Cities in American Federalism: Evidence on State-Local Government Conflict from a Survey of Mayors

Previous scholarship on American federalism has largely focused on the national government’s increasingly conflictual relationship with the states. While some studies have explored the rise of mandates at the state level, there has been comparatively less attention on state-local relationships. Using a new survey of mayors, we explore variations in local government attitudes towards their state governments. We find some evidence that, regardless of partisanship, mayors in more conservative states are unhappy about state funding and—especially—regulations. More strikingly, we also uncover a partisan mismatch in which Democratic mayors provide especially negative ratings of their state’s funding and—even more strongly—regulations. These findings have important implications for state-local relations as cities continue to become more Democratic and Republicans increasingly dominate state-level contests. In a climate of rising partisan polarization at the state and federal levels (McCarty et al. 2006; Abramowitz 2010; Shor and McCarty 2011), cities are increasingly tackling pressing economic and environmental challenges. In some states, cities’ move towards policy innovation has been accompanied by increased state-local conflict, as ideologically opposed state governments push against local policies with which they disagree. Alabama and Oklahoma, for example, have banned cities from providing paid sick leave for workers, while Texas prevents its local governments from pursuing a whole host of policies surrounding issues like gun control and the environment (Dewan 2015). We know relatively little, however, about these contentious state-local relationships, and about the extent to which partisan polarization affects them. Indeed, previous research has focused primarily on federal-state conflict. This work emphasizes the evolution of state-federal relations from cooperative to conflictual (Elazar 1962; Cho and Wright 2001; Conlan 2006; Kincaid 1990, 2008, 2012). Much of this scholarship highlights an increasingly frosty state-national relationship attributable to reductions in federal funding and increases in federal regulations. While some scholars in this field briefly mention local government and/or imply that findings about state-federal relations may apply to local government, cities and their leaders remain largely absent from this literature. The evidence we do have on local governments suggests that they are experiencing similar conflict with the federal and—especially—state levels. A large body of scholarship has documented the increasing fiscal abandonment of cities by the state and federal level (Eisinger 1998; Dreier et al. 2004) and suggests that they are largely unable to influence the legislative process (Dreier et al. 2004; Weir et al. 2005; Gamm and Kousser 2013). Moreover, their relationship with state government may be especially conflictual because of policy overlap (Peterson 1995; Frug and Barron 2008). This research, however, generally understudies variations in state-local relationships (and how rising partisan polarization might drive these variations). To further explore the relationship between partisanship and state-local relationships, we analyze data from a novel survey of mayors. Because virtually all interviews were conducted in person or over the phone, we are able to provide a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence. We find that mayors are unhappy with funding and especially regulations from state governments—consistent with previous scholarship suggesting a conflictual state-local relationship. We also reveal that these conflictual relationships vary depending upon the partisanship of the state government and the mayor. Mayors in conservative states are generally somewhat less happy with funding and (again especially) regulations from their states regardless of mayoral partisanship. Most consistently (and perhaps unsurprisingly), however, Democratic mayors in conservative states were particularly displeased with their treatment by their state governments. Given cities’ disproportionately Democratic political elites (Gerber and Hopkins 2011) and voting populations (Badger et al. 2016), these findings suggest that cities in red states may struggle to implement innovative progressive policies. In a context of increasingly prominent state-local conflict, these findings suggest that sharper ideological divides between city and state elites heighten intergovernmental tensions. CONFLICTUAL FEDERALISM In his seminal work, Elazar (1962) notes that “virtually all the activities of government in the nineteenth-century United States were cooperative endeavors, shared in much the same manners as governmental programs are in the twentieth century” (1). Prior to the 1970s, warm state-federal relations were largely based on generous federal aid (Cho and Wright 2001; Conlan 2006). Elazar, however, saw the potential for a new, cooler era in American federal relations with government regulation—rather than (or attached to) federal aid—more likely to characterize American federalism. Kincaid’s (1990, 2008) research confirms that this rise in federal regulation augured a shift in state-federal relations in the 1970s. Specifically, this work highlights movement away from the cooperative federalism that characterized earlier decades toward a more conflictual relationship between the powerful federal government and the involuntarily compliant states. Perhaps most saliently, conflictual federalism includes a shift in federal aid distribution. Rather than focusing on places, federal support is increasingly centered on persons or groups (Conlan 2006; Kincaid 2008). Moreover, funding increasingly features accompanying regulations that condition its use. Finally, congressional earmarking has become a mainstay of federal aid. In addition to these changes in federal aid, scholars have also observed a marked rise in the preemption of state powers. A disproportionate share of federal laws claiming functions that were previously left to the states have been passed in recent years, leading to heightened federal regulation of the state (Zimmerman 2005; Conlan 2006). Researchers have also highlighted mandates as an important component of conflictual federalism. A mandate is “a direct order from the federal government requiring state and local governments to execute a federal policy” (Kincaid 2008, 15). If violated, the federal government can institute civil or criminal penalties on state and local officials. A wealth of scholarship confirms that these trends have spurred increasingly frosty state-federal relations (Cho and Wright 2001; Kincaid 1990, 2008, 2012; Posner 2007; Pickerill and Bowling 2014). The same incentives and capacity to exert influence over lower levels of government exist—and may even be greater—at the state level. Indeed, as creatures of the state, local governments’ powers stem from their state governments (Frug 1980). This relationship does not include the same vertical separation of powers protections that the Constitution affords the states to (at least somewhat) ensure their sovereignty from Washington. Perhaps even more so than the federal government, then, states have the ability to limit policy innovation from local government (Frug and Barron 2008), and have increasingly employed the same sorts of mandates that have engendered state hostility towards the federal government (Berke and French 1993; Shaffer 1995; Norton 2005). In addition to possessing greater capacity to impinge upon the legal powers of cities, state government functions are more likely to overlap with cities’ relative to the national government (Peterson 1995). This overlap may make it less clear which entity should optimally perform a particular governing task and generate competition between the two levels of government over ownership of particular functions. Finally, in many instances, urban-rural divides may provide natural factions that pit state governments against the cities underneath them, and/or political homogeneity may make it easier for a faction at the state level to set aside urban interests (Gamm and Kousser 2013). Thus, state-local conflict may, in fact, be even greater than that between states and the federal government. Indeed, the recent proliferation of state preemption laws mentioned in the opening of this article underscores the potential for tensions between state and local government over regulations writ large. While there have been, to date, no systematic studies quantifying the frequency of state preemption, recent academic and journalistic evidence highlight the wide array of policy arenas these preemption laws cover. State preemptions of local government powers are typically a state response to a local government initiative at odds with the state’s ideological preferences. For example, cities across the country have adopted higher minimum wages—in some cases as high as $15 per hour. While many states have allowed these laws to stand, others have immediately (often preemptively) moved to prevent local governments from adopting local wage ordinances. Madison, WI, Birmingham, AL, and St. Louis, MO’s efforts to raise their minimum wage were followed by state legislative efforts to preclude local governments from passing such legislation (Schragger 2016, 149) States have similarly moved to block local government autonomy in the environmental realm. After the city of Denton, TX passed a fracking ban, the state legislature in Texas immediately responded with a preemption law prohibiting local regulation of fracking (Greenblatt 2016). Prior to his election, Republican governor Greg Abbott complained that local environmental laws generally were harmful to Texas: “Texas is being Californianized and you may not even be noticing it. It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree-cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model” (Tilove 2015). Finally, these state-local battles have also been fought over social policy. Perhaps most notably, after the Charlotte City Council passed legislation that extended civil-rights protections to its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, the state legislature in North Carolina met in a special session to block local governments from adopting antidiscrimination protections for LGBT people (the law also prevents cities from setting their own minimum wages) (Greenblatt 2016). States have similarly waged battles with cities over gun laws; in Arizona, for example, one law punishes local governments—like Tucson—that have kept gun regulations in place that contradict preempting state law with the removal of local public officials and penalties up to $50,000 (Greenblatt 2016). All of the examples provided above—and indeed, the overwhelming majority of those featured in media and academic coverage over the past five years—feature Republican states preempting progressive legislation. This is not to suggest that Republican states are the only ones limiting cities; in 2008, Democrats in California banned cities from requiring restaurants to include nutritional information on their menus (Dewan 2015). But, recent Republican dominance at the state level—Republicans have gained over 900 seats in state legislative contests since 2010 (Cillizza 2015) and currently control thirty-three of the state’s fifty governor’s seats (Mishak and Wieder 2016)—means that Republican states have greater opportunity to pass such legislation. Moreover, as we outline further below, there may be partisan incentives that would render Republican governments particularly inclined to limit local government autonomy. RISING PARTISAN POLARIZATION AND STATE-