COUNCIL VIEWS TOWARD TARGETING OF DEVELOPMENT POLICY BENEFITS

This research examines city council member views toward efforts to dir ect the benefits of local development policies to certain areas or int erests within communities. Using a large national sample of council me mbers, the analysis finds substantial support for the proposition that development should benefit needy areas within a community. Consistent with expectation, minority council members are found to be more suppo rtive of targeting efforts than are Anglo members, and ward representa tives appear marginally more supportive of such efforts than do at-lar ge representatives. Partisan affiliation, in general, does not seem to affect those attitudes, but Democratic ward representatives are much more supportive of targeting than either Democratic at-large represent atives or Republican council members. Consistent with some distributiv e policy-making models, we find that council members from cities with considerable experience with economic development programs are most li kely to believe that such programs gain popularity because they can be targeted to specific interests within the community. Such attitudes c ould lead to either need-based or universalistic targeting of benefits .