Can You Figure Out the Budget?
Reprinted from the Boston Globe Op-Ed
By Steve Crosby and Noah Berger
Published October 6, 2006
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. That's why a democracy can't work properly unless taxpayers know how their tax dollars are being spent.
Each year, the state budget allocates over $25 billion -- $4,000 for every man, woman, and child in the Commonwealth -- to services such as education, public safety, roads, public health, and environmental protection. Yet that budget is often inscrutable to all but the most sophisticated reader.
The state budget document is so hard to understand that ordinary citizens don't have the knowledge they need to shape critical choices about what government does, and how it does it. In fact, rank and file legislators frequently cannot understand clearly the fiscal and programmatic implications of the budgets on which they are asked to vote.
It doesn't have to be this way. Practical reforms, many of which have been adopted by other states, could make the budget and its implications much easier to understand. The budget could clearly list all significant new programs and expansions and all programs that have been eliminated or cut deeply. It does not.
The budget could include a clear and simple balance sheet that shows all spending and revenue and indicates which expenditures and revenues are one-time and which are ongoing. It does not.
The budget could include a list of major risk factors to show when revenue sources are at risk and which cost categories have the greatest potential for rapid growth, putting pressure on future budgets. It does not.
The budget could include a short, simple description of each program, and a brief statement of its key goals, with each line item. It does not.
All this information could be provided for each version of the budget (the governor's, the House, the Senate, and the final). It is not.
These are just a few examples of the common sense reforms that could open up the budget process and make it easier for the media, legislators, citizen advocacy organizations, and ordinary citizens to understand -- and participate in -- meaningful debate about the budget.
Today, the Massachusetts Budget Transparency Project will issue a report outlining a series of straightforward steps that can be taken to improve the way budgets are presented in the state. The project, convened by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, includes former House and Senate Ways and Means Budget Directors, a former secretary of administration and finance, the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, and a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Those of us who have worked on this project know what creates obstacles to transparency because we have seen it from the inside for many years. The problem is not partisan. The fault does not lie with Democrats or Republicans. The problem is structural.
The budget process drives the governor, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Ways and Means Committee to release budgets that highlight the politically attractive, blur the trade-offs, ignore long-term dangers, and discourage meaningful scrutiny by shielding information from the public.
There always will be competing visions of what the budget should include and what it should accomplish. There should not be a debate about the basic facts, or about the value and necessity of transparency of the process.
The most influential statement of policy in Massachusetts is the budget. Yet it is also the most obscure. That obscurity shields the process from meaningful public input and contributes to the public's skepticism about the quality of our democracy. Adoption of these recommendations will not be a panacea, but it will be a significant step in the continuing process of assuring that state government truly serves the people it represents.
If the leaders who will craft next year's budget can commit now to a more transparent budget process, the new governor and the Legislature will be able next spring to produce a budget that shows the people of Massachusetts clearly what it funds, where it saves money, whether it is balanced, and how it prepares for challenges that lie ahead.
Stephen P. Crosby, former secretary of administration, is dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass Boston. Noah Berger is executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.