Involving citizens in budgeting across North America.

• Position: News & Numbers - Brief article

From 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting has expanded to 46 North American communities in the past six years.

"Public Spending, By the People," a report from the Kettering Foundation, aims to provide a general understanding of how communities implement participatory budgeting, who participates, and what sorts of projects get funded. It finds that communities using the process have invested substantially in the process and have...