Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many environmental policies are framed in the form of intergovernmental mandates. Recently, there have been complaints about the federal government imposing more and more unfunded mandates on state governments. State mandates on local governments have also been criticized as unnecessary burdens that undermine the spirit of local self-governance. State mandates apply to all local jurisdictions uniformly, and local circumstances often are not considered in the design of these mandates. State mandates may also make prior local initiatives obsolete, thus requiring local agencies to spend extra efforts in compliance. Hence, existing views have focused on what funding and resource incentives the federal and state governments can provide to local agencies to minimize such unintended consequences. Yet, state mandates, if formulated appropriately, can facilitate diverse stakeholder engagement among the local entities themselves—institutional collective action, which would not occur otherwise but may facilitate compliance while preserving local self-governance.

This paper examines one such collaboration mandate, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014, designed to address worsening groundwater overdraft throughout the state. Based on a survey of all participating local agencies, we analyze how local managers evaluate the impact of state mandates on their abilities to solve local groundwater management problems. We examine how local contextual factors such as the agency’s resources, capacity, and technical expertise moderate these perceptions. We also examine the extent to which the local agencies adopt diverse stakeholder representation in their collaboration choices, and to what extent these efforts improve the effectiveness of the mandate. Further, based on in-depth interviews with officials from several dozen local agencies, we analyze how local officials strategize in their responses to state-mandated collaboration.

This study has implications for all layers of governments. For federal and state policymakers, it sheds light on how mandate design can be improved to enhance impact. For local managers, it provides guidance on strategies to facilitate the engagement of diverse stakeholders and perspectives in the implementation of environmental regulations.