Principles of Democracy/Policy Field Map/Discussion Board

Description

(Principles of Democracy)

(Original Content Only) (Directions are in the attachments) (attachments include reading material)

Assignment (2–3 pages):

Using the “Concept Worksheet – Principles of Democracy” document in the Learning Resources, complete the following:

Part 1 – Provide an original definition for each principle of democracy. Definitions should be original and reflect a synthesis of your definition research from the Learning Resources and other scholarly, trade, or government sources.
Part 2 – Select three of the principles of democracy from Part 1 and for each selected principle provide an example from the U.S. system and contrast it with an example from another country.

Policy Field Map

The topic for the final project is “Lead water contamination in Jackson, Mississippi primarily affecting low income communities in Jackson, Mississippi”

(Attachments include)

Review the following information in the Sandfort and Moulton (2015) resource in the Week 3 Learning Resources:

Policy Fields in Focus,” pp. 107–108
• “Policy Field Maps,” pp. 133–136
• “Policy Field Map,” p 134

(Discussion Board) (Original Content Only) (300 words for post) (150 words per reply)

To Prepare

Review this week’s Learning Resources related to peer-review and familiarize yourself with what constitutes peer review in research. Also, consider the advances made in international scholarship and how this might impact your topic of study.
Search the internet and/or the Walden library for a peer-reviewed journal article in your field, published within the past year and based on a topic of your choosing.

Post the following:

The title, the author, and the citation of the peer-reviewed article you chose from your search.
A brief summary of your peer-reviewed article.
A list of the most important elements you used to determine if your article is peer-reviewed.
An explanation of the importance of using peer-reviewed articles in your field and how international peer-review might impact the quality of your research.

(Replies) (150 words per reply)

Peer Review Article Used:

Evans, M. & Knepper, H. (2023) Women’s sports and public administration: Intertwined paths to social equity, Administrative Theory & Praxis,DOI: 10.1080/10841806.2023.2282920Links to an external site.

Peer Review Article Elements:

1. After reviewing the Walden Peer Review resource, I was able to determine that the journal article that I was selected was a Peer Reviewed article (Walden, n.d.). I was able to use the Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory to search for the journal title (UlrichsWeb, n.d.) The article was published in the Administrative Theory and Praxis Journal which is a Journal for critical peer reviewed articles. This journal specifically focuses on Public Administration articles (Taylor, n.d.)

The article also included an abstract. The article’s abstract introduced the information that would be provided in the article (Cornell, n.d.). This article provided background information in regards to the role of women in sports and how their role differs from the male counterpart (Evans & Knepper, 2023).

The Peer Review article also included a very thorough bibliography page. The bibliography page included all of the sources that the authors used to show their research and background within the article. Like most Peer Reviewed articles, many of the references on the bibliography were experts in their field (Cornell, n.d).

Brief Summary of Article:

The Women Sports and Public Administration: Intertwined Paths to Social Equity compared and contrasted the role of women in sports and in public administration roles. The two sports that were highlighted were Women’s Basketball (WNBA) and Women’s Soccer (NWSL) In these two sports, the peer reviewed article explained that the players, coaches, and administrative staff were all impacted by the passage of the Title IX bill. (Evans & Knepper, 2023).

The Title IX law was passed in 1972 and it stated that:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.)

Evans and Knepper conclude that due to the passage of this law many changes occurred in the field of sports and public administration. Their article continues to show that the law impacted males and females in the sports arena. However, even though there were some changes, some things still remained not equal (Evans & Knepper, 2023)

For example, head coaches in the WNBA are not paid close to the amount that the head coaches in the NBA are paid. Female driven sports are often not broadcast on national TV channels, but on streaming apps that require payment. Women were often given public administration roles compared to leadership and budget roles in their professions. They concluded that even though there has been a change in roles in women’s sports and public administration there are still many changes that need to be made in the field (Evans & Knepper, 2023).

Importance of Using Peer Reviewed Articles:

Using Peer Reviewed Articles is very important when reviewing or writing research. Often, peer reviewed articles are written by other scholars in the specific field. This allows you to gather knowledge from another person similar to you (Walden Library, n.d.) Also, peer reviewed articles provide other resources through the use of the bibliography page for your to use or review. Peer reviewed articles are pretty much what they are called. The single blind peer review is often the most used because the reviewer’s identity is concealed (Kelly, et al, 2014).

When an article is peer reviewed by others it can be accepted or even rejected by those in their discipline. Using international Peer Review articles can have its own challenges. International peer reviewed articles will often need to be reviewed to verify their information. You may need to review the articles: credentials, accuracy, relevance, and purpose – also known as CARP (Walden University Writing Center, n.d.).

2, I chose “Evidence for the Efficacy of the Child Advocacy Center Model: A Systematic Review” written by James Leslie Herbert and Leah Bromfield. The article is part of a research study evaluating the effectiveness of the Child Advocacy Center (CAC) Model. The Child Advocacy Center (CAC) model is proposed as a comprehensive solution to challenges in responding to child sexual abuse. These challenges include the lack of referral to therapeutic services, potentially traumatic investigation practices, and conflicts among different statutory agencies, all of which contribute to low conviction rates and poor outcomes for children. The CAC model addresses these issues through multidisciplinary teams, joint investigations, and services within a single child-friendly environment. The research aimed to identify and review studies evaluating the overall effectiveness of the CAC model. While criminal justice outcomes have been well studied, there is a notable gap in research concerning the model’s impact on child and family outcomes. The review indicates some modest positive outcomes, but the lack of empirical research and reliance on program outputs over outcomes suggest a need for clarification regarding the goals of the CAC model. (Bromfield, 2015)

University affiliations and dissertations from universities often undergo a peer-review process, especially if they are part of academic programs. With journal articles, several items on the list are articles from academic journals, which generally implies a peer-review process. Many entries refer to empirical research, indicating a commitment to evidence-based practice, which often involves peer-reviewed studies.

Peer reviewed articles are important in several ways. Peer-reviewed articles undergo scrutiny by experts, ensuring that the research is methodologically sound, accurate, and contributes meaningfully to the field. In fields like child advocacy, where effective intervention is crucial, peer-reviewed literature helps establish best practices based on validated research. Professionals and researchers use peer-reviewed articles to stay informed about the latest developments, methodologies, and findings in their respective fields.

International peer-review ensures that research is evaluated from diverse cultural and contextual perspectives, enhancing the robustness and applicability of the findings on a global scale. This is particularly important in fields like child advocacy where cultural nuances can play a significant role in the effectiveness of interventions.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

MMPA 6200/5200: Principles of Public Administration
Concept Worksheet – Principles of Democracy
Part 1 – Definitions
•
•
Provide an original definition for each principle of democracy by synthesizing material from the Learning
Resources and other scholarly, trade, or government sources.
Principles of Democracy:
o Rule of Law
o Inherent Rights
o Equality
o Limited Government
▪ Separation of Powers
▪ Federalism
o Self-Governance
o Peaceful Transfer of Power
o Free/Independent Press
Principle of
Democracy
Your Definition/Synthesis
Do not copy a definition. Instead, synthesize from the resources and create your own definition.
Rule of Law
Inherent Rights
Equality
Limited Government
Separation of Powers
Federalism
Self-Governance
© 2021 Walden University, LLC
Page 1 of 2
MMPA 6200/5200: Principles of Public Administration
Peaceful Transfer of
Power
Free/Independent
Press
Part 2 – Compare/Contrast
•
•
•
Select three of the principles of democracy from the table. For each selected principle, provide an example from
the U.S. system, and contrast that with an example from another country.
You may use the same country for all three principles, or you may select different countries. The countries may
use any form of government (i.e., they do not have to use a democratic system).
Include citations and a reference list, all using APA form and style.
Example – U.S.
Principle
Compare/Contrast – Other Country
Name the country at the beginning of the entry
and include a citation to the reference list below.
Inherent Rights
The U.S. has a Bill of Rights as part of its
Constitution in order to expressly protect
individual liberties (Patterson, 2022).
Australia does not have a bill of rights in its
Constitution. Instead, Australia uses other laws,
such as common law and statutes, to protect
specific rights (Commonwealth of Australia,
2020).
References:
Commonwealth of Australia. (2020, November 9). Australian constitution. https://peo.gov.au/understand-ourparliament/how-parliament-works/the-australian-constitution/australian-constitution/
Patterson, T. E. (2022). We the people (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
© 2021 Walden University, LLC
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Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In this chapter, we begin by bringing policy fields into focus, describing the
field first as a whole and then the roles played by its interrelated parts. Too often,
we rush to analyze the trees that are involved in implementation and lose sight of
the forest. Here we provide the landscape of the forest. To heighten our analysis,
we also probe how the core program is shaped at this level of the implementation
system. We conclude by introducing helpful tools that implementers can use to
describe and analyze policy fields.
POLICY FIELDS IN FOCUS
Policy fields are bounded networks among institutions and organizations carrying
out a substantive policy and program area in a particular place.6 They are made
of up formal and informal relationships between various units of government,
private corporations, and nonprofit agencies. Multiple government institutions
at the national, state, and local levels engage in the same policy field at any given
time, adding to the complexity.7 At the beginning of the twenty-first century,
there were approximately eighty-seven thousand governments in the United
States.8 While the US case is extreme, many other nations have developed similar
administrative layers in federalist systems in which authority is divided between
a centralized authority and regional and local entities with specified roles and
responsibilities. Many assume there is a hierarchical relationship of national, state,
and local governments. Yet researchers studying intergovernmental relationships
clearly document a long tradition of considerable legal, fiscal, and political
interdependence.9
Almost every policy field reflects significant intergovernmental negotiations
and challenges. In the national health care reform case, for example, although all
states were given the authority that Colorado took to develop their own health care
exchanges, thirty-four states refused to do so for political reasons. Instead of seizing the prerogative, they defaulted to the federally administered system and waited
for operational challenges to emerge. These political and administrative tensions
are predictable, even enabled, in a federalist system. There are often competing
needs for administrative centralization and geographic customization responding to political and regional conditions.10 National laws and regulations are often
impractical, either too grand to provide necessary guidance or mired in details
that do not apply to particular places; there are disconnects between mandates and
funding realities; and few incentives exist for national policymakers to prioritize
Policy Fields
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decisions. Instead, they often pass legislation without consideration of the whole
policy portfolio.11
In addition, private organizations, both corporations and nonprofits, play essential roles in policy fields—providing public services, brokering resources and information, educating the public, and facilitating policy and program evaluation.12
While this has a long tradition within the United States, governments’ changing
roles in Europe, Australia, and Asia have created new roles for civil society organizations and public-private partnerships around the world. As noted in chapter 2,
many researchers are concerned with the governance of these decentralized networks and the diverse tools that the public sector uses to implement public policy.13
The tools approach emphasizes the formal exchange of political authority between
a government agency and a private sector organization, such as a state agency
contracting out employment placement services to a private firm. While understanding the formal sources of authority in a given field is certainly important, it
is also important to understand the informal power and cultural dynamics that
developed between institutions in a shared context. To do that requires stepping
back to get a bigger picture of the field as a whole.
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Policy Fields as Strategic Action Fields
Different perspectives help make sense of the interrelated sets of institutions
operating within a given physical or technical space. For example, as described in
chapter 2, the network perspective provides a language to think about how the
different actors in the policy field work together and coordinate their activities.
While network actors may not have formal lines of authority, like different units
of an organization that are layered within a hierarchy, there are still institutional
bonds, or “institutional glue,” that tie them together.14 Some of these ties are
more formal, grounded in contracts or exchanges of financial resources, while
others are less formal and based in trust and sharing of information. In contrast
to just looking at the ties between two organizations, social network analysis
maps out ties among multiple organizations at the same time.15
Perhaps closest to our notion of policy fields is sociologists’ definition of
organizational fields, the aggregate of organizations working in a recognized
area of institutional life.16 At base, this idea explores the significance of groups
of organizations engaged in collaboration and competition for survival. These
organizations, often geographically bounded, must interrelate because of shared
functions or resource dependencies. For example, organizations providing public
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utilities would all be seen to exist within one field, similar to those working
together to accomplish passage of new environmental protection provisions or
those who all receive United Way grants supporting their work with the aged.
Organizations in the same fields often develop structures and ways of working
together that are mutually beneficial. The organizational field begins to develop
its own shared cultural rules and meaning, sometimes referred to as institutional
logics. While particular organizations might not be linked together directly, the
field creates common conditions within which they operate. Institutional logics
provide members of the organizational field a sense of collective purpose that both
helps explain their connections and guides their interactions. While multiple logics
might exist, organizational fields often are thought to coalesce around dominant
institutional logics.17 Organizations working in the same field may even start to look
alike, adopting similar policies, programs, and management techniques in an effort
to appear legitimate to others in the field—a process referred to as isomorphism.
The benefit of the organizational field perspective is that it emphasizes the
importance of institutional culture for policy and program implementation.
Within a field, resources are frequently pooled to carry out activities, emphasizing
the role of trust over formal contracts.18 Trust is created through relationships,
developed and nurtured, and earned rather than automatically granted through
hierarchical position. Sometimes there are strategic attempts to manage ongoing
interactions among the network actors through what some have termed metagovernance structures.19 Yet the organizational field frame minimizes the formal
influences of political authority that are typically inherent in policy and program
implementation.
By defining policy fields as strategic action fields, our approach combines the
structures and formal sources of authority inherent in intergovernmental relationships and networks with the culture and power dynamics of the organizational
field. Understanding the influence of intergovernmental authority and its ability
through policy tools to shape institutional relationships is essential; government
retains power over some decisions, particularly those shaping public service roles.
Economic authority through funding and competitive pressures for contracting
may also be significant. However, the horizontal nature of network ties is consequential. Appreciating the significance of organic collaborations among public,
nonprofit, and business organizations cannot be overlooked. All are important but
not sufficiently integrated given our needs here. We needed an integrative, analytical approach to understand implementation systems, and policy fields provide
that framework.20
Policy Fields
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Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Institutions within Policy Fields
In any setting, there are potential pools of institutions—governmental agencies,
nonprofit organizations, and private firms—that might participate in implementing a program or policy because of their interests and expertise. Each institution
has a role or set of roles to play that shape the dynamics of the policy field. Because
there are always limited resources—staff, time, funding, expertise are rarely sufficient in the public arena—these field players must make choices about whether
to engage and, if so, in what capacity. Organizations often are activated by function; some are brought in for planning or resource provision, service provision,
or evaluation.21 But the specific program or policy, or even the specific task at
hand, motivates different organizations from the field to step into active roles in
implementation. When they do so, they bring their staff expertise, their interests
and ideas, and other important resources into the policy field. Yet stepping into
active engagement with implementation clearly does not imply that the resources
or actions are necessarily aligned with other field actors. There is a dynamic, social
process of negotiation and meaning making at the heart of the policy and program
implementation process.
When an agency steps into active engagement in the field around the
implementation of a particular policy or program, significant relationships
and resources accompany them. Money, information, and program knowledge
all flow among the organizations, creating an implementation structure that
might shift and change depending on the implementation tasks or project time
line. The organizations act as nodes in a complex, emergent system. In this
way, the shape and dynamics of policy fields are unique to that place and time, to
the organizations and people involved at this level of the implementation system.
Said another way, they are endogenous to the policy environment found in a
particular place.
Many types of institutions operate in policy fields.22 Each confronts a range
of potential activities they could lead or participate in given their mission. There
are conventional ways each is expected to contribute but also more active ones
that leaders can pursue in a particular implementation project if they believe it
is warranted. Table 4.1 provides general descriptions of the range of institutions
that might be involved. Public agencies are important in structuring policy and
program implementation. They respond to laws and administrative regulations,
issuing rules and dedicating staff to public accountability mechanisms, such as
open solicitation of public comment periods or structured grant review processes.
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Table 4.1
Institutions Involved in Policy Fields
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Type of Institution Conventional Roles
Active Roles
Public agencies
(national,
regional/state,
local)
Respond to federal, state, Policy field design
or local laws or
administrative
regulations
Determine how to
allocate public funds
Determine rules and
manage within those
parameters
Philanthropies
Invest funds in priority
areas
Nonprofit,
for-profit, and
public service
providers
Respond to contractual
Attend field-level meetings
opportunities from public and convenings to share and
agencies
learn implementation lessons
Participate in ongoing groups
(communities of practice)
focused on implementation
Support implementation
teams within organizations
Intermediary
organizations or
purveyors
Respond to requests for
programmatic and
management training
Commission studies
Provide resources
(convenings, network
development) to support
sharing of implementation
knowledge
Fund intermediary
organizations to centralize
field knowledge and build
implementation capacity
Develop field networks
through convening
Enable coordination,
collaboration, and
partnership development
Provide financial resources
Share implementation
resources (reports,
convenings, Internet
communication platforms)
(continued)
Policy Fields
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Table 4.1
Institutions Involved in Policy Fields (Continued)
Type of Institution Conventional Roles
Active Roles
Research and
evaluation
organizations
Respond to requests for
formal studies
Provide technical assistance
materials to support
implementation
Nonprofit
membership and
advocacy
associations
Represent members and
constituent interests on
official bodies and policy
position statements
Share implementation
resources (reports,
convenings, Internet
communication platforms)
Provide information from
field experiences to public
policymakers
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
They determine how to allocate public funds and generally operate in regard to
other governments in a federalist system. Yet Stephen Goldsmith and William
Eggers showcase in their book Governing by Network 23 what years of consulting
practice taught them—how public agencies sometimes assume a more active role
in designing network relationships within a policy field.
Private philanthropies also can play important roles as sources of private
capital to smooth implementation challenges caused by inadequate funding. These
organizations play more active roles when commissioning relevant research,
supporting convenings and other means of sharing relevant knowledge, or funding
particular entities that centralize technical knowledge in the implementation
network. In the implementation of the ACA, the state of Colorado and others
benefited directly from these types of investments from private foundations. In
the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRS) case, they were similarly
significant.
Intermediaries as well can be essential entities within a field.24 They garner
information and resources to decrease transaction costs between two parties,
thereby increasing operational efficiencies and program effectiveness. Highly
developed in policy domains such as mental health, community economic development, and affordable housing, these organizations can play essential roles in
policy fields. Most basic, they can offer management or program-specific training
in innovative approaches or evidence-based models. More actively, though, they
develop relationships among organizations by convening organizations, providing
financial resources, and developing implementation resources. They also can
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offer information to public decision makers about the successes and challenges
of policy implementation visible from service agencies. By offering these types of
supports, intermediaries buffer service-providing organizations from turbulence
in the field. Often private funders, corporations, banks, or philanthropies support
such activities because of their interests in implementation results. Where neither
pure markets nor public provision operate effectively, intermediaries are one force
in field building for enhancing systems’ capacity and enabling the whole to operate
more coherently.
In some fields, institutions referred to as purveyors have an interest in
sharing innovations or evidence-based practices. Purveyors can be significant in some fields. For example, the Parents as Teachers model is an early
childhood home-visiting program focused on increasing parents’ knowledge
about early childhood development, changing their parenting techniques,
increasing early detection of developmental delays, and preventing child neglect.
More than two thousand Parents as Teachers affiliates provide the service across all
states and internationally. Like many other purveyors of proven interventions, this
organization invests significantly in creating implementation support; the agency’s
website provides extensive resources, including an overview of the model, case
studies about sites, and information about training opportunities, conferences,
policy advocacy strategies, and speakers for implementation leaders operating in
fields where the model is not yet present.25 The core mission is to promote the
intervention, which provides essential information to implementers looking for
practices that are documented to have a desired impact.
Research and evaluation firms or professional membership associations are
other organizations that can play important roles in policy fields. They can
represent their narrow interests and respond to requests from public and private
funders. More actively, they can initiate projects that share relevant information
and knowledge throughout the field, such as providing evidence-based program
models, developing resources to help implementation, or sharing implementation
experience with policymakers. However, none of these activities can be systematically predicted; the roles that public and private organizations play depend
completely on the context.
Sometimes policy fields reflect strong governance, and there is widespread
clarity about who can do what to whom under what authority. In national
security, for example, while there are multiple organizations involved in policy
implementation—military bases, state-level national guards, training facilities,
Policy Fields
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contractors supplying equipment—there are a clear hierarchy, deep socialization
of members who support it, and explicit and agreed-on rules of operation.
Sometimes service networks are purposively designed to carry out a new policy
initiative. In the mental health networks that Milward and Provan studied,26
one central organization was given the authority to both provide services and
coordinate those among others. Centralized network structures facilitate the use
of government tools like formal contracts.27
More often, though, policy fields reflect contested governance, especially when
relationships between organizations are not designed but rather have emerged as
people work together over time to solve implementation issues. In these situations,
diverse organizational actors vie for authority to define problems and solutions in
relation to a policy or program. There often are competing change strategies and
conflicting professional norms.
We return here to the two cases described in chapter 1 that we use to illustrate
implementation analysis throughout the book. The Hardest Hit Fund (HHF) is
a policy focused on foreclosure prevention in states hardest hit by the housing
crisis. Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRS) are programs designed to
improve the quality of early childhood settings and provide better information to
consumers. Box 4.1 explains some of the institutions important in the policy field
implementing the HHF in Ohio. National public institutions and financial networks are important for structuring the implementation conditions; they shaped
the guidelines and negotiated operating conditions of the policy. There was, for
example, a summit which brought together large financial institutions, such as
Chase and Bank of America, that needed to coordinate the HHF program across
multiple states. The event, convened by the US Department of Treasury, clarified
the rules and led to the design of common tools to use to process HHF loans in each
state. Within this context, the state-level Ohio Housing Finance Agency played a
central role and actively designed the field relationships through convening an
interagency council for advice and contracting with housing counseling agencies.
Box 4.1
HHF Policy Field Actors
The HHF program is a federal initiative, administered by the US Department of
Treasury and authorized under federal legislation. However, all of the eligible
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states created their own programs, creating unique policy fields within each
state. This box describes of some of the important actors involved in the policy
field for Ohio’s HHF program.
National Actors
Public Agencies (US Department of Treasury)
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) gave the US
Department of Treasury the authority to distribute up to $700 billion in
funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as one of its financial
stability initiatives. Under this program, Treasury allocated nearly $60 billion
for foreclosure mitigation efforts, including $7.6 billion for the HHF program.a
Treasury set the general guidelines for the program and approved program
proposals from the eighteen eligible state housing finance agencies.b
Private Financial Institutions (Lenders)
Mortgages are legal obligations between homeowners (borrowers) and financial institutions (lenders), with specified procedures for collecting payments and
pursuing foreclosure if payments are not made. Assistance provided to borrowers through the HHF program often requires a change in the terms of the
mortgage, thus requiring the participation (and approval) of private lenders.
HHF funds were typically paid to private lenders on behalf of borrowers.
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
National Intermediaries
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are national intermediaries in the United States,
also known as government-sponsored entities (GSEs), that securitize private
mortgages held by lenders, allowing the mortgages to be sold to investors
on the secondary market. Many of the mortgages that lenders service are
securitized by the GSEs, and therefore the lenders must make sure that any
changes that they make to mortgages are acceptable to the GSEs. Lenders
were hesitant to participate in the HHF program until they had the approval
of the GSE from the Servicer Summit.
Other National Intermediaries
The Mortgage Bankers Association represents the interests of US financial
institutions that originate mortgages. The National Council of State Housing
Agencies represents the interests of the state housing finance agencies that
administered the HHF program at the state level.
Other National Stakeholders
The HHF program was conceptualized in planning sessions with industry stakeholders, government agencies, and policymakers as an innovative strategy to
(continued)
Policy Fields
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(Continued)
address deficiencies of prior foreclosure prevention programs. Participants
included the administration, the National Economic Council, the Council of
Economic Advisers, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development,
Treasury officials, housing and mortgage sector participants including the
Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Council of State Housing Agencies,
and HOPE NOW.c
State Actors
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Public Agencies
As a quasi-governmental entity with a governor-appointed board, the Ohio
Governor’s Office had a significant voice at the table, ensuring that political
interests across the state were represented
The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) has been administering homeownership and rental housing programs since the 1980s. It has operated as an
independent state agency since 2005, with a board of directors appointed by
the governor. OHFA is the central agency for the HHF program in Ohio, responsible for the design and administration of the program.
OHFA convened an interagency council to help inform the design and
administration of the state HHF program. Different state agencies participated,
with varying degrees of power and authority depending in part on the
expertise brought to the table. For example, the Ohio Department of Job and
Family Services and the Ohio Department of Taxation were critical early on to
identify the number of unemployed homeowners in the state who might be
eligible for HHF assistance. The Ohio Department of Commerce was a critical
participant to engage lenders and servicers in the program (particularly state
institutions).
Nonprofit Support Organization: Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing
HHF federal program guidelines required that the recipient of HHF funds in
each state be structured as a “financial institution.” To meet this requirement,
OHFA partnered with a local nonprofit organization, the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing (OCCH), which subsequently formed Ohio Homeowner
Assistance LLC (OHA), a wholly owned subsidiary, to serve as the eligible entity
to receive funding from the HHF program. OHFA has been a longtime partner
with OCCH on many housing programs and was instrumental in the creation
of OCCH.
Statewide Foreclosure Prevention Network: Save the Dream Ohio
OHFA launched Save the Dream Ohio in 2008, two years prior to the HHF
program, funded in part through the National Foreclosure Mitigating
Counseling (NFMC) program.d OHFA served as the administrator of the Save
the Dream NFMC program in Ohio, distributing more than $8 million in
funding to twenty-one nonprofit counseling agencies to provide counseling to
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Effective Implementation in Practice
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homeowners facing potential foreclosure. In addition to these agencies, the
program brought together a network of agencies, including state agencies,
legal aid societies, and pro bono attorneys. A toll-free hotline for homeowners
in distress and a website were established.
Service Organizations: Nonprofit Housing Counseling Organizations
Like many other states, Ohio has a strong network of nonprofit organizations
providing foreclosure counseling, as Department of Housing and Urban Development certified housing counseling organizations. In Ohio, these nonprofit
organizations often work collaboratively with a strong advocacy voice. OHFA
contracted with more than twenty nonprofit housing counseling organizations
to conduct the initial intake screening for the HHF program. Organizations were
reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis.
Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Research and Evaluation Organizations
OHFA partnered with the Ohio State University to form the Office of Affordable
Housing Research (OAHR) in 2009, prior to the initiation of the HHF program.
The OAHR engages research expertise from a variety of entities to guide and
evaluate its programs, including the Ohio State University, Cleveland State University, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Policy Matters Ohio, and Ohio
Capital Corporation for Housing. In addition, in partnership with OSU, OHFA
was recently awarded a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation to evaluate the HHF program.
a. Much of the background information about the program is from information on the
program website: http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/TARP-Programs
/housing/hhf/Pages/default.aspx.
b. http://www.sigtarp.gov/audit%20reports/sigtarp_hhf_audit.pdf.
c. http://www.sigtarp.gov/audit%20reports/sigtarp_hhf_audit.pdf.
d. NFMC provided funding for counseling to homeowners in foreclosure, not direct financial assistance. Homeowners receiving counseling were still dependent on financial
institutions to work out a solution to their hardship (renegotiate mortgage payments,
screen for eligibility for federal programs).
Box 4.2 provides an overview of some of the institutions important in Minnesota’s early childhood education policy field focused on QRS implementation.
Organizations from various inte