Evaluating Enabling Laws for Special Districts: A Case Study in Oklahoma

Excerpts from the report: The purpose of this report is to present an outline for evaluating the enabling laws that authorize special districts. The outline is applied to the Oklahoma enabling laws for the equal purposes of developing and testing the outline and evaluating the laws. Because the statutes were the primary focus, relevant cases have not been explored. Nothing stated in this report should be considered as legal authority--only the original statutes and cases can be the legal authority. The report is a first step in developing a systematic procedure for analyzing the organizations that manage natural resources. While research has been done on costs and benefits, economic implications, and other aspects of natural resource programs, relatively little has been done to analyze the organizational structure. Recently, interest in the structure has been stimulated by the proliferation of these kinds of governmental units, and by the realization of how the organizational structure has affected the success of past and present resource programs. The outline is intended to be of value to resource development planners and administrators in Oklahoma, and also to establish an approach for evaluating districts in other States. With this in mind, the outline is expressed in general terms and with broad perspective. Oklahoma was chosen for the study because a number of resource development activities have taken place there in the past decade or more, and because several related studies on other phases of resource development in the State are underway.