What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Budget?
Balancing Power in Municipal Budgeting: Executive vs. Legislative Roles in Montana Local Government
The annual budget of a municipal government invites conflict between the legislative and executive branches. At stake, of course, is nothing less than whose “good ideas” will get funded? Which department will get a budget increase, and which will be cut? Which ward or commission district will get its streets or roads paved next year and which in five years? The local government’s annual struggle to answer these and a thousand other locally relevant questions can be made economically rational, politically defensible and certainly less stressful by means of a clear understanding of the appropriate budgeting roles to be filled by the governing body and by the executive. Montana Municipal Officials Handbook 135 The Governing Body The final budget must, in theory, be approved by the governing body before any public money can be spent. (See 7‐6‐4025, MCA for an important exception.) Therefore, a strong case can be made that the budget should, in substantial measure, reflect the goals and priorities of the governing council or commission, even if those goals are, in fact, developed by the executive branch for consideration and possible adoption by the governing body. Despite the self-evident virtue of this proposition, the practice in too many Montana municipalities is to treat the budget process as the mechanical, four-step sequence described above (data collection, legislative review, implementation and monitoring) and to do so without taking the time to formulate, articulate, and agree upon the council or commission’s specific goals and priorities for the coming budget year. As a result, very scarce local resources could end up allocated to the municipal department with the best argument, to the neighborhood or
citizen group with the most political clout, as a compromise between feuding council members or, worse, “pretty much the way we did it last year”. Perhaps this mechanical approach to budgeting is the reason that so few municipal budgets are accompanied by a budget message explaining the public purposes (goals) to be accomplished by the local government with taxpayer dollars. The mechanical budgeting style mentioned above will, in fact, produce a budget for the coming year. What it will not produce is orderly, predictable and affordable improvements in the well-being of the community. Nor will it generate much trust in the ability of the municipal government to address and solve community problems with the available resources, which is, after all, the reason to have a local government in the first place. In
short, the members of the governing body simply must take the time to formulate, articulate and agree upon their fundamental goals and priorities before they start allocating public resources. The Executive To emphasize what ought to be the important role of the governing body in goal setting, there was but passing reference to the involvement of the executive branch in the process described above. In reality, it is more often true than not that the executive side of the municipal government will play a key role in defining the goals to be
funded in the annual budget. Even in the commission-manager form of government wherein the boundary between the policy-‐making role of the commission and the policy implementation role of the manager is most clearly defined, the expertise, time and staff support available to the chief executive makes executive involvement virtually imperative in the commission’s goal setting process. In the traditional commission-executive
(mayor-council) form of municipal government, executive involvement in setting the goals of the legislative branch is unavoidable and is probably essential simply because the mayor usually serves as the council’s presiding officer. The typical dependence of the governing body on the executive branch for information, analyses, expert opinion, assessment of viability and resource availability when setting its budget goals is the friction point that can, and too often does, lead to conflict between the two branches of municipal government. For example, the
role of the chief executive in virtually all forms of Montana’s municipal government includes the legal responsibility and authority to prepare the budget for commission or council consideration and adoption. Moreover, virtually any chief- executive at any level of government (or in business for that matter), is very likely to have his or her own notion of the appropriate goals and priorities for the organization. It should come as no surprise that the executive’s goals may or may not be in harmony with the goals of the governing body. Unless there is an opportunity for the governing body to formulate, discuss and then communicate its goals and
priorities to the executive before they complete their version of the budget, the executive budget will reflect only the resource allocation recommendations of the chief executive. In this common situation, the members of the governing body are confronted with the typical dilemma of trying either to second guess and micro-manage the executive budget or, in order to avoid conflict, simply rubber-stamp the spending recommendations of the executive. The result is not likely to be either a good budget or an example of good government in action.
citizen group with the most political clout, as a compromise between feuding council members or, worse, “pretty much the way we did it last year”. Perhaps this mechanical approach to budgeting is the reason that so few municipal budgets are accompanied by a budget message explaining the public purposes (goals) to be accomplished by the local government with taxpayer dollars. The mechanical budgeting style mentioned above will, in fact, produce a budget for the coming year. What it will not produce is orderly, predictable and affordable improvements in the well-being of the community. Nor will it generate much trust in the ability of the municipal government to address and solve community problems with the available resources, which is, after all, the reason to have a local government in the first place. In
short, the members of the governing body simply must take the time to formulate, articulate and agree upon their fundamental goals and priorities before they start allocating public resources. The Executive To emphasize what ought to be the important role of the governing body in goal setting, there was but passing reference to the involvement of the executive branch in the process described above. In reality, it is more often true than not that the executive side of the municipal government will play a key role in defining the goals to be
funded in the annual budget. Even in the commission-manager form of government wherein the boundary between the policy-‐making role of the commission and the policy implementation role of the manager is most clearly defined, the expertise, time and staff support available to the chief executive makes executive involvement virtually imperative in the commission’s goal setting process. In the traditional commission-executive
(mayor-council) form of municipal government, executive involvement in setting the goals of the legislative branch is unavoidable and is probably essential simply because the mayor usually serves as the council’s presiding officer. The typical dependence of the governing body on the executive branch for information, analyses, expert opinion, assessment of viability and resource availability when setting its budget goals is the friction point that can, and too often does, lead to conflict between the two branches of municipal government. For example, the
role of the chief executive in virtually all forms of Montana’s municipal government includes the legal responsibility and authority to prepare the budget for commission or council consideration and adoption. Moreover, virtually any chief- executive at any level of government (or in business for that matter), is very likely to have his or her own notion of the appropriate goals and priorities for the organization. It should come as no surprise that the executive’s goals may or may not be in harmony with the goals of the governing body. Unless there is an opportunity for the governing body to formulate, discuss and then communicate its goals and
priorities to the executive before they complete their version of the budget, the executive budget will reflect only the resource allocation recommendations of the chief executive. In this common situation, the members of the governing body are confronted with the typical dilemma of trying either to second guess and micro-manage the executive budget or, in order to avoid conflict, simply rubber-stamp the spending recommendations of the executive. The result is not likely to be either a good budget or an example of good government in action.