The holidays are upon us and here at CityNews we figured we’d offer some last minute suggestions in case there is a public servant in your life that could use some loving.
Looking through our curated resource list ‘CityNewsU’ you might just be able to pull out a Christmas miracle.
Or you could simply treat yourself to some needed literature?
Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector
David Rosenbloom, Robert Kravchuk, Richard Clerkin
A go-to graduate level text, this is a comprehensive look at the systems that underpin public administration, and is used in both MPA an MBA programs. It's comprehensive, but that gives it shelf life as a reference book and you might not need any other single guide to the profession.
Guide to Local Government Finance in California
Michael Multari, Michael Coleman, Kenneth Hampian, Bill Statler
CityNews counts several of the authors among its good friends (we won't say which ones), but suffice to say they have laid down the most comprehensive look at this -- maybe any state's -- local finances. It belongs on your desk. We're only putting other books in this section to round it out.
California's Tax Machine: A History of Taxing and Spending in the Golden State (Second Edition)
David R. Doerr
Doerr spent 40 years on the California tax scene, including 28 years as chief consultant to the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation, and this is his opus. This is a blow-by-blow account of the politics and policies that have shaped the tax structure in California. It's replete with war stories and biographical notes on key players over the history of the state, though sections on Prop 13, Prop 218 and other more recent battles are more detailed.
The Elusive Eden: A New History of California
Richard Rice, William Bullough, Richard Orsi, Mary Ann Irwin.
From Native cultures through to the census of 2010, this is the definitive guide to the state's development and evolution. It's the backbone of many UC and CSU survey courses in California History.
Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government
Gavin Newsom
Yep, that Gavin Newsom. Citizenville argues that today's government is stuck in the last century while—in both the private sector and our personal lives—absolutely everything else has changed. The explosion of social media, the evolution of Internet commerce, the ubiquity of smart phones that can access all the world's information; in the face of these extraordinary advances, our government appears increasingly irrelevant and out of touch. A good read, and hey, this guy could be Governor.
Image Credit: By Kelvin Kay, en:user:kkmd [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons