Recommended budget practices: incorporating stakeholders into the process.

• Author: Johnson, Eric R.
• Position: Hillsborough County, FL

Illustrations from Hillsborough County, Florida, highlight advantages and pitfalls of various modes of public participation in developing and adopting the budget.

Participation by interested parties in the budget process has received a new boost from the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting's (NACSLB) recent adoption of recommended budgetary practices. Several of the recommended practices encourage the participation of "stakeholders" in governmental budgeting. Stakeholders is an inclusive term covering elected officials, government employees and their representatives, local residents and businesses, and others interested in government finances and services. As local governments seek to incorporate more stakeholder participation in their process, there are a variety of approaches that can be used. At the same time, practitioners must understand both the benefits and the limits of such participation. In its attempt to incorporate stakeholder input consistent with the intent of the NACSLB recommended practices, Hillsborough County, Florida, has used a variety of approaches.

To a very large degree, the incorporation of stakeholder participation in Hillsborough County's budget process was a matter of evolution and did not reflect any specific objective of county government. As county staff reviewed the stakeholder participation component of the NACSLB recommended budgetary practices, they found that most of the steps needed to incorporate stakeholder participation were already in place. Several of the ways in which Hillsborough stakeholders participate - and their strengths and potential pitfalls - are discussed in this article.

Aiding Stakeholder Participation

Among the more common ways in which stakeholders participate in the budget process are through publications, public hearings, community meetings, advisory committees, and surveys.

Publications. Recommended Practice 3.2 states, "A government should disseminate broad goals and review them with stakeholders." One element is the creation of budget documents and other publications that convey essential information on organizational goals and associated policies, plans, and resource allocations. This information needs to be available to casually interested stakeholders while giving those interested in more detail an opportunity to understand much more about the workings of government and how it is financed. The budget document itself can serve as a primary vehicle for educating stakeholders, especially when it presents charts and tables that "slice and dice" the budget into a variety of formats: by organization, by program, by fund, and by type of expenditures and combinations of each of these formats.

Production of a full-blown recommended budget provides stakeholders who are interested in participating in the adoption process an opportunity to see the budget in detail before it is cast in stone. A final adopted budget allows stakeholders the opportunity to see what eventually made it through the review process so that there are no mixed signals over what was adopted. Each document serves a critical function in educating those interested in the process and in emphasizing what was reflected at each stage. While those most interested in the budget may access the full document, others interested in budgeting may need a smaller dose of detail and be more interested in the big picture. A variety of GFOA publications give good examples of how to communicate budget information effectively, and reviewing other jurisdictions' documents can be a good approach to borrowing ideas.

Popular budgets, budgets-in-brief, and executive summaries all can satisfy the casual reader by providing key issues and major programmatic and financial changes. For several years, Hillsborough has produced a Taxpayers' Guide to the Hillsborough County Budget, targeted towards those interested in summary information and focusing particularly on what "drives" a budget over time.(1) Due to the public's limited exposure to the full budget document, the Taxpayer's Guide is produced inexpensively for mass distribution. Between one and two thousand copies are distributed annually at public meetings, through branch libraries, and to those who call the budget office...