Expert answer:compare and contrast a Block Grant and a Categoric
Solved by verified expert:Based on your readings for this week, compare and contrast a Block Grant and a Categorical Grant. Evaluate which grant is most useful in terms of law enforcement operations? Why?250 words
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Both federal and state governments operate intergovernmental assistance programs.
Many problems and structural features are common to both. The federal grant system has
included three types of assistance: (1) categorical grants, (2) block grants, and (3) from
1972 through 1986, general revenue sharing.25 The last is a type of general fiscal
assistance, a more common element of state-to-local grant programs. There is much
hybridization of grant styles, making clear classification difficult. However, the great
preponderance of federal grant programs—measured in both numbers and outlay totals—
are categorical grant programs.26A federal website provides the Catalog of Domestic
Federal Assistance (http://www.cdfa.gov) to guide anyone through the 2,312 federal
assistance programs (the count as of 2015).
State aid systems have some elements similar to the federal system, although each
state has its own peculiar mix. State grants to general-purpose local governments (mostly
cities and counties) have always been for relatively broad purposes. The grants
sometimes distribute earmarked percentages of certain state taxes. In a later section, we
examine state aid to schools, a major component of total state aid.
Categorical Grants
Categorical grants finance specific and narrowly defined programs, usually limited to
spending for certain activities, such as constructing a wastewater-treatment plant or
paying salaries of special education teachers. Such aid seeks to induce the recipient
government to behave in a fashion other than the way it would behave without the aid.
The grants encourage recipient governments to shift expenditures to particular functions
or to guarantee provision of certain recipient government services in a manner consistent
with national interest. In these areas, narrow local interest and national interest
presumably do not coincide. The grant changes the returns as seen by the recipient to
make certain activities more attractive—the federal share makes the aided activity
cheaper for the lower-level government—so that recipient actions coincide with national
interest.
Categorical grants may be:
1. Formula, in which aid is distributed among eligible governments according to a
legislatively or administratively determined formula. Formula elements may
include population, population in certain demographic categories, per capita
income, unemployment, energy use, housing categories, fiscal capacity, program
performance, highway lane miles, or other measures. For example, the DingellJohnson Sport Fish Restoration Program (Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration
Act of 1950) distributes funds to state fish and wildlife agencies according to a
formula that includes the state share of land and water area, miles of coastline, and
paid fishing license holders.27
2. Project, in which aid is distributed at the discretion of the administrator for
particular projects. These grants are usually awarded on a competitive basis from
applications made to support a particular proposal from a state or local government
(or other entity).
3. Project/formula, in which aid is distributed at the discretion of the administrator
within constraints set by a formula that limits amounts awarded in a state. For
instance, the Recreational Trails program in the Department of Transportation
provides formula assistance for development of trails for non-motorized and
motorized use with an 80 percent matching requirement.28
These grants may have matching provisions that require the recipient to spend a
specified sum for each dollar spent by the federal government in the grant (the match can
often be in-kind contributions to a program, such as office space, rather than cash)
or maintenance of effort provisions that require the recipient to continue a specified level
of spending in a specific area to receive the federal funds and to use the funds to
supplement, not supplant, spending.29
Project grants—about 70 percent of all categorical grant programs, but considerably
less than half of total categorical aid outlay—are the realm of the grants person, the
individual assigned by many state and local governments and nonprofit agencies to
manage the quest for external assistance. (Formula and reimbursement categories, plus
the block and revenue-sharing assistance examined later, do not require competitive
application to receive the funds but do require competent reporting of use of the funds.)
This person becomes familiar with the activities of federal agencies and private
foundations (state governments tend not to use project grants) and watches available
funding announcements published in sources such as the Federal Register and
the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. When project requirements and the
activities of the government coincide, the manager prepares a project proposal. The
funding agency awards go to proposals evaluated as best according to legislative and
regulatory constraints. Decisions are based on the extent to which the proposal responds
to the requirements presented in the funding advertisement, the extent to which the
proposer demonstrates ability to carry out the project, and other factors such as the
creativity or novelty of the project approach or the possibility that results may be used
elsewhere. Selection criteria and weighting among factors are usually published with
program announcements. Skeptics stress the significance of noncompetitive, political
factors in some assistance programs, however. These are the earmarked or pork-barrel
projects described in an earlier chapter. Sidebar 14–1 outlines basic rules for writing a
grant proposal to a government or nongovernment donor.
One peculiarity of the categorical grant must be recognized. For the recipient, the
grant is most valuable if it supports an activity the recipient was going to undertake even
without the assistance. In that case, there is minimal disruption of local interest, and
resources are released for use in accord with local priorities. For the donor, the grant is
most powerful when it supports activities not ordinarily undertaken at levels consistent
with the donor’s interest. Thus, there is some divergence of interest between recipient and
donor in a well-designed categorical grant.
Critics of the categorical grant system emphasize three particular difficulties. First is
the administrative complexity of the categorical grant system. In an effort to ensure that
federal policy objectives are met as nearly as possible by the recipients, federal programs
establish elaborate control mechanisms to monitor and shape actions taken by the
recipient. These mechanisms usually have different planning, application, reporting, and
accounting requirements—none of which coincide with those ordinarily used by the
recipient government. Not only are these controls an irritation, but also they divert state
and local resources to the administrative process. Some programs may be deemed to have
so many controls and required expenditures that they are not worth applying for.
A second criticism is the program overlap and duplication that has emerged in the
federal grant system. Complexity means that some communities do not participate,
leaving their residents less well served than would be desirable. Other local governments
aggressively seek funds, producing extraordinary assistance for their residents.
Governments may even use funds from one program to meet another program’s matching
requirements, thus thwarting the intention of matching to stimulate local expenditure.
Third, critics complain that categorical grants distort local priorities. Although grant
requirements try to reflect national interests, the distortion may exceed the level justified
by the traditional spillover-of-local-action argument. Furthermore, the aid may not be
reliable. Aid may be eliminated after a few years, leaving state and local governments
with program responsibility, but no resources. The combination of these criticisms has
been instrumental in movement toward block assistance and calls for a return to generalpurpose assistance.
Block Grants
Block grants are usually distributed to general-purpose governments (categorical grants
often go to special-purpose governments or non-governments) according to a statutory
formula to finance activities in a broad functional area. Recipients have considerable
discretion in how to spend the money. Among the features of federal block grants are
these: “[A]id is authorized for a wide range of activities within a broadly defined
functional area; recipients have substantial discretion to identify problems, design
programs, and allocate resources; administrative, fiscal reporting, planning, and other
federally imposed requirements are limited to those necessary to ensure that national
goals are being accomplished; and federal aid is distributed on the basis of statutory
formula with few, if any, matching requirements and, historically, spending has been
capped.”30 Federal block grants support programs that include health (Community Mental
Health Services, Prevention and Treatment of Substance Abuse, Maternal and Child
Health Services, Preventive Health and Health Services), crime control (Local Law
Enforcement, Juvenile Accountability Incentive), community development (Community
Development), social services (Social Services, Child Care and Development, LowIncome Home Energy Assistance, Community Services), aid for the needy (Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families), and emergency management (Emergency Management
Performance).31 Some federal lawmakers prefer block grants because they do cap federal
spending and may encourage recipient agencies to be more efficient in use of grant
resources.
The largest single surge of conversion from categorical to block grants in terms of
programs involved was in the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 (P.L. 97–35), when
fifty-seven categoricals were consolidated into nine block grants (social services; homeenergy assistance; community development; elementary and secondary education;
alcohol, drug abuse, and mental health; maternal and child care; community services;
primary health care; and preventative health and health services). Federal welfare reform,
through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(P.L. 104–193), added welfare to the list of block grants to states by replacing Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a formula entitlement paid to states for
distribution to needy mothers and children, with a multiyear, fixed-appropriation block
grant to states for support of the welfare programs. The new program is Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families or TANF. The appropriated amount is distributed among
states by a formula based on money each state received for programs it replaced—either
the higher of fiscal 1994 or fiscal 1995 or the average of fiscal 1992–1994. State
programs must be within certain federal standards, and states must achieve certain
performance goals to continue to receive the funds.
The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations maintained that block
grants with “well-designed allocation formulas and eligibility provisions” could:
1. Provide aid to those jurisdictions having the greatest programmatic needs and give
them a reasonable degree of fiscal certainty.
2. Accord recipients substantial discretion in defining problems, setting priorities,
and allocating resources.
3. Simplify program administration and reduce paperwork and overhead.
4. Facilitate interfunctional and intergovernmental coordination and planning.
5. Encourage greater participation on the part of elected and appointed generalist
officials in decision making.32
Block grants should not be expected to stimulate new recipient-government
initiatives and should be confined to activities for which a broad consensus already exists.
Block grants are not designed to bend local choices in a direction more consistent with
national interest or to cause local government units to change their operating methods.
They may replace groups of similar categoricals that have already established strong local
clienteles. However, critics complain that block grants, especially community
development block grants, usually aid affluent as well as poor communities and that some
funds get used in ways that would stretch congressional intentions. Donors worry about
how the programs can ensure accountability for spending and for outcomes. Federal
block grant funding has recently been restrained as one casualty on the path toward
expenditure constraint.
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