we do have comprehensively \u0026ndash; across time and colleges, by student population, and in contrast to city police \u0026ndash; we can better understand law enforcement on college campuses.\nHighlights from the report include:\nCampus police departments (CPDs) are a unique type of law enforcement agency chartered by a state legislature and directed by an institution of higher education. Unlike campus security offices, CPDs employ sworn law enforcement officers with full powers of arrest and investigation. CPDs serve public and private colleges and often have jurisdiction beyond the borders of the campus they serve 877 campus police departments in the UCR reported a total of 24,600+ employees. The median department reported 17 employees. The number of CPDs, and the number of officers they employ, has been growing steadily since 1980. Of the 10 largest campus police departments by officers per student, 4 were private not-for-profit colleges. Overall, private not-for-profit colleges were less likely to report data to the FBI than their public counterparts, but 148 CPDs operating at private not-for-profit colleges reported data to the FBI. Campus police departments made over 65,000 total arrests in the most recent year of data. The median CPD made 44 arrests: 12 for liquor laws, 8 for marijuana possession, 6 for driving under the influence (DUI), 5 for drunkenness, and 4 or fewer for each of the following: larceny, assault, disorderly conduct, vandalism, and drug possession. Arrest rates have held steady or slightly reduced for most offense categories since 1980. The exceptions are for marijuana possession and liquor laws: marijuana possession arrests are up and liquor law arrests are down. Since reporting began, CPD arrests of black adults have annually increased. Recent reductions in total arrests are due to a sharp decrease in arrests of white adults. More than half of campus police arrests are for just three offense categories: liquor laws, marijuana possession, and driving under the influence (DUI). Arrests by city police are more diversified \u0026ndash; it takes five categories to account for over half of municipal police\u0026rsquo;s arrests. For 45 CPDs, marijuana possession arrests make up 25% or more of their arrests. Fact Sheet Available Download the Two Page Fact Sheet (opens in new tab) The full report features 20 figures and 8 tables and includes an online appendix with further detailed figures and tables.\nThe report is published by Civilytics Consulting, a data science consulting firm in Boston that seeks to improve the public\u0026rsquo;s access to information necessary to gain a voice in public policy deliberations. Civilytics\u0026rsquo; work has previously appeared on the national radio program and podcast Reveal from the Center for Investigative Journalism. (opens in new tab)\nIn addition to the report, Civilytics has created a Campus Policing Toolkit. (opens in new tab) This toolkit is intended for communities interested in learning more about their local campus police department. The toolkit includes a dataset with the most current data on 837 campus police departments, a how-to guide for both interpreting the data and generating a community discussion, and detailed information about the data sources used. The Campus Policing Toolkit is free to the public and available today (opens in new tab).\n","date":"February 25, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/cpd-press-release/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The report by Civilytics Consulting covers the history of campus police departments and describes where campus police departments are located, how many people they employ, what kind of arrests they make, and how they compare to city police departments. The report is accompanied by resources to inform community discussions about police accountability.","title":"Policing the American University out now!","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"February 25, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/press-release/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Press-Release","type":"tags"},{"content":"Friends and Colleagues,\nWelcome to the official launch of the Civic Pulse newsletter. 2020 is a big year for Civilytics and we\u0026rsquo;ll be sharing a lot of our work publicly - we\u0026rsquo;ll be using this newsletter to keep you up to date. In this issue you\u0026rsquo;ll learn about:\nCivilytics\u0026rsquo; work on prison gerrymandering featured on the national radio show and podcast, Reveal.\nA preview of Civilytics new report: Policing the American University. The first ever comprehensive national analysis of campus police departments.\nAn update on Education Data Done Right and plans for volume 2 later this year.\nCivilytics is dedicated to restoring our democracy by elevating the voices of others with data analysis. We do this through consulting, training and education, and public research. You can learn more about all of these at: www.civilytics.com (opens in new tab)\nOn to this month\u0026rsquo;s topics!\nPrison Gerrymandering Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting people, for the purposes of political representation, as residing where they are incarcerated instead of where they are from. I learned about prison gerrymandering by contributing data analysis to this excellent story, out now on the national radio show and podcast Reveal (opens in new tab), by the Center for Investigative Journalism.\nYou should go listen to the story now: https://revealnews.org/episodes/dont-count-on-the-census/ (opens in new tab)\nCivilytics did the background data analysis for the story and supported journalist Natasha Haverty (opens in new tab) in her reporting on the extent and impact of prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Natasha\u0026rsquo;s story does an excellent job centering the voices of the people impacted by prison gerrymandering. The data work takes a backseat here as it should. The voices of those impacted by residential segregation, poverty, and mass incarceration tell the greater truth. While it is important to point out that statistically, prison gerrymandering gives a small edge to Republicans in Wisconsin, even more important is the fact that it greatly reduces the political power of Black communities.\nThis story is the first product of Civilytics\u0026rsquo; collaboration with Natasha Haverty - more data heavy stories looking at the impacts in Wisconsin will follow in the lead up to Census Day in April. This also represents Civilytics\u0026rsquo; first step toward publishing completely independent public research on police and criminal justice reform topics, with a lens of racial justice. Much more on these fronts is scheduled for 2020. Stay tuned.\nLearn more about prison gerrymandering, our collaboration with Natasha Haverty, and future planned work on our website: https://www.civilytics.com/project/prison-gerrymander/ (opens in new tab)\nPolicing the American University Later this month we will publish our first independent research report: Policing the American University. This in-depth report gives a national overview of campus police departments -- law enforcement agencies with powers of arrest, seizure, and use of force that are accountable to campus authorities. In 2016, (the most recent national data), just under 7.5 million students attended a college with a campus police department (over 60% of the total student population). Despite their prevalence, relatively little has been reported about how campus police departments behave or what role they serve at college and in the broader community.\nUntil now.Civilytics\u0026rsquo; brand new report looks at nationally available administrative data which covers the majority of these agencies and investigates the growth, composition, and arrest behavior of campus police and contrasts them to what we know about municipal police departments.\nThe report will be released in late February 2020. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to date and learn more heading up to the release:\nTwitter (opens in new tab)\nLinkedIn (opens in new tab)\nEducation Data Done Right Finally, the last time many of you heard from us was when we announced the publication of Education Data Done Right in October. Since release, we have heard from dozens of public sector data analysts across the country about how they have found the book helpful in their work. We can\u0026rsquo;t thank you enough for reading our work, and hearing from readers how it has helped always puts big smiles on our face during our planning calls.\nSpeaking of planning calls\u0026hellip; we have plans to release a second volume this fall featuring a wider set of contributors! We\u0026rsquo;ll be presenting case studies of analytics projects we think highlight best practices for using education data well, told by the people who made those projects happen. This project based approach will allow us to cover a wider range of topics and, we hope, highlight just how much good work is being done in the field and going unnoticed.\nWendy and Jared will be making the rounds giving talks about the book and sharing it at conferences and events. The next chance to catch them is at CCSSO\u0026rsquo;s ASR meeting in New Orleans in February.\nPick up your copy of EDDR at www.eddatadoneright.com (opens in new tab) - and remember - the digital version is always available for free!\nUpcoming Events With the spring-like weather here in New England, it is hard not to look ahead to upcoming events. In addition to releasing Policing the American University, Civilytics will be releasing some updated accountability tools related to municipal police departments and county sheriff's offices. We are looking forward to partnering with the Community Resource Hub (opens in new tab) in that effort. More on that very soon.\nWith gratitude,\nJared\\\nJared Knowles, Ph.D.\nPresident, Civilytics Consulting LLC\\\n","date":"February 3, 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/civilytics-contributes-to-the-reveal-national-radio-show/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Friends and Colleagues,","title":"Civilytics contributes to the Reveal national radio show","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"Or, sometimes we learn best by learning what not to do\nOrganizations, especially public education agencies, are always looking for best practices. I\u0026rsquo;m a big believer in this strategy \u0026mdash; the world is complex, there are many variables, and starting the search for solutions with practices that others in your field have found to work is a smart strategy. But, sometimes best practices have the effect of deterring change because they feel too far out of reach.\nWe could never get there! We can\u0026rsquo;t even get X right!\nThat\u0026rsquo;s why in this post I\u0026rsquo;m going to talk about worst practices. Building data science teams in public agencies is an immense challenge. The competition for talent is fierce. Demonstrating return on the investment in analysts can be difficult when your organization isn\u0026rsquo;t in the business of selling ads. It is often hard to gauge how different the outcomes of the organization would have been without analysts in the first place.\nFrom my work at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (opens in new tab) to my work with the Strategic Data Project (opens in new tab) at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (opens in new tab) to conversations and consultation with education analysts across the country (which led me to co-author a whole book) (opens in new tab) I\u0026rsquo;ve been part of building and training education agency data science teams. And, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen the struggles and triumphs.\nSo without further ado, let me cover what I see as some of the worst practices in doing this work and, if you see these in your organization, what you can do to start moving away from them.\nHave one analyst per language This is a big one for agencies. It is easy to justify letting analysts select their own set of tools to use for data analysis. It is hard enough to recruit without limiting analysts by a specific set of tools they use. Agencies struggle with underinvestment in staff training for analysts (see below) so the thought of retraining a team of analysts is daunting. And, analysts, well, we\u0026rsquo;re a picky bunch with lots of opinions on the tools we have come to know and love. (opens in new tab)\nBut, when you step back and take an agency perspective you see the problems.\nErrors abound. Data analysis is hard work. Mistakes happen. Without someone else to quality control (QC) your analysis and code, mistakes are much more likely to get out. Stunted growth. Analysts will be happy at first not having to learn new tools, but without true collaborators it will be harder and harder to learn new skills, push the boundaries, and build efficiencies in the tools they use. Continuity. Where does all the SAS code go when your last SAS programmer quits? How will you run those reports? Budgets. It\u0026rsquo;s not just the license fees for SPSS, SAS, and Stata that add up. What about training materials? Books? Training time? You can\u0026rsquo;t achieve any economies of scale. Isolation. Your analysts won\u0026rsquo;t feel like a team, they\u0026rsquo;ll feel like they are isolated from one another. The long-term effects of this are less job satisfaction and, probably, higher turnover. The best orgs have specialized teams by language. And, to achieve this, they set clear expectations about learning the standard tools used on their team, but also, provide plenty of support to new analysts to get up to speed on those tools.\nNever read code Reading and reviewing code outside of quality control is crucial. Teams need to be able to seamlessly read each other\u0026rsquo;s code to share ideas, develop norms, and collaborate. And, they need to to do so outside high-stakes quality control reviews. When teams don\u0026rsquo;t read code:\nSilos emerge. Analysts will assert different coding styles or slightly varying solutions to the same problem. This will create friction to collaboration among analysts over time. Innovation slows. QC of analysis code is a difficult task. While doing it, it is unlikely new ideas or patterns of solving problems will stick with the analyst. So the benefits of code reading aren\u0026rsquo;t realized. Continuity is threatened. Even if everyone uses the same language, radically different dialects can emerge in the absence of reading code. It is possible that an analyst leaves behind an R script that no one else is quite sure how it works. Reading code is a great skill to help sustain professional development even when budgets are tight. Most analysts are trained in a solo environment \u0026mdash; individual projects in graduate courses. So building the habit of reading code is a management challenge on three fronts: creating the expectation of reading code, protecting time to read code, and getting the tools to make code sharing easy. Teams that do it though gain the benefit of more standard code, more sustainable professional development, and a more collegial workspace.\nRecruit one \u0026ldquo;superstar\u0026rdquo; and give them free reign Speaking of collegial \u0026mdash; here\u0026rsquo;s the number one way to keep your team from developing. I am not the the first one to write about this (opens in new tab), and I won\u0026rsquo;t be the last. This is a real problem in the way software (and now data analysis is software) has historically been designed (opens in new tab) and the ways people think software should be designed (opens in new tab).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s tempting to identify one person with great analytic skills and put your hardest challenges to them. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to find, recruit, and train analytic talent so it may feel like when you think your team has a superstar you have to maximize their output. But, here\u0026rsquo;s why it won\u0026rsquo;t work:\nWhat superstar? Most organizations are bad at identifying analytic superstars. Too often the \u0026ldquo;superstar\u0026rdquo; label goes to the person who most assertively takes it. But, the most confident analyst may not be the best. The best programmers I\u0026rsquo;ve ever worked with were also the most careful, cautious, and unassuming people you\u0026rsquo;d ever meet. But their code always opened my eyes. Toxic culture. You might get lucky and the \u0026ldquo;superstar\u0026rdquo; you identify is magnanimous in their role and uses it for good. But, it is equally, if not more likely, that you\u0026rsquo;ve, a) misidentified the superstar on your team and alienated your best analyst, and b) the team culture and discussions are now dominated by a single person \u0026mdash; cutting down on the debate, collaboration, and professional growth the rest of the team needs. Fragility. What happens if your superstar leaves? You want great talent on your teams and you want to create room for that talent to be put to good use. But, the superstar team model, while easier on you as a manager in the short run, creates serious risks and probably won\u0026rsquo;t last.\nLeave analysts to self-direct their learning Data nerds, generally, have already done a lot of self-teaching and self-learning. It is often part of the job and a necessary skill to learn the tools of the trade, and to keep up to date on them. But, turning over all the responsibilities of guiding professional development of analysts to the analysts themselves is damaging for four reasons:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not for everyone. Some analysts don\u0026rsquo;t want to manage their learning and their work. Or they aren\u0026rsquo;t sure what is best for themselves or the organization. Or they don\u0026rsquo;t feel comfortable asking for time to learn. It\u0026rsquo;s a strategic miss. Analysts may choose to learn things that help them professionally, but only marginally benefit the organization. This makes professional development function more like a perk than a strategic investment. Ideally, professional learning is linked to the priorities and workload of the agency. It\u0026rsquo;s inefficient. Just as each analyst using a different language creates silos, so does each analyst learning in different directions. Unless you have a staff with the ability and time to train each other, the whole will be less than the sum of its parts. Slows mastery. Too often analyst self-directed learning is not disciplined on mastering what analysts need and is instead directed toward trying new things that seem interesting and fun \u0026mdash; trust me on this, I\u0026rsquo;m as guilty of it as anyone. Switching away from self-directed learning is hard! It requires thinking carefully about the work analysts will do and holding firm in aligning professional learning towards mastery of tasks that align with that work.\nExclude subject matter experts This is a big one. Data reign supreme in agencies and the mantra of \u0026ldquo;what gets measured gets done\u0026rdquo; gives analysts an outsized voice in policy discussions. Sometimes teams forget or choose not to work with experts that use other types of evidence \u0026mdash; qualitative data, experience, direct feedback. Ignoring practitioners and subject matter experts when doing a data analysis may feel more efficient in terms of output \u0026mdash; think of all the Tableau dashboards you can create if you\u0026rsquo;re not in meetings! But, in the long run it keeps data analysis teams from achieving their goal \u0026mdash; to aid decision-makers in setting policy and practice by using data. This is because it:\nCreates blindspots. There are other ways of knowing things than using statistics to count, tabulate, and compare them. Data cannot capture all the important aspects of something as complex as education or policing. So avoiding other forms of knowledge from other methodologies or experience from practitioners creates dangerous blindspots. Damages credibility. Unless the chief of your organization is a supercomputer, there are probably lots of ways they receive information that are not grounded in quantitative data. If the data don\u0026rsquo;t line up with what others see, and they weren\u0026rsquo;t involved in the work, they will resist your recommendations and challenge your results. Instead of making allies you\u0026rsquo;ll be making opposition. This is a topic I\u0026rsquo;ve done a lot of thinking about and I\u0026rsquo;ve written about the antidemocratic threat excluding other forms of knowledge poses to society at large elsewhere. I feel passionately about it. But even if you\u0026rsquo;re not worried on a global scale, these are serious risks to your organization that will catch up to you.\nInstead, work to create the time and space for your analysts to get out and talk to practitioners and spend time collaborating with subject matter experts. In the long run you\u0026rsquo;ll get better answers and you\u0026rsquo;ll be building an organization that learns together.\nKeep it internal Organizations invest a lot in their data teams \u0026mdash; infrastructure, recruitment, software tools. But, your team needs a steady flow of fresh ideas, new perspectives, and sharing of solutions too. Sometimes an analyst becomes a manager and has the time and energy to do this. But most often, analysts are left to read blog posts and watch YouTube videos and talk together to find out what is best. This underinvestment will keep your staff from growing their skills and will slow the adoption of, you guessed it, best practices.\nThe best organizations do the internal work but also periodically bring in outside expertise to coach them on what they are doing well, identify where they could improve, and bring a fresh perspective. Great teams are those that are not afraid of being vulnerable, showing their work, and sitting down to think about ways they can improve.\nAgencies often think this type of training and review must be too expensive, but there\u0026rsquo;s a growing number of experts who are available to do just this kind of work for your agency. Experts who will work with you to identify the training your team can benefit from the most, train your staff, co-develop solutions with your staff to your toughest problems, and provide ongoing coaching as you and your team implement your projects.\nIf you think your team is ready to bring in some outside help to take steps away from these worst practices, and to really institutionalize the best practices you have in place, get in touch. (opens in new tab) This is just the kind of training, coaching, and application co-development that Civilytics will be happy to help you out with.\n","date":"September 29, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/datasci-worst-practices/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Or, sometimes we learn best by learning what not to do","title":"Worst practices in managing data science teams","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"","date":"August 13, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/accountability/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Accountability","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"August 13, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/local-government/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Local-Government","type":"tags"},{"content":" By Aleksander Kaasik – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53121816 Civilytics tagline is: \u0026ldquo;Measuring the pulse of civic life.\u0026rdquo; Measurements, whether in health care or care of a democracy, only tell part of the picture, but when chosen well, they can tell that part of the picture very efficiently. The pulse is a simple, but vital, measure that conveys a lot of information while remaining easy to understand and measure. Ongoing monitoring of a patient is done by keeping track of a patient\u0026rsquo;s pulse and a number of other indicators that provide immediate interpretation and lots of information.\nIn this post I\u0026rsquo;m going to explain why local government matters more than ever, and why it is critical we take its pulse.\nThe Enduring Strength of and Faith in Local Government Trust and faith in the problem solving capacity of the federal government ebbs and flows. This Gallup poll (opens in new tab) highlights the new low that faith in government has reached.\nFigure 1: Faith in federal capacity to solve domestic problems is at a new low. Faith in the federal government to solve domestic problems is at an all time low. While this is concerning, it is also true that Americans\u0026rsquo; faith in the federal government to solve their problems has always been highly dependent on which political party they belong to and which party is in control. Look at this trend when we divide it by party-affiliation:\nFigure 2: Wide partisan variance in faith in government. Contrast this roller coaster trend of public faith in the federal government, tied closely with political party, with the steady high regard Americans hold for their state and local governments \u0026ndash; according to Gallup polling. (opens in new tab)\nFigure 3: Steady faith in state and local government capacity to solve problems. Even when we look at local government approval by party affiliation, we see greater trust and greater stability over time.\nFigure 4: Stability in support of local government by political party. The American public consistently believes local government can solve problems that matter to them. In my dissertation (opens in new tab) one thing I evaluated was how democratic local governments are. I concluded that many local governments in America retain what I call \u0026ldquo;democratic promise.\u0026rdquo; Democratic promise means that formal and structural barriers to political participation are low. Contrast running for local and federal office. Running for federal office, like the U.S. House or Senate, requires winning a partisan primary, fundraising hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more), and building a small enterprise of professional campaign staff and volunteers. In all but the largest cities, running for city council can be done alongside a full-time job, with minimal fundraising, and with entirely amateur campaign staff.\nDespite these lowered barriers to entry, acting on the democratic promise of local government, remains low. This is because of informal barriers to participation are high \u0026ndash; acquiring the information necessary to make local political decisions is expensive and time-consuming, and the infrastructure to make this information usable and accessible remains rudimentary1.\nThis is where taking the pulse comes in.\nThe Importance of Information in Democratic Control Acquiring information needed to petition your government for change can be daunting. Citizens who experience an unsafe environment, unclean drinking water, or lack of safe access to a public park may feel deterred from speaking up due to a lack of information that they perceive is necessary to make a credible case. Often, it can be frustrating to look at local conditions and wonder how \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; such conditions are in other communities like your own. Such information about what is \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; or happening elsewhere is important in order to be taken seriously and ultimately to be effective in your activism.\nThis need for information becomes a cause for concern when the definition of what is acceptable information in public deliberation about local policy changes. Today, a massive shift has occurred away from narrative experiences of residents toward tabulated counts of events and people (Eubanks 2017).\nThe Technocratic Threat to Responsive Governance As we\u0026rsquo;ve asked government to take on increasingly complex challenges, and to do so with increasingly constrained resources, government has turned to professionals for expertise and advice. This rise of expertise, technocracy, has produced a more efficient and professionalized government with many innovations and improvements to service delivery. (opens in new tab) But it has also increasingly asked the public to trust the array of unelected professionals designing, implementing, advising, and strategizing about local services. I have already said much on this topic, but it is important here too. With experts measuring, evaluating, and analyzing all aspects of government performance it can become all too easy for the government to say to the public \u0026ldquo;trust us\u0026rdquo; or, if you don\u0026rsquo;t, \u0026ldquo;bring data to back up your point.\u0026rdquo;\nThis poses three major problems:\nThe government we are trying to hold accountable is the source of that data. Accessing and preparing data as evidence in an argument is a specialized skill \u0026ndash; leaving some left out of the conversation. It excludes many other ways of knowing from being treated as valid evidence. Stories, case studies, investigations, and many many other forms of evidence are pushed aside (Stone 2002). To address this, we need to rethink the role of measurement and data in how we hold government accountable.\nThe Risks of Local Government The informal barriers to accessing local government create another problem \u0026ndash; the ability of a small group of people to seize control and attempt to insulate their community from the larger community. In its worst form this allows small communities to adopt racist or other radical agendas enforced through informal networks. In other forms it allows for a small segment of the community, perhaps not even residents in the case of cities like Hartford, CT, to decide on how the schools, police, and public parks are run without having a personal stake in those services.2\nIt is an American tradition since before Thomas Jefferson to romanticize the potential of local government, but local government has also sheltered and enabled some of the most ghastly incidents of racial and class violence in our nation\u0026rsquo;s history. This is why simply introducing technocratic solutions to make local government \u0026ldquo;run better\u0026rdquo; are not enough \u0026ndash; to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past or empowering local government to simply do more of what it is doing \u0026ndash; we have to ensure local government operates democratically.\nWhy Local Government Accountability Matters Now If local government is the most responsive form of government available to us, and the one we trust most to solve problems that matter to our everyday lives, we need to act now to ensure it stays that way. The slide into a technocratic government run by professionals, at the exclusion of the voice of the citizens, is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Not because of twirling mustaches or backroom deals, but because of the risk that the pursuit of complete professionalization leaves no room for the voice of the affected, the lived experience of the public.\nOne bulwark we can turn to is accountability measures. Open data and open metrics that are comparative and informative, and, like a pulse, provide a steady assessment of how the community is doing.\nReferences Eubanks, Virginia. 2017. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. First Edition. New York, NY: St. Martin\u0026rsquo;s Press.\nStone, Deborah A. 2002. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. Rev. ed. New York: Norton.\nPolitical parties, for good or bad, play this role at other levels of government. The lack of party involvement in local government often removes formal barriers but increases informal barriers.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nI\u0026rsquo;m indebted to my friend Se-Hyoung Yi (opens in new tab) for his review and feedback on this article and for reminding me to highlight the drawbacks and risks associated with local control.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"August 13, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/why-local-government-accountability-matters/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Civilytics tagline is: “Measuring the pulse of civic life.” Measurements, whether in health care or care of a democracy, only tell part of the picture, but when chosen well, they can tell that part of the picture very efficiently. The pulse is a simple, but vital, measure that conveys a lot of information while remaining easy to understand and measure. Ongoing monitoring of a patient is done by keeping track of a patient’s pulse and a number of other indicators that provide immediate interpretation and lots of information.","title":"Why local government accountability matters","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" By Jared Knowles, copyright 2016, www.jaredknowles.com (opens in new tab) Government agencies, just like any person or organization, resist accountability. As Behn (2001) writes:\n\u0026ldquo;I suspect, however, that the people being held accountable\u0026hellip; recognize that, if someone is holding them accountable, two things can happen: When they do something good, nothing happens. But when they screw up, all hell can break loose.\u0026rdquo;\nAccountability can take many forms \u0026mdash; but at its most basic it involves checking that the\ngovernment\u0026rsquo;s actions do not constitute a \u0026ldquo;screw up\u0026rdquo; in Behn\u0026rsquo;s words.1 The key point I want to zero in on is the way this form of accountability is seen by agencies themselves \u0026mdash; as a no-win game that they do not want to play.\nThat is why when I first came across the FBI\u0026rsquo;s statement on the proper use of Uniform Crime Report data I found it so fascinating. In the document titled UCR Statistics and Their Proper Use (opens in new tab) the FBI describes its policy for how it uses agency-level UCR data:\n\u0026quot;Because of concern regarding the proper use of UCR data, the FBI has the following policies:\nThe FBI does not analyze, interpret, or publish crime statistics based solely on a single-dimension interagency ranking. The FBI does not provide agency-based crime statistics to data users in a ranked format. When providing/using agency-oriented statistics, the FBI cautions and, in fact, strongly discourages, data users against using rankings to evaluate locales or the effectiveness of their law enforcement agencies.\u0026quot; The FBI publishes raw UCR data (opens in new tab) via its Crime Data Explorer, but it actively refrains from making department-to-department comparisons. Aggregated data like states or regions are compared in the FBI\u0026rsquo;s Crime in the U.S. series (opens in new tab). But when it comes to making comparisons at the local level \u0026mdash; the data upon which these aggregates depend, the FBI draws a line.\nThis makes sense from a political perspective \u0026mdash; the accountability threat is non-existent for the aggregated entities on which the FBI reports. No one is accountable for crime in \u0026ldquo;Metropolitan Statistical Areas\u0026rdquo; compared to \u0026ldquo;Nonmetropolitan Counties.\u0026rdquo; Reporting these statistics informs the public, but the stakes are not high; in fact, they are almost academic. Even when reporting at the state level it is hard to envision much pressure from the public to lower crime across an entire state since it is well known that crime and policing activity vary greatly within a state, county, and even city (Kent and Carmichael 2014; Stucky 2005; Ward 2016).\nSo this form of accountability is safe \u0026mdash; the FBI can report the data, but politically, the public has relatively little use for it. It\u0026rsquo;s informative, but inert.\nHowever, the FBI does collect local data and others report it. Here\u0026rsquo;s an example of the trend in arrests for rape made by the Indianapolis Police department in Indianapolis Indiana. (opens in new tab)\nDecreasing arrests in Indianapolis. Chart and data provided by Vera Institute So why does the Vera Institute (opens in new tab) (and others) report this information, but the FBI does not?\nThe FBI provides a list of contextual factors that the UCR does not take into account, which reads a lot like the syllabus to a Sociology of Crime course:\nPopulation density and degree of urbanization. Variations in composition of the population, particularly youth concentration. Stability of the population with respect to residents; mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors. Economic conditions, including median income, poverty level, and job availability. Modes of transportation and highway systems. Cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics. Family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness. Climate. Effective strength of law enforcement agencies. Administrative and investigative emphases of law enforcement. Policies of other components of the criminal justice system (i.e., prosecutorial, judicial, correctional, and probational). Citizens\u0026rsquo; attitudes toward crime. Crime reporting practices of the citizenry. This is a thoughtful and pretty comprehensive list of the social determinants of crime rates and the factors contributing to the ability of law enforcement and the criminal justice system to respond to those social determinants. I could do a whole series of posts covering each of those bullets! Maybe I should!\nHowever, almost all of these factors apply to all public services. Let\u0026rsquo;s take the public service I I am most familiar with \u0026mdash; education. You can go down the FBI\u0026rsquo;s list and you will find each item also contributes to the educational outcomes of schools. Schools are affected by climate, by economic conditions, by transit, by population variation, by family conditions, by urbanization, and by policy, citizen attitudes, administrative practices, and the size of their budgets.\nBut \u0026mdash; we still hold individual school districts and schools accountable. Publicly. Using data. Here for example, you can look up the relative ranking and performance of any school in Kansas. (opens in new tab) Want to find another state? Just Google the state name and \u0026ldquo;school report card\u0026rdquo; and you\u0026rsquo;ll be on your way.\nSchool systems caveat these report cards. They talk about the factors that aren\u0026rsquo;t included. They explain the limitations of the data. They do all of this in much the same way as the FBI has done here. But, in the end, the public still has access to both the underlying data and the ranking and analysis of that data to allow for comparison.\nAre the comparisons always fair and appropriate? No. (opens in new tab) Do they account for all these contextual factors? Not always despite sometimes trying. (opens in new tab) But, have they advanced the public discourse around what education systems should do and whether or not they are meeting those expectations? Absolutely. (opens in new tab)\nSo back to the FBI.\nThe FBI is clearly trying to head off what it sees as an irresponsible use of the UCR \u0026mdash; making strong claims about the relative ranking of agencies in preventing or solving crimes. The FBI does not want users to think that UCR data captures the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. It also does not want the public thinking that the UCR comprehensively describes crime and safety in their local community.\nFair enough.\nBut this approach \u0026mdash; hiding the agency-level data (the politically relevant unit of analysis) and waving our hands, appealing to sociology, that police performance is too difficult to measure is wrong for two reasons.\nCrime, public safety, and law enforcement agency effectiveness should not be held to different standards than other social policy areas like education and public health, where we do enforce local accountability using data. Police should be held to the same standard. Avoiding the conversation sets us back as a community. Education has made great strides in the last 25 years in figuring out how to measure different aspects of what schools do and communicate that to the public. It\u0026rsquo;s not perfect \u0026mdash; it\u0026rsquo;s definitely a work in a progress. But \u0026mdash; that work is meaningful and leads to a vibrant civic conversation about public services and the kind of community we want to have. Further Reading Behn, Robert D. 2001. Rethinking Democratic Accountability. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press.\nKent, Stephanie L., and Jason T. Carmichael. 2014. \u0026ldquo;Racial Residential Segregation and Social Control: A Panel Study of the Variation in Police Strength Across U.S Cities, 19802010.\u0026rdquo; American Journal of Criminal Justice 39 (2): 228\u0026ndash;49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-013-9212-8 (opens in new tab).\nStucky, Thomas D. 2005. \u0026ldquo;Local Politics and Police Strength.\u0026rdquo; Justice Quarterly 22 (2): 139\u0026ndash;69. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418820500088739 (opens in new tab).\nWard, Geoff. 2016. \u0026ldquo;Microclimates of Racial Meaning: Historical Racial Violence and Environmental Impacts.\u0026rdquo; Wisconsin Law Review 2016 (3): 52.\nThere is a lot of work to be done in narrowing down what we mean when we talk about holding law enforcement accountable \u0026mdash; but that will be for another post.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n","date":"May 31, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/can-pds-be-accountable/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"Government agencies, just like any person or organization, resist accountability. As Behn (2001) writes:","title":"Can police departments be held accountable like schools?","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Jared Knowles, copyright, www.jaredknowles.com (opens in new tab) A lot of people ask me why I think building public accountability measures for police departments (opens in new tab) is possible. If police aren\u0026rsquo;t currently held accountable for their performance, why would communities begin to do that? How would we ever gather the data? Where would we begin?\nThe answer lies in public education.\nIn this post I share three lessons from education that we can use to inform the construction of a performance based accountability system for policing. These are:\nDemand performance analytics at all levels Use initial performance metrics to spur demand Understand that analytics can and should be contested Let\u0026rsquo;s look at these a little closer.\nBackground Twenty-five years ago schools were relatively unaccountable as well. Standardized tests were for students \u0026mdash; not for measuring school performance \u0026mdash; and schools reported a wide variety of unstandardized information touting their performance. Graduation rates had no common definition, either of what counted as a graduate or of who should be counted as a potential graduate (i.e. the denominator). There were no ratings systems for schools. And we certainly had much less insight into the different experiences of racial minorities and low-income students \u0026mdash; students largely invisible in the education system. So what changed?\nA movement happened. Not a coordinated movement orchestrated by a few small leaders; a grassroots demand for a better understanding of our schools and what they were doing. This movement was used by many people for many different purposes, but they shared one thing in common \u0026mdash; a desire to better understand and contextualize the performance of public schools in order to improve their ability to shape the management of those schools.\nLesson 1: Demand performance analytics at all levels of government Education researchers and public officials had been clamoring for better data for a long time \u0026mdash; it\u0026rsquo;s what they do \u0026mdash; but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t until school boards began feeling direct pressure from within that things started to change.1 That local pressure for better data on public schools came from all sides \u0026mdash; from community members wanting to reduce property taxes and reign in spending, neighborhood advocates wanting to highlight the deep racial inequalities in their schools, special education advocates demanding more visibility for how schools serve their students, and parents faced with an increasingly complex supply of schooling options to choose from. School boards were challenged to justify the outcomes of their students and found they were often unable to do so \u0026mdash; even when they had the will. There were no common measures for comparison. Learning about neighboring and peer school districts was hard. Every district was an island, measuring its performance with its own system of measures.\nAdvocates, sometimes in concert with local school districts, appealed to higher levels of government to solve this coordination challenge. They sought a wide range of reforms to make performance measurement of education easier: federal reporting requirements and infrastructure investments, state level standardization of accountability measures and funding for assessments, and tools to compare outcomes of schools in the community to neighboring school districts.\nPressure on all fronts created forward progress. Pressure on each front created positive feedback loops to sustain momentum on other fronts. States coordinated assessment programs for all their districts and the Federal government contributed to funding these assessments. The Federal government invested in data systems and data infrastructure for states, and states created tools to ease reporting burdens on schools and provide comparative information back to them.\nBut how were all these groups able to build success in their efforts?\nLesson 2: Use initial performance metrics to spur demand Success in education came from the pragmatic approach of starting simple with available data, and building the case for better metrics from there. To understand why, a brief aside on performance analytics is necessary.\nPerformance analytics \u0026mdash; done well \u0026mdash; level the playing field between insiders in the government agency and outsiders consuming or funding the agency\u0026rsquo;s work. K-12 education in the United States is highly technical work enmeshed in a dense web of expectations; state and federal regulations; and ethical, moral, and political concerns. Lots of people care about it. And those delivering public education \u0026mdash; school district employees \u0026mdash; have an inside knowledge of how well they are doing, where they are struggling, and what their needs are.\nData has a wide appeal because it is an efficient way of transmitting some of this insider knowledge back out into the public sphere. Instead of having to interview and evaluate statements from lots of people inside the agency, we can agree on some pre-set attributes that are important about the agency and measure them quantitatively.\nThese measures are efficient statements about how the agency is doing. And they can be used by each and every party with an interest in public education to make their case. Because of their power and efficiency, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t take long for public interest groups to rely on and demand more performance metrics (Stone 2002).\nTake a school district with a graduation rate of 87%, above the national average. The school district and supporters can claim that they beat the national average \u0026mdash; the school is doing well. One set of critics can point out that, for the cost of education in the school district, the district should be doing better. Another set of critics can point to the graduation rate for low-income students at 78% and demand the school district do better.\nThe point is \u0026mdash; the metric anchors the ability of the public to participate in performance management on an equal footing with the agency itself.\nBut even more \u0026mdash; agencies themselves come to rely on these public reports because:\nView tweet by @mattBernius on X Often agencies themselves are flying in the dark about their own performance on many metrics that matter. Agencies are deeply curious who the leaders in their field are and how they can emulate them. Performance analytics are a powerful tool agency leadership can use to spur reform, identify new strategies, and inspire change.\nAnd, the public, in the end, wants performance as well (Heinrich and Marschke 2010).\nLesson 3: Understand that analytics can and should be contested You may already have found some things to quibble with in the school example. Is a graduation rate the right measure? Don\u0026rsquo;t graduation standards vary? Should schools produce a high average graduation rate or try to graduate all student groups at the same rate?\nThe fact is that performance analytics are insufficient to hold public services accountable. But the discourse that surrounds them is critical for that accountability (Behn 2003). The analytics themselves become contested definitions that competing interests can discuss and debate about, and in so doing, advance our understanding of what performance characteristics we value and how much we value them (Stone 2002).\nDebates about measures are not just academic debates about trivial things \u0026mdash; they are debates about who and what counts. As Stone (2002) writes:\n\u0026ldquo;People change the activities that are being measured\u0026hellip; The exercise of counting makes them notice things more. Measurers change the way they count because their measures affect how they, not only the measured, are treated. The things being counted become bargaining chips in a strategic relationship between the measurers and the measured, so that at different points in the relationship, there are very different pressures to reveal or conceal. The choice of measures is part of strategic problem definition, and the results of the measures take on their political character only with the costume of interpretive language.\u0026rdquo;\nAnalytics reshape the public discourse. They need not dominate it, but, by being part of it, they clarify thinking, help set priorities, and become an important way for communities to decide on what matters to them.\nAnalytics do not tell us everything we need to know to make our policing better but they do open the door to a more complex discourse that invigorates the public\u0026rsquo;s ability to have a say in what matters and why.\nHow do we bring this to policing? So how do we get the ball rolling in policing? By using the data we already have to build measures. That\u0026rsquo;s how it started in education. Inevitably, (and also, probably correctly) there will be new objections raised about the data and about the measures. But it is with these initial objections - these debates about what the measure means \u0026mdash; that the paradigm shifts and we move forward.\nAnd it is this debate we need to spark in communities across the country.\nReferences Behn, Robert D. 2003. \u0026ldquo;Why Measure Performance? Different Purposes Require Different Measures.\u0026rdquo; Public Administration Review 63 (5): 586\u0026ndash;606. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6210.00322 (opens in new tab).\nHeinrich, Carolyn J., and Gerald Marschke. 2010. \u0026ldquo;Incentives and Their Dynamics in Public Sector Performance Management Systems.\u0026rdquo; Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29 (1): 183\u0026ndash;208. https://doi.org/10/bkgwng (opens in new tab).\nStone, Deborah A. 2002. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. Rev. ed. New York: Norton.\nThis is not my area of expertise, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be surprised to find out that this grassroots effort was funded and subsidized by philanthropists advancing this agenda. That\u0026rsquo;s another topic for another day. ","date":"April 11, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/lessons-from-public-education/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"A lot of people ask me why I think building public accountability measures for police departments is possible. If police aren’t currently held accountable for their performance, why would communities begin to do that? How would we ever gather the data? Where would we begin?","title":"Three lessons in performance accountability from public education","type":"newsletter"},{"content":"The centering of data within the public policy discourse is happening across the country and the pace of it is accelerating. That\u0026rsquo;s a big part of my consulting practice now - providing an infusion of data expertise to help an organization move forward toward its goals. It\u0026rsquo;s important and necessary work now that governments are being asked to do more than ever.\nBut - it comes with risks - the biggest being that it can quickly become anti-democratic.\nIt is in this context that I read Fischer (2009) and took away some important lessons about the changing nature of expertise today, the increased technological demands placed on government, and what it means for our ability as citizens to direct our own government.\nExpertise often crowds out the voice of the people For many in the public policy field involvement of the public feels messy, unnecessary, and most dreadfully, inefficient. Here\u0026rsquo;s Fischer (2009) :\n\u0026ldquo;With each area of modern life under the control of disciplinary expertise - welfare, crime, family environment, schools, and so on - there is little that the citizen would seem to be able to offer. To be sure, the citizen can still express his or her view, but in a world dominated by a centralized state guided in large part by the views of administrative and policy experts, professional advisory committees, think tank specialists, governmental policy staffs, academic consultants, and the like, they have less and less change of being taken seriously. In face of this situation, deliberation based on public opinion moves from being considered a waste of time to being detrimental to the making of effective policy decisions.\u0026rdquo; p.55\nPut differently, the keys of the state have been handed over to professionals who ask us to trust them. And, very often, these professionals are happy to write-off public input as unnecessary and unhelpful. This is anti-democratic. And, it misses the point. The public may not be able to weigh in on which route of garbage trucks is optimal in a small town, but the public can weigh in on how often it wants trash pickup done and how early or late it is acceptable to run garbage trucks. These are values questions, which Fischer argues the public must be allowed to answer.\nDenying participation does lasting harm to our communities Again, quoting Fischer (2009):\n\u0026ldquo;Participation can be also be judged in terms of three effects: instrumental, developmental, and intrinsic.\u0026rdquo;\nHere Fischer means that participation in deliberative control of expert advised government agencies provides participants with the benefit of changing the outcome, developing their skills as a citizen, and reaffirming and showing our public commitment to democratic ideals. Instead of seeing public participation as a box checking exercise on the road to implementation for each policy we need to see it as a vehicle through which we build a better world.\nBy excluding the public from participating in policy creation we are denying members of our community these benefits - we are depriving them of the satisfaction of being heard, and the sense of efficacy that comes from deliberating, as an equal, with peers about policy issues that matter to you.\nWe need to broaden what we think of as expertise Increasingly government agencies have come to prioritize technical knowledge (here meaning specialized professional skills) above other forms of knowledge in their pursuit of efficient and consistent delivery of services. My own biography is an example of this with my skills in R programming and policy evaluation giving me an accelerated career path over peers with other valuable skills.\nThis is, in part, the result of a politics of \u0026ldquo;do more with less\u0026rdquo;. Sometimes, the public wants efficient. But other times, efficiency becomes too narrowly defined and in pursuit of that goal the application of technical expertise goes too far - with disastrous outcomes. Take the in-depth study of changes to the state Medicaid system in Indiana by Eubanks (2017). Focusing on computer-based decision making for denying and approving claims was presented as \u0026ldquo;objective\u0026rdquo; but:\n\u0026ldquo;The assumption that automated decision-making tools were infallible meant that computerized decisions trumped procedures intended to provide applicants with procedural fairness. The result was a million benefit denials.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Being denied benefits to which you know you are entitled and not being told why says, \u0026ldquo;You are worth so little that we will withhold life-saving support just because we feel like it.\u0026rdquo; Openness in political decision-making matters. It is key to maintaining confidence in public institutions and to achieving fairness and due process.\u0026quot;\nThe attempt to purge values, experiential, and political knowledge from the administration of public programs is a mirage. A magic trick. An attempt to enforce a specific world view and to gain an upper hand in discourse. Let Kitcher (2011) tell it:\n\u0026ldquo;An allergy to public value-judgment has long pervaded our discussions of Science, fostering the myth of some neutrality that is actually attained. The deepest source of the current erosion of scientific authority consists in insisting on the value-freedom of Genuine Science, while attributing value-judgments to scientists whose conclusion you want to deny.\u0026rdquo; p. 40\nExpertise needs to confront, not sidestep, the \u0026ldquo;normative\u0026rdquo; From Fischer (2009):\n\u0026ldquo;A great deal of what cognitive psychologists have learned about the interactions between professional experts and citizens points to conflicts between different ways of reasoning. Although such conflicts are typically attributed to the citizens\u0026rsquo; inability to understand the technical aspects of any complex issues, such a conclusion may only reflect the privileged position of expert knowledge in modern society. It does not necessarily mean that citizens are unable to reason logically\u0026hellip; [citizens] are \u0026hellip; exercising a different mode of reason in arriving at their conclusions, often more appropriate to the social situation\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; p.85\nIndeed - avoiding values as unscientific is simply false. Values guide science directly, and doubly so when it turns to technical expertise deployed in service or assistance of the public through government work. Too often the technical piece is used as a cloak to shield the government and its policy from criticism or inconvenient value concerns expressed by citizens.\nAnd I really like this from Eubanks (2017) which gets at what this says about our soul and our humanity - issues technocrats are uncomfortable talking about, but whether spoken or unspoken are there all the same:\n\u0026ldquo;I find the philosophy that sees human beings as unknowable black boxes and machines as transparent deeply troubling. It seems to me a worldview that surrenders any attempt at empathy and forecloses the possibility of ethical development. The presumption that human decision-making is opaque and inaccessible is an admission that we have abandoned a social commitment to try to understand each other.\u0026rdquo;\nWe need to recenter the policy professions around democracy We need to smash what Fischer (2009) describes here:\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; scientists often present their findings \u0026mdash; intentionally or unintentionally \u0026mdash; in an intimidating language that gives citizens the sense that they can\u0026rsquo;t discuss the issues\u0026hellip; The end effect is that the process works\u0026hellip; to privilege expert knowledge, thus maintaining a barrier to a fuller form of democratization.\u0026rdquo; p.109\nTo stop this, we have to reorient our policy analysis away from devotion to values like efficiency, optimization, and \u0026ldquo;effectiveness\u0026rdquo;. These economic frames make sense when we are discussing iPhone production, but they have much less utility when we are talking about where to place a public park or where to build a new recycling center. We have to call out the myth that efficiency is objective or that technical solutions can neutrally redistribute finite public goods.\nWe need to replace this with values. Our public policy needs to be value oriented. We need to weigh values in our policy analysis. And we need to be explicit in stating and understanding our values. Values are the key. Values are the fulcrum upon which democracy turns. The social sciences are not, and cannot, be neutral and objective because they are operating within a society that is composed of competing values and interests. Only recognizing this can move us forward.\nScholars of deliberative democracy have found that merely getting people to come to town halls and give voice to their preferences is not enough. My good friend studies deliberative democracy and reminded me that the successful cases where the public worked together through questions of values in a democratic setting were cases where experts, bureaucrats, and the public worked together \u0026mdash; a government \u0026ldquo;not of, by, or for\u0026rdquo; the people, but a government with the people.1\nAnd we have to do this because the current system is denying millions from the benefits of participating in our democracy and atrophying our muscles of self-government.\nReferences Eubanks, Virginia. 2017. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. First Edition. New York, NY: St. Martin\u0026rsquo;s Press.\nFischer, Frank. 2009. Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.\nKitcher, Philip. 2011. Science in a Democratic Society. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.\nI\u0026rsquo;m indebted to my friend Se-Hyoung Yi (opens in new tab) for his review and feedback on this article and for reminding me to include this work on deliberative democracy. ","date":"February 22, 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/newsletter/democratic-expertise/","section":"Read The Civic Pulse","summary":"The centering of data within the public policy discourse is happening across the country and the pace of it is accelerating. That’s a big part of my consulting practice now - providing an infusion of data expertise to help an organization move forward toward its goals. It’s important and necessary work now that governments are being asked to do more than ever.","title":"A review of Democracy and Expertise","type":"newsletter"},{"content":" Abstract In the United States there are over 13,000 independent school districts governed by school boards consisting of three to nine elected representatives from their community. They decide on curriculum, school construction and closures, staff compensation, and the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This dissertation seeks to explore the degree of democratic control communities exercise over school boards through elections.\nThe perception is that voters and candidates do not participate in school board elections. This perception runs counter to the democratic promise of school boards as local offices. School board membership, often by design, is among the easiest offices for a potential candidate to secure in terms of votes needed to win, campaign costs, and lack of political party gatekeepers.\nI look at four aspects of school board elections to assess whether or not school boards do fulfill their promise of democratic control over local schools:\nWhat community conditions are related to the emergence of school board candidates? What factors determine changes in the level of voter turnout for school board elections? Do voters and candidates change their behavior in response to exogenous political forces? Does incumbent defeat lead to measurable changes in school district outcomes? To examine this I construct a new dataset around a panel of election records from over 300 Wisconsin school districts spanning the 2002–2012 elections. I combine these election results with administrative records on the demographics, finances, community partisanship, policy decisions, and academic performance of school districts to explore the relationship between these conditions and election behavior through multilevel modeling. Wisconsin is selected because of the introduction of a reform that gave boards unanticipated freedom in setting employee compensation and work rules, which provides an exogenous shock to the information available to board members, voters, and potential candidates about the preferences of their community for public education and the role of school boards.\nDespite the greater accessibility of school board office, on average, participation by both candidates and voters in board elections remains low and responded only weakly to a large external policy shock.\nSchool Board Elections and Democracy My dissertation examines school board elections in the United States through the lens of modern democratic theory. I develop a theory for understanding democratic institutions based on the democratic potential of the institution and the actualization of democracy. This theory helps explain the phenomenon of school boards being stable low-participation elected positions characterized by brief periods of intense political action.\nI analyze nearly all school board elections in the state of Wisconsin over a sustained ten-year period of study to explore both the way school board election participation varies between places, but also within school districts over time.\nFindings A stylized summary of the state of school board elections over the period of study in Wisconsin:\nFew candidates run for office and many races are uncontested. When incumbents face a challenger, they most often win. When incumbents are defeated, they are defeated by a very small slice of the electorate. Incumbent defeat and turnout are moderated by organized interests. Board turnover often precedes turnover in the district administration. I characterize this as evidence of the unfulfilled democratic potential of school boards. These facts, in most communities, are trivially easy to change. Individual citizens can, and do, file to run for office and wage a successful campaign with no campaign donations and few volunteers. The small scale of most school districts in Wisconsin suggests that relatively few meaningful barriers exist to running for and winning a school board seat relative to almost any other elected office in the state. However, despite this great potential, the actual uptake remains low.\nVoters, with little media coverage of school boards or the school board campaign, have relatively few avenues of acquiring the information necessary to cast a meaningful ballot and largely choose to simply opt out and implicitly endorse the status quo. It is hard to imagine an event within the current organization of school boards that could better provoke the public to care about school board elections than the events in Wisconsin from 2010–2012, and yet the impact on participation was negligible. This lack of mutability in participation is troubling evidence against the likelihood of fulfillment of the democratic potential of school boards.\n","date":"May 20, 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/portfolio/school-boards-and-the-democratic-promise/","section":"Portfolio","summary":"Examines the degree of democratic control communities exercise over school boards through elections, combining election results for Wisconsin school districts with administrative records on local conditions.","title":"School Boards and the Democratic Promise","type":"portfolio"},{"content":" Why we do what we do We are an independent data science consultancy focused on applying cutting edge social science to promote social good. We believe that truth and evidence eventually will win the day in policymaking that builds a more just and fair society. For this to happen, advocates, researchers, the media, and policymakers need principled social scientists who can help translate what we know into what we should do.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what we do at Civilytics. We bring our social science toolbox and experience aligning evidence, values, and policy and work with our partners to build the case for a better community, state, and country. Whether its working to highlight evidence-based practices in education that help more students succeed or identifying areas of waste and misuse of funding in the carceral system - we work with partners to bring evidence to bear on the issues that matter to them.\nWe use the term partner intentionally - we\u0026rsquo;ve learned so much from our clients and enjoy projects where we can collaborate and explore difficult topics together. Social science is, after all, social!\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"About Us","summary":"Why we do what we do We are an independent data science consultancy focused on applying cutting edge social science to promote social good. We believe that truth and evidence eventually will win the day in policymaking that builds a more just and fair society. For this to happen, advocates, researchers, the media, and policymakers need principled social scientists who can help translate what we know into what we should do.\n","title":"About Us","type":"about"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories","type":"categories"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/contact/","section":"Civilytics Consulting","summary":"","title":"Contact Us","type":"page"},{"content":"Jared founded Civilytics in 2016. After earning his PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and working as a budget and research analyst for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Jared was convinced there was a need for more high-quality, transparent public-sector data science work. He was equally convinced that the best analytic products are the ones that outlast their analyst and that developing others\u0026rsquo; capacity was central to what he loved to do.\nAt Civilytics, we take a client-centered approach that empowers partners with clearly explained, detailed, timely, and reproducible solutions to meet their needs. We appreciate the opportunity to work across sectors, taking what we\u0026rsquo;ve learned from collaborating with a variety of state, district, and local education agencies to inform work in child welfare, community health, local policing, and more. So many social issues and needs are interconnected and we find that we learn a lot from working with clients in different sectors.\nCivilytics is an independent data science consulting firm founded in 2016. Civilytics believes that the work to reinvigorate our democracy must begin at the local level where the public has the greatest control and barriers to collective action are the lowest. Civilytics is focusing on building the tools communities need to understand and deliberate about the performance of their local governments.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/history/","section":"About Us","summary":"Jared founded Civilytics in 2016. After earning his PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and working as a budget and research analyst for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Jared was convinced there was a need for more high-quality, transparent public-sector data science work. He was equally convinced that the best analytic products are the ones that outlast their analyst and that developing others’ capacity was central to what he loved to do.\n","title":"History","type":"about"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/people/","section":"About Us","summary":"","title":"Our Team","type":"about"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"Series","type":"series"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/services/","section":"Civilytics Consulting","summary":"","title":"Services","type":"page"}]