Andrew Kleine, City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). 279 p. ISBN: 978‐1‐5381‐2187‐0.

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Hannah Lebovits
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13449

190 Public Administration Review • January | Fe bruary 20 22

Reviewed by: Hannah Lebovits

University of Texas at Arlington

Andrew Kleine, City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed

Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). 279 p.

ISBN: 978-1-5381-2187-0.

Hannah Lebovits is a an assistant

professor of public affairs at the University

of Texas at Arlington.

Email: hannah.lebovits@uta.edu Budgets reflect priorities. At every level of

budgeting, from individual household budgets

to the behemoth that is the federal budget, the

dollars allocated to efforts highlight the value placed

upon those endeavors. And yet, the budgeting process

in many public institutions does not begin with a

renewed look at the priorities of the organization but

with last year’s balance sheet. In his book, City on the

Line (Kleine 2019), Andrew Kleine argues that not only

is the completed budget a value statement, the process

of creating a budget should be value-laden and value-

directed, as well. City on the Line describes the process of

applying a unique method of preparing and analyzing

budgets, outcome-based budgeting, in post-recession

Baltimore, MD. Kleine served as Baltimore’s budget

director from 2008 to 2017 and took his role shortly

before the housing and financial crisis that devasted

local tax coffers and increased local vacancy rates in

cities across the United States. In City on the Line, Kleine

chronicles Baltimore’s 10-year endeavor to create and

sustain an outcome-based budgeting system in a format

that is easily accessible for scholars and practitioners

alike. The author uses his experience in Baltimore

to explain the process of outcome-based budgeting,

describe ways to resolve budgeting conflicts between and

within city departments and provide a compelling case

for a new perspective on local budgeting.

Outcome-based budgeting has received increased

attention in the last 15 years as an addition to, and

sometimes a replacement for, the canonical line-item

budgeting process. The inputs, outputs, and outcomes

are the model children of the New Public Management

movement—the process requires significant citizen

engagement, is arguably more efficient than allocating

dollars based on the budgets or recent years, and

is a highly effective way of achieving specific goals.

Outcome-based budgeting is not agency-directed but

begins with an understanding of the city’s strategy and

priorities and allocates funding in accordance with the

city’s desired outcomes. Nevertheless, applying this

system as a replacement for individual agency budgets

is a hefty endeavor that requires the institutionalization

of several feedback loops to be successfully

implemented. Therefore, case studies of successful

applications are a valuable way to understand the exact

measures and methods required to make outcome-

based budgeting work within a complex public

organization. City on the Line aims to be one such case

study and serves this role skillfully.

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 1, pp. 190–192. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13449.