Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — Civil servants and leading policy scholars from seventeen states across the US gathered at the 2025 Conference on Collaborative State and Local Policy Research on January 27–28, 2025, in Hoover’s new Shultz Auditorium.
Presenters discussed innovative new government programs and fresh ways of evaluating existing ones across multiple disciplines including health, criminal justice, housing, education, and public finance.
In each presentation, scholars showed unique insights into government policy using administrative data supplied by a state or local government entity. The questions tackled by the scholars were typically motivated by the needs of the government partners themselves.
The conference is part of an ongoing effort by Hoover’s State and Local Governance Initiative to examine policy outcomes of government programs using high-quality, comprehensive data.
“Our aim is to help academics better understand the issues on the ground that are keeping public servants up at night and urgently require their attention, to help public servants make informed policy decisions based on rigorous research, and to grow a network of people who see the tremendous value in learning from the policy experiments happening in laboratories of democracy across the country,” said conference co-organizer and Hoover Fellow Valentin Bolotnyy.
Hoover Senior Fellow Thomas Dee presented data on a program in several Bay Area cities that sends trained mental health professionals out on police calls where a mental health crisis is suspected.
Using data from cities including San Mateo, Daly City, and Redwood City, CA, he found that between 2021 to 2023, dispatching mental health professionals along with police in these instances resulted in a decline in the number of calls for police service that involved mental health crises, as well as a drop in the number of involuntary psychiatric holds ordered.
However, the program, known as Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team, did not lower the overall number of calls to police requiring a response during that period.
Using data on arrests, detentions, and drug overdoses from the city of Chicago, Panka Bencsik of Vanderbilt University and Ashna Arora of Arnold Ventures were able to assess the benefits of a new Chicago program where those arrested for simple drug possession bypass the regular criminal pathway and are directed straight to treatment for substance abuse.
In the usual sequence, a person arrested for drug possession crime is taken into custody at a police precinct, charged, moved to a city detention center, transferred to the local jail, and then appears before a judge before being released on a promise to appear.
With this program, a substance use treatment provider is situated within a police station waiting for individuals who could benefit from treatment following their apprehension by law enforcement.
After meeting with a substance abuse treatment counselor, they are never charged and are directed to go straight to drug treatment.
To qualify, the accused must be found with less than one gram of cocaine, heroin, or other analog substance, and have no charges involving a victim and no prior convictions for violence or sex offenses.
The scholars found that participants in this program were statistically less likely to be rearrested for drug possessions or violent crimes in the future.
They also showed similar levels of commitment to drug treatment programs thirty and sixty days after arrest.
In a presentation on teacher quality and compensation, Senior Hoover Fellow Eric Hanushek spoke about his research on public school teacher salary reforms in Dallas, Texas that started in 2012.
By changing the compensation policy away from seniority and tying it instead to pupil performance, as well as offering bonuses to teachers who agreed to teach in poor-performing schools, the Dallas public school system was able to see average math scores increase by 0.2 standard deviations between 2014 to 2019.
Hanushek argued that the experience in Dallas shows that other school districts can address teacher shortages by reforming salary structures and creating the right incentives.
Research Fellow Oliver Giesecke presented his findings on how cities and towns grapple with sudden fiscal shocks.
Using data from the state of Connecticut, he found that municipalities there typically opt to raise property taxes rather than cut amenities or services when faced with a gap.
But raising property taxes, Giesecke found, also increases the chances of residents moving to another community. He found that in Connecticut, every 10 percent increase in property taxes increases the propensity of the average resident to leave by 0.15 percent.
Other presentations made at the conference included a look at how large language models are helping authorities predict which police officers are most likely to commit misconduct, how cognitive behavioral therapy in jails can reduce rates of violence, and what works and what doesn’t when it comes to encouraging households to save for college.
Additional highlights of the conference included a dinner talk by Jens Ludwig from the University of Chicago Crime Lab which focused on his forthcoming book on gun violence in American cities.
The event was capped off with a public servant panel which brought together officials from California, Hawaii, and West Virginia and was moderated by Research Fellow Rebecca Lester. The panel emphasized the benefits and challenges of government-academic research partnerships and underscored the importance of trust for successful collaboration.
For more information on the annual Conference on Collaborative State & Local Policy Research and the Hoover Institution’s State and Local Governance Initiative, click here.
