Norway was the worst case. I was most surprised that I couldn't find the information, and if I did find someone, they didn't know about what was happening at a local level. I came to the conclusion, after a lot of phone calls, that the central government wasn't involved and didn't know what was going on.
In Iceland there are 60 harbours, quite large--200 to 300 boats per harbour; 13 large, multi-purpose harbours. The ownership is local government; operations and repair are local government; fees and charges are set nationally, collected locally based on tonnage. On capital funding, central government does fund 60% to 75% of the capital funds, and they have a very centralized capital planning system.
I think I described it in more detail, because I thought that was important. On page 6 of the report it says the federal government, through the Icelandic Maritime Administration, plays a major role in funding harbour works. It reviews the financial statements of each harbour annually as part of funding requests by the municipalities. A four-year capital plan is prepared every two years. So it's forward looking.
Municipalities submit project proposals, which are evaluated against a set of well-defined standards through the use of a computer program. The plan is submitted to the Althing, which is the parliament in Iceland, for approval. The use of specific evaluation criteria and a transparent review process apparently results in few changes in the list of projects provided to the parliament, according to our interview. Only five of 130 projects were changed in the last plan, according to my contact.
So you go from one extreme, Norway, which is not involved, to a very elaborate system.