4 - Institutions - Manny Teodoro

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 💻

A new book aims to shape the national conversation Now available from Palgrave Macmillan In December 2024, the La Follette School at UW-Madison and the Water & Health Advisory Council gathered researchers, regulators, water sector executives, and community

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 📖

Palgrave Macmillan Manuel P. Teodoro, Editor In this open access book, contributors explore current challenges and opportunities to improve drinking water regulation, governance, management, environmental justice, and more. In 2024, the United States marked

Toward Excellence 💻

Report cards for 570 Wisconsin water utilities strong marks for the Badger State’s capital city Back in 2019 I did something quite foolish: thinking out loud while testifying in a public hearing. When a

Public enterprise pricing as redistributive policy 🎓

Policy Studies Journal Manuel P. Teodoro and David Switzer Abstract This paper analyzes public enterprise pricing as a form of redistributive politics. Beyond regulation and public goods, governments provide goods and services on a

Medium and Message by Mail 🎓

A Field Experiment to Promote Low-Income Assistance Programs Public Administration Review Manuel P. Teodoro and Jean Smith ABSTRACT Limited awareness impedes take-up in low-income utility assistance programs, which often suffer from low uptake. This

2024 La Follette School Commencement Address 💻

On May 12, at the invitation of the graduating MPA/MIPA candidates, I shared remarks at the 2024 graduation ceremony in the Wisconsin State Assembly chambers. Here’s what I had to say - or you

Profits of Distrust at Seminary Co-op Bookstore 🎦

A conversation with Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago The burgeoning bottled water industry presents a paradox: Why do people choose expensive, environmentally destructive bottled water, rather than cheaper, sustainable, and more rigorously regulated tap

Broken politics, broken pipes 💻

Sustainable solutions for Jackson, Mississippi not a sustainable solution National attention is back on drinking water utilities, and once again for all the wrong reasons. As readers of this blog surely know by now,

The Profits of Distrust 📖

Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government Cambridge University Press, 2022 The choices people make about drinking water reveal deeper lessons about trust in government and civic life. The burgeoning

And Water for All 🎦

Ramiro Berardo, Director ...And Water For All is an educational documentary about water affordability in Ohio. The film aims to amplify the voices of those who work toward providing clean, affordable water for all.

The Sweet Spot 💻

How much consolidation is enough? you know it when you hit the sweet spot There’s a growing consensus that there are way too many water utilities in the United States. America’s 50,000 community water

Environmental Federalism in Indian Country 🎓

Sovereignty, primacy & environmental protection Policy Studies Journal, May 2020 Mellie Haider, Manuel P. Teodoro The landmark American environmental laws of the 1970s originally made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and subsequent

Lone Star Blues 💻

When utility regulation fails, democracy fails when utilities fail, democracy fails The utility failures in the Lone Star State last week cascaded into a disaster when extreme weather hit an isolated electrical grid.* But

Ready, Fire, Aim 💻

Managing the $638 million low-income water & sewer assistance in the federal COVID relief package Now what? As frequent readers of this page likely know, the COVID relief bill that Congress passed in December

Shallow State 💻

Inefficient, inequitable, and maddeningly slow, America’s fragmented administrative institutions are saving the Republic before our eyes. American elections are run by a jumble of local, state, and federal agencies. That’s a feature, not a

Clean water regulation in Indian Country 💻

Sovereignty isn’t what’s on paper, it’s what flows through taps and rivers Environmental sovereignty (Photo: nativenewsonline.net) America is slowly awakening to the dire state of tribal water and sewer systems. Access to drinking water

Prevent Defense 💻

Playing to win not to lose in water utility management Nature's Prevent Defense Warning: strained sports metaphor coming. It’s late January, and the National Football League season soon reaches its climax with the Super

The Plan 💻

A five-point proposal to transform the U.S. water sector As daunting as the challenges in the U.S. water sector are, solutions are possible and within our grasp. Thanks to legions of smart, creative scientists

Grow to Shrink, Shrink to Grow 💻

Better Together Water Sector Reform #1: Consolidation With a major federal investment in water infrastructure possibly on the horizon, the United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage that money into reforms to transform

Life Support 💻

Devils (and angels) in the details, Part 3 In early January the California Water Board released its draft proposal for a statewide low-income water bill assistance program. My last couple posts summarized the proposal

Political Decoupling 🎓

Private Implementation of Public Policy PSJ: Policy Studies Journal Manuel P. Teodoro, Youlang Zhang, David Switzer Where policy goals can be achieved through regulation of private firms, private provision of public services allows governments

Aftermath 💻

A California Surprise, Part 3 California’s private utilities continued to out-conserve public utilities even after the state lifted its mandate. In 2015 the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) ordered drinking water utilities

Political Decoupling 💻

A California Surprise, Part 2 More drought porn (this is used to be Folsom Lake) How private implementation separates public policies from their political costs. Warning: this post contains hardcore wonkery. In 2015 the

Golden State Waterers 💻

A California surprise, Part I Drought porn Something unexpected happened when California ordered its utilities to save water: the state’s investor-owned private utilities out-conserved local governments. California’s long-term drought began as early as 2007,

Institutions and Democracy in Africa 📖

Chapter 7 - The Bureaucracy: Policy Implementation and Reform Cambridge University Press M. Anne Pitcher & Manuel P. Teodoro New bureaucratic agencies – most commonly central banks, privatisation agencies and regulatory commissions – multiplied

What Jacksonville utilities say about municipal governance 💻

The City of Jacksonville, FL is contemplating sale of JEA, its municipal electric, water, and sewer utility. For years Jacksonville has toyed with the idea of selling JEA to a private investor, but the possibility

Private dollars for public works 💻

This is the second in my series of posts on the recently released White House infrastructure plan. We’re at a strange point in America’s fiscal history. Cash on corporate ledgers is high, bond rates

U.S. Environmental Policy Implementation on Tribal Lands 🎓

Trust, Neglect, and Justice PSJ: Policy Studies Journal Manuel P. Teodoro, Mellie Haider, David Switzer This study investigates the implementation of U.S. environmental protection laws under American Indian tribal governance. The landmark laws of

Drinking from the Talent Pool 🎓

A Resource Endowment Theory of Human Capital and Agency Performance PAR: Public Administration Review Manuel P. Teodoro & David Switzer This article advances a resource endowment theory of human capital and performance in government

Bureaucratic Ambition 📖

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011 Careers, Motives, and the Innovative Administrator Teodoro explains the systems that foster or frustrate entrepreneurship among public executives. Through case studies and quantitative analysis of original data, he shows

The Institutional Politics of Water Conservation 🎓

Journal AWWA Manuel P. Teodoro This article analyzes the influence of local governmental structures on the likelihood that utilities adopt one of two water conservation policies: conservation rates and landscape audits. Statistical analysis tests