Table 11

Mean Percentages of Shared Revenues Allocated by the Local
Sample Jurisdictions (Brookings Sample), by Type of Net
Fiscal Effect

The Brookings

Source: Nathan, Manvel, Calkins and Associates, Monitoring
Revenue Sharing, (Washington, D. C.:
Institution, 1975), pp. 193 and 199.

The unweighted mean, which gives equal weight to

all jurisdictions regardless of size, is, in effect, an
accounting of revenue sharing decisions; the weighted
mean is an accounting of how revenue-sharing dollars
are allocated and therefore gives extra weight to the
decisions made by the larger jurisdictions.

By this latter reckoning, one-third of the revenue sharing dollars allocated by the Brookings-monitored local communities from their first three entitlements went for tax stabilization and almost 15 percent, for borrowing stabilization (avoidance of borrowing).

Impact on Public Libraries

State Revenue Sharing

According to the actual use reports submitted

to the Treasury Department, state and local governments allocated $82.3 million of their 1973-74 revenue sharing entitlements to public libraries. Of this amount, $6.3 million was allocated by the state governments and $76 million, by counties and municipalities (including townships).

Only 7 states reported any revenue sharing allocations to public libraries, and of the $6.3 million so allocated by them, $4.5 million was attributed to North Carolina, $1 million to Georgia, and minor amounts, to Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

The questionnaire survey carried out as a part of this study

was directed to chief state library officers and elicited

data on state library expenditure by source of financing. Several additional states indicated having expended

revenue sharing funds for public libraries.

Missouri,

for example, reported spending in fiscal 1974, $539 thousand for state aid to local libraries from revenue sharing, while the amount of LSCA funds passed on to local libraries was reduced by a similar amount.

Colorado, according to its GSS survey response also replaced some LSCA funds with revenue sharing. According to the Brookings Institution Associate assigned to Colorado, it has been a matter of policy in Colorado to use revenue sharing as a replacement for reduced categorical grants. Mississippi enacted a new program in 1975, under which it started to distribute shared revenue in the form of project grants for construction and rehabilitation of public library buildings. (1)

Local Revenue Sharing

The $76 million of local shared revenue allocated

to public libraries in 1973-74 was 1.8 percent of the total received by localities for that period (Table 12). There was considerable interstate variation in the portion of shared revenue localities allocated for libraries-- from 0.2 percent in Indiana to 8.4 percent in Oregon.

Those two states also ranked lowest and highest when shared revenue is related to total local expenditure for public

libraries--0.6 and 44.5 percent, respectively, compared to a national average of 7.8 percent. Significantly, in Indiana and Ohio, where local libraries are administered predominantly by special library districts and by school districts, the library revenue sharing allocation rela

tive to library expenditure was far the smallest--0.6 percent in Indiana and 2.0 percent in Ohio. Special districts and school districts are not eligible recipients of shared so that in Indiana and Ohio, and to some extent in Missouri, libraries must depend on local governments to which they have no political attachment to get a

revenue,

piece of the revenue sharing action.

As has been noted, the actual use allocations tell little about the real impact of revenue sharing on libraries--or on any local function, for that matter. The data in Table 12, however, do provide some intuitive indication that there must have been considerable replacement of locally raised funds by shared revenue in the library field. For example, the average 7.8 percent relationship of revenue sharing to local library expenditure comes close to recent average annual increases in total local library expenditure. In 21 states, the ratio of library shared revenue to library expenditure is more than 10 percent and in seven of them, the ratio exceeds 20 percent. It is hardly likely that library expenditure would have been increased by such amounts on top of the regular increases that local taxpayers have tolerated from their own revenue sources.

Source:

GRS amounts from data tape of official use reports, 1973-74. Library expenditure
data from GSS survey, except for states marked with an asterisk (*) for which data
were obtained from the Governments Division, Bureau of the Census.

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