How Rural Local Governments Budget: The Alternatives to Executive Preparation

Abstract

If the available studies are to be believed, annual budgeting by local governments in the United States is very much an executive-centered and dominated process. The idea of the budget is foremost in both prescription and description. Chief executives, whether appointed, as in the case of city managers, or separately elected, as are strong mayors, control the process. They and their staffs establish policy for departmental proposals, collect revenue estimates and spending requests, combine and revise these materials, and present final recommendations as their own programs to bodies. The city councils and other local governing boards, in contrast, are mainly legitimizers of leadership in this area-rarely able and seldom willing to carry out independent and comprehensive reviews of budget proposals. Thus, budgeting in the city of Oakland is described by Wildavsky as a matter of executive domination and legislative acquiescence,' a generalization that seems to fit big city and metropolitan practices elsewhere.2 But what of the many small governments that do not have recognized and powerful chief executives-how do they handle their annual budgeting? The question is not inconsequential, since the vast majority of general purpose local governments in the United States serve small populations in rural and suburban areas and lack either professional managers or strong elected executives.3 They are an important part of the nation's local government apparatus, spending billions of public dollars every year to provide basic services to millions of residents.4 And they are becoming even more important, as the urban-to-rural population redistribution first noted