As stated in chapter one of A Budgeting Guide for Local Government, navigating the increasingly complex crosscurrents of local government finance has become an essential skill for today’s public administrator. Even more so as local budgets are extremely sensitive to their political, economic, social, and legal environments. Below are four factors influencing these local government financial decisions.

1. Political (Citizen) Involvement

What appears to be occurring at the local level is that city and county managers and their legislative boards are increasingly using the budget to better understand how citizens, rather than internal participants, see government. Such a transformation will have a major effect on budget allocations and the relative size of city and county agencies.

Read "How Public Engagement Produces More Accountable and Effective Government" »

In fact, we should anticipate greater diversity among local governments in type and quality of services provided, particularly as communities develop reputations for having strengths in particular services. And given the powerful differences in service preferences that have been documented among age groups, we should also anticipate further segmentation of communities along generational lines.

Types of citizen involvement to obtain citizen feedback:

• citizen surveys
• neighborhood forums
• town hall meetings
• interactive websites

2. Economic Influences

A number of factors can influence the economic environment of local government budgeting, including:

• Economic cycles. Economic downturns affect local budgets in two main ways. First, revenues may decline, especially such revenue as sales or income taxes, which are more sensitive to economic cycles. Second, during a recession, state and federal revenues are often hit hard, which means that intergovernmental aid to local governments may decline.
• Inflation. Inflation creates uncertainty in local government revenue and expenditure forecasts. When the cost of living increases rapidly, organized labor experts pressure to keep wages current with inflation.
• Interest rates. Changes in interest rates can also affect the budget, although their effects are not as great at the local level as they are at the national level, where the federal deficit requires continual borrowing.
• Competition among local governments. Because it affects taxation decisions, competition among local governments for new residents or business investment also exerts an economic influence on local budgeting.

Read "Rethinking Budgeting: Are We Ready for a New Approach?" »

You can prepare for economic influences by (1) prohibiting departments from spending all their allocations, holding back on permission to hire new staff or make other contractual commitments, building reserves or rainy day funds; and (2) obtaining a competitive advantage over other jurisdictions is to export the tax burden, lifting it from residents to nonresidents. Such action reduces taxes on residents while allowing service levels to be maintained.

3. Social and Demographic Change

Changes in three social and demographic factors – population, age distribution, and personal income – have significant and lasting effects on local budgets.

• Population. As population increases and fixed costs are divided among more households, the resulting economies of scale will mean lower per-unit costs. Because financial obligations do not decline in proportion to population loss, communities with declining populations have difficulty reducing spending.
• Age distribution. Spending for public education, public safety, and recreational services are the budget categories most likely to be affected by the age distribution of the population.
• Personal income. Research consistently shows that growth in personal income significantly affects the size of local government budgets. Higher-income households often demand more and better services from government, although these same households are more likely to advocate limited government, especially at the state and federal levels.

Read "Sustainability Through an Equity Lens, an Introduction" »

4. Legal and Intergovernmental Matters

Legal and intergovernmental factors shape local budgets in three principal ways:

• Budgetary balance. The legal environment in which state and local budgeting operates typically requires budgetary balance – that is, current revenues must equal current expenditures. Requirements for budgetary balance are complicated by a technical question: Is the budget balanced on a cash basis (i.e.; revenues are recorded when cash is received, and expenditures recorded when disbursed) or on a modified accrual basis (i.e., liabilities are recognized at the time they are incurred, and revenues are recognized when they are available for budgeted purposes)?

Read "Rethinking Local Government Revenue: Why the Time Is Now and What Can Be Done" »

This question is important because cash balances can be easily manipulated: to make the budget look more balanced than it is, payments can be delayed until the following fiscal year and revenue collections can be accelerated for credit to the current year.

• Mandates. A mandate involves one level of government requiring another level to provide particular services or follow certain procedures, as well as specifying the quality or frequency of service provision. Both the federal and state government imposes mandates on local governments. 

The problem: Unless the federal or state government also provides full funding to implement the mandates, local officials may have to cut other services to comply. Communities suffering the effects of recessions have sometimes been hit simultaneously by unfunded mandates and cutbacks in state spending.

• A combined effect. Forbidding particular revenue sources, constraining tax increases, requiring balance, and mandating some services and service levels, are a combination of factors that has created enormous fiscal stress at the local level during the past three decades.

Other Links of Note for Local Government Budgeting and Finance

2019 State and Local Fiscal Facts. Annual report on the fiscal condition of state and local governments, municipal bonds, and state and local pensions.

Ask an ICMA Manager: How to Manage Budget Expectations? Retired city manager and ICMA Legacy Leader Carl Swenson shares his experience with managing expectations during the annual budget process.

Planning a Financial Future. This article discusses the benefits of forecasting, provides some important drivers that communities need to think about when planning for the future, and gives examples of two types of governments that have used long-term financial analysis to help solve budgeting problems.