PPPM Graduate Student Research

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Browsing PPPM Graduate Student Research by Subject "budgeting"

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    Operationalization of the Strategic Plan: An Analysis of Lane County through a Fiscal Stewardship Lens
    (Oregon Policy Lab, 2020-06) Conway, James; LeMay, Donovan; Mehdi, Fatima
    Lane County’s 2018-2021 Strategic Plan puts forth three strategic lenses including Financial Stewardship, Equity, and Collective Impact. This report focuses on the use of financial stewardship, the prudent and transparent management of funds, as a strategic lens for setting the perspective from which goals should be viewed. The report outlines ways to approach and efficiently improve the budgetary process through citizen participation that cultivates validation, technology that increases transparency, and the budget process that assures accountability. Summary of Key Findings Based on the definition of financial stewardship published in the strategic plan, we focused on researching how Lane County could improve its accountability, transparency, and use of analytical tools in decision making, and how: • citizen participation would improve accountability to the public • technology can improve the transparency of Lane County finances, and • performance measurements can improve the budget process. Citizens can currently interact with the government through various channels. The impact of the communication or participation isn’t always effective. Ways to increase validation among community members are reshaping the hierarchical structure of meetings and using fiscal intelligence to safeguard efficiency for the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars. Citizen participation is a collaborative process between community members and government that assures financial stewardship through validation, accountability, and trust. Accountability is best achieved when the political culture of the community is correctly assessed. Finally, in conjecture with validation and accountability, holding additional meetings early in the budget formulation process, and changing the financial language through community finance education will install the institution of trust in the collaborative process. Transparency is accomplished through direct information and communication between constituents and government administrators. Currently, Lane County applies minimum transparency requirements by publishing all transactions in a list. An open data portal that makes the transactions organizable or interactive would encourage participation and improve transparency. The data portal could also use geo-referenced maps to display where public projects are occurring so that citizens can have high quality data to help structure their feedback and best recommendations for the projects. Lane County already has existing open data software- Tableau and Geographic information system- that could be better utilized for these outcomes. Lane County’s budget process has only three meetings for public hearings or comment. The budget committee is made up of the county administrator and citizens appointed by the county commissioners. Changes to each year’s budget occurs after meetings where department heads give presentations. The department heads propose a budget after receiving one annual budget training. Performance information is then selected at the manager’s discretion. The budget process and committee members would benefit greatly from standardized performance information when deciding on awarding more or less funding to government programs.