Congressional Considerations and Urban Characteristics in the Selection of Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities

ABSTRACT:

This study examines the benefit hypothesis from distributive theory to test the assumption that the Department of Housing and Urban Development selected cities for an empowerment zone or enterprise community based on political favoritism in 1994. With data collected from the 290 urban applications, the independent variables in the ordinal logit regression model include oversight committee assignments in the House of Representatives, seniority, poverty, population, and award status sought by cities. The regression output provides support for the benefit hypothesis; the influence of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program’s primary funding source, is significant. However, the results of the district level coefficients question to some extent the argument that non-political factors (e.g., poverty and internal dynamics) were important to the agency’s decision-making calculus. The implications of the study reveal that the agency can accommodate its political allies without forfeiting the program’s broader goals.