An efficient allocation of funds for public health services requires careful consideration of citizen demand and the appropriate type of institutionalization. Is it more efficient to have local public health departments institutionalized independently? Or is it better when public health departments function as agencies of the municipal governments (that is, to be regionalized)?

In the paper “Does Regionalization of Local Public Health Services Influence Public Spending Levels and Allocative Efficiency?” Laurie Bates and Rexford Santerre explore public health service funding and regionalization issues. Because funding for these services comes from taxes and intergovernmental grants, Bates and Santerre assume that demand for community public health services will respond to changes in tax-share, income, and other public spending on education and other municipal services. To explore the allocation of resource efficiency with respect to the type of institutionalization of public health departments, the authors compared the spending levels of the local and regional demands for public health services, then examined if resources for public health services are more efficiently allocated to independent public health departments or regional public health departments.

In a study of 169 Connecticut towns and cities from 2001 to 2008, the authors found that the change of demand for public health services responds more to the change in tax-share than the change in other types of public services, like education. The results also showed that demand for public health services does not respond much to a change in citizen income level and that a change in education spending and other municipal spending is not associated with change in intergovernmental aid on public health spending. According to the authors, such findings imply that there is no spillover effect of public health-directed intergovernmental aid services to other types of public services.

And how does the spending on public health services change in response to the change on institutional structure of public health departments? Research results show that when a public health department in a region shifts from a local independent institution to a regionalized department acting as a governmental agency, there is a corresponding increase in spending on public health services in the region.

To test the allocation efficiency for public health resources, the authors proposed that the efficiency of public health spending in a region be determined by the aggregate property values. The underlying rationale is that public officials decide the level of spending on public health services in order to maximize aggregate property value in the region. The authors found that a 10 percent increase in local public health spending reduces aggregate property values, on average, by 1.2 percent. According to authors, this result indicates that regionalizing independent public health departments may not be the preferred policy goal from the perspective of resource allocation efficiency. In addition, the authors explained that the efficiency loss resulting from additional public health spending is larger in regions with a greater population.

The research by Bates and Santerre has many useful implications for public health funding. The results of their study may help public health officials better understand citizen demand for public health services and find more efficient allocations of resources to serve the public.

Feature Photo: cc/(PNNL – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Dr. Rachel Johnston, Chapin Hall

Dr. Rachel Johnston directs the Violence Inquest for Solutions and Alliance (VISA) project at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Dr. Johnston conducts research on law enforcement policy, the prevention of violence, and surveillance. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, as well as a master’s degree from the UIC College of Urban Planning and Policy and a bachelor’s degree from Cornell College.

Are we about to see a change in our nation’s gun violence policies? Is this national debate relevant to Chicago, or are there different issues at stake for Chicago communities and families?

Gun policy matters—think about smoking with regard to advertising or on television. The way smoking is perceived in our culture now is much different than it was 25 years ago. It takes time to make cultural changes. Many people are anxious for a change in gun violence rates, which can be perilous because people get disheartened when they want something to change immediately and it does not. Change will have to be achieved by slowly chipping away at violence from many, many different angles. It is very complicated, and although no one wants it to be a long, slow process, it is.

The national debate is certainly relevant to Chicago. There are many things that could be done on the national level that would have an impact on Chicago (many of President Obama’s gun violence prevention proposals, for example). I certainly hope we are at a tipping point with regard to gun policy, but I cannot say that I believe that is the case. It is a very complicated issue and there is very little common ground between opposing perspectives. There is so much fear on both sides of the debate. It is a highly emotional issue that seems to prevent sensible, realistic, and rational debate. There has been a lot of digging in of the heels and unrealistic demands.

In addition to the tragedy of losing a loved one, what are some of the effects that gun violence has on children and families? What, if anything, can policy do to mitigate those effects?

There is a lot of research on the effects of exposure to violence, especially on children. There is evidence that violence in the community can compromise feelings of safety and security, leading to emotional scars or even PTSD, higher levels of anger and aggression, sleep disruptions, or withdrawal. In children, these effects can impact brain development and create additional problems. Exposure to violence can lead young people to believe that they must arm themselves, increasing the opportunities for violence, as does desensitization to violence.

Public policy is simply about targeting resources. Changes in policy can impact public safety by creating an environment that fosters and supports healthy individuals and communities. For example, policies that implement screening at the court level can divert individuals from the criminal system into mental health or substance abuse treatment. Education policy can create programming to teach young people how to experience conflict and develop a non-violent response. Employment policies can create opportunities for individuals who are returning to communities from incarceration and thus impact recidivism. Policy can direct resources into any number of areas that can positively impact individuals, communities, and public safety.

The Violence Inquest for Solutions and Alliance (VISA) program strives to increase collaboration among the agencies that provide support to at-risk youth in Chicago. How will this collaboration reduce incidences of violence? What are the challenges or barriers to coordinating service among these different agencies?

It is no secret that there are inefficiencies in service delivery between public agencies. Public agencies provide services to young people without knowing how other agencies are working with those individuals. Coordination means that services can be much more comprehensive (such as one referral to counseling rather than separate referrals to different providers from multiple agencies) and monitoring can be more efficient (such as a single point of contact rather than multiple individuals who do not know about the others).

What kind of data will the VISA program collect? How will analyzing that data lead to improved policies?

Currently, anonymous reviews of fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents involving school-aged people are conducted monthly. Data are not recorded about the specific events. Rather, practitioners and policy experts are presented with details about the individuals involved (their criminal histories, school involvement, etc.) with an ear for identifying the opportunities that exist to enhance collaboration, coordination, or communication among public agencies. The core belief is that individuals who are involved with one public agency often have multiple “touch points” across public agencies. The group asks, “What changes would have had to occur to have potentially changed the outcome in these cases?” Often, the answer is that public agencies should do a better job of communicating about individuals and coordinating services. We are looking to turn those opportunities into policy recommendations.

It is our intention, after we secure the appropriate data sharing agreements, to link records about individuals across agencies to understand how individuals who are involved in shootings interact with governmental agencies. We also want to use the information to develop a more detailed picture of the context and characteristics of fatal and non-fatal shootings among youth in Chicago.

What sorts of simultaneous programs or policies are needed in order to make VISA effective?

Data sharing is the biggest issue we are addressing right now. There are existing guidelines—like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Illinois Juvenile Court Act, internal policy, etc.—that must be reviewed and discussed in order to ensure the protection of juveniles’ information while allowing agencies to collaborate and operate more efficiently. I believe that improving information sharing will go a long way toward improving outcomes for individuals, and I also believe that once that piece has been sorted out, we can go much deeper into uncovering other opportunities to impact public safety.

Feature Photo: cc/wakalani

Richard M. Daley

 Richard M. Daley recently finished his tenure as the longest-serving mayor of Chicago, Illinois. Serving from 1989 to 2011, he earned an international reputation as a leader in urban development, fiscal policy, and government stewardship. Currently, he is engaged in a variety of projects, including as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and as chair of the new “Global Cities Initiative.”  The Initiative is a joint project of JP Morgan Chase and the Brookings Institution that aims to help cities identify and leverage their greatest economic development resources.

This week, Julie Cooper speaks with former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley about his partnership with the University of Chicago and the City of Gary, Indiana. Mayor Daley shares his perspectives on how to solve urban issues and how to build vibrant cities.

Special thanks to Carol Brown and Marnie Van Der Voort.

This podcast was produced by Julie Cooper.

Feature photo: cc/Payton Chung

Derek Eder, Open City

Juan-Pablo Velez, Open City

Derek Eder is the co-founder of Open City, a collective that makes civic apps with open data, and organizer for OpenGov Chicago, a monthly Meetup group that promotes open data and open government in Chicago and Cook County. He is also the owner of DataMade, LLC, an open government and open data web consulting company.

Juan Pablo Velez is a civic technologist with Open City and organizes Chicago’s OpenGov hack night. He was previously a journalist for the Chicago News Cooperative.

This week, Julie Cooper ventures out to OpenGov Hack Night for a special edition of Chicago Policy Radio. She talks to Derek Eder and Juan Pablo Velez of Open City, as well as other participants at their monthly meetup to talk about open data, how data can change policy, and ways for anyone to get involved in using data to improve governance.

Special thanks to Open City, John Owens, Nicholas Mader, Emily Rosengren, Tom Kompare, Elnaz Moshfeghian, and Young Jin Kim.

This podcast was produced by Julie Cooper.

Feature photo: cc/MadLabUK

In a paper titled “Are Central Cities More Creative? The Intrametropolitan Geography of Creative Industries,” researchers Ric Kolenda and Cathy Yang Liu explored the intra-metropolitan (center cities vs. suburbs) distribution of creative industries and the resulting economic effects.

To frame their study, Kolenda and Liu address two opposing trends in industry location: employment decentralization and the center-city concentration of creative industries. Previous literature showed regional and industry differences in metropolitan employment concentration. According to research by Ed Glaeser and Matthew Kahn, cities specializing in manufacturing are likely to have more suburbanized employment, while those specializing in services tend to be more centralized. Furthermore, idea-intensive industries and those employing a highly educated workforce are likely to locate in central cities. The authors also explored the previously studied rationale for creative industries to cluster in central cities: creative industries demand openness to diversity, social capital for networking, a concentration of immediate consumer demand, and institutional infrastructures, all of which can be more easily accessed in central cities.

Kolenda and Liu investigated three categories of creative industries—information; professional, scientific, and technical services; and art, entertainment, and recreation—across forty US metropolitan areas from 1998 to 2002. The findings demonstrated the positive economic impact of creative industries. In 2002 the average creative job in a central city paid $57,356 per year, compared to the average central city job that paid only $40,000.

The authors also studied the concentration and decentralization effects of creative jobs around central cities. They categorize cities into three types: creative flight cities, where both the number and share of creative jobs in metropolitan areas are declining; creative sprawl cities, where creative jobs in central cities are increasing, but at a lower rate than their suburban areas; and creative engine cities, where creative jobs in metropolitan areas grow at a higher rate than suburban areas in both relative and absolute terms. The authors found regional differences in the decentralization of creative industries: western regions were found to be decentralizing at a more rapid pace than eastern regions.

Creative engine cities like Los Angeles, Miami, and Santa Ana-Anaheim are helping to boost regional economies from city center outward. For those cities the growth in creative jobs in central cities is driving employment in all other sectors across the region. This finding may provide policy makers with a potentially powerful tool. Encouraging creative industries to locate in central cities can foster economic development over a whole region. Creative sprawl cities can benefit suburban economies but incur a trade-off as creative industries spread out of city centers. In creative flight cities local metropolitan areas can look to policies that encourage social interaction and attract a more diverse population to encourage new creative industries to locate there.

Aside from potential policy implications, the study of the spatial distribution of creative industries may also provide clues to creative workers and entrepreneurs about where to live and locate new creative businesses. As the economic role of America’s creative class continues to grow, urban economic policy and the decisions of creative workers and businesses will go a long way toward shaping the future of American cities.

Feature photo: cc/jurvetson

The authors focused their study on licensed gun dealers in Milwaukee hoping to get a better sense of how changes in federal regulations might alter the number of legally purchased firearms later used in crimes. They gave particular attention to a single area dealer, Badger Guns and Ammo, identified by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) in 1999 as the national leader in the number of guns sold which were later linked to crimes. In response to the ATF’s announcement, the owner of the store announced that he would no longer sell the types of guns most commonly used in crime – inexpensive handguns, referred to as “junk guns” – in his store. Four years later, Congress passed the Tiahrt amendment, which, with a series of follow up amendments, restricts federal firearm regulatory and enforcement powers. Among other limitations, the amendments prohibit the ATF from responding to public requests for gun crime trace data and from requiring gun dealers to do physical inventory of their stock during compliance inspections. To this day, many gun control advocates argue that these changes inhibit the federal government’s ability to hold firearms dealers accountable. The authors examine how the passage of the Tiahrt amendment might have affected the number of firearms sold by Badger that were eventually involved in crimes.

Unlike some major city departments, the Milwaukee Police Department traces all guns recovered from a crime scene. Because of their voluntary decision to stop selling junk guns in 1999 and the Milwaukee Police Department’s careful tracing procedures, Badger represented a useful case study for the researchers at a time when the restrictions created by the Tiahrt amendment made it difficult to collect data from other sources. The researchers broke their data into three distinct periods: before Badger announced it would stop selling junk guns (July 1996 to April 1999), after it stopped sales of junk guns but before the passage of the Tiahrt amendment (May 1999 to February 2003) and a period after the passage of the Tiahrt amendment (March 2003 to December 2005).

The authors run a number of regressions on the data to look at criminal diversions of both junk guns and non-junk guns at Badger during the selected periods, using other retailers in the Milwaukee area as a control. They find that the number of guns sold by Badger that were eventually used in a crime decreased by 66 percent after the owner decided to discontinue selling junk guns. However, after the Tiahrt amendment was passed the number of guns used in crime traced to Badger increased by over 100 percent.

The authors acknowledge that these trends were not observed in a statistically significant way among other retailers included in the study and are careful to point out that making causal assumptions about the observed results is difficult. However, they note that the increase in the number of Badger guns traced to crimes after the passage of the Tiahrt amendment is consistent with their expectations of what a large gun dealer might do after some mechanisms for legal and public accountability were removed. With fewer avenues for legal and public recourse, they reason, there is less incentive for the dealer to avoid selling guns to dubious customers, and the Badger data could support this assertion.

Given the nature of gun politics in the United States, a resolution to the current debate is likely only after extensive discussion and deliberation. This research presents thought-provoking insight into the potential ramifications of regulatory decisions in the firearms industry.

Feature Photo: cc/(Curtis Gregory Perry)

Sanford Ungar, Goucher College

Since July 2001, Sanford (“Sandy”) Ungar has been the President of Goucher College, a liberal arts college in Baltimore County, Maryland. Under Sandy’s leadership, in 2006 Goucher became the first college to require every undergraduate student to study abroad at least once before graduation. Prior to becoming the President of the College, Sandy was the Director of Voice of America, the Dean of the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and the host of several programs on National Public Radio, including “All Things Considered.” He also authored several books, the most recent being Fresh Blood: The New American Immigrants. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in Government and from the London School of Economics and Political Science with an MSc in International History.

Goucher’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) aims to provide a liberal arts education to intellectually promising first-generation college students who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. What other avenues exist to enhance educational outcomes for these students?

We made a financial commitment to the EOP program when we started it. We said we would make it easier for these students to complete their education by making it unnecessary for them to take out loans. Many schools have said they would waive the necessity of loans for everybody below a certain income level, but we cannot afford that. Because the EOP is restricted to Maryland residents, we can single out a particular group of good students. There are state scholarships available for families with lower incomes, so the state, in effect, foots part of the bill.

Of course, we do have a Summer Bridge Program. We have specialists who serve as instructors during the summer. They tend to be high school teachers who have experience working with students who need special help. This has been a real advantage because a lot of students who are accepted to the EOP need more preparation for college. If we brought them in without special help, they might be less likely to succeed.

Another notable aspect of the EOP is the diversity of the students. They are not all inner-city Baltimore youth. We have white students from Baltimore or from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and Hispanics from the suburbs of Washington, DC. There are Pakistani immigrant students and other Asians, as well as African-Americans.

There is a distinction between attending college and completing college. How does the EOP influence completion and participation rates for students?

That is a very important question. Our completion rate of EOP students so far has been quite impressive. Now if you ask about completion within four years, it’s not quite as high. Then again, four-year graduation rates are not as high for the general population. Some students in the EOP have taken five years; one has taken an eleventh semester. One issue that has emerged for us is how long can we afford to support EOP students at an enhanced level, and what do we do if they do not complete a degree within four years? Is it fair to devote resources to them if there are so many other families who could benefit from a high level of aid? Many of these families live close to the margin and could benefit from the kind of help that is available under the EOP.

One interesting thing has been that when we first started this, we were unsure about how much students wanted to be known as part of the EOP. We feared they might feel there was a stigma attached to the program. It turns out that they were quite eager to identify as part of this special cohort. They felt proud. One reason is because they were singled out as intellectually promising.

What are the shortcomings and the strengths of Goucher’s EOP?

First, let me say that we knew going into this that we were going to make only a small contribution to closing the higher education gap between students who can afford it and those who cannot. The number of EOP students for whom state and Goucher funding is available each year is limited.

That aside, I see two weaknesses in the Goucher EOP that I would like to work on. The first is that the EOP takes in a relatively small cohort each year, maybe twelve students. In addition, they are all from Maryland, and it would be nice to be able to have a more national impact. The second weakness involves making the adjustment to college life a bit easier for EOP students. There is one program out there like the EOP called the Posse Program. It takes a cohort of ten students who are all from the same city. These students all go through the program together, so they do not face the problem of not having anyone to talk to who can relate to their experiences. I wish we could afford to do that here at Goucher. It is hard enough for most students to adjust to college life. EOP students may have a more daunting adjustment to make, academically, socially, and culturally. They eventually do adjust, but it would probably help if they saw familiar faces during their early days in the program.

To be clear, we care deeply about the state of Maryland. We take seriously Goucher’s obligations as an institutional citizen of Maryland. We can demonstrate that we are educating students from Maryland who come from low-income backgrounds and show intellectual promise. Nonetheless, I wish we could implement the EOP program on a national scale, with a national pool of students.

Being ready for college means having the cognitive and the non-cognitive skills, such as self-efficacy and grit, to succeed. How might colleges and universities that operate programs like the EOP use these measures of college-readiness to inform the design and the goals of these programs? 

More and more institutions of higher education are realizing how much college readiness can vary among incoming students. Students arrive in many different states of preparedness. As the President of a liberal arts college for almost 12 years now, I can say that one of the advantages of an institution like ours is that we can look at every student holistically. We can determine how best to serve each student. One thing that has surprised me is just how many students are really not ready for college and for the responsibilities that come with being away from home.

For example, we have students who have been so pampered that they are unprepared for college in surprising, even startling, ways. Some, for example, have never shared a bathroom before—let alone co-ed bathrooms. This is not the case for all EOP students, although you might be surprised.

With regard to EOP students, they have actually impressed me with how quickly they do adjust to college life. In recent years, quite a few EOP students have become Community Assistants (our equivalent of RAs). By their junior or senior year, not only are most EOP students well adjusted, but they are also in a position to help other students adapt to college, including the majority of non-EOP students.

As time goes on, all colleges will have to find new indicators of college readiness, such as cultural and social preparedness. These things can’t be measured by the SAT. The SAT was really written by whites for whites. As such, it is an imperfect instrument for measuring how students will perform in college. That is why it is optional at Goucher; you do not need to take the SAT to gain admission.

Is there anything that you would like to add?

I think there is a conceptual difficulty in the way many people at all levels think about programs like Goucher’s EOP. They think of them as “affirmative action”—as if we were just doing a favor for the students who enroll. This is a contentious issue for me, that there are people who still have not moved beyond the old “charity mode” of diversity. Everyone needs to know how to live and learn with a broad cross-section of society. People must realize that there are many forms of diversity—not just racial, but also economic, social, cultural, lifestyle, and political diversity, for example. So, diversity is not simply a favor for the students who are diverse. It is good for everyone. The society and the culture cannot sustain itself indefinitely when there is a very obvious underclass.

We are doing an important service to the United States of America, albeit on a relatively modest scale. The EOP helps students who have the cognitive ability to succeed in school and who will be an asset to society upon graduation. So the EOP is not just about these students’ own self-improvement. We are enhancing the ability of our community, the state of Maryland, and the country to develop. It used to be that the privileged elite was very narrowly defined here in America, and that the pattern of access to schooling was not so different from that in other developed countries, such as the United Kingdom. I studied in England, and I have lived and worked in France. I saw that if someone came from the “wrong” subset of these societies and did not break out of his or her economic and social group by 7th or 8th grade, it might never happen. Many young people were tracked into an educational path that would not make college or university attainable for them. The United States purports to be different, and I think the EOP is one way to deliver on that promise.

Charles Wheelan, Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College

Charles Wheelan is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of several books, including Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data and Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, and has served as the Midwest correspondent for The Economist, an economics and finance correspondent for WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and as Director of Policy and Communications for Chicago Metropolis 2020. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School, a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. 

In this week’s episode of Chicago Policy Radio, David Levine sits down with Professor Charles Wheelan to discuss his upcoming book, The Centrist Manifesto, his unsuccessful run for Congress, and the differences between policy wonks and political hacks.

This podcast was produced by David Levine and Claire O’Hanlon.

Feature photo: cc/freefotouk

In response to this sobering reality, the University of Chicago Crime Lab launched an initiative to identify and evaluate promising interventions to reduce youth gun violence. In July 2012, the Crime Lab released findings from a large-scale randomized controlled trial of one such program: a one-year initiative designed to develop social and cognitive skills such as impulse control and conflict resolution among at-risk adolescent males in CPS. The focus on social and cognitive skills stems from a stream of research that suggests that impulsive behavior and an inability to resolve conflict may be, in part, responsible for many of the homicides of Chicago youth.

The program, “Becoming a Man: Sports Edition,” offers a combination of in-school and after-school small group sessions that focus on developing skills in social and emotional regulation, interpersonal problem solving, and goal setting. Weekly in-school sessions during the school year include structured skill-based lessons and weekly homework assignments designed to practice and apply that skill. After-school sessions include nontraditional sports such as wrestling, martial arts, archery, and handball to teach students self-discipline and concentration. Sports activities reinforce conflict resolution skills and social-emotional learning in the student groups.

Nearly 2,800 disadvantaged males in grades seven through 10 and attending 18 Chicago Public Schools participated in the program. Each school in the study serves a low-income community that faces a host of social and economic challenges, including adolescent violence. The evaluation targeted students of “medium risk”––youth with school records that indicated social and cognitive skill deficits, but who were still likely to attend school regularly enough to benefit from the intervention. Two-thirds of these young men were black and one-third Hispanic. On average, these students missed nearly six weeks of school a year and had a mean GPA of a D+. Nearly a third had been arrested in the past.

Students were randomly assigned to the treatment group (in-school programming only, after-school programming only, or both) or control group (no programming received). About half of the students assigned to the treatment group participated in the program, and those who attended went to approximately 13 of the 27 program sessions offered. To evaluate the impact of the program, researchers measured CPS school engagement and performance records and Illinois State Police arrest records.

Researchers found that program participation significantly increased school engagement and performance during the program year itself and in the subsequent post-program year. Drawing upon other longitudinal studies within CPS that link graduation and school engagement, the researchers estimate that these impacts imply future graduation rate increases of 10 to 23 percent relative to the control group.

The intervention also reduced violent-crime arrests during the program year by 44 percent and arrests in miscellaneous crime (including vandalism and weapons crime) by 36 percent. Researchers think that improved social, emotional, and cognitive skills might partially explain these impacts.

The program impacts on criminal behavior during the program year alone generated benefits to society valued between $3,600 and $34,000 per participant. These estimates include tangible costs of crime (insurance and medical care, reduced costs of arrest and incarceration, etc.) and vary due to the way intangible costs of crime (quality of life costs) are estimated. The estimated program benefits of reduced arrests range from three to 31 times the actual cost of the program.

The results of the intervention also suggest a significant academic impact with long-term outcomes. At a cost of roughly $1,100 per program participant, the total social benefit falls between $49,000 and $119,000 per person if the estimated impacts on high school graduation rates are realized. These estimates include lifetime earnings, tax payments, and lower use of public benefits.

These sizable gains are particularly notable, given the relatively limited amount of time participants spent in the program (roughly 13 sessions) and the low cost of the intervention. While the long-term impacts of the program are unknown, the results seem promising. There may be considerable returns to Chicago, and other cities struggling with youth violence, by expanding investments in promising interventions like this one. Far more valuable than any monetary return, however, this research suggests that teaching important social and cognitive skills, like impulse control and conflict resolution in our classrooms, might help save lives of Chicago youth.

Feature Photo: cc/jDevaun

Natalia Chernysheva, Moscow Zuzino District

Natalia Chernysheva is a Municipal Council Deputy, elected to serve her second term for the Zuzino District within Moscow in 2012. Prior to public service, Natalia worked as an auditor for the International Consulting and Legal Center and later became partner and Deputy CEO at Baker Tilly Russaudit. She is the founder of the Organization for Civil Control, an NGO advocating for government transparency in Russia.

You advocate for more public control over government authorities. Why is an informed and vocal public dialogue vital to a successful government?

Before I was elected, I was a professional auditor; I checked financial statements. After I became the municipal deputy, I realized it was even more important to be able to look at the financial records of our local and higher ranking authorities. In my post I established an organization promoting civil control. We inform people of how they can go and ask for any financial information from their local authorities. There are forty-six financial divisions in the various regions of Russia and a few divisions within Moscow, and our goal is to give the people instructions on how make requests to view the regions’ financial information. Also, we show them how to analyze it and use it to inform other local people about what’s going on with their government’s finances.

People are very interested in this, but sometimes our authorities are reluctant to give their information to the public. It seems they want to keep it secret. My organization places advertisements about public budget hearings to encourage people to come to their local government’s budget hearings and ask questions.

When I was first named Deputy of the Municipal Council, I understood our accountant was not very professional. I spoke up about the accounting mistakes, and they fired that accountant and hired another one, then they fired that one, and now we are on our third accountant. She is a professional. She makes her financial statements in the way our organization wants to see them, so they are useful for the people. Overall, we are working on our authorities and making them better.

Do people in Russia want to be engaged with their government, or is there a sense of apathy? What is the climate of the political activism there?

It can make a difference if we have a public hearing about, for example, a road that will affect their house. Of course people will come to those hearings, as people are very interested in how the road will affect the prices of homes. But sometimes we have to push people toward making their government authorities change.

What government practices are you most intrigued by in the promotion of a unified, free society?

I am very interested in the techniques of an open government, especially transparency in financial statements. I have learned about the Freedom of Information Act here in the U.S. – it is very important to Russia that we have a law analogous to this. Sometimes authorities in Russia don’t understand why we are making them give us this information, whether they want to or not.

When my organization first started I was even “invited” to the police department because they couldn’t understand what I was doing and why I was asking for government documents. I told them, “Here is the law that says you must release these financial statements.” But the head authority wouldn’t give them to me. I explained to him that he was breaking the law. Finally they let me go, but the head authority still wouldn’t give me the information I was after. So we organized a local rally and meetings with local people, and we were outside their offices with placards and signs saying, “Give us the information” and “Disclose the financial information!” After that they gave us everything we wanted. But this has been a slow process, and transparency is very hard to understand by many governmental agencies in Russia. But we realize we must fight so that fraud can be at its lowest.

I know you advocate for the people against utility price gauging. What are the main sources of utility energy in Russia? Are there efforts in Russia to move toward cleaner, more sustainable, and cheaper energy?

The main thing, beyond the source of the energy, is that prices for our utilities are far too high – sometimes the Russian people pay more in utilities for a one-bedroom flat than a German would pay for a three-bedroom house. The trouble is that the prices for gas, electric, and water are established by monopolies. And the monopolies, of course, have an agreement with government. I keep asking, “Let’s do an independent audit of tariffs and rates, and after that we’ll find out whether our utility prices are okay or are far too high.” But the companies will not do that. They didn’t like that every time we have one of our big rallies or when I have a chance to speak, I always speak about this problem, and about them. Now it is a popular social issue in Russia. Six months ago nobody knew about our asking for an independent audit of utility rates, but now we think we’ll make the authorities succumb to us. The regional deputies have to look at utility rates and establish them, but of course they are not auditors or specialists; they just sign what they’re given.

In an ideal world, what is the one policy you would see implemented in Russia?

When I was invited to serve on the President’s Council on Civil Society, we developed a law called the Law on Civil Control. This law allowed anybody to check the financial reports of any entity, commercial or noncommercial, that was using budgetary funds. In Russia it is very difficult to check subcontracts that are using budgetary money. I was the author of the clause that said no matter the source, or no matter what form of the company uses the money, if it’s a government contract, it’s subject to checking. All budgetary money should be subjected to audits by civil society.

This law was quite good. Quite a few professionals worked on it, and the team did a good job in drafting it. However, we knew the government wouldn’t like it in the form we created. And sure enough, they gave it to another team that was more “associated” with the authorities, and what they did to our law was terrible. I was unhappy to see what the result was. Of course, I would like to see the law established in our form. But they said, “We have our own methods for checking, on our own.” However, our struggle for a proper law is not finished yet, and I am sure we will succeed.

It is a frustrating process at times, but we have developed a group of uncorrupt checkers. I like to say I am the Eliot Ness of Russia – I have gathered my own team that won’t take bribes and wants transparency in government. One final story: in one situation where we were trying to gain access to information, some authorities tried to bribe us, but we said we didn’t want any money at all. They were confused, and said, “Then what do you bloody want?” And we said, “All we want is for you to do your job properly!”

Feature photo: cc/archer10 (Dennis)