Taxpayer's Guide to the Hillsborough County Budget: turning the tide from distrust to understanding.

• Author: Johnson, Eric R.

Explaining the budget in easily understood terms meaningful to the citizens has helped defuse the public's general distrust of government in Hillsborough County, Florida.

Hillsborough County, Florida, received GFOA's 1993 Award for Excellence in Financial Management for the Budgeting and Financial Management category for a document it produces to educate county taxpayers on the principles of county budgeting: the Taxpayer's Guide to the Hillsborough County Budget. First published in July 1992, the Taxpayer's Guide was designed to be updated

annually as a supplement to conventional budget documents. It has proven to be an effective tool for improving citizen understanding of the county's budget and budgeting process.

Problem: Distrust of Government

What led to the production of the Taxpayer's Guide as a budget supplement? In general, a relatively small number of vocal activists in Hillsborough County had taken advantage of the public's general suspicion of government to raise opposition to new programs and new revenues--a problem not unique to Hillsborough County. The news media helped focus attention on the controversy. To counter the opposition, management sought to educate groups of county residents on basic issues related to county government budgeting in Florida.

What led to this distrust? One factor was the tendency of the news media to focus on the bottom line--in Hillsborough County's case, a $1.5 billion budget. Over the past several years, the bottom line had changed significantly, largely due to new bond issues with impacts on reserves, debt service, internal transfers between funds and the county's capital program. Most of this activity did not affect the requirement for property taxes, but the bottom line moved, and suspicion developed.

Other factors underlying citizen distrust included growth in taxes and taxing authorities as rural Hillsborough County evolved into an urban area due to heavy development and population growth in the 1980s. New programs and new taxing authorities led to confusion over what services the county provides and how it pays for them. In Florida, counties provide criminal justice and social services to a countywide population. In addition, counties provide municipal-type services--police protection, fire suppression, zoning, recreation, road maintenance and others--to the unincorporated population of the county. By 1992, the county population had grown to where Hillsborough County was providing countywide services to more than 800,000 residents. It also was providing municipal services to more than 500,000 residents, twice as many residents as the City of Tampa, the largest municipality within the county. School districts are separate taxing authorities in Florida, and there may be several other local taxing authorities in each county in addition to any municipalities. In...