Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores how Colorado, which accepted 4000 evacuees from the Gulf Coast following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, provided services through public and private agencies and the challenges that arose. Housing southern Blacks presented several challenges for state and voluntary organization officials unaccustomed to many of the cultural differences from the region as well as the deep distrust of official efforts to assist them. These agencies adapted their practice in significant ways. Using interview data with evacuees, service providers, agency leaders, and government officials, we examine which culturally and racially-based challenges arose and how agencies aimed to mitigate them. First, relief agencies modified food service, including the use of ingredients and recipes to make meals more familiar to clients. Second, members of multi-racial and predominantly African American churches began volunteering to provide human contact and spiritual uplift for evacuees. Third, Colorado mobilized a multi-racial coalition of churches, victims’ assistance programs, local chapters of national charities, and the counties in which those affected settled. In this paper, we examine the complicated issues that arise as private agencies determine eligibility for services or “moral worthiness” in ways not permitted by state agents. Private organizations—both religious and secular—have long been relied upon as a source of relief in disasters. In this case, the official delegation of short-term relief and long-term recovery to local churches provides opportunity to examine the limits of the state as well as the strengths and limits of volunteerism, particularly as they are deployed to manage racially charged interactions.

Publication Type: Presentation Proposal
Abstract: The sustainable management of a natural habitat involves human interaction between stakeholders, decision makers and the advocates. Learn about collaboration and flow of information between the groups involved in the restoration and management of the Colorado River Delta.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Since Bollens (1957) first identified special districts as a “dark continent” in political science, the number of non-school special districts in the United States has grown substantially. During the past 50 years, however, political science objections to the fragmentation of metropolitan government have remained largely theoretical.
This study examines one form of non-school special districts-- park districts-- and evaluates their efficiency and effectiveness. The study evaluates park district services compared to similar services provided by consolidated general-purpose municipal governments.
Two competing hypotheses are identified. The first states that parks and recreation departments provide higher levels of efficiency in delivering services than park districts. The second states that park districts provide higher service levels than municipal parks and recreation departments.
Midwestern states were selected for the study because they have the largest number of non-school special districts in the United States and comparable numbers of parks and recreation departments within municipalities and county governments.
Service levels, autonomy, demographic, and administrator profile data for park districts and parks and recreation departments were collected by surveying an equal number of randomly selected park district administrators and randomly selected parks and recreation department administrators in Midwestern states.
Data was analyzed using comparative means testing, bivariate and multivariate linear regression to test the relationships between service levels, and efficiency levels, as identified in the literature. In addition, these quantitative techniques were used to test competing hypotheses identified in other studies, suggesting that staffing and professional training levels are explanations for service and budgetary levels.
The aggregate results of this study show that structure of government is not an important determinant of total recreation program levels. The study also demonstrates that structure of government is not an important determinant of levels of efficiency.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In recent years, the drug methamphetamine has caused numerous problems across communities in Western Colorado, ranging from increased property crime, drug endangered children, violent crime, and public health risks. This paper presents an implementation study of how one community - Mesa County, Colorado - came together to develop an evidence-based approach to dealing with methamphetamine. Through interviews with stakeholders, analysis of several years of newspaper articles, and quantitative data illustrating the nature of the project, the author shows how the community came together to develop a three-pronged approach of enforcement, prevention, and treatment in dealing with methamphetamine. It illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the Mesa County approach, and provides a model for inter-agency cooperation for other jurisdictions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite appellate law that does not support second parent adoption (by members of same-sex couples) in Colorado, attorneys and parents have gained recognition for second parents through trial courts. This paper relies in part on interview data with applicants and attorneys to explore strategizing through law. Throughout the United States, the claim to access to the legal responsibilities of parenting have laid the legal groundwork for the claims to marriage and have shifted portrayals of same-sex families as not truly families. The decentralization of the American legal system has made this possible, even in a state (Colorado) with a political climate somewhat hostile to claims to equality on the basis of sexual orientation. Finally, this paper is a first step toward thinking through comparative legal claims to making families. The legal claim to parenting has been particularly important in the United States given the American private welfare state, where health care is generally provided via employers rather than the state directly. (In Europe, states have been reluctant to grant access to children as a matter of right to same-sex couples, and the provision of health care benefits to all has made it less crucial that a child be a legally recognized relative of someone with health insurance).