The Public Administration Review announced this week that Professor Manny Teodoro of the La Follette School of Public Affairs is the recipient of its prestigious Chester Newland Award for his 2025 paper, “Medium and Message by Mail: A Field Experiment to Promote Low-Income Assistance Programs.”
The Public Administration Review is one of the premier scholarly journals for public administration research theory, and practice. Each year, they present the Newland Award for the best “practically speaking” article of the year. The journal described Teodoro’s study as “a beautifully designed field experiment on reducing administrative burden and boosting program uptake for lower-income residents.”
“I believe the best public policy research is clear, accessible and relevant to policymakers and administrators,” Teodoro said. “So, this award means a great deal to me.”
Teodoro’s study was a large-scale field experiment that grew out of a collaboration with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) in the Cleveland area. Looking for ways to promote low-income assistance programs that often suffer from low uptake, Teodoro and his collaborator from NEORSD, Jean Smith, sent thousands of informational mailings to customers that varied in a host of ways. They then compared these customers with a control group that received no mail and with each other.
They found that direct mail significantly increased program interest, postcards were as effective as letters, and multiple mailings made little difference compared to just one. “This is a rare, happy case when the simplest, cheapest option also turned out to be most effective,” Teodoro said. “That’s great news for ratepayers and utilities alike.”
“Underutilization of assistance programs is a problem for thousands of utilities across the country,” Teodoro continued. “Many low-income households spend money each month on utility bills that could stay in their pockets. I hope this research can help inform the public of the options available to reduce their bills, especially as utility rates continue to rise.”
Teodoro’s broader work addresses how utilities approach affordability, transparency, and governance. His development of the Affordability Ratio has equipped water utilities with a practical, equity-centered framework for evaluating rate structures and building public trust. His Wisconsin Waterworks Excellence Project has made water utility performance data more accessible and actionable through report card-style evaluations for every water utility in the state.
His award-winning book, The Profits of Distrust, explores the relationship between public services like drinking water and confidence in government. He also edited the recently released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, which brings together leading policy scholars and water sector professionals to critique current drinking water policy and make ambitious calls for action over the next 50 years. The book was born out of the 2024 conference he hosted in partnership with the Water & Health Advisory Council in recognition of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s 50th anniversary.
The award is named after Chester Newland, a leading scholar of public administration who spent nearly five decades at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California before his retirement in 2015. He also served as editor-in-chief for the Public Administration Review from 1984 to 1990.
The Public Administration Review officially announced Teodoro’s selection for the award during the American Society for Public Administration’s 2026 Annual Conference held in Hollywood, California from March 20-24, 2026.