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Participatory Budgeting as Solution to Council District Discretionary Fund Problems
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Robert Wechsler
One of the most damaging aspects of ethical misconduct in government
is that it decreases the amount of citizen participation in
government activities. People feel that their local government is
rigged to help politicians and their families, friends, and business
associates. It's not worth spending time getting involved in a
rigged system, unless your goal is to be part of the in crowd.
It was nice to read an article in this Sunday's New York Times about a solution to a problem I've written about in the past: the New York city council's discretionary funds (often referred to as "slush funds"), which have sometimes been given to organizations run by people with special relationships to council members. The solution – in an experimental stage – is not oversight, but citizen participation (see another blog post on an oversight approach to the same problem).
According to the article, "constituents in four City Council districts were given control over a slice of their council members’ discretionary budgets — $1 million in each district. In a process that began in October, they proposed projects, researched their viability and ran them by city agencies. This week, voters will finish choosing which of the proposals can move forward."
The result is that "250 regular New Yorkers jumped into the trenches and dirtied their hands with democracy. The point of the experiment in October was to counter people’s cynical view of government by inviting them to participate in the very process they mistrust."
The result has not been full trust. Many obstacles have been put up by city agencies. Bureaucracy's turf wars and unreasonable rules can be daunting. And no one knows if this approach will really work.
But what is exciting about this experiment is how many of the citizens who have become involved were not politically active before. And also how, in some cases, individuals sat together and moved from projects they thought of and that benefited their neighborhood to projects that benefited other neighborhoods, but appeared to help more people that needed help.
For example, a teacher named Christiansen had an idea to create a green laboratory and outdoor teaching space at his school. "But when he saw the needs at other schools, he pulled his own project from his committee. [He] and his fellow committee members decided to use need — which they collectively decided to measure by the percentage of students in the schools receiving free lunches — as the deciding factor. They also looked for projects at schools that had no advocates on the committee, which is how Mr. Christiansen became the champion for a project at a school in which he had never set foot. ... Agencies and politicians aside, strangers found a way to work together and commit to honoring one another’s priorities, while considering the good of their neighborhoods. And that ultimately was the point. 'Maybe I should’ve fought for the garden at my school and ducked for cover,' Mr. Christiansen said. 'Now I’m arguing for some complete strangers’ toilets.'"
The approach is known as "participatory budgeting." According to the article, it was created in 1989 by the city government of Porto Allegre, Brazil to introduce transparency into and restore faith in the government's budget process. It has since expanded to about 300 cities in Brazil and elsewhere. It was even picked up by a Chicago alderman, Joe Moore, two years ago. And, of course, participatory budgeting has been done in New England towns for hundreds of years.
There is even a nonprofit focused on this issue, the Participatory Budgeting Project, headed by Josh Lerner (the New York and Chicago experiments are described on the website, as is the participatory budgeting of Toronto Community Housing).
Participatory budgeting is just the right way to deal with district-oriented budgets. I hope these experiments lead to changes in the bureaucracy that will enable such budgeting to work more smoothly, and that the process spreads to districts throughout New York City and to cities across the country.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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It was nice to read an article in this Sunday's New York Times about a solution to a problem I've written about in the past: the New York city council's discretionary funds (often referred to as "slush funds"), which have sometimes been given to organizations run by people with special relationships to council members. The solution – in an experimental stage – is not oversight, but citizen participation (see another blog post on an oversight approach to the same problem).
According to the article, "constituents in four City Council districts were given control over a slice of their council members’ discretionary budgets — $1 million in each district. In a process that began in October, they proposed projects, researched their viability and ran them by city agencies. This week, voters will finish choosing which of the proposals can move forward."
The result is that "250 regular New Yorkers jumped into the trenches and dirtied their hands with democracy. The point of the experiment in October was to counter people’s cynical view of government by inviting them to participate in the very process they mistrust."
The result has not been full trust. Many obstacles have been put up by city agencies. Bureaucracy's turf wars and unreasonable rules can be daunting. And no one knows if this approach will really work.
But what is exciting about this experiment is how many of the citizens who have become involved were not politically active before. And also how, in some cases, individuals sat together and moved from projects they thought of and that benefited their neighborhood to projects that benefited other neighborhoods, but appeared to help more people that needed help.
For example, a teacher named Christiansen had an idea to create a green laboratory and outdoor teaching space at his school. "But when he saw the needs at other schools, he pulled his own project from his committee. [He] and his fellow committee members decided to use need — which they collectively decided to measure by the percentage of students in the schools receiving free lunches — as the deciding factor. They also looked for projects at schools that had no advocates on the committee, which is how Mr. Christiansen became the champion for a project at a school in which he had never set foot. ... Agencies and politicians aside, strangers found a way to work together and commit to honoring one another’s priorities, while considering the good of their neighborhoods. And that ultimately was the point. 'Maybe I should’ve fought for the garden at my school and ducked for cover,' Mr. Christiansen said. 'Now I’m arguing for some complete strangers’ toilets.'"
The approach is known as "participatory budgeting." According to the article, it was created in 1989 by the city government of Porto Allegre, Brazil to introduce transparency into and restore faith in the government's budget process. It has since expanded to about 300 cities in Brazil and elsewhere. It was even picked up by a Chicago alderman, Joe Moore, two years ago. And, of course, participatory budgeting has been done in New England towns for hundreds of years.
There is even a nonprofit focused on this issue, the Participatory Budgeting Project, headed by Josh Lerner (the New York and Chicago experiments are described on the website, as is the participatory budgeting of Toronto Community Housing).
Participatory budgeting is just the right way to deal with district-oriented budgets. I hope these experiments lead to changes in the bureaucracy that will enable such budgeting to work more smoothly, and that the process spreads to districts throughout New York City and to cities across the country.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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