An important actor in the Central Park story is Frederick Law Olmsted, the park's first superintendent. As the story goes, Olmsted was able to implement his vision for the park because he could be autonomous from Tammany hall. The Central Park Commission's independent taxing authority provided Olmsted the ability to secure funding without paying homage to city's political rainmakers or hiring their partisan cronies or pet contractors.

The history of the creation of Central Park is an extreme example of how the inherent political nature of city government can make it more difficult for park and recreation professionals to pursue professional goals for their agencies.

The autonomy of local park, recreation, conservation and special recreation districts can help bring fiscally efficient and professional services to the public.

Measuring Autonomy
One of the most important professional goals to parks and recreation professionals is the pursuit of the business model of parks and recreation services. In this model, parks and recreation professionals become entrepreneurs rather than solely public administrators. To do so, they need autonomy. The academic question is: What really happens when they get it?

In an attempt to answer that question, in his 1986 doctoral dissertation written for West Virginia University, Van Anderson studied autonomy and revenue. He compared levels of autonomy that West Virginia municipal parks and recreation departments exhibited to the levels of fees they were allowed to charge for services.

Anderson's primary hypothesis was the more autonomous a park and recreation system is, the greater the percentage of the budget that will be from self-generated revenues (fees).

From his data, Anderson created an autonomy index, which he compared to agencies' budgets. Anderson's findings suggested that when it comes to percentages of budgets' fee revenues, agency autonomy matters. He found that for highly autonomous agencies, an average of 47.3 percent of the operating budget was from fees. For agencies exhibiting low levels of autonomy, only 10.1 percent of operating budgets were derived from fees.

In 2002, I conducted a somewhat broader study. In this study, parks and recreation administrators in Illinois were asked to rate their levels of budgetary autonomy on a Likert scale. They were also asked the percentages of their budgets derived from fees and the number of programs that their agencies operated.

The findings of the 2002 study affirmed Anderson's hypothesis that when parks and recreation agencies were provided the autonomy to set their own fees, a greater number of recreation programs were produced by the agency and a greater percentage of their budgets resulted from fees. The findings showed that agencies with high levels of autonomy generated 39.6 percent of their budgets from fees compared to 27 percent for agencies with low autonomy. At the end of 2005, I conducted a similar study in Wisconsin, and that data was merged with the Illinois data. The findings continued to suggest that administrative autonomy is a significant and meaningful factor in determining the number of recreation programs that an agency offers, as well as the percentage of the operating budget generated from program fees. To those of us in the parks and recreation profession, this comes as no surprise. Without the burden of political patronage and with the autonomy to pursue professional goals we, like Olmsted, can be allowed to do great things. Among these things are enhancing and diversifying our revenue streams.

Form of Governance and Autonomy
Considering the Central Park story, it can be useful to test our hypothesis that the structure of government makes a difference. This was done using the combined data from the 2002 Illinois and 2005 Wisconsin studies.

The findings from the combined data from both states show that agencies with high levels of autonomy generated 35.3 percent of their budgets from program fees, while agencies with low levels of autonomy generated only 23.5 percent of their budgets from program fees.

This continues to suggest that autonomy makes a difference. The question becomes: Does the structure of government create autonomy?

Separating park districts and parks and recreation departments into two groups and comparing their averages addressed that question.

In the comparison, Illinois park district administrators reported a level of autonomy that was 36.2 percent higher than their counterparts at parks and recreation departments in Illinois and Wisconsin. Similarly, the total number of programs offered by park districts was 12.7 percent higher than parks and recreation departments.

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If autonomy is related to structure of government and to percentage of budgets generated from fees, there should be a relationship between the structure of government and percentage of budgets generated from fees. That hypothesis was also tested.

The graph shows that as a percentage of the total operating budgets, park districts generate 36.7 percent of their budgets from fees, while parks and recreation departments generated 30.9 percent of their budgets from fees. This would suggest that the business model used to create the Central Park Commission is still relevant today. Special districts appear to be more entrepreneurial because they have the autonomy to do so. Education and Autonomy As an educator, it is of particular interest to me to determine whether professional training affects the level of recreation programs agencies offer and, therefore, the revenue streams that their agencies generate.

Within the Illinois and Wisconsin data, it was found that agencies that were managed by people having a master's degree in the parks and recreation field offered 19.6 percent more recreation programs than agencies with administrators who didn't have a master's in the field.

Similarly, agencies that were managed by people having a master's degree in the field generated 18.1 percent more of their operating budgets from fees than agencies where the administrator did not have a master's degree in the parks and recreation field The effect of agency administrators having a CPRP was even more pronounced. Park districts and parks and recreation departments in Illinois and Wisconsin that were led by administrators who had CPRPs offered 43.4 percent more total recreation programs than agencies where the director was not a CPRP.

Considering the percentage of their budgets that were generated from fees, the differences were nearly the same.

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The figure above shows that agencies in Illinois and Wisconsin headed by administrators with professional certification generated more revenues from fees than agencies where the director was not certified. Another important finding is that the Illinois study showed 56 percent of park districts were headed by certified park and recreation professionals and only 38 percent of municipal parks and recreation department directors were certified. This difference may provide part of the explanation why park districts provide higher numbers of recreation programs. It suggests that park districts value professional training more than municipal park and recreation departments value professional training.

Conclusions
These studies show that, on average, if parks and recreation administrators are professionally trained and provided more autonomy to do their jobs, the number of programs an agency offers could increase, diversifying the agency's revenue streams and increasing the percentage of self-generated revenues in the budget.

But the studies are relevant for another reason. They let us know that the structure of government does make a difference. Evidently Olmsted knew it, which may be why he came to Illinois and did so much of his work here.

Dr. David N. Emanuelson
is an assistant professor of recreation administration and the graduate internship coordinator at the George Williams College of Aurora University. He holds a bachelor's degree in parks and recreation from the University of Illinois, an MBA from Indiana University, an MPA and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University. He has 30 years of administrative experience as a parks and recreation department and park district director, leading his park district to the Gold Medal Award in 2003.

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