Over at Human Transit, public transportation planner Jarrett Walker points to yet another online budget puzzle, this one from Portland, OR and still ongoing: portland: balance the budget yourself

Portland’s Tri-Met faces another horrible funding shortfall this year, but they’ve come up with a good survey tool to engage the public in their decisions about what services to cut. It’s one of those “balance the budget yourself” tools that’s becoming increasingly necessary to bring voters into contact with reality about government budgets.

Here’s a screenshot showing the progress bar under the combination of revenue increases and spending cuts that yield the maximum impact.

In the comments, readers point out a number of issues with this setup:

• Options don’t appear to cover the full spectrum of solutions.
• Appears to only include options that are generally within the scope of convener’s institutional authority.
• Options appear to be biased.
• Financial impact calculations seem questionable.
• Low combined impact volume means some “options” aren’t really that optional.

Whether these concerns are justified or not, at this point the damage is already done: the perceived shortcomings put this public participation exercise in a pretty bad spot right from the get-go.

Here’s the comment I left:

Interesting, anyone know what kind of software they’re using or whether this was built in-house?

There are two things I look at when I come across online budget tools like this one:

1) What’s the maximum impact of all options combined as a percentage of the deficit? In this case, the deficit is $17m, but only $25.7m (151%) in deficit reduction measures are offered. It’s clear right there that there probably isn’t a lot of flexibility for participants in choosing their path to solving the deficit.

2) Are there any options that are impossible to avoid? In this case, the budget deficit cannot be resolved unless fares are increased. As long as a participants [sic] chooses “no fare increase” she won’t be able to solve the puzzle. Failure to make this more transparent to the participant can be a simple oversight or, worse, an effort to push a hidden agenda.

Obviously, the options shouldn’t be biased (as much as that’s possible). At the very least, TriMet should provide information as to how the various options were selected and share the assumptions behind their financial impact calculations.

There are better ways to do this, though it certainly isn’t the first project to struggle.

Josh Lerner (Co-Director, The Participatory Budgeting Project) shared this conference announcement via the NCDD listserv:

International Conference: Participatory Budgeting in the US and Canada
March 2012
New York City, NY

From the email:

In a time of widespread budget crises and plummeting trust in government, politicians and community members are searching for more democratic and accountable ways to manage public money. Participatory Budgeting (PB) offers an alternative. PB is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. The process was first developed in Brazil in 1989, and there are now over 1,000 participatory budgets around the world. Most are for city budgets, but counties, states, towns, housing authorities, schools, and other institutions have also used PB to open up public spending to public participation.

PB is now common in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa – and in some cases even required by law. Yet it has only recently appeared on the radar in the US and Canada, with a few Canadian processes starting in 2001 and some initial US experiments starting in 2009.

This first regional conference on PB will take place in New York City to allow participants to observe and celebrate the closing of the city’s first PB cycle. The conference will provide a space for participants and organizers of the initial PB processes in the US and Canada to share and reflect on their experiences so far, alongside interested activists, practitioners, and scholars.

[...]

Conference Themes

As an opportunity to reflect upon early PB initiatives in the US and Canada, and build new relationships and collaborations between practitioners, the conference will focus on the following questions. We encourage all submissions relating to these and other similar themes.

1. What is the current state of PB practice in the United States and Canada? How are current experiments progressing and what efforts to establish new PB’s are underway?
2. What common themes or conditions underlie PB experiences in the US ad Canada?
3. How do experiences in these countries differ from PB in other parts of the world?
4. How do PB experiences in the US and Canada inform key ongoing debates on PB worldwide?
5. How can PB practitioners, activists, and participants in the US and Canada support each others’ efforts?

The call for proposals ends January 1, 2012.

Participation around money and budgets is an exciting field with plenty of opportunities for online engagement, and a lot of good work in that area is already happening around the world. Being based on the West Coast, this conference sounds like a great excuse to visit New York City.

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you might want to check out this exciting event the IAP2 NorCal Chapter is putting on (I’m chapter co-chair): IAP2 NorCal Event: Fixing Broke(n) Governments through Serious Games, November 17 in San Francisco

Governments around the world are all facing budget shortfalls, spending cuts and reduced services. All of us — ordinary citizens, elected officials and community leaders — know that we must make dramatic changes to solve these crises, and yet governments remain gridlocked. How do we move beyond this impasse? How do we create an approach to budgeting that is both participatory and scalable? The answer is serious games!

Join Luke Hohmann, CEO and founder of the Innovation Games® Company, to learn how serious games are creating real change through encouraging public participation in government. Luke will talk about the specially designed Innovation Game® Budget Games and how it was used by the city of San Jose, CA, to bring together more than 100 community leaders and ordinary citizens to collaboratively prioritize possible cuts to the city budget.

Come prepared to participate, because we’ll also be playing a version of the Innovation Game® to get a real-world understanding of how serious games can be more effective way to get accurate and actionable data than traditional polling methods.

It’s Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 6.30pm. We’ll be back at the Citizen Space, one of San Francisco’s premier co-working spaces and fabulous community watering hole. Please see Eventbrite for details and to RSVP.

After a long period of low activity, our local IAP2 USA chapter is starting with precious little funding, so we definitely need to break even with this event. Please consider the sponsoring opportunities we’re offering. Thank you!

In preparation for this event, the chapter has started its own presence on Twitter and Facebook. Check it out!

On Friday, the City of Calgary launched a large-scale citizen engagement project: Our City. Our Budget. Our Future.

In February 2011, Council approved the engagement process for the facilitated review of core services and The City’s business planning and budget process. It is an extensive engagement process that will facilitate conversations with citizens, employees and Council to identify and confirm immediate priorities for The City’s next three year business planning and budget cycle while keeping an eye on the longer-term vision that will support the future that Calgarians envision. Dialogue Partners, Ottawa based public engagement consultants, has been hired to assist with the engagement process.

The backgrounder (PDF) has more details.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce has recommended thirteen principles “to be incorporated into the final design of the project”:

Principles for The City of Calgary 2012 – 2014 Business Planning and Budgeting Consultation

The City of Calgary is developing a public engagement process for the upcoming 2012 – 2014 business planning and budgeting cycle. Authenticity and effectiveness of the engagement process will be critical to the success of the initiative.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce looks for the following guidelines to be incorporated into the final design of the project:

1. Broad outreach – City budgets affect all citizens, and The City must find a way to connect with all stakeholder groups and the general public.
2. Authentic engagement — It is important that The City undertake legitimate and effective efforts to engage stakeholders, utilize input, and/or communicate why input can’t be used.
3. Identify community goals and priorities — The Process must start by identifying what matters most to Calgarians. Budget decisions are best made when they are based on the kind of city Calgarians want, as opposed to narrow tactical tradeoffs.
4. Reporting back — Calgarians must receive consistent and timely feedback on what has been heard, learned and, most importantly, changed, as a result of the engagement process.
5. Openness, transparency and dialogue — Citizens should be able to access and contribute to the discussions and dialogue arising from the process. A web space could help achieve this goal.
6. Ongoing and repeatable –The process should be constructed to allow ongoing feedback with annual input from the public and stakeholders.
7. Legitimacy — The process should be guided by the advice of a committee of recognized community leaders at the governance level, such as Board Chairs of City Authorities, key institutions, leading businesses and social services organizations.
8. Sufficient resourcing — Allow for reasonable resourcing for the consultation.
9. Accommodation of differences — Different groups require different techniques and approaches for engagement. The process should ask groups how they want to be involved.
10. Use of multiple approaches — Traditional processes such as meetings, open houses and submissions should be partnered with use of online social media to generate public feedback and commentary on ideas and submissions.
11. Multi-stage process — Multiple stages help people understand the process and learn as they go. This facilitates understanding of the evolution of the priorities and helps Calgarians support the outcomes.
12. Reasonable timelines — Inform the public of the various stages of the process with timelines included. Remind the public through the process of these timelines.
13. Build on existing work — Use The City of Calgary’s Engage! Policy as a starting point for engagement.

Very solid! Whoever wrote these knows what they are talking about.

The three-phased consultation is expected to include several online elements and is scheduled to run through June 2011.

Over on Facebook, the Kettering Foundation asks with regard to the Times’ Budget Puzzle:

What do you think: are budgeting exercises like these what we would call “deliberative choice work”? If not, how are they related?

For a definition of what Kettering means by choice work, we turn to the ever-competent NCDD resource center and their quick reference glossary:

Choice Work

“Choice work” is a term used by the Kettering Foundation and ViewpointLearning to refer to the weighing of costs and consequences of various courses of action in a group deliberation process in order for participants to make sound decisions about critical issues. Citizens have an undelegable responsibility to make choices about how to solve problems because government alone cannot solve them all. Highly deliberative, choice work emphasizes the need to do the hard work of recognizing that a choice has to be made, that consequences have to be weighed and trade-offs balanced.

So is the Budget Puzzle in its current form deliberative? Hardly. The countless budgets participants have been busy sharing on Twitter and Facebook over the past three days may have triggered an occasional back and forth, a short exchange here, a reply there. But the key challenge of integrating competing viewpoints in the face of tough choices — and using highly-structured deliberative processes as a means to do so — does not yet get addressed by this application.

The core task of balancing the budget by selecting from a list of deficit-reducing measure is an activity that participants do independently, by themselves, not as a team or a group. And in this case, with an issue as complex and polarized as the federal budget, the former is infinitely easier than the latter.

I’d describe the current application as a kind of online choicebook, focused on engaging the participants and educate them about the issue (see related projects on ParticipateDB: here, here).

The New York Times’ Budget Puzzle has been getting quite a bit of buzz over the past 48 hours. Here’s what I wrote in an email to the NCDD mailing list yesterday:

What I find particularly interesting about this implementation is that it comes with a very large number of viable combinations that would all result in a balanced budget. It’s not black or white at all! Instead, there seems to be a lot more room for compromise than many might expect (I crunched the numbers a little bit last night and believe my analysis shows this):

http://www.intellitics.com/blog/2010/11/14/new-york-times-budget-puzzle/

Anyway, as of about 24 hours ago, people all over the internet and from across the entire political spectrum are having fun balancing the budget according to their personal preferences (and are wondering why Congress is having such a hard time).

The collage below is a small sampling of what some of these participants were saying on Twitter yesterday afternoon:

Quite a diverse set of preferences and opinions driving a broad range of solution approaches.

It’s worth noting, too, how much everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. People are actually having fun doing this!

While the overall feedback I’ve seen so far has been mostly positive, here’s one comment from Peter Keane that brings up a good point: NYTimes Budget App

Well, on further consideration I am starting to think this visualization, snazzy as it is, is more harmful than helpful. It’s simply misleading to think that there is any logical basis at all for any of the selections I made. Am I such an expert on military readiness that I know when budgets there can be slashed? Are some lured in by the opportunity to click a money-saving button to “cap” Medicare aware of the implications for an aging population? We make these selections with only a vague notion of the values we think each represent. But do they, really, and how do we know? [...]

[...] Something else is needed — partly more in-depth analysis (but isn’t that what NYTimes is attempting here?), and partly a frank conversation about what it means — what are the values that drive our decisions and what sort of society we want to be.

There is indeed an opportunity here to connect citizens with different viewpoints and start meaningful conversations around these issues. A first step might be to simply host small-group dialogues that encourage participants to listen to each other and learn where everyone’s coming from. A next step might be to invite “team budgets” that challenge small groups of randomly selected participants to come up with a balanced budget they can all agree on.

Update 11/14: For more background, see this accompanying NYTimes story: O.K., You Fix the Budget

Yesterday, The New York Times launched Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget, an easy-to-use online budget simulator that challenges participants to balance the US federal budget both short and longer-term. From the website:

Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.

At first glance, this tool looks a lot more mature than the example I reviewed earlier this year (see: Los Angeles Budget Challenge: When Surveys Won’t Take No For An Answer).

The budget simulator assumes a projected budget shortfall of $418 billion (2015) and $1,355 billion (2030). It consists of a total of 32 measures, including 22 spending cuts and ten tax increases. Each measure lists the dollar value in projected savings to the deficit in 2015 and 2030. As participants select their preferred measures, an interactive graphic keeps track of and visualizes their choices. Seven of the 32 items allow the participants to choose between two or three different alternatives (e.g. raising the Social Security retirement age to 68 or 70 years), each yielding a different savings impact.

I plugged all 32 measures and their respective dollar impact into a spreadsheet for some quick analysis. To keep things simple, for the seven measures where the tool gave options only the alternatives with the biggest savings impact were considered.

Below a few observations that I found noteworthy.

1) Total impact

The maximum savings impact from all 32 measures combined is $1,142 billion in 2015 (273%) and $3,172 billion in 2030 (234%). That means the tool allows roughly 2.5 times more savings than necessary (Los Angeles was less than 1.5 times). This is good! All things being equal, the higher this factor the more viable combinations can be found to balance the budget.

For reference, a factor of <1 means the budget is impossible to balance. A factor of 1 means there is no choice (no measure can be avoided in order to balance the budget). A factor of >2 usually means there are at least two entirely different solution approaches possible.

2) Total impact by type

Balancing budgets usually comes down to only two types of measures: spending cuts and revenue increases. This example includes 22 spending cuts with a total impact of $473 billion in 2015 (113% of deficit) and $1,751 billion in 2030 (129% of deficit) and ten tax increases with a total impact of $669 billion in 2015 (160% of deficit) and $1,421 billion in 2030 (105% of deficit). That means a balanced budget can be achieved in either year working purely the cost or the revenue side (something that wasn’t possible in the Los Angeles example where less then 75% of the projected deficit could be balanced by relying on one of the two types alone).

3) Short-term vs. long-term impact by type

It appears that in aggregate, spending cuts and tax increases impact the 2015 and 2030 deficits differently. While all ten tax increases together save 160% of the 2015 deficit, they only cover %105 of the 2030 deficit.  Vice versa, while all 22 spending cuts save %113 of the 2015 budget, they cover %129 of the 2030 deficit.

Out of the 10 measures with the highest impact towards 2015, eight are tax cuts. Out of the 10 measures with the highest impact towards 2030, only 5 are tax cuts.

4) Top measures by impact (2015)

The following nine high-impact measures with regard to balancing the 2015 budget can be avoided by choosing all other 23 remaining measures:

• The Bush Tax Cuts: Allow expiration for income below $250,000 a year: $172B (41.1%)
• Eliminate loopholes, but keep taxes slightly higher: $136B (32.5%)
• Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanist to 30,000 by 2013: $86B (20.6%)
• Bank Tax: $73B (17.5%)
• Estate Taxes: Return the estate tax to Clinton-era levels: $50B (12.0%)
• Payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax: $50B (12.0%)
• Millionaire’s tax on income above $1 million: $50B (12.0%)
• National sales tax: $41B (9.8%)
• Reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance: $41B (9.8%)
• All remaining 23 measures: $443B (106%)

This is an important thing to look at when reviewing budget simulators, and the Budget Puzzle does pretty well. The shorter this list, the fewer of these high-impact measures are actual choices or can even become hidden mandates (one of my main criticisms of the Los Angeles example). If reality dictates little choice, at least the budget simulator has to present these conditions transparently.

5) Top measures by impact (2030)

The following five high-impact measures with regard to balancing the 2030 budget can be avoided by choosing all other 27 remaining measures:

• Health Care Cap Medicare growth starting in 2013: $562B (41.5%)
• Tax Reform Eliminate loopholes, but keep taxes slightly higher: $315B (23.2%)
• Tax Reform National sales tax: $281B (20.7%)
• Existing Taxes The Bush Tax Cuts: Allow expiration for income below $250,000 a year: $252B (18.6%)
• Social Security Raise the Social Security retirement age to 70: $247B (18.2%)
• All remaining 27 measures: $1,515B (111.8%)

Again, pretty good. No apparent automatisms here.

6) Impact by category (2015 / 2030)

Another way to look for potential bias is to examine each of the six budget categories for size and short vs. long-term impact (in parenthesis the percentage of the budget deficit each category covers):

• Domestic: $147B (35.2%) / $166B (12.3%)
• Military: $191B (45.7%) / $349B (25.7%)
• Health Care: $86B (20.6%) / $836B (61.7%)
• Social Security: $49B (11.7%) / $400B (29.5%)
• Existing Taxes: $304B (72.7%) / $502B (37.1%)
• Tax Reform: $365B (87.3%) / $919B (67.8%)

Again, it seems that the measures offered are pretty balanced overall. Or at least I’m not able to detect any obvious bias towards any one category.

7) Quoting your sources

Obviously, budget simulators can only provide a very simplified picture of the world in order to remain usable and still fit on one page. At least the Budget Puzzle mentions the sources upon which its numbers and calculations are based:

Sources: New York Times analysis of data provided by Alan Auerbach and William Gale; Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; Tax Policy Center; Congressional Budget Office; Sustainable Defense Task Force; Cato Institute; Economic Policy Institute; National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Joint Committee on Taxation; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Social Security Administration

8. Straightforward handling, transparent display of results

It’s nice that the entire tool fits on one page pretty much. Each choice a participants makes is immediately reflected in the visualization at the top. None of the 32 measures are inter-related, meaning whether a participants selects a measure or not will not affect the impact any of the other measures have. I mention this because I’ve seen this happen elsewhere, and it makes for a confusing or even misleading user experience.

* * *

I can’t speak to the quality of the data, the relevance and completeness of the measures offered, the accuracy of the predicted impacts etc. It would be nice to get a few testimonials from trusted experts from across the political spectrum to confirm the budget simulator is valid.

But all in all, a very nicely done tool to engage citizens around the complex issue that is the federal budget deficit.

The other day, someone on Twitter passed along this announcement about a new budget consultation in Seattle, WA:

I admit it doesn’t take a lot more to get me interested, so I clicked right through. Here’s a bit of a checklist I usually apply when I scan online consultations such as this one (listed in no particular order):

• Is it clear who is the convener? Sort of. Yes, it does say Seattle City Council in the top header but I’m not sure that’s obvious enough. Plus, the page doesn’t  include any contact information nor does it link back to the council’s homepage.
• Does it say what the site is about? Sort of. Something about balancing the budget and providing input, though very little detail is provided.
• Does the site educate participants about the issue at hand? No. The site does not provide background information or other related resources. How big a deficit are we talking about? Has the council or any of its committees already done any preliminary work? Are there any areas that are out of scope in terms of this consultation? Anything participants should consider before they chime in?
• Is the promise to the public clearly defined? No. Unfortunately, it is not clear at all if and to what degree the participants’ input will inform the decision-making process. Will their ideas be considered? Will there be follow-up afterwards?
• Is the timeline defined? No. The site does not specify any key dates, phases or milestones. When will the comment period close? When will the new budget be decided?
• Are the community ground rules defined? No.
• Are the rules for moderation defined? No.
• Can the convener be easily contacted? No. The site does not provide any contact information.

At first glance, that’s a pretty weak performance. If I were to grade it, I’d give it a straight F. However, further digging painted a somewhat brighter picture.

From the press release:

Seattle City Council seeks resident feedback during 2011 – 2012 budget process

SEATTLE – The City of Seattle faces a $67 million general fund deficit for 2011, meaning there are some very difficult budget decisions to be made in the months to come. As the City Council works to balance the Seattle’s 2011-2012 budget, considerable input from residents is needed to develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

Here we learn about the extent of the 2011 budget deficit ($67m), and a rough timeline is outlined when the budget decisions will be due (over the next few months). The press release mentions three ways for citizens to get involved: the IdeaScale website, which I reviewed above, an online comment form, as well as a series of three public meetings.

The press release makes two promises to the public (emphasis mine):

Visit our new Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com. Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.

Submit your thoughts about the budget using our online comment form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.

That’s starting to look a lot better already.

Finally, the press release contains a link to the homepage of the council’s budget committee, which prominently features this invitation:

Friends and neighbors;

As we work to balance the City’s 2011-2012 budget, we need considerable input from you to put our spending priorities in order. With your help, we will develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

The Seattle City Council is providing many ways for you to participate in this year’s budget process. Share with us your thoughts on which services you expect city government to deliver by:

• Attending one of our three public hearings held in north, south or central Seattle.
• Visiting our Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com.** Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.
• Emailing us your thoughts about the budget using this form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.
• And of course, calling and post mail is always an option for contacting Councilmembers with your feedback.

Stay informed. This site contains multiple resources that will help guide you through the budget process.  Seattle’s budget document is actually the size of a large city phone book, serving as a candid picture of the City’s priorities and a road map for the future. You are an important part of an open and transparent budgeting process. We hope you will join us in this important exercise.

On the same page, a more detailed schedule is provided, though it doesn’t say explicitly when the period for public input will end.

The site also references A Guide to Seattle’s Budget Process (PDF), which contains a nice overview of the basic numbers (revenues, expenses). In it, another two ways to participate are mentioned:

• Video (live meeting coverage on cable or online, recorded meetings online)
• Audio (live meetings via phone)

All in all, it looks like most of the necessary information is available, it may just need some organization across the various web properties.

In closing, here’s my recommendation to the Seattle City Council:

• On the IdeaScale site, provide the necessary context by prominently referencing the budget committee homepage, the calendar and the guidebook.
• Across all sites, be even more explicit about how participants’ input will be used and what impact they can or cannot expect to have.
• Outline any important dates related to the consultation (mainly, when the opportunity for public input will end).

We’ve added this project to ParticipateDB and will watch how it evolves.

A number of people commented on last month’s post about the Los Angeles Budget Challenge (both online and offline), and most seemed to share my concerns regarding the survey design.

Shortly after publishing the post, I reached out to the City of Los Angeles via the email address given on the site. I figured many readers might be interested in hearing their take on things, so with their generous permission, I’m sharing the reply below.

First, my email from January 7, 2010 (typos and all):

Hi,

I came across your e-consultation “Los Angeles Budget Challenge” via Twitter today:

http://labudgetchallenge.lacity.org/budgetchallenge/sim/budget_master.html

I have a couple of research questions:

1.  Is the site supported by any tools?

Does the site use any off-the-shelf tools (e.g. a service or software) to run the survey?  It looks like it’s custom-built using Adobe Flash but maybe you could confirm.

We recently launched ParticipateDB, a directory of online tools for participation.  I’ve added your project here: http://participatedb.com/projects/106

2.  Project duration and results

When did this consultation launch?  What is its scheduled end date?  And do you plan to share the results?

3.  Pre-defined outcome one question #12

WIth regard to the last item of the survey (Public Private Partnerships for Parking Structures/Meters), I noticed that it is impossible to balance the budget unless a participant chooses option 2 (”Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for City parking structures only.”) or option 3 (”Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for CIty parking structures and City parking meters.”).  Yet option 1 (“No. The City should not pursue any P3 initiatives.”) is still on the table.

Was this a deliberate design decision?  Or an oversight?  ;-)

Thanks,
Tim

Their response from yesterday, February 8, 2010:

Hi Tim,

We apologize that we didn’t get back to you more quickly.

To answer your questions:

1) The Mayor’s Office licensed the survey tool from the non-partisan non-profit organization Next 10, who in 2005 released the California Budget Challenge.  A handful of other municipalities and agencies have used the Challenge software to create budget survey type tools similar to ours.

http://www.nextten.org/

2) The Mayor’s Office launched the LA Budget Challenge on December 28th.  We will be analyzing all the results that come in by February 28th (2 month survey duration) but will most likely keep a version of the LA Budget Challenge up and running with modifications.  The results generated during the two month duration will be compiled, simplified, separated by planning region, and presented at a community meeting in early March.

3) We do understand that a respondent isn’t able to solve the entire $400 million deficit without choosing one of the P3 options that generates revenue.  The goal of the Challenge is to balance the budget, but a respondent isn’t required to solve the entire deficit in order to provide our office with feedback.

Moreover, this on-line exercise attempts to provide the public with information regarding a handful of real life budget decisions that the Mayor and City Council are faced with in the development of next year’s budget.  This tool obviously does not include all possible ways to balance the City’s budget.

That said, the Mayor does believe that a long-term concession agreement for the operation of 10 City parking structures is a viable means of generated significant one-time revenue for the City’s General Fund.  Similarly, the Mayor believes that a P3 agreement for parking meters needs to be thoroughly evaluated and may prove to be a feasible revenue generating strategy as well.

The Mayor’s Office simply wants input from the public on these P3 initiatives.  We understand that some respondents will not agree that these initiatives should be pursued and we welcome any feedback we receive.  Many respondents did not eliminate the entire deficit but have shared valuable feedback on the issues presented and on other budget related topics.

To date, we have received about 14,000 hits with about 3,600 full responses.

We appreciate your interest and questions.  Your comments will help shape the next iteration of this on-line survey tool.  We view the Challenge as a flexible input vehicle that will change and improve over time.

Please let us know if you have additional question.

Office of Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa
Finance and Performance Management Unit
LABudget@lacity.org

Fair enough. In general, I think it’s great to see municipalities embrace these kinds of online feedback gathering mechanisms. And yes, there is still a lot of room for improvement both in terms of the technology used and the processes that are being applied.

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Via Twitter today, I came across a new online consultation by the City of Los Angeles: Los Angeles Budget Challenge

How will you balance the City’s budget?

The Mayor of the City of Los Angeles is given the responsibility by the City Charter to develop a budget plan that must be presented for City Council consideration by April 20th of each year.

This year, the City of Los Angles will be challenged by many issues, including declining revenues, increased service demands, and soaring City pension contributions.

As we begin the planning process for Fiscal Year 2010-11, I invite you to help me develop my proposed budget by participating in the Los Angeles Budget Challenge where you will be asked to make some of the tough choices necessary to balance the City’s budget.

The site does not require registration, but participants are asked to identify their age group and zip code. Following a brief overview of the current budget situation and some instructions, the site leads into a total of twelve survey items, a selection of key issues and related policy proposals. Each item provides participants with a bit of basic background information. Participants can then choose between two to four pre-defined options, each of which with more or less of a deficit-reducing impact on the budget.

According to the site, the city is facing a $400 million budget deficit in FY 2010/2011. The eight survey items under spending offer participants up to $293 million in budget cuts and savings. The four items under revenue offer up to $280 million in additional revenue.

Screenshot gallery

From a participation perspective, there are always a lot of questions one could ask for further analysis: How were the issues and policy proposals chosen that made it onto the survey? What will happen to the input? How binding is it? How does this fit into the overall budgeting process? Etc.

However, I just wanted to point out one easily overlooked detail that struck me as odd. Turns out there is one item among the twelve that won’t take “no” for an answer (the last one, which also happens to be the biggest, relatively): Public Private Partnerships for Parking Structures/Meters

If you do the math, it is impossible to balance the budget unless a participant chooses option 2 (“Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for City parking structures only.”) or option 3 (“Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for CIty parking structures and City parking meters.”).

Honi soit qui mal y pense…

It’s not apparent if this site uses an off-the-shelf tool. I’ve added it to ParticipateDB, nonetheless.

Update: Looks like they’re using the Next 10 Budget Challenge tool (also added to ParticipateDB).

I usually refrain from embedding other people’s hard work unless I have at least some additional value to add. In this case, however, I’m simply glad to see my German hometown embrace public participation:

About Zebralog:

Zebralog is a not-for-profit organization that supports modern democratic decision making through the use of interactive media. Zebralog offers every service that is needed to run online dialogues: institutional embedding, marketing, technical backbone and moderation. Its members have a strong background in participatory planning processes, social science and face-to-face moderation. In Germany, they were among the first to conduct online consultations for various state bodies, among them the government of Berlin or Frankfurt.

Zebralog has also offered consulting and research to organizations that plan to stage online dialogues, among them the Federal Parliament of Germany and the Federal Ministry for Development. Last but not least, the members of Zebralog are very engaged in networking activities to exchange experience among dialogue designers, make the opportunity of e-participation more known and work towards standards of excellence. Currently, Zebralog directs its creativity to the challenge of transnational and multi-lingual online dialogues and is very interested to find international partners for cooperation.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this presentation was held at a conference in China: International Conference “Participatory Budgeting in Asia and Europe: Key Challenges of Participation”, August 17-19, 2009, University of Zhejiang, Hangzhou, China