Preparation of the Local Budget

The old saws, “money makes the mare go” and “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” make for awareness of the central importance of budgeting in government. While these expressions indicate the possibility of a measure of general understanding of public budgeting, they also are indicative of the ease with which superficiality and misconceptions may develop in this field. A public budget, one authority has rightly declared “… is not what most people conceive it to be. It is not figures about sums of money to be set aside for definite expenditures, nor is it a series of graphic charts, nor multitudes of sheets indicating limits not to be exceeded.” While columns of figures, forms and procedures, and preparation of the budget document are important budget activities, they are only incidental to the basic functions of budgeting, which are to aid the executive in his job of management and to help simplify the task of the legislative body in determining policy. To carry out these two functions properly, the whole governmental organization, indeed, the citizenry, too, must be involved in budgeting.The budget is a psychological device to make people in an administrative organization think and, as will be explained more fully, to make the people themselves think about their government. Budget reformers, hard at work in this worthy cause since the model municipal corporation act of 1899 was drafted, have emphasized the executive's rôle in budgeting: “it shall be the duty of the Mayor … in each year to submit to the Council the annual budget …” The tendency has been for the executive and his budget officer, commonly the controller, to work up a budget and then impose it, with councilmanic consent, on the administration.