DETAILS MATTER by Bob Ginsburg September 7, 2022
THE NEED TO RETHINK THE STRUCTURE AND PRESENTATION OF BUDGETS – “USER FRIENDLY SHOULD NOT BE OPTIONAL”
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THE NEED TO RETHINK THE STRUCTURE AND PRESENTATION OF BUDGETS – “USER FRIENDLY SHOULD NOT BE OPTIONAL”
In the next few weeks the City of Chicago and Cook County will be presenting their draft budgets. This will be followed a few weeks later by a vote by the City Council or the County Board. There will be much discussion about new programs and initiatives, BUT you will be hard pressed to actually see where that funding shows up in the published budget and how the executive branch can be held accountable. The reality of the budgets presented to the public is that the details are designed for financial reporting, not clear understanding or accountability. This “design” means that, once those draft budgets are released, it is difficult to make significant financial or even organizational changes in the budgets. Most effort goes into relatively small changes or pilot programs that can be tacked onto the existing structure.
For example, the City of Chicago budget is presented by funding source (e.g. Corporate Fund, Water Fund, Motor Vehicle tax Fund, Sewer Fund, Chicago O’Hare Airport Fund, etc.) and departments get money from different funds. This was the structure adopted fifty years ago with little modification since. Thus the Mayor’s Office appears under two funds; and the Office of Inspector General appears under five funds, as does the Chicago Police Department. Both the city and county budgets list funded positions but not how those positions relate to programs. For example the county budget lists about 300 police officers but has no substantive discussion of what they do and whether they are in Harvey or Austin. In separate sections both budgets list funding and staffing in broad categories such as narcotics, design, etc. How those relate to specific initiatives such as Invest South/West or the county’s Integrated Mental Health Initiative is not detailed.
It would be a dramatic shift if the City of Chicago budget vote included a separate and clear budget for Invest South/West which specified funding and the mechanism to coordinate spending for housing, transportation, expanded access to health care, improved funding for schools, expanded year-round youth programs, and how funding will be applied to improve public safety. This could then allow the City Council and the public to evaluate and track effectiveness and progress. The commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development (Chicago Sun Times, 9/2/2022) recently talked about “re-populating underinvested communities” which is critically important BUT that will not take place without better schools, better commercial areas, better (more regular, reliable and frequent) transit service, better access to health care and better public safety. The budget should reflect how those investments will be made and the level of resources (e.g. money and staff) that will go into addressing those needs. That would give residents and legislators a way to measure accountability. This is not a new concept. Recent articles in the Sun Times and Crain’s all discuss the comprehensive needs in our underinvested communities. (Underinvested) (Communities)
Anyone who has read any copy of this newsletter knows that I think that budgets are major policy documents and they should make it clearer how money will be spent on projects. Budgets are blueprints to show how we plan to address needs, how we identify what are important shared or community goals, AND how we can show we deliver on those plans. (N.B. In academic circles there is discussion of the Overton Window or what range of policies are acceptable to the mainstream population but that “Window” changes as more promises are actually delivered.) When budgets only show how money is allocated to departments, no one really understands how multifaceted problems are actually funded and addressed. For example, the larger issue of maintaining city streets and arterials depends on CDOT working with Streets and Sanitation and Planning and Development on coordinating and prioritizing street cleaning, snow plowing, street and gutter repairs and development projects. Community development initiatives should be coordinated by the Mayor’s Office to reflect City-wide priorities, and because they should require close collaboration, planning and budgeting between CDOT, Housing, DPD and CTA. How that happens and who is responsible should be clear in the budget – but it is not.
The importance of the budget can also be seen by the attention which political campaigns give them. The Mayor announced her 2023 budget proposal on August 10 as the “best of all possible budgets.” This was followed a few weeks later by a conservative challenger (Vallas) criticizing that budget for overoptimistic projections and a lack of transparency. Neither depiction is particularly accurate or useful, given the very real lack of transparency, and the rosy projections from one side and the commensurately gloomy view from the other. Neither the media nor the community groups are in a position to evaluate those assertions because they don’t really know how the last budget was actually spent.
Unfortunately, budgets are often viewed as “black boxes”[1] with only a broad understanding of what people think is in them. Thus the challenge is to make budgets and budget votes clean on how the projects they want funded will actually be delivered. It is a daunting task but is critical in making the government actually work and deliver results. What follows is a more detailed example for the City of Chicago that would increase transparency and accountability – especially for Invest South/West – and clarify how the city will coordinate funding and ensure that staff work together.
I have not presented an equally detailed presentation for the county because there is less centralized leadership in how departments coordinate and share resources/responsibilities. It is not clear how the county will actually implement mental health coordination between the Sheriff, Cermak Health Center, Stroger Hospital and Clinics and the County Department of Public Health, though it is likely they will put out an RFP for a consultant to do the integration or arrange for the Civic Consulting Alliance to lead a study group and issue a report.
Finally, there is some simplification in this discussion as each budget has its own unique characteristics. It should be noted that the state and federal budget processes are different in ways which lead to some greater transparency and clearer avenues to hold agencies accountable (e.gThe federal budget goes in several stages, and the budget legislation includes project details which can be understandable, even if following their implementation is harder).
We should be able to make changes to the fifty-year-old budget formats and budget approval processes. Given public cynicism about government, we need to get better control over what money is spent and how it is spent. If we can’t then the range of policies acceptable to the general public (i.e. the Overton Window) will both shrink and shift to the right with, fewer policies acceptable and fewer options for public direction in solving challenges.