J. OF PUBLIC BUDGETING, ACCOUNTING & FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, 14(3), 463-485
FALL 2002
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
IN PUBLIC BUDGETING: A DISCUSSION
Julia Beckett and Cheryl Simrell King*
ABSTRACT. This article considers the recent emphasis on the importance and
value of citizen participation, involvement, and engagement in local government
and how active participation extends to public budgeting. The inclusion of citizen
participation in local government budget processes challenges the traditional budget
discourse between managers and representatives. Active citizen participation
provides valuable comments and insight as well as complexity and challenges to
administrative processes. This article discusses the themes, opportunities,
techniques and strategies developed in this symposium to expand citizen
participation in public budgeting. Continued discussion and innovation in active
citizen participation in budgeting is encouraged.
INTRODUCTION
The question of the role of citizens in public budgeting processes is an
important and significant question. It draws attention to many of the wicked
paradoxes and tensions in the recent movement to increase citizen
participation, involvement, and engagement in administrative processes.
While many people agree, scholars and practitioners alike, that it is a good
thing to open administrative processes to citizens, there is little
…………………..
* Julia Beckett, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor, Department of Public
Administration and Urban Studies, University of Akron. Her teaching and research
interests are in intergovernmental management, public finance, and public law.
Cheryl Simrell King, Ph.D., is member of the Faculty, Graduate Program in Public
Administration, The Evergreen State College. Her teaching and research interests
are in democratization of administrative processes and structures.
Copyright © 2002 by PrAcademics Press
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agreement about how to do this and about the degree to which citizens
should or should not be involved. The consensus seems to be that citizens
should be involved when it makes reasonable sense, when the issues are
understandable, and when citizen involvement can be effective. Citizen
participation can advise administrative expertise and legislative decisions.
When issues are complicated and, seemingly, the purview of the people
who know best what is best, we think those issues should be left to the
administrative experts.
It is best, at this point, to outline what we mean by citizens and
citizenship. It is common in contemporary conversation to refer to subjects
of government as “clients,” “customers,” “taxpayers” or even “the public.”
We purposively avoid these terms because of the way they shift and change
the relationships between and among citizens and those who govern. In
using the term citizen, we are not intending to proffer a term that, by
definition, excludes those who are not legal citizens. Instead, we seek to
suggest that citizenship is both a legal status and a practice; in this
symposium, all the authors are suggesting that citizenship is more than a
mere category. The idea of citizenship has a long history in Western
political philosophy, beginning with the city-states of ancient Greece.
Citizenship has long been thought of as both a status and a practice (Stivers,
1990). As status, it connotes formal relationships between the individual
and the state, including rights (voting, free speech, and freedom of
association) but few, if any, responsibilities. As practice, citizenship entails
obligations and activities that make up the essence of political life, such as
participation in governance and the duty to consider the general good.
Practicing citizenship means being significantly engaged in governance
and in considering the general good in one’s engagement. As indicated
earlier, this might be difficult to achieve when the issues on the table are
technical and complex. Indeed, budgeting may be the thorniest of
administrative issues – one of the last bastions of administrative expertise.
While there have been some successes in opening up certain administrative
processes that are technically and scientifically complex and considered to
be out of the realm of “ordinary” citizens (for example, the EPA has
recently experimented with citizen engagement in regional environmental
planning in several cities across the U.S., including Cleveland), budgetary
processes tend to remain closed because of the belief that citizens do not
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
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have the knowledge and expertise needed to make the complex and
technical decisions involved in allocating public funds. While the question
of whether or not citizens have the capacity to be involved in budgetary
decisions remains to be answered, the question brings to light many of the
significant conundrums of citizen involvement, not the least of which is
how citizens can be involved in administrative processes in a responsible
and informed way.
In the state of Washington, as well as in many other Western states,
citizens are currently involved in decisions that affect resource allocation
through referendum and initiative processes. Anti-government movements
and ideological organizations are currently working to limit the power that
public officials (legislators and administrators alike) have over taxation and
other resource allocation decisions. In an ironic appeal, using “taxpayers"
as their audience rather than “citizens,” these reforms argue that the
government takes too much from them to fund a beast that is growing too
powerful and too big. This movement speaks to a certain kind of citizen
who can fall anywhere on the ideological spectrum, from the left to the
right. In the recent presidential election, the candidates from both of the
major parties have taken up the clarion call to reduce the size of government
and return more to taxpayers. The desire to limit the funding of government
seemingly does not belong to only one party or on one side of the
ideological spectrum.
However, as a columnist writing in the Olympia, Washington local
paper puts it: “The problem is more fundamental – ‘We the People’ have
lost control of the reins of government” (Preble, 2000, p. 9). People do not
trust their governments to make decisions that are in the best interest of the
people. While the left-wing calls for more democratic, deliberative, and
inclusive governments, driving decisions down to the people (see, for
example, the “citizen-centered” government advocates in public
administration, referenced below), the most prevalent “right-wing” response
to this loss of trust and control is to propose state initiatives to limit the
spending power of governments by limiting their taxation power. In
addition, many of these initiatives also seek to make decisions about how
resources are allocated within government, thus taking away the power of
legislators and administrators to make these decisions.
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The initiative movements seem to make the question of whether citizens
should be involved in budgetary decisions moot. Citizens are involved in
budgetary decisions and that involvement is increasing, across the country,
on a yearly basis. The concern about electoral involvement is that it is often
a nondeliberative or ignorant act, rather than a reasoned decision. Do
citizens, as a rule, make decisions about these initiatives based upon 30second sound bites and inflammatory advertising? Are voters making
decisions based upon appeals to their pocketbooks and to their personal
frustrations? Informed decision making requires considering options (e.g.,
what are the consequences of making decision A over decision B?). Active
citizen participation requires being engaged in a process that leads to
making informed decisions about taxation and leading to decisions that
have the public good in mind rather than private gain.
Last year, in the state of Washington, citizens limited the taxing power
of the government by passing statewide Initiative 695, repealing an annual
state-wide property tax on automobiles. Washington does not assess an
income tax. Because of this, one of the most important revenue generating
tools in Washington was the automobile tax. The implications to state and
local governments are astounding. Agencies and localities are struggling to
provide the same level of services (service delivery expectations were not
changed) on radically reduced revenue streams. This year, in the state of
Washington, citizens limited the taxing power of localities by passing an
initiative limiting property taxes. Citizens constricted the local
governments’ ability to allocate resources through several other initiatives:
imposing a compulsory cost of living adjustments for teachers and staff in
local K-12 schools and community colleges; imposing a compulsory
reduction in faculty-student ratios in classrooms; and increasing capital
spending for schools. By a narrow margin, however, voters rejected an
initiative that would have required that 90% of state transportation funds be
allocated for road construction and maintenance with the remaining 10% to
be used for other transportation (e.g., buses, rail, airports, ferries, etc.).
While it can be argued that the intentions behind these initiatives are
laudable, the long-term fiduciary effects of these initiatives are significantly
problematic. In the main, voters are not aware of the long-term effects when
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
467
they cast their vote. They are thinking of the here and now and, for the
most part, how these decisions will affect them personally rather than how
the initiatives affect the totality of the public or the “civic good.” They are
participating in governance through voting, but are usually not engaged in
a deliberative process that informs their decision.
The short story here is that people/citizens are participating in
budgeting and fiscal matters. The problem is that this participation is
typically uninformed and not made in engagement with those who have the
expertise to ensure that decisions being made are informed decisions. The
decisions being made are not made with the people, but by the people, for
the most part without the tools to make good, well-informed decisions. In
a way, this type of citizen participation is not unlike the kind of citizen
involvement that Rimmerman (1997) calls “outlaw citizenship” –
participation that is intended to be an action against government, instead of
an action with governments. Participation that comes out of anger and
discontent may focus on individual aims and purposes. The preferred
alternative, instead, comes out of an engaged process that has, as its
intended ends, outcomes that serve the civic good.
INVOLVING CITIZENS IN FISCAL AND BUDGETARY MATTERS
We contend, as do the other authors in this symposium, that a better
way to involve citizens in fiscal and budgetary matters is to do so in the
ways people are writing about in this symposium – at the ground level.
These methods of involvement need to take citizen participation beyond the
kind of occasional participation that happens when one votes or when one
gives testimony at a public hearing toward significant engagement in the
processes of budgeting. This requires a shift in the way we think about
citizen involvement away from the notion of participation toward the idea
of engagement.
Engaged citizenship requires that one view citizenship, as discussed
earlier, as both a status and a practice. Citizenship as practice emphasizes
“freedom to.” Engaged citizens make public decisions based on their sense
of the public interest, using phronesis, or practical wisdom, and experiential
knowledge relevant to the circumstances. Through engagement in
governance, citizens develop capacities and skills important to the effective
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conduct of public affairs. Because they have to wrestle with problems larger
than their own private concerns, they come to develop the kind of broad
understanding and judgment that will ensure that their decisions are well
made. As John Stuart Mill put it, the citizen “is called upon…to weigh
interests not his own; to apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which
have for their reason of existence the common good” (1972, p. 233).
Toqueville argued in a similar way that through this educative process of
having to make public decisions, initial self-interested participation would
be transmuted to something approaching classical virtue (1945, p. 112). A
further benefit of this kind of citizenship is that citizens so engaged will
come to appreciate the interaction itself and, therefore, strengthen their
sense of community.
By joining together in civil and political organized activity, citizens
come to value not agreement but collaboration. As Benjamin Barber
suggests, through “strong democratic talk,” which may often involve
disagreement, citizens become “capable of genuinely public thinking and
political judgment and thus able to envision a common future in terms of
genuinely common goals” (1984, p. 197). Barber explicates this kind of
citizenship as follows:
[It is] a dynamic relationship among strangers who are transformed
into neighbors, whose commonality derives from expanding
consciousness rather than geographical proximity. Because the
sharp distinction that separates government and citizenry in
representative systems is missing, the civic bond under strong
democracy is neither vertical nor lateral but circular and dialectical.
Individuals become involved in government by participating in the
common institutions of self-government and become involved with
one another by virtue of their common engagement in politics.
They are united by the ties of common activity and common
consciousness – ties that are willed rather than given by blood or
heritage or prior consensus on beliefs and that thus depend for their
preservation and growth on constant commitment and ongoing
political activity (p. 223).
Moving toward engaged citizenship, whether in budgeting or other
administrative arenas, requires that we think about citizen participation and
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
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involvement in new ways. This is not an easy task. We are beginning, again,
to have serious discussions about citizen roles. It is time to start talking
about this question: What can and should these citizen roles look like?
Transformative movements appear to happen in stages. The first stage
involves coming to consciousness – the point where we recognize that
transformation and change is needed and includes calls for change that are
often ideological, theoretical, and dogmatic. If you will, the question of
“why” or “whether” gets answered in this first stage. The first stage of the
citizen participation movement in the U.S. has been in process for over 30
years, although the question of the appropriate involvement of citizens in
their government has been a topic of debate since the founding of this
country. The contemporary movement began, more or less, with the
community-based reforms of the Great Society programs, including the
reforms suggested by the New Public Administration movement
(Frederickson, 1980; Marini, 1971), and continuing in contemporary
“citizen-centered governance” including citizen participation movements
(Barber, 1984; Box, 1998; Frederickson, 1997; Gawthrop, 1998; King,
Stivers & Collaborators, 1998; McSwite, 1997; Thomas, 1995). In the last
30 years or so, public administrators and public administration scholars
have become conscious of the importance of citizen involvement in
administration. The question of why, or whether, citizens should be
involved in administrative governance seems to be argued with less
regularity. We know that governance processes are generally improved with
citizen involvement and that citizens should be involved in some way. If
administrators, and the administrative processes, do not invite citizens in,
then citizens will seek involvement later, perhaps in the form of NIMBYs
(Not in My Backyard - see Timney, 1996) or other kinds of reactive
“outlaw citizenship” (Rimmerman, 1997, p. 62).
In the second stage of transformation, consciousness is put to practice
and the thorny questions of “how,” “who,” “in what,” “where,” and “when”
come into play. The dogmatic claims that transformation always results in
positive outcomes (usually posited in the coming to consciousness stage)
are interrogated and deconstructed. We start experimenting with the
transformative practices and are quickly embedded in the wicked
conundrums that arise as a result. With regard to citizen involvement in
administrative practices, this second stage has been occurring in tandem
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with the first stage and overlapping for a number of years. We might agree
that citizens should be involved but we cannot agree about how to do this,
in what processes, and where or when citizens should be involved. For
example, perhaps they should be involved in making decisions about the
siting of waste plants, but not in the more traditional administrative
functions like staffing and budgeting, among others. These thorny questions
are at the core of many of the ideological differences between advocates of
citizen involvement in administrative governance.
Although contemporary administrative practices and perspectives are
more appropriately arrayed across a spectrum, because we like to think and
analyze in polarized dichotomies, we are going to suggest that there are two
major poles in contemporary administrative movements – the more
“radical” movements like citizen-based governance and the more
conservative movements like new public management and reinvention.
These movements advocate for increased citizen participation in
administrative governance, yet have significantly different definitions of
citizen participation. “New public management” advocates view
participation from a managerial perspective, building citizen participation
into managerial techniques often drawn from “total quality management”
movements in the private sector. In these models, citizens are the
“consumers” or “customers” of government service and their input is
important in order to deliver high quality products and services. Citizen
participation is encouraged in the form of “citizen satisfaction” panels or
surveys, and in performance measurement. Like in contemporary politics,
and borrowing from classical marketing techniques, new ideas are “focus
grouped” with citizens to test their viability. Citizens, in a classic
managerial model, are one of the “inputs” of the managerial process. What
is important here is to see that participation is defined as “input,” and as one
of the pieces of raw material used in the production process, and not a part
of the “machinery” that produces the public or civic good.
Another way of looking at citizen participation is as an instrument of
production – as a piece of the “machinery” that produces the public good
or civic good. For citizen-based governance scholars, citizen engagement
is an essential part of the machinery that produces governance, not raw
material input or an add-on to the already existing machinery. Achieving
this kind of citizen participation or engagement requires that we not only
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shift the way we think about citizens and their roles in governance
processes, but shift the way we govern itself – shifting the administration
processes and structures such that citizen engagement is possible.
As we read through the recent works on citizen participation and
consider the five papers in this symposium we are heartened by what we
see. The linking of a citizen participation or engagement ethic through
strategies, opportunities, and methods in the budget and financial process
of local government provides insight into the challenges and possibilities of
citizen engagement in one of the most difficult administrative arenas. The
papers also show us that many local governments are using and developing
citizen participation opportunities, regardless of the arguments in the
scholastic community.
This symposium directly challenges public budgeting orthodoxy as
applied to local governments. Through new research on the practice and
ethics of public finance managers, and by linking the budgeting and public
finance literature to the public participation literature, this symposium
proposes a different representation of public budgeting that includes the
dynamic of citizen participation in governance, policy design, and resource
allocation.
Public budgeting is typically considered a management skill and a
technical area for public administration. The politics typically involve only
the decisions of elected public officers and administrators. This orthodoxy
is currently the view presented in many of the leading public budget and
finance textbooks. The orthodox view of public budgeting comes out of the
structural and functional separation of administration and politics. Within
these distinct spheres, the technocratic expertise and competence of
administrators in budget preparation and execution are responsive to, but
distinct from, the policy decision-making of politicians. The “public”
aspects of the budget include first, its publication as a draft and official
document available to the general public. The second, participatory aspect,
is the opportunity for the public to observe and listen to executive
presentation and legislative hearings. For consistency and accountability,
these two norms are memorialized in legislation.
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In the orthodoxy of executive budgets, it does not matter if it is
theoretically possible for the public to have access to or understand the
official budget plan. Thus, like the Pareto efficiency and the Kaldor-Hicks
criteria in finance theory, the possibility, not the actuality, of achieving an
outcome is accepted. Further, it is the primary duty or obligation of the
public or politician to build the links between the public and executive
budgeting. These links are typically seen as outside the primary role of the
public manager. Thus, the norms of publication and open meetings are two
ways to allow transparency for accountability that are the responsibility of
elected officials; citizen participation affecting and influencing policy is
outside of the administrative budgetary concerns.
The “public” in this orthodox public budgeting is seen as an abstraction,
as a beneficiary or client group. They are not actively involved or cognizant
of the budget preparation and decision making. The public is represented by
elected officials who serve a mediating role. Thus, the main budget actors,
the administrators and elected officers, engage in a two-sided colloquy.
The separation of politics and administration was discredited by Dwight
Waldo (1948; 1980) and it has generally faded as a pre-eminent norm from
public administration literature, except, perhaps, in the realm of public
finance and budgeting. A cursory evaluation of leading budgeting texts
indicates maintenance of the separation of technique, expertise, and method
of budget preparation from the decision-making (Axelrod, 1995; Lee &
Johnson, 1998; Lynch, 1995; Reed & Swain, 1990; Rubin, 2000). The
technical side is for managers, and the decision making of the final proposal
is for the representatives. An affirmative or active role for citizens is rarely
mentioned. When it is, it is more often an anecdote of local innovation (e.g.
Rubin, 2000, p.86). Thus, it is correct to infer that, for the most part,
citizens are seen as being outside the budget process.
This last bastion of the politics administration dichotomy is being
challenged by a more inclusive, democratic, and participatory mode at the
local level where citizens can be engaged and interact throughout the budget
cycle. Various studies and experiments demonstrate a variety of methods,
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
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techniques, and strategies where citizen participation occurs in budgeting,
and these provide advice, questions, and feedback for managers.
What is also noted here is that many budgeteers and local managers
have acknowledged and internalized a responsibility to the constituency as
a norm, even though it may not be expressly elaborated in the leading
budget texts. Indeed, many examples are present that discuss and address
citizen participation in budget and fiscal decisions. These include efforts on
budget history (Kahn, 1997; Rubin, 1998), on budget practice, and on
practitioner values found in ICMA and GFOA. As Miller and Evers (in this
symposium), and Alexander (1999) note, the democratic ethos of acting for
the public is part of the budget and financial management normative ethics.
What the papers in this symposium show is that budgeteers and managers
are actively working to institute citizen participation in numerous settings.
A DISCUSSION OF THE PAPERS
What this symposium indicates is a concerted effort to connect the
literature of budgeting and citizen participation and to demonstrate the wide
range of strategies, situations, and methods that can be used to expand
citizen participation in budget, finance, and policy decisions. The
symposium authors considered themes of roles in participation, occasions
of participation, expansion of participation approaches, and measures of
success.
Who is Participating?
There are a few necessary comments about what is being discussed in
this symposium. As mentioned before, the term “public” and “citizen” have
broad, and sometimes different, meanings. Indeed, there are variations in
how the public or citizen is defined in this symposium. Ebdon and Robbins
and Simonsen take the broadest view of citizens and include the public
within a jurisdiction as citizens. Callahan considers citizen narrowly as
those who are appointed to serve on advisory committees and does not
distinguish them from a broader definition of the general citizenry. Orosz
is more concerned with the active citizen participant. Miller and Evers look
at a broad range of different publics affected by government, but do not
distinguish between types of citizens.
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This variance in defining “citizen” and “public” is not unique to this
symposium. To be sure, one of the fundamental issues in the citizen
participation literature today is the question of who, or what, is the
citizenry. To simplify here, to address how citizens and citizenship are
referred to in this symposium, we will refer to the public affected by a local
government as the public-at-large or PAL. The term “active citizen” is used
to represent the idea of the engaged, or active, citizen (King, Stivers &
Collaborators, 1998).
To summarize some of the useful criteria in dealing with PALs, and the
extent of their participation, there are four types of participation by citizens
defined in this symposium: passive, indirect, informed, and active. As
indicated in Table 1, they do not fit neatly in mutually exclusive categories.
The differing views of participation make it necessary to pay close
TABLE 1
Range of Citizen Participation Roles
Passive
a) Citizen is non-voter or inattentive to government
Indirect
b) Citizen is an elector of the political representatives
c) Citizen is an elector for specific issues on referenda, initiatives or
policy decisions
d) Citizen is an elector for tax levies and public debt
Informed
e) Citizen is informed and knowledgeable
f) Citizen is an interest group member — represented by group
Active
g) Citizen is involved in a single issue - complaint or call
h) Citizen is attending general meetings — observing or
commenting
i) Citizen is serving on boards — specialized and formal boards
linked to governance
j) Citizen is serving on community committees
k) Citizen is engaging in wide range of meetings and presents
altruistic viewpoints.
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attention to critiques and proposals. Types of participation in the
administrative and public context are important, as is indicated by the
symposium authors.
When and Where to Add Citizen Participation in Budgeting?
Axelrod (1995) and others have suggested that budgeting is central to
government. The extent of local government financial concerns makes them
integral to general governance and connected to policy decisions. The
connection and closeness of citizens to local government is accepted as the
rationale for intergovernmental and devolution theories (Conlan, 1998). The
closeness of citizens to local government is proposed as one reason for
citizen participation (Box, 1998). This connection between local
government and the public appears in the symposium discussions of when
and where to include participation.
As indicated earlier, in the public budgeting and financial management
literature there are different views about the roles and responsibility of
administrators towards the public. As a general foundation, there is always
a clear public purpose to budget and financial management. In addition,
there are a wide range of ways in which citizens can affect budget and
financial decision making, but most of these are passive or indirect.
Traditional roles for the public-at-large to affect local budgets and
management include
- attending meetings;
- contacting representatives
- writing letters to the editor;
- joining an interest group that lobbies;
- voting for representatives;
- circulating petitions and initiatives;
- voting on debt or tax referenda; and
- serving on advisory committees or appointed boards.
Common critiques of these traditional modes of citizen participation in
budgeting are that they are indirect and not authentic, and that they are
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controlled by an agenda that limits the ability to change the outcome of
budget. This view is presented by both Callahan (2002) and Orosz (2002)
in their assertions that PAL inclusion should be early, not late, in the budget
process and in arguing that the minimum legislated requirements of notice
and comments at an open public hearing are inauthentic.
This critique of “too little, too late” deserves some attention here. What
this critique does not directly address is whether these bare minimum
requirements have value. We assert that they do. These bare minimum
disclosure and filing provisions provide information over time, allow
comparison between communities and, provide, at the very least, a starting
place for citizen participation in budgeting. Thus, they provide some
standard of what should be done. This minimum certainly allows for greater
and varied practical efforts of citizen participation based on local needs,
innovations, and constraints. More to the point, the question is whether
meeting the bare minimum of notice and comments is sufficient and
satisfactory for both public understanding and democratic governance. We
concur with the authors in this symposium that meeting the bare minimum
is not sufficient.
The second concern with the “too little, too late” critique goes to the
complexity of the budget process. It is widely agreed that budgets are
cyclical and not linear. Budgets address a one year fiscal calendar, but
during that year there may be three different budget cycles - planning the
next budget year, executing the current year, and auditing the prior year.
Although a mandated budget hearing may be based on a nearly completed
plan, that plan is often flexible enough to allow for shifting emphasis in
application. Allowing and encouraging public comment at the approval
stage can provide valuable and authentic input (although, probably, not
engagement) in governance. Even though the general plan of a proposed
budget may not change based on public comments at the hearing, these
comments affect the implementation of the budget, and can affect the
planning of the next budget. It cannot be logically concluded that just
because citizens' comments do not change a budget document they do not
affect the budget process or that the comments are not welcome.
What may be a more positive and pragmatic inquiry is how to affect a
shift in the attitudes of people involved in budget processes to one of
inclusion. The discussions of alternative modes of participation and
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engagement in this symposium acknowledge part of the problem is to
augment traditional budget hearings where the atmosphere is formal and
controlled and the discussion is often not accessible to citizens. The second
relevant inquiry is to determine ways to indicate to the citizens participating
that what they have to say is valued and can make a difference. The needed
inquiry is how to expand opportunities for active citizen participation and
engagement in budgeting, as several of the papers in this symposium
discuss.
How Is Participation Expanded in the Budget Context?
The articles in this symposium discuss opportunities to expand citizen
participation and engagement. It is likely they address only a small
sampling of the types and variations of citizen participation and engagement
that exist or could exist in budgeting. What the articles indicate are some
creative and ongoing efforts to include citizens in local government budget,
finance, and policy decisions that expand on the indirect strategies typically
used. The types of citizen participation or engagement discussed in this
symposium are:
S community visioning (Miller & Evers, 2002);
S citizen university model (Miller & Evers, 2002);
S panels or focus groups (Ebdon, 2002);
S issue advisory boards (Callahan, 2002; Ebdon, 2002);
S open house informational discussions (Orosz, 2002);
S opinion survey responses (Ebdon, 2002; Robbins & Simonsen, 2002);
and
S traditional and special public meetings (Ebdon, 2002).
Different participatory modes are connected to different types of
problems. Citizen advisory boards, discussed by Callahan (2002), are used
in two traditional budget areas of operating budgets and capital
improvement plans, and they are also used in the broader policy area of
economic development. Open house meetings, as suggested by Orosz
(2002), may fit better for the tractable issues in developing long-range
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capital improvement plans and bond package decisions. Linking tax
incidence and service preferences are proposed by Robbins and Simonsen
as useful in the occasion of budget retrenchment where reducing current
levels of services may be necessary to balance the budget.
Discussions of strategies and processes to allow citizen participation
suggest differing views of the purposes for and uses of public input and
participation. Robbins and Simonsen provide a powerful dynamic model to
compare willingness-to-pay to levels of services provided. One difficulty
with their assumptions may be in using a single tax source (property tax) to
fund the level of government services. The complexity of many local
government budgets may not be captured here. Local government budgets
include multiple revenue sources: taxes (sales, income and property taxes),
user fees, and purchase of services. Different revenues are used for different
services. This dynamic model based on property taxes provides valuable
information both to the citizens about the interaction of tax and spending
and to the administrators, but it may not reflect the greater complexity of
budgets.
The strategies for public input were discussed in all the symposium
articles in the context of improving the decisions and informing the
budgeteers. This was an express concern in the research of Ebdon (2002),
Callahan (2002), and Robbins and Simonsen (2002). At the basic level, a
discussion of the idea of public input seeks to help inform the budgeteers
and public servants. Thus, citizen or public input is used to educate and
enlighten those inside the government with the expectation that better
decisions will result. In this context, part of the public input was gathered
in focus groups, advisory boards, or open meetings. The citizen viewpoints
obtained by administrators in these settings differed. These discussions of
informing administrators lead in the direction of, but may not reach, active
and engaged citizen participation in the budget process. In some
participation discussions, there may not be attention given to the citizens’
learning or towards empowering citizens.
Some of the input was through meetings where administrators provided
information to the public and allowed for comments. Those speaking and
attending may represent the more attentive citizenry. These meetings that
allowed for discussions and exchange of ideas between the administrators
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
479
are closer to the ideal of engaged citizen participation. A theme in the
symposium is that much of the effort for managers was spent on informing
the public and citizen participants. Thus, the educational and informational
exchange was a constant and ongoing challenge.
How Are Participation Approaches Determined to Be A Success?
A question raised in all these articles is how well does citizen
participation work? This issue is also raised in other citizen participation
literature (e.g. Box, 1998). In the symposium articles, there is a theme of the
difficulty, uncertainty, and expense of citizen participation strategies and
processes. The realistic portrayal of the messy and uncertain nature of
citizen participation is acknowledged, but this characteristic should not
dissuade governments from continuing participation efforts. What these
articles also address is measuring the success of participation efforts.
Citizen participation techniques and processes require effort and
resources. The pragmatic concern is whether the time, effort, and expense
have value. Thus, there are very real administrative concerns of comparing
costs and benefits or cost effectiveness, and administrators may ask if
participation efforts should be continued if there are uncertain, incomplete,
or qualitative measures of success. Many of the expectations for citizen
participation are about improving governance. Some expectations are
focused on creating more engaged or active citizens. Finally, there is an
expectation of an ongoing and long-term relationship of participation efforts
for the good of the public and community. Because these are broad, longterm ambitions, looking to short term results or impressions may capture
some, but not all, factors.
The first measures of participation success relate to numbers of
individuals involved and their effect on decisions. Miller and Evers (2002)
discuss this at length. Callahan (2002) begins by proposing citizens should
be equal partners in decisions, and her measure of success is whether the
citizens advisory boards changed the outcome toward their own preferences.
Ebdon (2002) notes success or lack of success was occasionally measured
by the number who attended meetings. Robbins and Simonsen (2002)
consider the application of their model as allowing administrators and
electors to make informed decisions that reflect the majority preferences.
By measuring winning and losing, by counting numbers involved, or by
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counting numbers that agree with the outcome, competition is used to
determine success.
A second approach to success in citizen participation has implicit
acceptance of a market model; citizens are viewed as purchasers of services
provided by the producer government. This market metaphor was included
in both the Miller and Evers (2002) and Robbins and Simonsen (2002)
articles.
A third approach incorporates education and knowledge building. In
part, education in the form of an information campaign is expected to
improve citizen opinion about government, raise more good will, and bring
greater acceptance of government actions. Seeing participation techniques
as a chance to educate and rally support is presented in varying forms in the
Ebdon (2002), Orosz (2002), Miller and Evers (2002) discussions. A
difficulty occurs in linking the value of citizen participation opportunities
to positive public opinion about local government. This may be difficult to
ascertain. Or the opposite may occur; a paradox of greater participation can
mean more negative public opinions may occur. It is not clear that the
democratic purposes for authentic citizen participation can be directly and
authoritatively measured in the short term.
Rubin noted that sometimes budget information is controlled because
it may be used as a weapon in political contests for elected leaders (Rubin,
1998). The political connection and acceptance by elected officials is also
noted by Ebdon. These struggles over the use of information are a very
difficult concern in the measure of success and they may discourage open
participation. Thus, a link between participation and positive public opinion
may not be an indicator of success.
Other problems raised are how to interpret the results of lack of
participation, lack of comments, or lack of change in opinions. Some of the
articles discussing outcomes of participation efforts, in effect, ask the
question: Suppose we held a public meeting and nobody came? Asking this
implies that holding any informational meetings may be a waste of time,
money, and effort. This discouraging conclusion is not the only possible
conclusion. It may be that something specific about that one meeting--the
location, publicity or timing - were factors in the turnout (see King, Feltey,
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
481
& Susel, 1998, for more on addressing problems with meetings). These are
the types of wicked problems that administrators must address in
developing and evaluating participation techniques and processes.
Considering competition, market models and changes in public opinion
may only capture part of the purposes of active citizen participation.
Limiting evaluation of the "success" of participation to these purposes may
not capture the broader ideas of educating those involved to improve civic
good. If the processes of citizen participation include allowing questions,
discussion and an exchange of ideas as part of the democratic responsibility
of government, then other measures may be needed. The type of public
process envisioned in participation serves an essential purpose that the best
designed empirical research may not capture. It provides opportunity for
comments and responses that are not preconceived by the researcher.
Although the results of some citizen participation may not be generalized
with confidence elsewhere, often authentic citizen participation does not
seek generalizations as its highest end. Often participation is used as a
valuable piece but perhaps not the complete voice of citizen concerns for
decision making.
Varying participation modes and using creativity are options proposed
by Callahan (2002) and Orosz (2002). Thus, focus groups seek out public
input on specific concerns. Taking meetings to community members early
is another suggestion. There certainly are other examples of participation
techniques that are useable, replicable, and authentic. There are concerted
efforts to capture the best practices and examples of innovation in public
management from The Ford Foundation, Harvard University and Price
Waterhouse (Holzer & Callahan, 1998). Similar examples of citizen
participation and agency outreach are just beginning to be gathered and
discussed. The National Civic League, the ICMA and others are beginning
to provide these participation exemplars that may be adapted for broader
use. Finding examples of citizen participation in local government
budgeting, and celebrating them is still needed.
CONCLUSION
Active citizen engagement assumes that both the administrators and the
citizens involved learn from the experience of listening and talking with
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each other about governance. We wish to encourage others to view citizen
participation as a type of discussion that allows all involved to learn from
the conversation. Perhaps the first question of whether a citizen
participation effort is a success is to ask if the citizen and the administrator
each learned from the experience.
Citizen participation is often viewed as messy and uncertain; we
acknowledge this and propose that this messiness and uncertainty may
actually be one of the valuable aspects of citizen participation. The mess or
uncertainty allows for exchange of ideas and gives rise to possibilities to
transform, to educate, and to empower. It also allows the possibility that
individuals will shift from thinking about their own personal good, and their
own pocketbooks, to some broader notion of public interest or civic good.
Administrators may become better at doing their jobs through being
connected to those for whom they administrator. It won’t be easy, but it will
probably produce value.
This symposium challenges the traditional budget colloquy between
managers and representatives. It augmented budget process discussions to
include public input and active citizen participation. Remaining questions
include: Where else in the budget process can citizen participation occur?
What other types of participation can be used? Are there other measures of
success? Additional examples and analysis of innovation and creativity in
citizen participation may address these questions.
At the close of this article, we summarize some of the major points of
agreement from this symposium. Our goal is not to paint an overly
optimistic picture but to point out that the recurring themes and points of
agreement are worth paying attention to in the thorny, complicated,
problematic, and important area of public budgeting. Major points of citizen
participation in budgeting are:
S
There are many opportunities to engage citizens in local
government decision-making processes.
S
Providing opportunities for, and value from, citizen participation is
a long term undertaking that requires ongoing effort.
S
Encouraging citizen participation requires rethinking approaches
for cooperation among managers, representatives, and the public.
THE CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC BUDGETING
483
S
Numerous methods, strategies, and approaches exist, that have been
used, and that can be used to provide meaningful public
participation.
S
The public - from the active and engaged citizens to the passive and
silent residents - can provide valuable comments, contributions,
inquiries, and insight into government budget and policy decisions.
S
Citizen participation is complex and messy but worthwhile for
communities.
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