GFR October 2023

Government Finance Officers Association | OCTOBER 2023 

Calibration training for 

better decision making 

Crushing assumptions for 

more visionary thinking 

Government Finance Review 

How fiscal mapping will 

make you more effective 

Shaping Stronger 

Communities 

Recognizing the unique needs of different groups 

strengthens the community as a whole. Budgeting for 

equity provides a path for making this vision a reality.

“A must-have publicaaon 

for every local government.” 

Accounnng for Capital Assets: A Guide for State and Local Governments 

(2nd ediion) offers clear and straight-forward guidance to public-sector 

accounnng professionals who must confront the pracccal challenges of 

accounnng for capital assets and similar items on a daily basis. 

Chapter-in-Brief Summaries | Quiz Questions | Sample Journal Entries 

Purchase your soocover or e-Book copy at 

gfoa.org/capitalassets

contents 

OCTOBER 

2023 

VOLUME 39, NUMBER 5 

SPECIAL SECTION 

16 

Building a 

Better Community 

for Everyone 

Managing the tensions 

surrounding equity in 

budgeting to build better, 

stronger communities 

By Shayne C. Kavanagh, 

Andrew Kleine, Chris Fabian, 

and Erik Fabian 

©2023 DAVIDE BONAZZI (COVER); JING JING TSONG C/O THEISPOT.COM 

32 

From Guesswork to 

Informed Judgment 

Using calibration training 

for better decision-making 

By Shayne Kavanagh, Doug Hubbard, 

Philip Martin, and Robert Weant 

40 

A Key Role 

Why economists offer 

an essential skill set to 

local governments 

By Deepayan Debnath, Matthew 

Lue, Alex Tabb, and Mark Mack 

OCTOBER 2023 | GOVERNMENT FINANCE REVIEW 1

contents 

44 

Map the Way to 

Smarter Funding 

The Children’s Funding Project 

demonstrates how fiscal 

mapping can help finance 

officers make informed 

budgeting recommendations 

By Amelia Vaughn and 

Ed Harrington 

50 

Crushing Assumptions 

in Two Simple Steps 

How to break the curse 

of knowledge and unlock 

visionary thinking 

By Susan Robertson 

54 

Positive Change 

in Action 

Build trust and expertise 

with after action reviews 

By Jake Mazulewicz 

6 Contributors 

8 From the CEO 

By Chris Morrill 

10 Rewind: A Look Back 

at GFR from 1975 

11 Students Investigate 

Rethinking Revenue 

Options 

14 Hiring Issues, Solved: 

Case Studies and 

Solutions in Action 

59 Contribution Versus 

Collaboration 

By Katie Ludwig 

64 Distinguishing Between 

Internal Cash Flows and 

Internal Resource Flows 

By Michele Mark Levine 

68 The Fiscal Cliff 

By Katherine Barrett 

and Richard Greene 

70 Celebrating Sui Generis 

By Justin Marlowe 

72 Q&A with Anne Baker 

By Mike Mucha 

77 An Interview with Glenys Salas 

By Jara Kern 

80 10 Steps to Establishing 

a GFOA Student Chapter 

©2023 ANNA GODEASSI; JAMES YANG C/O THEISPOT.COM 

2

Fall Training in Chicago 

Debt Management 

Best Praccces 

November 7-8 | 16 CPE 

Gain essennal knowledge and 

tools for effeccve debt issuance 

policies and management. This 

course will highlight pracccal 

examples and feature interaccve 

discussions. 

ERP Implementaaon 

and Technology 

Governance 

November 29-30 | 16 CPE 

Implemennng ERP? AAend to 

explore all implementaaon 

phases, customer and vendor 

expectaaons, insights on 

managing constraints, and more. 

Role of the Finance 

Officer in the Budget 

Process 

December 5-6 | 16 CPE 

Learn the skills needed to 

Learn the skills needed to 

become a “decision architect” 

and design a beeer budget 

decision-making environment for 

your organizaaon. 

gfoa.org/events

Publisher 

Chris Morrill 

Editor in Chief 

Michael J. Mucha 

Managing Editor 

Marcy Boggs 

GOVERNMENT FINANCE REVIEW 

www.gfoa.org/gfr 

EDITORIAL 

gfr@gfoa.org 

ADVERTISING 

gfoa.org/gfr-ads 

PERMISSION & REPRINTS 

gfr@gfoa.org 

CHANGE OF ADDRESS 

gfoa.org/update-membership 

SUBSCRIPTIONS 

gfoa.org/gfr 

SUBMISSIONS 

GFOA encourages finance officers, scholars, 

private consultants, and other knowledgeable 

individuals to submit manuscripts to GFR. 

All manuscripts should conform to the Editorial 

Policy and Guidelines for Authors, which are 

available online at gfoa.org. Manuscripts should 

be submitted electronically to gfr@gfoa.org. 

CONTACT 

Government Finance Review 

c/o Government Finance Officers Association 

203 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 2700 

Chicago, Illinois 60601-1210 

Phone: 312-977-9700 

Fax: 312-977-4806 

GFOA EXECUTIVE BOARD 

Laura Allen 

President 

Maryland Department of 

Budget and Management, MD 

Terri Velasquez 

Past President 

City of Aurora, CO 

Tanya Garost 

President-Elect 

City of Martensville, SK 

Sonya Andrews 

City of Scottsdale, AZ 

Lunda Asmani 

Norwalk Public Schools, CT 

Jennifer Brown 

City of Sugar Land, TX 

Timothy Ewell 

County of Contra Costa, CA 

Edwin Gin 

Illinois Housing 

Development Authority, IL 

Bruce H. Fisher 

Nova Scotia Utility and 

Review Board, NS 

Jason Greene 

City of Miami Beach, FL 

Anne P. Harty 

City of Rock Hill, SC 

Sue Iverson 

City of Red Wing, MN 

Grace Martinez 

Metropolitan Transportation 

Commission, CA 

Debra Roberts 

Maryland Teachers & State 

Employees Supplemental 

Retirement Plans, MD 

David P. Schmiedicke 

City of Madison, WI 

Kendel Taylor 

City of Alexandria, VA 

Diane Waldron 

City of Bristol, CT 

Chris Morrill 

GFOA 

GFR (Government Finance Review) (ISSN 0883-7856) is published bimonthly in February, April, June, August, October, and December. 

Subscription price is $35 annually. Opinions expressed herein are the viewpoints of the authors. They may differ from the policies and 

recommendations of the Government Finance Officers Association, its committees, and staff. Letters to the editor are welcomed. 

Copyright 2023 by the GFOA. Published by the Government Finance Officers Association, 203 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 2700, Chicago, 

IL 60601-1210. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois, and additional mailing office. Postmaster: Please send address changes 

to Government Finance Review, 203 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 2700, Chicago, IL 60601-1210. 

4

Encore Presentaaon 

The 2023 Governmental GAAP Update includes 

last-minute guidance on current standards, such as 

Subscrippon-Based Informaaon Technology, along 

with implementaaon details about GASB 100, 

Accounnng Changes and Error Correccons; GASB 101, 

Compensated Absences; and the upcoming GASB 102, 

Risks and Uncertainnes Disclosures. 

New this year, we'll discuss effeccve strategies for 

hiring in accounnng and audiing roles—a crucial 

aspect in the public finance sector. 

gfoa.org/gaap-update

CONTRIBUTORS 

Deepayan Debnath, who has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics, is an economist for the City of Columbia, 

Missouri. Currently, he manages a team of economic and ERP analysts. Before joining the city, Debnath 

worked with several organizations, including the University of Missouri-Columbia, Iowa State University, 

the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and 

Development. As an economist, he has more than ten years of experience. Debnath has published numerous 

reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and chapters. 

Chris Fabian is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Resource Exploration (ResourceX). ResourceX 

supports local governments in their initiatives to strategically align resources with community outcomes. 

Through priority-based budgeting methodology and software, local governments are accelerating data-driven 

decision-making to align resources toward society’s biggest challenges. ResourceX provides a platform to fund 

equity initiatives, climate action plans, and a fiscally sustainable future for residents and the community. 

Fabian has more than a decade of experience consulting with local governments. 

Erik Fabian is the business development manager at ResourceX, which supports and accelerates local 

government’s ability to tackle massive societal challenges, from climate change and homelessness to equity 

and sustainability, through program identification and resource reallocation. Before joining ResourceX, he 

was president at Edgewerk: Tactical & Creative Business Solutions. Fabian has years of senior-level finance and 

operations experience in both the public and private real estate sectors, including more than ten years with the 

Housing Authority of Portland, Oregon. 

Ed Harrington is a former controller for the City and County of San Francisco and a former GFOA president. He 

is a board member for Children’s Funding Project. He was general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities 

Commission before moving to the city and county government. Harrington was also a member of the Financial 

Accounting Foundation Board. Since his retirement, Harrington has worked extensively with governmental 

and nonprofit organizations. He is a member of the San Francisco Port Commission, a board member for the 

national Children’s Funding Project, and an adviser to California’s Funding the Next Generation. He was also 

the treasurer of SPUR and Greenpeace International for a number of years. 

Doug Hubbard is chief executive officer of Hubbard Decision Research. He developed a decision analysis 

method he calls Applied Information Economics (AIE), and it has been his specialty for the last 25 years of his 

35-year management consulting career, specializing in the application of quantitative methods in management. 

Doug uses AIE to solve difficult forecasting, measurement, and decision analysis problems in business and 

government. He’s completed more than 150 risk-return analyses of large, critical projects, investments, and 

other management decisions. 

Shayne Kavanagh is the senior manager of research for GFOA. He started GFOA’s long-term financial planning and 

policy consulting offering in 2002 and has been working with governments on financial planning and policies ever 

since. Most recently, Kavanagh has pioneered the use of computer simulation to “stress test” the long-term financial 

position of local governments. He is also the author of a number of influential publications on financial planning 

and budgeting. His work has earned him a fellowship with the National Academy of Public Administration, a 

position on the board of advisors for the University of Chicago’s Center for Municipal Finance, and recognition as 

one of the 100 most influential people in local government by Engaging Local Government Leaders. 

Andrew Kleine is senior director, EY-Parthenon Government & Public Sector, Ernst & Young LLP. He is the 

author of City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes 

(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: 2018). Kleine is passionate about helping governments get the most possible 

value for their resources and achieve great outcomes for their residents. In his 25-year public service career, 

he served as a White House budget examiner, federal chief finance officer, big-city budget director, and county 

chief administrative officer. In 2016, Kleine received the National Public Service Award from the National 

Academy of Public Administration. 

6

Matthew Lue is a director and chief financial officer with 15 years of private- and public-sector accounting, 

financial, and management experience. Lue holds a bachelor’s degree in finance with an emphasis in 

accounting from the University of Central Missouri, and a Master of Business Administration degree from 

Avila University. He currently serves as the director of finance and chief financial officer for the City of 

Columbia Missouri, where he has been since November 2019. 

Mark Mack is a senior manager in GFOA’s Research and Consulting Center. Mack supports governments 

through finance-related consulting projects. Mark supports government jurisdictions through finance-related 

consulting projects and technology acquisitions. He also conducts research and writes on topics that affect 

public-sector finance. In addition to research and consulting, Mack also staffs finance- and budget-related 

professional development trainings. He holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification from the 

Project Management Institute. Before joining GFOA, he worked in municipal government and higher education. 

Philip Martin is chief operating officer of Hubbard Decision Research. Martin has spent most of his 

professional career in the software engineering industry, both as an engineer and, in recent years, a program 

manager. Most of this work in recent years has been with avionics software companies working on testing 

and verification of their software to be in compliance with the FAA’s safety standards. In addition to program 

management, Martin has been responsible for developing new training methodologies and tools for engineers, 

as well as providing risk analysis assessments for projects and proposals. 

Jake Mazulewicz, Ph.D., shows leaders in high-hazard industries why errors are signals, not failures, and how 

to address the deeper problem, so that everyone can work more reliably and safely. He makes keynote speeches 

and advises globally. Mazulewicz has a decade of experience in safety for electric utilities, and he’s served as a 

firefighter, an EMT, and a military paratrooper. To learn more, visit www.reliableorg.com. 

Susan Robertson empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to more nimbly adapt to change by 

transforming thinking from “why we can’t” to “how might we?” She is a creative thinking expert with more than 

20 years of experience speaking and coaching in Fortune 500 companies. As an instructor on applied creativity 

at Harvard, Robertson brings a scientific foundation to enhancing human creativity. More information is 

available at SusanRobertsonSpeaker.com. 

Alex Tabb is an economic analyst for the City of Columbia, Missouri. Tabb earned a Bachelor of Science degree 

in economics at the University of Kansas. He is currently working on finishing his graduate degree at the 

University of Missouri-Columbia, where he also served as a teaching assistant. He is developing a revenue 

forecasting model that incorporates the hierarchies that exist within municipal fund structures. Alex also 

helped provide information on the impact of recreational marijuana tax on the city’s revenue. 

Amelia Vaughn is co-director of research capacity at Children’s Funding Project, where she supports the 

growing strategic public financing work of the organization by providing technical assistance, coaching, and 

supervision to contracts with a range of local, state, and national partners. She has worked for the Virginia 

Governor’s Children’s Cabinet. Her passion and career began in direct service as both a birth doula and early 

childhood parent educator for a home visiting program. 

Robert Weant is senior analyst at Hubbard Decision Research. He has led several large, risk-focused projects 

and acted as project support for a variety of industries. Weant has also been instrumental in developing 

algorithms that have enhanced the methods used by AIE and increased the effectiveness of the Monte Carlo 

simulations the firm builds for its clients. Among other pursuits, he led a team of economics students to 

successfully compete in a monetary policy competition hosted by the Federal Reserve to become one of the top 

five finalists in the country. 


FROM THE CEO 

Christopher P. Morrill 

Executive Director/CEO 

We Agree, and We Don’t 

G 

FOA’s Code of Ethics 

requires finance officers 

to disclose the information 

that both local officials 

and the public need 

to fully understand the financial 

condition of their communities. It also 

emphasizes the importance of striving 

to produce timely information. This 

concept—that the timely disclosure 

of relevant information is crucial to a 

well-run local government—is part of 

GFOA’s core values, and it provides the 

foundation for our awards programs, 

advocacy work, and education. 

Most people agree with this idea, but 

we can find ourselves disagreeing about 

the best path to get there. Many people 

think that our method of reporting, 

using the current generally accepted 

accounting principles (GAAP), may not 

be the best way to achieve the objectives 

of transparency and accountability. 

This is backed by continued feedback 

from our members. The complexity 

of GAAP’s requirements, especially 

some of the recent changes, have led 

to additional time and effort, and 

many practitioners think this makes 

communication with the public and 

other key stakeholders more difficult. 

GFOA’s Rethinking initiatives (like 

Rethinking Financial Reporting) were 

designed to ask questions that will lead 

to discoveries about what drives value 

in common finance processes. And now 

is the time to ask if lengthy, technical 

financial reports that are published 

months after the close of the fiscal year 

are the most effective way to achieve 

transparency goals, inform citizens, 

and ultimately work to build trust. 

Recent GASB statements have not only 

added significant time and expense to 

the task of producing financial reports, 

but as with any major change, they 

also create confusion. This impact 

is most felt among the many local 

governments that are already facing 

challenges in recruiting and retaining 

staff and lack the resources to purchase 

more software or hire consultants. 

With the recently passed Financial 

Data Transparency Act of 2022 

(FDTA), the federal government 

may add even more requirements 

for local government financial 

reporting, creating yet another layer 

of unfunded mandates and confusion. 

The law requires federal departments 

and regulators to develop machine 

readable data standards for state and 

local annual comprehensive financial 

reports and other disclosures for 

issuers of municipal debt. Unless those 

standards are informed by a thorough 

understanding of local government 

financial reports and the processes 

used in creating them, we’re probably 

facing even more misunderstandings 

and unnecessary expenses. 

GFOA has a variety of strategies for 

helping our members navigate these 

challenging times. Our Federal Liaison 

Center will make sure that GFOA 

members receive updates on the status of 

FDTA implementation and what it means 

for your government. GFOA will create 

a dedicated resource page at gfoa.org/ 

fdta to provide information, tools, and 

recommendations. We will also continue 

to provide ongoing education in the form 

of webinars, conference sessions, and 

other presentations to communicate 

best practices in financial reporting. 

For example, GFOA recently released a 

short video series with timely accounting 

8

©2023 MICHAEL AUSTIN C/O THEISPOT.COM 

Recent GASB statements 

have not only added 

significant time and 

expense to the task 

of producing financial 

reports, but as with any 

major change, they also 

create confusion. 

discussions (TAD), which you can find 

online at gfoa.org/justatad. And our 

research will continue to pose difficult 

questions and uncover new information 

about what the public wants, document 

how to best communicate it, and tell 

the story of leading governments with 

lessons learned to share. (To get involved 

in our research, please visit gfoa.org/ 

rethinking-financial-reporting.) 

We will continue to support GFOA 

members through advocacy on your 

behalf both in Washington, D.C., and 

with GASB. Our purpose is to represent 

government finance professionals, 

communicate your feedback and 

positions, and push back against 

unreasonable standards. 

Our commitment to GAAP remains 

as strong as ever, and we believe that 

the consistency and comparability 

GAAP reporting offers is the best way for 

governments to meet their obligations 

to be transparent and accountable. But 

we also realize that GAAP aren’t perfect 

and, in their current form, may have 

even taken a few steps backward. So, 

we will continue to provide resources, 

advocacy, and research, and we look 

forward to a future with more timely, less 

burdensome financial reporting that 

meets the needs of an engaged public. 

We also invite your assistance and 

welcome your engagement as we work to 

advance excellence in public finance. 

To participate in sharing ideas, case 

studies, or your experience, or to help 

get the message to policymakers, please 

join the discussion in GFOA’s online 

communities or visit gfoa.org/volunteer 

for a current list of opportunities. 

Sincerely, 

Resources At-a-Glance 

Find up-to-date information on 

the Financial Data Transparency 

Act of 2022 and what it means 

for your government. 

gfoa.org/fdta 

Our Just a T.A.D. video series 

offers timely accounting 

discussions in ten minutes 

or less on specific topics. 

gfoa.org/justatad 

Get involved with our research 

on how local governments 

can best communicate financial 

information to the public. 

gfoa.org/rethinkingfinancial-reporting 

Share your ideas and join us in 

our work to advance excellence 

in public finance. 

gfoa.org/volunteer 


ewind 

Cash Management 50 Years Ago 

A look back at GFR from November 1975 

The 1960s and ’70s 

were the decades when 

local government 

cash management 

started becoming more 

sophisticated, along with 

the treasury function as a whole. The 

November 1975 issue of Governmental 

Finance (now GFR) published the 

steps taken by the finance office of 

Westchester County, New York, that 

emphasized banking relationships “to 

assure the maximum participation by 

and encourage competitiveness among 

the banks serving the community, thus 

permitting the highest realistic return 

for the county’s working dollars.” 

“All too often, we become totally 

technical in our approaches to cash 

management and forget that the banking 

community with which we deal is 

essentially made up of businessmen 

with strong ties to the community in 

which they work and live,” according 

to the article, which noted that before 

1960, the county relied solely on the 

locally owned and operated banks for all 

day-to-day operations and investments. 

Around this time, states started 

passing legislation that allowed local 

governments to invest further afield. 

Many or most local governments had 

substantial cash positions and only 

issued debt for capital projects. Banks 

working with governments provided 

much of the financing for projects. In 

the mid-1970s, a well-run government’s 

needs for banking services fell primarily 

into two main areas: investment of 

funds and disbursements of the types of 

funds under the organization’s control. 

For example, checks might be issued 

for social services, payroll, claims 

disbursement, and capital. Those checks 

would be primarily computer-generated, 

and the disbursements would be 

controlled by the Department of Finance. 

Using objective and subjective criteria, 

the placement of operating accounts 

needed to disburse these funds and 

residual demand deposits with various 

banks was continually evaluated. The 

county had 60 accounts in all 12 of 

its officially designated banks, which 

was considered the maximum number 

of accounts capable of being easily 

controlled on a daily basis. 

Only 11 percent of the county’s 

revenues came from departmental 

sources (the rest was sales tax collected 

by the state and remitted monthly, and 

federal and state aid, which comprised 

40 percent of revenues and was 

collected monthly), so the control of 

these revenues was maintained using 

individual cash pending accounts. 

Each day, all revenues collected and 

deposited were transferred into a 

concentration system that allowed 

for their daily investment or use. This 

number of accounts (60) was then divided 

into a two-tier operation that provided for 

a consolidation of balances in each of the 

major areas. At this point, Finance simply 

designated banks and the accounts were 

opened as either concentration accounts 

(pending accounts for revenues) or 

operation accounts (for disbursements). 

In reviewing the placement of these 

designated accounts with the 12 depository 

banks, the three major considerations 

were: 1) Is this account and subsequent 

activity suitable to the specific bank? 

2) Will this account be part of the 

automated system, or provided as one of 

the government’s few manual checking 

accounts? And 3) Is the account in question 

a duplicate account already in operation at 

another bank? (If so, why the duplication?) 

An important aspect of selection of the 

most suitable bank for a specific account 

was to have a thorough knowledge of the 

bank and its operational capabilities 

and financial resources. To ensure that 

the county was always on top of this 

aspect of the relationship, it requested 

that all the services provided by the 

banks be demonstrated, that the county 

be appraised of any new applicable 

service, and that these items were 

reviewed with the county. The opening 

or closing of a new bank branch was kept 

on file and demographically recorded 

and maintained, allowing the county 

to keep track of nearby banks. 

10

In Brief 

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT | CASE STUDIES 

At left, the group meets to discuss 

revenue options. Attending via Zoom 

video are Leah Benz, health program 

manager, County of Sonoma Department 

of Health; Shayne Kavanagh, senior 

manager of research, GFOA; Bryan 

Glenn, chief executive officer, SERVUS; 

and Adriana Rizzo, board member, 

Common Ground California. Attending in 

person are (left to right): Karen McMillen, 

Malluli Cuellar, Professor Rob Wassmer, 

Dexter Davis, and Marco Martinez. 

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT 

Students Investigate Rethinking 

Revenue Options 

BY MALLULI CUELLAR, DEXTER DAVIS, MARCO MARTINEZ AND KAREN MCMILLEN 

GFOA recently guided 

students at California State 

University, Sacramento in a 

project on local government 

revenue. The students, 

who are in a Master of Public Policy 

and Administration program, spent a 

semester considering a problem: that 

the way California local governments 

raise their own-source revenue could 

be outdated, lack transparency, and 

is predicted to not raise enough future 

revenue to satisfy the needs and wants of 

its residents. GFOA’s Rethinking Revenue 

research publications led the students 

to contact GFOA for support, and GFOA 

Executive Director Chris Morrill and 

Senior Manager of Research Shayne 

Kavanagh helped define the problem, 

select alternatives to mitigate it, define 

evaluation criteria, and participate in 

a panel discussion. Below are some of 

the students’ insight from this project. 

MALLULI CUELLAR 

I am a recent first-generation 

graduate, having earned my bachelor’s 

degree in political science last May 

from California State Polytechnic 

University, Humboldt. I moved to the 

City of Sacramento, California, to 

pursue a Master of Public Policy and 

Administration from Sacramento 

State (California State University, 

Sacramento) last August. I work for 

the California State Legislature in 

the Office of Senate Majority Leader 

Mike McGuire. 

As a young professional, I am eager 

to learn. I began this research project 

excited to develop familiarity with 

local government revenue, an area 

of local governance I wasn’t familiar 

with. Before working on this semesterlong 

research project, my experience 

in finance was limited to my work with 

my undergraduate student government. 

I served as the social justice and equity 

officer and, later, the legislative vice 

president of associated students. I 

began my involvement in student 

government in the second year of my 

undergraduate studies. At Cal Poly 

Humboldt, Associated Students collects 

a student fee to fund its programs and 

services. I was able to participate in the 

budget development, public hearing, 

and allocation processes to ensure 

student dollars resulted in student 

services that have an impact. 

I began this project hoping to 

understand local government revenue, 

but as I delved into research and my 

curiosity grew, I developed a fondness 

for segmented pricing that grew into a 

passion. I worked with Bryan Glenn, 

founder and chief executive of SERVUS, 

to research applying the private-sector 

strategy of segmented pricing to local 

government fees and fines. I thank 

Glenn for volunteering his time for 

this research project and culminating 

presentation. There are students, just 

like us, who are eager to learn. 

DEXTER DAVIS 

As an accountant working for local 

government in an internal service 

fund, I don’t have to worry about 

where, specifically, our government 

revenue comes from. Learning about 

streams of local government was very 

interesting—how different types 

of revenue collection affects 

equity, how much a tax generates, 

administrability, and whether it’s 


IN BRIEF 

politically feasible to enact. It was 

eye opening to realize the level of 

transparency of revenue collection 

among local jurisdictions. I am grateful 

to GFOA, our client, and our stakeholders 

who volunteered to help us learn 

about unique approaches to revenue 

generation. After this project, I am more 

thoughtful about where government 

revenue is derived from and how 

revenue streams affect my work. 

MARCO MARTINEZ 

As an undergraduate, I had the 

opportunity to intern for the City of 

Sacramento, where I worked directly 

with local communities and was able to 

listen to their concerns firsthand. 

As our district worked efficiently to 

provide resources for our communities, 

I was still able to see that many of the 

concerns that our constituents voiced 

were out of our control because local 

governments often lack revenue. 

After my time interning for the City of 

Sacramento, I grew passionate about 

continuing my involvement in local 

government. I was excited and eager 

to work on a semester-long project 

about this specific topic. I completely 

immersed myself in the topic of local 

government revenue and explored 

alternatives to help local governments 

generate revenue that were efficient, 

equitable, and easy to implement 

with the existing administration. 

My team, along with GFOA, 

produced a great project with 

innovative findings, which showed 

me how to efficiently work with a 

team to achieve a common goal. 

After a semester of research and 

much thought among my team and 

our professor about the intricacies 

of our project, I am proud of the work 

we were able to produce. 

KAREN MCMILLEN 

I currently work for a local government 

treasurer-tax collector, and I was 

excited when my cohort wanted to study 

local government revenue. I went into 

this project with an interest in local 

government revenue, as revenue is 

essential to support local government 

services and projects. What I took 

away from this project is that revenue 

generation does not just play a support 

role to policy initiatives—it is policy 

itself. There is strategy in choosing 

revenue streams, and it can be designed 

to help ensure the long-term success of 

an initiative through political cycles, 

promote equity, or generate revenue in 

nontraditional ways. This project has 

challenged me to look beyond the status 

quo of property tax, sales tax, and more, 

and to look for opportunities to generate 

revenue in ways that are more efficient, 

modern, and equitable. 

MALLULI CUELLAR 

DEXTER DAVIS 

MARCO MARTINEZ 

KAREN MCMILLEN 

EDUCATION 

Sacramento State Master 

of Public Policy and 

Administration student 

EDUCATION 



Administration Student 

EDUCATION 



Administration student 

EDUCATION 



Administration Student 

B.A. Political Science, Law, 

and Public Policy Concentration, 

California State Polytechnic 

University, Humboldt 

WHY AM I INTERESTED 

IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

REVENUE? I’m a young 

professional who is eager to 

learn about public finance! 

B.S. Joint Mathematics- 

Economics, University of 

California, San Diego 

Prospective CPA 

WORK 

Accountant, Placer 

County, California 



REVENUE? I’m interested 

in public accounting and 

finance as a career path. 

B.A. Political Science and 

Chicanx Studies, University 

of California, Davis 

WORK 

Compliance and 

Grants Analyst, UEI 



REVENUE? I’m excited to 

explore ideas that would 

improve public finance at 

the local level. 

B.S. Managerial Economics, 

UC Davis 

WORK 

Treasurer-Tax Manager, 

Placer County, California 



REVENUE? I intend to make 

a career in public finance, 

and I am very involved in the 

public finance community. I 

am a member of GFOA, the 

California Municipal Treasurers 

Association, and the California 

Association of County 

Treasurers and Tax Collectors. 

12

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IN BRIEF 

CASE STUDIES 

Hiring Issues, 

Solved 

In response to common hiring challenges reported 

by our members, GFOA conducted a series of case 

studies with eight municipalities that have grown their 

applicant pools and reduced hiring times through 

process change. Their stories reveal solutions that can 

help other governments overcome similar challenges. 

GFOA has consistently 

heard about hiring issues 

from our members—few 

applicants, extended 

hiring timeframes, and 

the interaction of these issues leads to 

vacancies that sit open for months. To 

support our members in confronting 

these issues, GFOA identified eight 

local governments across the country 

that have increased their applicant 

pools and reduced hiring times through 

process change. GFOA spoke with staff 

from the City of Los Angeles, California; 

Nevada County, California; San Diego 

County, California; the City of Memphis, 

Tennessee; the City of Hollywood, 

Florida; the City of West Plains, 

Montana; Pierce County, Washington; 

and the Kitsap County Public Health 

District, Washington. 

COMMON ISSUES 

The governments all reported similar 

issues. Difficultly attracting qualified 

candidates was a problem for highly 

technical, certified, or law enforcement 

positions. But we found that in some 

cases, governments can make this 

worse. In Pierce County, for example, 

supplemental questions about 

experience on each job posting meant 

that new graduates were being removed 

from the applicant pool even though 

they would be able to do the job. 

Extended hiring processes was 

also a problem. In Nevada County, 

applicants were being delayed for so 

long that by the time the county was 

ready to move forward, applicants had 

been able to find jobs elsewhere. 

RESULTS 

The case study governments were 

trying to address hiring issues in 

various ways, so results have also been 

varied—but all eight governments, 

despite different contexts, state laws, 

and political environments, have been 

able to make progress toward their own 

hiring goals. By adapting available 

solutions to their own contexts, GFOA 

member governments can also start 

to chip away at their hiring times and 

grow their workforces for the future. 

SOLUTIONS 

The case study governments 

implemented a wide variety of solutions 

to address their hiring challenges, but 

some common themes are: 

Outreach to expand the candidate 

pool. Several case study governments 

reported a number of actions to 

encourage more applicants. The City 

of Los Angeles reported using not 

just the typical job fair booths, but 

also strategies including same-dayhire 

events where they interview 

candidates and provide conditional 

offers for targeted positions. 

Reduce barriers for applicants. Another 

common strategy was to make changes 

to job descriptions and application 

processes to stop qualified candidates 

from self-selecting out of the process. 

The Kitsap County Public Health District 

reviews job descriptions for any problem 

positions to remove barriers such as 

overly strict supplemental questions. 

Review your process. Several 

governments emphasized the 

importance of detailed process 

analysis at the start of any project to 

address hiring time. Clearly laying 

out each step in the process will 

help in identifying steps that could 

be combined, eliminated, or done 

concurrently instead of sequentially. 

Collaborate. Many governments 

noted that improving the relationship 

between Human Resources and client 

departments was a key part of their 

process improvements. Sharing 

responsibilities and giving lower-level 

staff more control over the process speeds 

things up and also gives these employees 

more of a stake in each recruitment. 

Some human resources staff also noted 

that changes can be piloted by eager 

departments and then rolled out to others 

once they’ve demonstrated success. 

©2023 HARRY CAMPBELL C/O THEISPOT.COM 

14

Pierce County, Washington 

Population: 921,000 

PROBLEM: Inconsistent hiring processes 

between government branches created 

barriers and delays that were exacerbated 

in 2020, especially for wastewater, civil 

engineering, and medical examiner positions. 

SOLUTION: Recruiting was centralized 

through the Human Resources Department, 

with analysis of historical position data, 

holistic applicant evaluation, and specific 

strategy sessions for hard-to-fill positions. 

San Diego County, California 

Population: 3,000,000 

PROBLEM: The one-two punch of population 

loss and difficulty attracting candidates to 

public service meant the County encountered 

difficulty hiring for positions including public 

health, public safety, and technical staff. 

SOLUTION: The county deployed a 

three-prong strategy to strengthen its 

hiring processes, including pre-planning 

interview dates, introducing same-day 

offers, and allowing for walk-in applicants. 

City of West Plains, Missouri 


PROBLEM: Like much of the nation, 

the city has had a difficult time 

recruiting for public service roles, 

specifically in the police department. 

SOLUTION: A proactive scheduling 

process fast-tracks hiring timelines, 

and an employee training and 

advancement program helps 

hires learn while they earn—and 

advance quickly. 

Kitsap Public Health District, 

Washington 


PROBLEM: When the pandemic hit, 

Kitsap Public Health District faced 

surging demand for public health 

services coupled with high turnover. 

SOLUTION: The district embraced 

innovation and flexibility in hiring, 

expanding its recruitment outreach 

channels and streamlining staffing 

for early-stage interviews. 

Solutions 

In Action 

These eight success stories 

offer a variety of solutions 

to common hiring issues. 

To learn more about the 

challenges they faced and 

lessons learned, visit 

gfoa.org/workforce2023. 

City of Memphis, Tennessee 


PROBLEM: When the Great Resignation 

hit, City staff grappled with record staff 

turnover and evaporating applicant pools, 

especially for mechanics, executive-level 

finance positions, and summer staff. 

SOLUTION: Staff enhanced collaboration 

between recruiters and departmental 

hiring managers, and compensation 

and talent management teams to 

create an internal culture of efficiency. 

City of Los Angeles, California 

Population: 4,000,000 

PROBLEM: The City faced high vacancy 

rates, at times nearly 25% of its workforce, 

with difficulty recruiting for police, 

clerical, analyst, and specialized positions. 

SOLUTION: City staff engaged in 

process mapping to streamline the 

hiring process, introduced alternative 

targeted hiring pathways, and hosted 

community-based hiring events. 

Nevada County, California 


PROBLEM: Because of excessively 

long delays, many applicants accepted 

private sector offers before the County 

could complete the hiring process. 

SOLUTION: The County set a 60-day 

recruitment goal, sought key outside 

perspectives for process improvement 

and diagramming, and consolidated 

final staff approval into a single meeting. 

City of Hollywood, Florida 


PROBLEM: The city struggled to replace 

employees in lower-paying and technical 

positions, with a limited applicant pool and stiff 

competition from private-sector industries. 

SOLUTION: City staff added sign-on 

bonuses for hard-to-recruit positions, 

revised compensation packages, used 

technology to streamline hiring processes, 

and invested in online recruitment. 


16

SPECIAL SECTION | BUDGETING FOR EQUITY 

SPECIAL SECTION 

BUILDING A 

BETTER COMMUNITY 

FOR EVERYONE 

©2023 JING JING TSONG C/O THEISPOT.COM 

BY SHAYNE C. KAVANAGH, ANDREW KLEINE, CHRIS FABIAN, AND ERIK FABIAN 

Today, discussions on equity are making their way into every aspect 

of decision-making—including budgeting. Because budgeting is 

ultimately about who gets what, and how much, equity must shape 

the process. But budgeting for equity is difficult and reveals tensions 

in a community. This section explores these tensions and techniques 

for managing them to build better and stronger communities. 

Many local governments 

are taking an interest in 

“budgeting for equity,” 

which, broadly defined, 

means allocating local 

government resources 

in a way that is intended to address 

unfair disparities between different 

groups of people, such as racial groups 

or income groups. 

Local government budget officials 

have a duty to develop a budget that 

is fair. 1 And equity is one perspective 

on fairness that has historically not 

been given much attention in local 

governments. 

Social inequities are associated 

with a host of undesirable conditions 

that include lower interpersonal 

trust and reduced physical health. 2 

American society has several large 

social inequities, some of which have 

worsened in recent decades. Income 

inequality might be the most well-known 

example. 3 Rising income inequality is 

associated with lower interpersonal 

trust. 4 Less well-publicized but at least 

as concerning is reduced lifespan. 5 

For example, in 2019, in one large U.S. 

city, there was as much as a 20-year 

difference in life expectancy between 

men living in a poor neighborhood versus 

a more affluent neighborhood. 6 If local 

governments want their communities 

to thrive, these disparities must be 

evaluated and addressed. 

What a local government does is driven 

by its budget. To be part of the solution to 

these inequities, then, a government’s 

budget takes center stage. Budgeting 

for equity is hard, though, because it 

reveals tensions. It raises the central 

tension in budgeting of who gets what. 

(Budgeting is inherently political and it 

concerns, at its core, how limited public 

resources will be allocated.) If resources 

are going to be used differently in the 

future, there is a risk that people who are 

used to the current levels of service will 

object. Those who are comfortable with 

the current allocation of resources may 

also have advantageous relationships, 

connections, and power dynamics to 

secure those resources. 

There are also ideological tensions. 

Equity is one perspective on how to fairly 

distribute resources. People define what 

is fair differently. The result is that the 

term “equity” is often used imprecisely. 

At best, this causes people to talk 

past each other and, at worst, fosters 

destructive conflict over what is defined 

as fair or unfair treatment. 

There are tensions that underlie the 

need for equity in budgeting, including 

those between the “haves” and “have 

nots,” and those inherent in asking 

local government to confront racial and 

other injustices. These tensions require 

local government to take account of the 

interests of people who have traditionally 

been underserved by the local 

government budget—which requires 

forming relationships and connections 

with members of marginalized 

communities and changing the power 

dynamics of budgeting to give the 

members of these communities a voice. 


BY JOE BUCKSHON AND MATTHEW STITT 


In this special section, we focus on 

four tensions in budgeting for equity 

and suggest how they could be managed. 

The tensions are: 

Budgeting for equity is hard because it reveals tensions. 

It raises the central tension in budgeting of who gets what. 

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITIES 

VERSUS EQUALITY OF OUTCOMES. 

This is at the core of the ideological 

tension over what’s fair. Is fairness 

defined as leveling the playing field or 

evening up the scoreboard? 

SYMBOLS VERSUS SUBSTANCE. 

Symbols represent abstract concepts 

and help people understand the concepts. 

Budgeting for equity is a concept, and 

symbols are necessary to get people on 

board with the concept. But substance 

is required to make a difference in the 

lives of community members. 

BREADTH VERSUS DEPTH. 

An equity lens could be applied across 

the entire budget, but this risks a shallow 

analysis that doesn’t make a meaningful 

change in how resources are used. 

Alternatively, focusing on just a few 

areas risks missing opportunities. 

IDEALISM VERSUS PRAGMATISM. 

Idealism is needed for bold action but risks 

being unrealistic. Pragmatism is needed 

to get things done but risks being timid. 

To help resolve the tensions, we’ll draw 

on a philosophy called “pragmatic 

idealism.” This philosophy originated 

in the early 1900s, a period in history 

with great relevance to our own times. 

Esteemed sociologist Robert Putnam 

has shown that the early 1900s were 

like today’s United States in terms of 

high political polarization, low trust, 

and other social problems that plague us 

today. The successful reform movement 

that arose in response was rooted in 

pragmatic idealism. This philosophy 

holds that it is an ethical imperative to 

implement ideals of virtue or good. At 

the same time, it is immoral to refuse 

to make the compromises necessary 

to realize ideals or to discard ideals in 

the name of expediency. Budgeting for 

equity involves ideals. The tensions 

involved mean that any one person’s 

ideal version of budgeting for equity 

probably cannot be realized. This doesn’t 

mean we give up on the virtue behind 

budgeting for equity—rather, we find 

workable solutions to balance competing 

interests, beliefs, and attitudes while 

still improving on the status quo. 

We’ll also show that managing these 

tensions does not require “picking 

a side.” Rather, the tensions help us 

identify a spectrum of possibilities. 

Once we see the possibilities, we can 

negotiate them. The goal is to find a 

balance within the tensions. 

1 

According to the GFOA Code of Ethics. See: gfoa.org/ethics. 

2 

For an overview of the correlation between inequities and 

social impacts, see: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The 

spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger 

(Bloomsbury Press: 2010). 

3 

The United States has the highest level of income inequality 

among the top seven largest industrialized democracies. 

See: Katherine Schaeffer, “6 facts about economic 

inequality in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 2020. 

4 

Eric D Gould; Alexander Hijzen, “Growing apart, losing trust? 

The impact of inequality on social capital,” IMF Working 

Paper, 2016. 

5 

Raj Chetty, Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, et al, “The 

association between income and life expectancy in the 

United States, 2001-2014, PMCID: PMC4866586. 

6 

Adrienne Roeder, “The deadly effects of social inequality,” 

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2019. 

CITY BUDGETING 

FOR EQUITY 

AND RECOVERY 

EFFECTIVE CHANGE 

MANAGEMENT IN EQUITY 

IMPLEMENTATION 

In 2021, we worked with 11 cities across the United States to bring an equity perspective to the budgeting 

process through the What Works Cities: City Budgeting for Equity & Recovery (CBER) program, funded 

by Bloomberg Philanthropies and led by Results for America. The last article in this series draws 

on the lessons from this experience to show a process for budgeting for equity that addresses the 

tensions identified. 

Read the article: 

City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery: Effective Change Management in Equity Implementation 

gfoa.org/materials/gfr1022-city-budgeting-for-equity-and-recovery 

18

PART ONE 

Equality of 

Opportunities 

Versus 

Equality of 

Outcomes 

Perceptions of fairness are 

essential to any decisionmaking 

system. Without 

them, the system will 

likely fail. A key tension 

about fairness that must be resolved 

by budgeting for equity is equality 

of opportunity versus equality of 

outcomes. Or put another way, is 

budgeting for equity intended to level 

the playing field or even the scoreboard? 

This is no mere academic distinction. 

People can vary dramatically in their 

views on which of these is preferable. 

The resulting conflicts can be intense 

because they get right to the heart of 

people’s differing moral intuitions 

about what is fair. 1 Research has shown 

that this distinction is closely related 

to political polarization. Most people 

endorse a definition of fairness that 

includes equality of opportunities, but 

this definition is especially preferred 

by conservatives. Progressives/liberals 

are more likely to include equality of 

outcomes in their definition of fairness. 2 

The way to manage this tension and 

get better results from budgeting for 

equity is to: 

• Disaggregate outcomes into ultimate 

outcomes and intermediate outcomes. 

• Consider how equality of opportunity 

supports achieving the outcomes. 

• Consider the role for local government 

in both opportunities and outcomes. 

Exhibit 1 illustrates a decomposition 

of outcomes related to education and 

mobility. At the bottom of the exhibit, 

EXHIBIT 1 | DECOMPOSITION OF OPPORTUNITIES AND OUTCOMES 

Ultimate Outcome 

Local government’s role is indirect— 

to contribute to people’s ability to achieve 

the ultimate outcome 

Intermediate Outcome 

Local government has a role, but perhaps 

a partial role. Need to consider local 

government’s limits and partnerships to 

help reach the outcome. 

Opportunity 

A clear role for local government 

we have opportunities like access to 

quality education and transportation 

infrastructure. Providing these 

services is a traditional role of local 

government, which can examine its 

budget to see if these opportunities are 

provided to all community members. 

As we move up in Exhibit 1, we 

arrive at intermediate outcomes. Local 

governments have a role in intermediate 

outcomes too, but sometimes the role is 

only partial. Local governments can do 

a lot to influence all the intermediate 

outcomes shown in Exhibit 1, but there 

is much outside the local government’s 

control. For example, a student’s success 

in school is a product of many things, 

not just the efforts of the school system. 

Local governments can increase the 

chances of student success by forming 

partnerships with other organizations 

to influence factors that are outside 

the school’s control. For example, if 

students come to school distracted 

by hunger, they are less likely to 

succeed in their studies. Some schools 

have partnered with social service 

organizations to provide “wraparound” 

services that equip students to learn 

at school by addressing food, shelter, 

clothing, and other basic needs. This 

is an example of how equity can be 

put into practice for students from 

a disadvantaged socioeconomic 

background: the local government 

Prosperity, individuals fulfilling their 

human potential, and a thriving community 

Students graduate 

Students read 

at grade level 

Access to 

quality education 

Education 

Safety of the 

transportation system 

People can get to 

where they need to go 

Access to quality 

transportation 

infrastructure 

Mobility 

removes barriers to learning like 

inadequate food, shelter, or clothing. 

Finally, at the top of Exhibit 1, we 

have ultimate outcomes. For instance, 

if students graduate from school 

ready for college and/or a career (the 

intermediate outcome), they are better 

positioned to achieve prosperity (the 

ultimate outcome). While success at 

the intermediate outcomes increases 

the odds of success in the ultimate 

outcomes, it does not guarantee it. 

This means a local government’s role 

in the ultimate outcome is at times 

indirect. Decomposing outcomes helps 

a local government practice “pragmatic 

idealism” because it shows how the ideal 

of successful outcomes for all can be 

positively influenced by local government 

action. At the same time, it respects 

different views of what is fair with 

respect to equality of outcomes versus 

opportunities and the government’s 

role in each, including where the role is 

limited. With this method, it is possible to 

decompose outcomes and opportunities 

by geographic area, socioeconomic class, 

race, or any other relevant categories to 

see if opportunities are evenly available 

and how that may be affecting outcomes. 

1 

GFOA’s research on fairness and how it is defined is available 

at gfoa.org/fairness. Part 3 of the series is particularly relevant 

to this discussion. 

2 

This is shown by moral foundations theory. You can learn 

more about this at gfoa.org/perspectives and gfoa.org/ 

materials/ bridging-political-divides-in-local-government. 



PART TWO 

Symbols 

Versus 

Substance 

Symbols versus substance is 

a dilemma whenever local 

governments try to mobilize 

on a big, complex issue, like 

applying an equity lens to 

budgeting. Symbolism is necessary to 

get broad agreement to move forward. 

Take a phrase like “the budget is a moral 

document.” This phrase highlights the 

consequences of budgetary choices, and 

their impact on the extent to which the 

community thrives. It makes the case 

that an equity lens should be applied to 

budgeting so everyone thrives. Symbols 

attract people because everyone can 

interpret the symbol’s meaning in a 

way that closely matches their own 

preferences and moral intuitions. For 

example, two individuals can agree 

that it is a good thing for a budget to 

be “moral,” but they will likely have 

different ideas about what the details 

of a “moral” budget would look like. 

These differing interpretations make 

implementation challenging. We know 

that different definitions of fairness can 

create conflict. We have observed that 

when people in local government talk 

about “equity,” they often don’t agree 

about what that means. And we know 

that local governments can benefit 

greatly by coming to an agreement on 

what “equity” means. Below are a few 

examples of definitions from cities in 

the What Works Cities CBER program: 

City of Columbia, South Carolina. 

Equity is creating and maintaining 

an environment that embraces the 

diversity of Columbia’s residents and 

empowers them to engage policymakers 

and influence service delivery and 

the distribution of resources to create 

a city where all residents can overcome 

historical barriers to their success 

Symbols attract people because everyone can interpret the 

symbol’s meaning in a way that closely matches their own 

preferences and moral intuitions. 

and fully participate in Columbia’s 

economic vitality and growth. 

Salt Lake City, Utah. Equity in Salt 

Lake City is acknowledging and 

addressing history and current 

disparities experienced by our 

residents, businesses, neighborhoods, 

and visitors. Salt Lake City provides 

access to resources and opportunities 

that support everyone in overcoming 

barriers to their success so that our 

community today, and generations 

tomorrow, can thrive. 

City of Denver, Colorado. Equity 

is a systemic endeavor, achieved 

through the advancement of policies 

and practices, resulting in equitable 

opportunities and outcomes where race/ 

ethnicity and other social identities 

can no longer be used to predict life 

outcomes, and outcomes for all groups 

are improved, centering on those who 

are underrepresented and have been 

historically disadvantaged. 

You’ll notice that Denver’s definition 

places a focus on outcomes, while the 

other two cities’ definitions emphasize 

equality of opportunity. It is worth 

noting that Denver’s definition is 

focused on race/ethnicity and other 

social identities, while the other cities’ 

definitions are not. The point here is 

not to suggest that any one of these 

definitions is better than another, but 

rather to show that “equity” can be 

defined quite differently. 

For example, it is probably not a 

coincidence that Denver, as a more 

progressive/liberal city than Columbia 

or Salt Lake City, brings equitable 

outcomes into its definition, while 

the other two focus on equality of 

opportunity. 1 We’ve noticed this same 

20

difference in definitions between other 

cities, depending on their differing 

ideological leanings. It could be that 

the extent to which race/ethnicity is 

featured in the definition is a product 

of local circumstances. In Salt Lake 

City, the poverty rate among Black 

residents (36 percent) is much higher 

than White residents (13 percent) and 

higher than Hispanic residents (28 

percent). However, Black people make 

up a small portion of the population 

(2 percent) compared to White people 

(64 percent) or Hispanic people (21 

percent). This means that there are far 

more impoverished White people than 

any other ethnic group, which may have 

influenced Salt Lake City’s definition, 

making it more focused on class 

disparities than race. 2 

These nuances make it important 

to define what “equity” means in 

your community. Doing so provides 

the opportunity for people in local 

government to discuss the demographic 

and income characteristics of their 

communities and their implications for 

equity in budgeting. It also gives them 

the common understanding needed 

to navigate potential tensions around 

fairness. 

The definition can also be used to 

guide the budget process. Columbia 

and Salt Lake City first identified the 

programs they funded through their 

budget. Then they used their definitions 

of equity as the basis to evaluate the 

extent to which programs were helping 

achieve the municipality’s equity goals. 

In this way, the budget becomes a bridge 

between symbolism (idealism) and 

substance (pragmatism). It reflects 

the community’s shared values and 

aspirations, while remaining grounded 

in the details of service delivery and 

constrained by fiscal realities. 

PART THREE 

Breadth Versus Depth 

Imagine the following scenario: 

you’ve established a clear definition 

of equity that your elected officials 

support unanimously and 

enthusiastically. You’ve hired a 

chief equity officer who has successfully 

deployed training across the organization 

to recognize bias and elevate awareness of 

disparities. You’ve set the stage perfectly. 

Now you roll out the budget process, 

emphasizing equity, and eagerly await 

a wave of inspired and game-changing 

proposals from departments to arrive 

on your desk. Instead, the proposals 

resemble last year’s proposals. They’re 

the same types of proposals your 

departments usually produce—maybe 

this time with a narrative that loosely 

links their proposed spending to your 

equity objectives. (This is an instance of 

symbolism displacing substance.) 

What went wrong? The issue could 

be what we’ll refer to as “breadth versus 

depth.” There’s a tension in going 

broad in pursuit of equity-enhancing 

proposals versus going deeply into what 

it would take to evolve the programs and 

services you offer to help disadvantaged 

and historically marginalized 

populations become better off. 

Going broad seems practical and 

easy. You add a question to the budget 

request, business case, and decision 

package forms: “How does this proposal 

impact equity?” Or perhaps you roll out 

a checklist, helping guide departments 

to self-reflect. The result? Too often, 

familiar budget proposals from 

departments are attached to flimsy 

appeals toward equity. This is not what 

you’re striving to accomplish. 

One larger U.S. city from our research 

described how its library department 

proposed a decision package for new 

carpeting and shelving throughout 

the main branch. A similar proposal 

There’s a tension in going broad in pursuit of equity-enhancing 

proposals versus going deeply into what it would take to evolve 

the programs and services you offer to help disadvantaged and 

historically marginalized populations become better off. 


1 

To judge how liberal or conservative a city might be, we 

looked at 2020 presidential election results. We found that 

Denver voted almost 80 percent Democratic. Salt Lake 

County voted just over 50 percent Democratic. Columbia 

sits on the edge of two counties and the combined results 

suggest a slight Democratic leaning. So, though all cities 

ultimately voted Democratic, the overwhelming win for 

the Democrats in Denver suggests Denver is a much more 

liberal city. 

2 

Salt Lake City, Utah Poverty Rate by Race, Welfare Info 

(welfareinfo.org/poverty-rate/utah/salt-lake-city#by-race). 



had been on the table the year before. 

Checking the “yes” box on the proposal 

request form section for “equity impact,” 

the department described how the carpet 

and shelving would spruce up the first and 

second floors, equitably serving readers 

of both nonfiction and fiction. This was 

not the game-changing, opportunity 

enhancing, disparity-reducing proposal 

the budget office had hoped for. 

So, if breadth doesn’t yield the proposals 

we need, what does depth look like? 

Let’s illustrate with the experiences 

of a different city from our research 

(we’ll refer to it as “the City”), showing 

how it navigated the tension of breadth 

and depth. The City had established a 

foundation for racial justice and equity, 

including compelling data on disparities 

throughout the community. It first rolled 

out a series of simple questions as part of 

the budget process: 

• How does this proposal advance the 

City’s equity goals? 

• Which geographic areas do these 

enhancements or reductions impact? 

• How will this proposal affect 

(negatively or positively) historically 

disadvantaged communities and/or 

underrepresented groups? How have 

you worked to mitigate negative impact? 

• Who was engaged to develop this 

proposal? 

What the City learned was that, though 

these questions provided some insight, 

its departments needed to think 

more deeply about their proposals. 

Departments were asked to look across 

their inventory of programs and identify 

the best opportunities for an in-depth 

reimagining of how a given program 

could enhance equity. 

Exhibit 2 illustrates the basic process. 

First was a program analysis that 

included an inventory of all the City’s 

programs, complete with the costs 

and revenues of each. This included 

evaluating the programs’ alignment with 

the City’s equity goals. Second was to 

ask how the City could better achieve its 

equity priorities. Third was to propose 

budget allocations to the places needed 

to make positive change. Fourth was 

to adopt a budget that reflects these 

decisions. This progression is what we 

mean by “depth.” 

The tools and processes deployed by 

the City favor deeper study into how 

programs can be changed to enhance 

equity. Let’s consider the problem of 

homelessness, a complex challenge 

with no easy answers. Addressing it 

will require thoughtful action across 

government departments. Going 

deeper into program evaluation gives 

departments the opportunity to think 

about how their actions can contribute 

to the solution. 

The City’s code compliance program 

was one piece of the puzzle to addressing 

homelessness. Homeless encampments 

create public health risks due to 

unsanitary conditions. The conventional 

code enforcement approach would 

be rooted in punitive measures. By 

diving deeper into the program, the 

City realized that if the goal was to 

increase public health and safety of 

homeless encampments, then a humane 

and necessary step was to offer relief to 

people who live in the encampments. A 

program proposal was made to provide 

additional relief to homeless people 

(such as additional water), especially 

during inclement weather. This would 

make the encampments more livable 

and sanitary, thus preventing or at least 

mitigating potential code violations 

stemming from unsanitary conditions. 

Of course, there is more to addressing 

homelessness. Encampments are 

far from a permanent solution. 

Encampments can infringe on the 

rights of private property owners by 

producing large amounts of litter, debris, 

needles, and more, causing hazardous and 

unsafe conditions. Enabling permanent 

or long-term encampments would raise 

serious questions of fairness. Why would 

some property owners be required to 

bear the burden of an encampment while 

others wouldn’t? As we have discussed, 

views on “what’s fair” are a big point of 

tension in budgeting for equity. People will 

not support a system they feel is unfair. 

If property owners feel unfairly burdened 

by the City’s approach to homelessness, 

the City will likely lose their support. The 

consequences might include, for instance, 

voting against the current office holders or 

moving out of the community. Therefore, 

the code enforcement budget also 

included a proposal for the City to conduct 

removal and cleanup for homeless 

encampments on private property. 

This example is a glimpse into 

how a budget process could begin 

to address homelessness in a more 

EXHIBIT 2 | BUDGETING APPROACH THAT PROGRESSES FROM BREADTH TO DEPTH 

Program Analysis: 

Current Service 

Levels and Costs 

What do we do? 

How much does it cost? 

What is the impact of the 

program on priorities? 

Strategic Planning 

and Council Priorities 

What should we be doing 

better to meet strategic 

goals/priorities? 

What do we need to do to 

meet equity goals? 

Proposed 

Changes to Budget 

What should we do more of? 

What should we do 

less of or not at all? 

What is a new program 

we need to offer? 

Biennial Budget 

Program Equity Analysis Racial Equity Action Plans Equity Analysis of Proposals 

22


comprehensive way. The conversation 

could go further to address how 

people living in encampments could 

be directed to programs designed to 

end homelessness, outside of code 

enforcement. Program reviews center 

the budgeting discussion on the results 

produced by government. This allows 

for a thoughtful discussion of how 

programs can be rethought, revised, or 

reformed to support equity. Ultimately, 

program changes are translated to lineitem 

detail (will the recommendation 

require more staff, more equipment, 

or supplies to put the change in to 

operation and achieve the result?) for 

a complete budget recommendation. 

If your goal is game-changing budget 

proposals, then depth over breadth is 

the key. To emphasize depth, consider 

the following. 

The social problems that budgeting 

for equity is intended to address are 

often complex and took generations 

to develop into their current forms. 

Attempting to solve these issues in a 

budget cycle is like trying to build an 

airplane while in flight. Simple, broadbased 

budget questionnaires become 

an attractive but cursory alternative. 

Instead, budgeting can be preceded by 

a dedicated planning cycle that makes 

time for deeper exploration of the 

problems budgeting for equity hopes 

to address. 

Going broad is often mistaken for being 

comprehensive. A truly comprehensive 

review of a local government’s spending 

is probably impossible and certainly 

isn’t sustainable. 1 A local government 

will be better off focusing its limited 

time and analytical capacity on a 

smaller number of areas, where it can 

do the most good with the resources 

available. This includes a smaller 

number of issues (like homelessness) 

and a smaller portion of budget 

proposals (like those that can make a 

material difference in homelessness). 

1 

The best historical example of an attempt at comprehensive 

review of government spending is zero-base budgeting 

(ZBB). GFOA has never found an example of a true 

“textbook” implementation of ZBB; all local governments 

GFOA has found that claim to do ZBB have used 

the “textbook” ideal as inspiration, but the practical 

implementation falls far short of the comprehensive ideal. 

Even these truncated versions of ZBB tend to be used 

for limited periods of time, however, like helping a local 

government get through a serious financial crisis. (gfoa.org/ 

materials/zero-base-budgeting) 

PART FOUR 

Idealism Versus Pragmatism 

The stakes of budgeting for 

equity are high. And anytime 

the stakes are high, emotions 

can run high as well. Add 

to this the tensions we’ve 

discussed and a polarized political 

environment, and you have a recipe for 

high conflict. Conflict is not necessarily 

bad; some conflict usually is needed for 

change. Idealism is needed to embolden 

the spirit to advance big ideas and to 

take on the conflicts that come along 

with big ideas. Pragmatism is necessary 

for putting those ideas into practice 

and for resolving conflicts in a way 

that brings along as many people as 

possible. This is “pragmatic idealism.” 

Pragmatic idealism exemplifies the 

tension inherent in budgeting for equity 

(pragmatism versus idealism) and how 

to manage the tension (combine the best 

of both pragmatism and idealism without 

overemphasizing either). 

Effective idealism produces a 

vision that brings people together. The 

vision addresses what it would look 

like to have a thriving community for 

everyone. A compelling vision invites 

other people and organizations to get 

involved in making the vision a reality 

and keeps participants inspired. The 

City of Pueblo, Colorado, provides an 

example of what effective community 

visions look like. The city was planning 

how to use its American Rescue Plan 

Act (ARPA) funding from the federal 

government. It established seven areas 

in which the city might look to make 

an impact (youth, small businesses, 

infrastructure, and more). The city also 

defined more specific goals under each 

area. For example, “quality childcare” 

was a goal for youth. Community 

members were involved in defining 

this vision and the goals for each area 

and deciding how funding would be 

distributed. Equity was one of the 

criteria the city used with community 

members to determine where to direct 

the funding. 

Effective pragmatism is needed to 

find the interventions that make a real 

and lasting difference in the lives of 

community members. This is because 

changing people’s lives through social 

policy is difficult and often fails. Take, 

for example, mathematics education 

in primary and secondary schools. A 

review of 155 math programs in the U.S. 

Department of Education’s Institute 



of Educational Sciences’ What Works 

Clearinghouse shows that fewer than 

20 (12 percent) of those programs have 

proven positive or potentially positive 

effects. Literacy does better, but only 

23 percent of programs in the database 

have positive or potentially positive 

effects. Switching to a different field, 

justice, the National Institute of Justice’s 

CrimeSolutions database shows that, 

of about 650 programs, about 90 (only 

14 percent) have proven effective. The 

statistics show that making an impact 

through public policy is difficult— 

although making an impact might be 

harder than these numbers suggest. 

The evaluations that produce these 

statistics are often based on pilot projects 

or small-scale demonstrations. Scaling 

up successful pilots to serve a larger 

number of people is a common point of 

program failure. 1 

If local governments are to have 

any chance of realizing a vision for 

a thriving community, they need to 

apply a rigorous approach to what 

works and what doesn’t. Here are 

three crucial practices in this vein. 

where there are no viable substitutes for 

the services these facilities provided. 

The city also used data to direct its efforts 

for grass and tree maintenance to make 

sure all public areas in all neighborhoods 

were adequately maintained. And rather 

than applying the same approach to each 

neighborhood, services were customized 

to the needs of each neighborhood. This 

helps ensure all residents can be proud of 

their neighborhood. 

Talk to people in communities. Though 

structured data from sources like calls 

for service is important, it may not 

capture everything people care about. 

Low-income or minority communities 

may have less trust in government than 

other groups and may therefore be less 

willing to provide information (by making 

calls for service, for example). City 

officials must engage directly with people 

Take the Next Step 

about their concerns. This could include 

engaging with the people government 

services are intended to help so they can 

better understand the problems they 

face and co-design the solutions. It could 

also include designing the planning and 

budget process to better meet the needs of 

communities. 

We’ve seen what effective idealism 

and pragmatism look like. We also need to 

know what to guard against when it comes 

to ineffective idealism and pragmatism. 

Ineffective idealism is dogmatic. 

Dogma is not subject to compromise or 

questioning, which means it can’t gain 

consensus. Something that can’t be 

questioned can’t be evolved and adapted 

over time. How might one recognize where 

idealism is slipping into dogma? One way 

is to watch out for clichés that try to give 

the impression of wisdom but only replace 

important nuances with false clarity. 

Learn more about the benefits of rethinking public engagement and how to put it into practice 

at gfoa.org/rethinking-public-engagement. 

Define the problem clearly. People tend to 

jump to solutions without taking the time 

to properly diagnose the problem. This can 

result in suboptimal or even completely 

wrong solutions. A simple example might 

be found in mobility goals. Conventional 

mobility strategies in some communities 

might be centered on the automobile. 

However, a diagnosis of the problem might 

reveal that low-income communities rely 

more on public transportation or walking. 

This realization would lead to very 

different mobility strategies. (You can find 

a full discussion of this topic in GFOA’s 

report, “Defining the Problem: The Missing 

Piece to Local Government Planning.”) 

Gather data. Because human judgment 

is highly imperfect, defining a problem 

or designing a solution based only on 

judgment will rarely get the best results. 

For example, the City of Toledo, Ohio, used 

data from sources like calls for service 

and foot traffic into facilities to recognize 

where reductions in the city budget would 

have an adverse impact on historically 

underserved neighborhoods. It 

determined that closing a library branch or 

recreation center would have a particular 

impact in a low-income neighborhood 

Idealism is needed to embolden the spirit to advance big ideas and 

to take on the conflicts that come along with big ideas. Pragmatism 

is necessary for putting those ideas into practice and for resolving 

conflicts in a way that brings along as many people as possible. 


24

Let’s take a saying that is sometimes 

used to support putting an equity lens on 

budgeting: “Equity is fairness, equality is 

sameness.” This seeks to establish equity 

(equality of outcomes) 2 as the singular 

definition of fairness and equality as, 

at best, a counterfeit form of fairness. 

However, most people don’t agree with 

that. GFOA has run multiple polls asking 

people to define “fairness.” Equity 

(equality of outcomes) received around 

25 percent to 33 percent support as the 

definition of fairness across all polls, 

while equality (people should be treated 

the same) was the clear winner with just 

over half. 3 These results are consistent 

with broader psychological research into 

how people define fairness. 4 Further, 

a little thought experiment will easily 

expose this cliché as false. Imagine if you 

were to ask someone: do the following 

propositions represent fairness? 

• Human life should be valued 

equally, so we should have the same 

emergency response times in all 

geographic areas of the community. 

• Equal work should receive equal 

pay, which should be reflected in our 

human resources practices. 

• All citizens should be equal before the 

law, so we should eliminate unequal 

outcomes in sentencing for the same 

crime, based on race. 

Do you think they’d agree these 

conditions are fair? They probably would. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean equity is not 

fair. It does, however, mean that fairness 

is a multifaceted, nuanced concept, and 

there is more to it than just equity. 

These are not just semantics. If most 

people’s primary definition of fairness 

is something other than equity (when 

defined as equality of outcomes), it 

is probably not wise to declare their 

definition of fairness invalid. As an 

example of real-world dangers of these 

kinds of clichés, we might consider 

“defund the police.” Surveys from the 

summer of 2020 show that a rather small 

percentage of people (around 15 percent 

to 25 percent) supported abolishing 

the police entirely. 5 But a dogmatic 

framing of “defunding” impeded or even 

prevented productive conversations 

about practical opportunities for more 

cost-effective ways than traditional law 

enforcement to achieve certain public 

safety goals. In the same way, a dogmatic 

approach to budgeting for equity that 

seeks to enshrine one definition of 

equity (equality of outcomes) as the sole 

definition of fairness risks marginalizing 

other, more widely held views of 

fairness and thereby sowing the seeds 

of divisiveness, which will hamper 

effective budget deliberations. 

To illustrate how this could manifest in 

local governments, we observed in some 

of the 11 cities we worked with that city 

staff felt uncomfortable with budgeting 

for equity and did not participate as fully 

in the implementation as city leaders 

would have preferred. One possible 

explanation is that some staff felt they 

were being asked to step out of the 

traditional nonpartisan, non-ideological 

role of the public servant and were 

uncomfortable with that. 

Ineffective idealism could also 

manifest itself, seeking to look good 

rather than to do good. Governments 

are, understandably, concerned about 

perceptions. But equity cannot be mainly 

about perceptions because it would risk 

not making a difference in people’s lives. 

An approach to equity that is centered 

on perceptions misses the opportunity 

to engage with the tensions inherent in 

equity. A dose of pragmatism can help 

here, by identifying clear and tangible 

goals for equity, clear indicators of 

whether those goals are being met, and 

monitoring those indicators over time. 

Pragmatism has its dark side, too. 

Ineffective pragmatism is technocracy, 

or domination by the views of technical 

experts. The first problem with this is 

that technical experts may be out of 

touch with the concerns of the people 

they are supposed to be helping. This 

might lead to solutions that don’t work, 

are too complex to be sustainable, or 

address the problem but create new 

problems. A classic example is public 

assistance programs for unemployed 

people that cut benefits starting with the 

first dollar a participant in the program 

receives from a job. This policy may be 

well-intentioned as a way to make good 

use of taxpayer dollars, but it creates a 

clear disincentive to work. 

Using data about the community’s 

needs can help avoid some of these 

problems, but data is often imperfect. 

Co-designing solutions with the people 

whom the government is trying to help 

could, at least, partially overcome the 

limits of data, but at worst, the technocrat 

thinks they know best and eschews 

direct input from community members. 

Another problem is that technocrats 

overlook things like trust, fairness, 

ethics, and virtue. At best, they are 

seen as “soft” concerns because they 

are not easily quantified, or they may 

be ignored entirely. These concerns 

could not be more central to budgeting 

for equity. As we have seen, fairness 

and equity are intertwined, and a 

nuanced understanding of each is 

necessary. Virtue is necessary because 

pursuing equity requires empathy 

and understanding for disadvantaged 

community members. Trust is required 

for productive conversations on 

how to reallocate resources to help 

disadvantaged community members. 

Fairness, virtue, and trust are all 

characteristics of ethical conduct of 

public finances. 6 

1 

For more on scaling and the challenges involved, see: John 

List, The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and 

Great Ideas Scale (Currency: 2022). 

2 

To demonstrate that “equity” is often defined as equality of 

outcomes, consider for example, in a 2020 campaign video, 

Kamala Harris said, “Equitable treatment means we all end 

up in the same place.” Though she wasn’t directly referring 

to local government budgeting, it is a well-publicized 

example of how equity is defined as equality of outcomes 

by prominent people in American society. Another 

conspicuous example is the widely shared depictions of 

equity that show children looking over a fence at a baseball 

game. These pictures define equity in terms of equality of 

outcomes: everyone sees over the fence. GFOA’s research 

into fairness also shows that politically liberal or left-leaning 

people tend to, on average, define fairness more in terms of 

equality of outcomes than politically conservative or rightleaning 

people. See gfoa.org/fairness. 

3 

These polls were conducted across multiple GFOA channels 

and events, with variations in the ways different forms of 

fairness were described and the order in which the options 

were presented. For example, equity, in one poll, was 

described as “people are given what they need.” The other 

options were equality (the most popular—“you are treated 

equally”) and proportionality (“getting back what you put 

in”). Another poll asked people to define what they think 

“equity” means, posing it as equality of opportunity versus 

equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity was the clear 

favorite at almost 80 percent. 

4 

For example, developmental psychologists Christina 

Starmans, Mark Sheskin, and Paul Bloom reviewed the 

research on fairness in children and concluded that “people 

prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.” See: Christina 

Starmans, Mark Sheskin, and Paul Bloom, “Why people 

prefer unequal societies,” Nature Human Behaviour, 2017. 

5 

For example, in a June 11, 2020, only 24 percent of 

respondents believed that “we need to defund police 

and reinvent our approach to public safety.” All other 

respondents (59 percent) believed change should be made 

within the current system. These attitudes were consistent 

across people who live in cities, suburbs, towns, and rural 

areas, and along racial lines. A late June to early July 2020 

Gallup poll showed little support for “abolishing police 

departments” (15 percent support across all racial groups). 

6 

See the GFOA Code of Ethics at gfoa.org/ethics. 



PART FIVE 

Proven 

Techniques 

The tensions we have described 

in this paper require a 

different approach to 

budgeting. The conventional 

approach is often a win-lose 

game, where stakeholders position 

themselves to get their piece of the 

proverbial pie—in other words, to come 

out on top in a competition for resources. 

But the local government budget will 

never be sufficient to give everyone 

what they want, so the long-run result 

is financial strain and alienation of the 

“losers” in the competition for resources. 

A successful and sustainable 

approach to budgeting for equity needs 

to be based on some other model than a 

win-lose game—like GFOA’s Financial 

Foundations Framework. Based on Nobel 

Prize-winning research, 1 the Financial 

Foundations Framework lays out five 

pillars for financial decision-making, as 

shown in Exhibit 3. (Learn more about 

the Framework at gfoa.org/financialfoundations.) 

In this section, we will outline 

an approach to budgeting for equity 

that is consistent with the Financial 

Foundations Framework. Exhibit 

4 outlines the four elements of the 

budgeting for equity process, each of 

which are described below. 

Gain Commitment 

Budgeting for equity is a departure 

from the traditional way of budgeting 

in governments. The traditional way 

has several advantages that account for 

its popularity and staying power, 2 so a 

new method demands an intentional 

strategy for convincing people to try 

something different. 

Step 1: Articulate a compelling vision. 

A compelling vision attracts people 

to the idea of budgeting for equity and 

builds the excitement needed to try 

doing it in a new way. 

EXHIBIT 3 | FINANCIAL FOUNDATIONS FRAMEWORK 

Pillar 1 

ESTABLISH A 

LONG-TERM 

VISION 

Pillar 2 

BUILD TRUST 

AND OPEN 

COMMUNICATION 

EXHIBIT 4 | A PROCESS FOR BUDGETING FOR EQUITY 

Gain Commitment 

Articulate a compelling vision PILLAR 1 

Define equity PILLAR 1 

Discover your critical equity issues PILLAR 2, PILLAR 3 

Establish goals and measures PILLAR 2, PILLAR 3 

Program Budgeting 

Turn the Curve Planning 

Develop Turn the Curve plan PILLAR 3 

Low or no cost ideas 

Pillar 3 

USE 

COLLECTIVE 

DECISION- 

MAKING 

Inventory programs 

Find programs with highest leverage to achieve equity goals PILLAR 4 

Determine programs to expand, keep or cut* PILLAR 4, PILLAR 5 

Ideas that cost money 

Allocate Resources 

Use planning to inform budget guidance and proposals PILLAR 4, PILLAR 5 

Decide which proposals are most valuable and allocate money PILLAR 5 

*Cutting low priority programs frees up money for higher impact spending 

Pillar 4 

CREATE 

CLEAR 

RULES 

Pillar 5 

TREAT 

EVERYONE 

FAIRLY 

26


Step 2: Define equity. Because fairness is 

a nuanced concept, the term “equity” is 

often used in an imprecise way. Working 

together, local government employees 

should define what equity means for their 

community, while doing their best to 

manage the inherent tensions. Fairness 

is essential for people to have trust in 

the budget process. Think of trust as the 

oil that allows the process to run. Trust 

is necessary to navigate the difficult 

decisions the community will face in how 

to allocate resources. 

“Polarity Management” 3 is a technique 

for recognizing and balancing tensions 

by helping participants combine the 

best of different perspectives without 

overemphasizing any of them specifically. 

Polarity Management has a great deal 

of potential for navigating tensions 

related to budgeting for equity. For 

example, some communities may have 

historical circumstances that contribute 

to present-day inequities, which might 

create a tension between looking to the 

past versus looking to the future. Polarity 

Management can help find a balancing 

point as part of a definition of equity that 

has broad support. 

Step 3: Discover your critical equity 

issues. Examine demographic and 

socioeconomic data about your 

community to discover where there are 

disparities in the opportunities available 

to—or outcomes experienced by—people 

of a different race, socioeconomic class, 

or other characteristics relevant to your 

community. 

Step 4: Establish goals and measures. 

The beauty in budgeting, if there is such 

a thing, is in turning a grand ideal like 

equity into real, measurable results by 

way of programs and projects planned 

down to the line item. How does this 

happen? Anyone who has assembled a 

piece of IKEA furniture can appreciate 

that it helps to have words to go with 

the pictures. In the same way, the more 

we can articulate our equity goals, the 

more successful we’ll be in budgeting, 

implementing, and accomplishing them. 

Montgomery County, Maryland, 

provides an example of establishing 

measurable equity goals. This county of 

more than one million people, just north of 

Washington, D.C., is among the wealthiest 

counties in America. By any aggregate 

measure of well-being—income, 

education, and public health—life in 

Montgomery County is good. Hidden 

within the aggregate data, though, 

are tens of thousands of residents 

living in poverty, failing in school, and 

suffering chronic illness. 

Montgomery County’s goals are not 

unusual. They include thriving youth 

and families, safer neighborhoods, 

and a greener county. Where the 

county diverges from the norm is 

in the indicators of progress toward 

the goals. Instead of measuring 

population-wide averages, the county 

measures racial gaps, specifically in 

student achievement, employment, 

and life expectancy. The reason for 

focusing on disparities is not because 

outcomes for all groups must be equal, 

but because understanding disparities 

(who is impacted and why) allows 

governments to design strategies that 

increase access, opportunity, and 

support for disadvantaged groups. 

Program Budgeting 

Mario Cuomo, the late governor of New 

York, famously said, “You campaign in 

poetry. You govern in prose.” He could 

have gone on to say that you budget in 

particulars. 

The local government budget 

has traditionally been divided into 

departments. Departments are useful 

for day-to-day management of services, 

but it is often unclear what services a 

department provides. This is where 

programs come in. A program describes 

a set of related activities or tasks 

intended to produce a desired result for 

constituents. Generally, a program is 

broader than a line item or task but more 

detailed than a department or entire 

function, but also different. Examples 

of programs include residential 

building inspections, snow and ice 

removal, code enforcement, open space 

preservation, or financial reporting. 

A budget that is based on programs 

shows what the government does, how 

much it costs to provide the programs, 

Understanding disparities (who is impacted and why) allows 

governments to design strategies that increase access, 

opportunity, and support for disadvantaged groups. 



and the fees and charges associated 

with recovering costs for the programs. 

A program budget supports budgeting 

for equity because the government 

can more easily identify the services 

that are the most powerful levers for 

achieving equity goals. This then forms 

the basis for developing criteria for how 

to allocate funding. 

Step 1: Inventory your programs. 

A program inventory is a list of all the 

programs offered by the government. 

Below is an example of a partial 

inventory of programs in the planning, 

building, and code enforcement 

function: 

• Public hearing support planning and 

zoning issues building construction 

inspections 

• Business license review and 

compliance home occupation 

inspections 

• Building construction plan review 

work without permits 

• Grading and drainage plan review 

business licensing 

• Building construction and permitting 

site plan review 

Ideally, a government will inventory 

all its programs. If that isn’t possible, 

perhaps because of time or resource 

constraints, it is possible to inventory 

the programs only within the functional 

areas that are most relevant to your 

equity goals. You can learn more about 

the details behind creating a program 

inventory in GFOA’s “The Challenges and 

Promise of Program Budgeting.” 

Step 2: Find programs with the highest 

leverage for achieving equity goals. 

While some programs are more 

important than others, which are which? 

Salt Lake City, Utah, and the City of 

Columbia, South Carolina, illustrate how 

programs can be prioritized. Both cities 

developed a set of criteria to evaluate 

programs. Each city had two criteria 

related to equity: equity “process” and 

equity “outcomes.” 

Equity process judges the extent to 

which programs were based on a clear and 

accurate analysis of the community’s 

needs. Equity outcomes judge a program’s 

potential impact on the city’s equity goals. 

Both criteria bring key ideas from the 

“gain commitment” element of Exhibit 4 

into budgeting. 

Each program in Salt Lake City and 

Columbia was judged against these 

criteria using a 0 through 4 rating scale, 

where 4 is the best score and 0 the worst. 

The best score on equity outcomes: 

“The program reaches diverse residents 

and helps them overcome historical 

barriers to their success and participate in 

Columbia’s economic vitality and growth.” 

The best score on the equity process: 

“Program design and decisions reflect 

EXHIBIT 5 | RATIONALE FOR SALT LAKE CITY’S CIVILIAN RESPONSE TEAM 

Traditional Public Safety Call-for-Service Model 

CRST/Social-Work Diverted Call-for-Service Model 

Homelessness Calls 

Mental Health Calls 

Emergency Calls 

Non-Emergency Calls 

Sworn Response 

Phone Report 

Online Report 

Homelessness Calls 

Mental Health Calls 

Emergency Calls 

Non-Emergency Calls 

MH/Social Services 

Sworn Response 

Phone Report 

Online Report 

Civilian Response 

EXHIBIT 6 | SCORING MATRIX FOR SALT LAKE CITY CIVILIAN RESPONSE TEAM BUDGET PROPOSAL 

Mandate Reliance Cost Recovery 

Community 

Benefit 

Equity Impact – 

Process 

Equity Impact – 

Outcome 

Economic 

Development 

Environment & 

Sustainability 

Infrastructure 

0 No mandate 

Other public sector 

entities provide this 

service 

Program does not 

currently generate 

revenue 

Less than 25% 

of community 

benefiting 

No relationship to 

equity impact(s) 

No relationship to 

equity impact(s) 

Meets 2 or less 

of Economic 

Development 

metrics 

Meets 2 or less 

of Environment 

& Sustainability 

metrics 

Meets 2 or less of 

the infrastructure 

metrics 

2 Self mandate 

Other private sector 

entities provide this 

service 

Program recovers 

deep understanding of disparities in the 

city via prior program evaluation, data 

analysis, and community engagement.” 

The evaluation also included 

other considerations that were not 

necessarily related to equity but are 

nonetheless important for making 

good decisions about how to allocate 

resources among programs. Some 

examples of criteria that were common 

to both Salt Lake City and Columbia 

include: 

• Reach into the population: do many 

people benefit, or just a few? 

• Demand: is the need for this service 

increasing or declining? 

• Reliance: is the city the sole possible 

provider of this service? Or can other 

entities better provide this service? 

All the criteria together form the basis 

for clear rules on how resources will be 

allocated. 

Step 3: Determine which programs 

to expand, keep, or cut. There is a 

strong case to keep or perhaps expand 

programs that score well on criteria 

like those used by Salt Lake City 

and Columbia. The formation and 

expansion of Salt Lake City’s Civilian 

Response Team is a good example. The 

Civilian Response Team program was 

created to be a public safety response to 

low-hazard, non-emergency, policerelated 

calls for service. The intent is to 

supplement traditional police response 

with responders who have different skill 

sets that are a better fit for certain types 

of calls, as illustrated in Exhibit 5. 

As we can see in Exhibit 6, the 

Civilian Response Team scored highly 

on many of the city’s criteria. It also 

received the lowest score on several 

criteria. Rarely will a local government 

find the perfect program that addresses 

all the criteria equally well. The job of 

the budget is to find the programs that 

have the greatest potential and weigh 

trade-offs among these options. 

Just like any other local government, 

Salt Lake City and Columbia must 

balance their budgets within revenue 

constraints. This could mean that 

expanding programs need to be 

balanced out with cuts in other areas. 

Cuts can be targeted to programs that 

don’t score well against the criteria. 

EXHIBIT 7 | TURN THE CURVE PLANNING 

Source: Clear Impact 

How are we doing on the data? 

What is our action plan 

to turn the curve? 

What works to 

turn the curve? 

There are many ways to fund ideas 

for new or expanded programs. For 

example, the City of Pueblo, Colorado, 

wanted to fund $1.5 million for 40 

equity-enhancing opportunities, so 

they identified $1.6 million in resource 

reallocation and revenue-generating 

opportunities from 71 programmatic 

recommendations. To enhance revenue, 

the city expanded municipal snow and 

ice removal services to additional paying 

customers, generating $100,000. Another 

idea included placing solar panels on cityowned 

facilities. To reduce costs, public 

hearings for planning and zoning issues 

moved strictly to web-based meetings. 

Though each of these examples are 

modest, 71 of them added up to a big 

impact. 

Turn the Curve Planning 

Programs cover the breadth of what a 

local government does. However, to find 

the most leverage to achieve equity goals, 

a local government may need to go deeper 

than a program inventory. A limitation of 

a program inventory is that it starts with 

what the government is already doing—it 

lists the services that are being provided 

now. But these programs may not be the 

offerings that have the highest possible 

leverage for achieving the government’s 

goals. Recall that improving people’s lives 

via public policy is difficult. The starting 

point for making a positive difference is to 

define the problem correctly. 

Turn the Curve is a planning method 

that starts with data, probes for root 

causes, and identifies evidence-based 

actions. This method was originated by 

5 

4 

1 

Turn the Curve 

3 

2 

What is the story 

behind the curve? 

Who are the partners 

who have a role to play 

in turning the curve? 

Mark Friedman in his book, Trying Hard 

Is Not Good Enough, 4 and is overviewed 

in GFOA and International City/County 

Management Association’s “Defining 

the Problem: The Missing Piece to Local 

Government Planning.” There are five 

steps in Turn the Curve planning, as 

shown in Exhibit 7. 

If we look back to Exhibit 4, we see 

that program budgeting may lead to the 

realization that the government doesn’t 

know if a given program really does 

make a difference, thereby prompting 

the government to develop a Turn the 

Curve plan for that program. As Exhibit 4 

also shows, a government could engage 

in Turn the Curve planning to figure out 

the best way to achieve its equity goals, 

independent of program budgeting. 

What is the story behind the curve? 

Who are the partners who have a 

government to develop a Turn the Curve 

plan for that program. As Exhibit 4 also 

shows, a government could engage in 

Turn the Curve planning to figure out 

the best way to achieve its equity goals, 

independent of program budgeting. 

Step 1. How are we doing on the data? 

Turn the Curve planning starts by 

charting out a baseline. A baseline is 

a multiyear display of data with two 

parts: a historical part that shows where 

we’ve been, and a forecast part that 

shows where we are headed if we stay 

on our current course. The baseline 

shown in Exhibit 8 is from a city with a 

growing housing affordability problem. 

Baselines allow us to define success 

as doing better than the baseline—or 

“turning the curve.” 



Step 2. What is the story behind the curve 

of the baseline? What are the causes and 

the forces at work? Why does the trend 

look the way it does? Friedman calls this 

the epidemiology part of the work. As the 

saying goes, “a problem well-defined is a 

problem half-solved.” 

Often, the causes behind inequity are 

multifaceted and deep-rooted. For the city 

with declining housing affordability, the 

facts behind the curve include factors 

such as restrictive zoning laws, high 

construction costs, limited access to 

credit, and weak tenants’ rights. If not 

for ample land availability, low property 

taxes, and a robust homebuyer education 

program, housing affordability would be 

even worse. 

One critical step in understanding the 

story behind the curve is to disaggregate 

the data and reveal the role of race, 

geography, and other factors that impact 

housing affordability. Another is to 

look for bright spots to learn from, such 

as people living in decent, affordable 

housing with little or no government help. 

Step 3. Who are the partners with a role 

to play in turning the curve? Most curves 

related to equitable outcomes cannot 

be turned by local government acting 

on its own. Local governments should 

cast a wide net for partners. Partners 

for tackling housing affordability might 

include developers, urban planners, 

banks, churches, other governments, 

business groups, nonprofits, 

neighborhood associations, universities, 

advocates, media, foundations, and 

consultants. 

EXHIBIT 8 | BASELINE FOR HOUSING AFFORDABILITY 

Step 4. What works to turn the curve? 

Ideas for turning the curve should flow 

from the story behind it. For example, 

if one cause of the housing burden is a 

shortage of housing supply, then what are 

some ways to increase supply? 

The search for answers should cover 

research, best practices from other 

places, experience, and professional 

judgment. The list of potential solutions 

should range from low-cost/no-cost 

strategies (zoning law changes) to 

“blank check” options (construction of 

subsidized low-income units). 

Step 5. What is our action plan to turn the 

curve? The basic notion of an action plan 

is who does what, when, and how. 

The problem is that too many 

plans jump to solutions without fully 

understanding the problem. Evaluate 

and prioritize the solutions from Step 4 

of Turn the Curve planning using a set 

of criteria, which might include impact, 

feasibility, and equity. Next, fit the 

best solutions together into a coherent, 

cascading strategy. Finally, document 

each milestone and action step to provide 

a detailed road map for implementation. 

The city in our example generated 35 

“what works” ideas and prioritized 13 of 

them for its action plan. They include 

gap financing to turn the upper floors of 

commercial buildings into affordable 

housing, exploring an inclusionary 

zoning program, and hiring a fair housing 

ombudsperson. 

The action plan might suggest which 

programs to expand, create, or eliminate, 

which has implications for the budget. 

Percent of Rental Households Earning Below $49,999 Annually Paying More than 30% of Income of Housing 

75% 

70 

65 

60 

66% 

62% 

63% 

62% 

Data Source: American Community Survey 

65% 

66% 66% 

67% 67% 

68% 

2010 2015 2020 

Current Actual Value Trend Labels Forecast 

Allocate resources 

Even with strong commitment, clear goals, 

and detailed plans, budgeting for equity 

can be stifled by the traditional budget 

process, which is designed to preserve 

status quo spending patterns, minimize 

conflict, and stop or slow change. 

Transforming the budget process is beyond 

the scope of this article, but there are steps 

local governments can take to give equity 

leverage in budget decision-making. 

Step 1. Use planning to inform budget 

guidance and proposals. In their book 

The Price of Government, 5 David Osborne 

and Peter Hutchinson suggest that 

budgeting should be an exercise in 

purchasing results, not funding line 

items. In the same way that they would 

issue a request for proposal (RFP) to buy 

a good or service from a private company, 

local government leaders should issue 

a request for results (RFR) to specify to 

departments what they are looking for 

in the budget. Turn the Curve planning 

can be translated into this kind of 

budget guidance, giving departments 

specifications, and even detailed 

instructions, that they are expected to 

incorporate into spending proposals. 

Step 2. Make decisions about which 

proposals are most valuable. Decisionmaking 

is both art and science. Start with 

the science: develop a rubric for scoring 

budget proposals that gives points for 

alignment with the guidance, program 

performance, strength of evidence, 

efficient use of resources, and other 

important factors. For the art, convene a 

team to review all the budget proposals 

pertinent to each equity goal and advise 

about how well they collectively fit 

together into a complete, coherent 

approach and where there may be gaps, 

overlaps, or other shortcomings. 

1 

Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in 

Economic Sciences in 2009. Her work focused on how 

human beings come together to solve social dilemmas 

similarly to the way in which a resource held in common 

should be managed. GFOA’s Financial Foundations 

Framework is based on her work. 

2 

The classic piece supporting this is: Aaron Wildavsky, 

“A budget for all seasons? Why the traditional budget lasts,” 

Public Administration Review, 1978. 

3 

Barry Johnson, Polarity Management: Identifying and 

Managing Unsolvable Problems (H R D Press: 2014). 

4 

Mark Friedman, Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough 

(BookSurge Publishing: 2009). 

5 

David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson, The Price of 

Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of 

Permanent Fiscal Crisis (Basic Books: 2006). 

30

©2023 DAVIDE BONAZZI C/O THEISPOT.COM 

PART SIX 

Summary 

Budgeting for equity holds 

great promise for helping 

local governments make their 

communities better places to 

live for all people. It can be the 

bridge from a set of ideals to actual results, 

even though it can seem like a rope bridge 

across an unfriendly river, with planks 

missing here and there. That’s because 

equity is a new and nuanced entrant in the 

fiercely competitive contest called local 

government budgeting and planning. 

In the fights over what is fair and who 

gets what, there are tensions borne of 

ideology, self-interest, and impatience. 

We have described four such tensions 

inherent to budgeting for equity: 

• Equality of opportunities versus 

equality of outcomes 

• Symbols versus substance 

• Breadth versus depth 

• Idealism versus pragmatism 

When we approach a bridge, getting to 

the other side is usually the goal—but 

When we approach a bridge, 

getting to the other side 

is usually the goal—but 

managing the tensions of 

budgeting for equity requires 

meeting in the middle. 

managing the tensions of budgeting 

for equity requires meeting in the 

middle. Whether it’s agreeing on what 

equity means in your community, 

balancing inspiring slogans with 

substantive planning, prioritizing 

time and resources, or settling for less 

than everything you want, there are 

ways to make budgeting for equity an 

affirming and effective endeavor. 

Rope bridges aren’t so scary when 

you take them step by step. That’s 

where the process comes in. We have 

outlined four proven techniques for 

implementing budgeting for equity: 

Gain commitment. Identify disparities 

in your community and establish 

goals to lift up those who have been 

disadvantaged. 

Program budgeting. Break your 

budget down and examine how each 

program can contribute to achieving 

your equity goals. 

Turn the Curve planning. Define the 

problems underlying persistent 

disparities so that you have the insight 

needed to find effective solutions. 

Allocate resources. Change your 

budgeting from funding line items 

to purchasing results by giving 

departments clear expectations and 

instructions to guide their budget 

proposals. 

We’ve shown you the ropes—the steps 

are yours to take. 

Shayne Kavanagh is senior manager 

of research for GFOA. Andrew Kleine 

is senior director at EY-Parthenon 

Government & Public Sector, Ernst 

& Young LLP. Chris Fabian is chief 

executive at ResourceX. Erik Fabian is 

chief operating officer at ResourceX. 

The authors would like to thank Results 

for America, without which this article 

would not be possible. They would also 

like to acknowledge the hard work and 

dedication of the public servants in all 

the 11 cities they worked with as part of 

this project. 

Learn More 

Learn more about the Rethinking Budgeting 

initiative at gfoa.org/rethinking-budgeting. 


32

CALIBRATION TRAINING 

From 

Guesswork 

to 

Informed 

Judgment 

©2023 AAD GOUDAPPEL C/O THEISPOT.COM 

Using Calibration Training 

for Better Decision-Making 

BY SHAYNE KAVANAGH, DOUG HUBBARD, PHILIP MARTIN, AND ROBERT WEANT 


34



The job of a local government finance officer is to help elected officials 

and other decision-makers make better decisions. This involves 

helping elected officials make sense of uncertain information and 

situations—which requires us to express uncertainty clearly, especially 

for assumptions that might underlie financial plans and budgets. 

To help, GFOA worked with Hubbard Decision Research (HDR) and 

40 GFOA member volunteers to go through what is known as 

“calibration training.” The objective of calibration training is to prepare 

people to express their estimates of uncertainty in quantitative terms, 

using only their own judgment and without relying on outside data. 

Quantified estimates of uncertainty are desirable, and special training 

is necessary to make them. 

WHY DO WE NEED TRAINING TO 

QUANTIFY UNCERTAINTY? 

Let’s start with why quantified 

estimates of uncertainty are desirable. 

Uncertainty is a key element of risk, 

which could be defined as the downside 

of uncertainty. Finance officers help 

decision-makers manage the financial 

risk of their decisions. But as Peter 

Bernstein put it in Against the Gods: 

The Remarkable Story of Risk, 1 “Without 

numbers, there are no odds and 

no probabilities; without odds and 

probabilities, the only way to deal with 

risk is to appeal to the gods and the 

fates. Without numbers, risk is wholly 

a matter of gut.” 

Bernstein is advocating for 

quantifying uncertainty (and, thereby, 

risk) by using odds and probabilities. 

He cautions against our gut instincts 

because people are not wired to think 

about risk correctly. One reason for 

that is what psychologists call the 

“overconfidence bias.” This means that 

we are overconfident in our predictions 

and tend to underestimate uncertainty. 

We can illustrate this with data from a 

calibration training experiment GFOA 

conducted (see Exhibit 2). 

Exhibit 2 provides a comparison of 

how well the group of GFOA volunteers 

thought they did on making a prediction 

versus how well they actually did, before 

they went through calibration training. 

For instance, if we look at the horizontal 

axis and find the 0.8 mark, this is the 

point where someone believes their 

forecast has an 80 percent chance of 

being correct. We can then look upward 

until we intersect the 0.8 mark on the 

vertical axis, which is on the green line. 

This is the point of perfect calibration: 

if you say your forecasts have an 80 

percent chance of being correct, and 

your forecasts are, in fact, correct 80 

percent of the time. Any point on the 

green line is perfect calibration. 

Percent Correct 

EXHIBIT 1 | UNQUANTIFIED VERSUS QUANTIFIED ESTIMATES 

Unquantified estimate 

Next year’s total revenue will be 

somewhere around $20 million. 

I think the new sales tax law will likely 

pass by the start of our next fiscal year. 

We also see a red line on Exhibit 2; this 

is data from participants before they took 

the calibration training. If we revisit 0.8 

on the horizontal axis, we see the red line 

meets the vertical axis at 0.68. In other 

words, the uncalibrated person believed 

their forecasts had an 80 percent chance 

of being correct but are actually correct 

only 68 percent of the time; this is 

overconfidence bias. Anytime the red 

line is below the green line, it represents 

overconfidence. The dotted gray 

lines represent allowable error in our 

measurement of the participants in the 

training—we can’t expect our tests to be 

a perfect measure of accuracy. 

With this in mind, we can see that 

the participants are not overconfident 

when assessing their chances at 50 or 60 

percent. This is because the participants 

are highly uncertain and are, in essence, 

flipping a coin when estimating if they 

will be correct or not. In fact, because 

the red line is above the green line, our 

participants were underconfident: they 

thought they were flipping a coin; but, 

Quantified estimate 

There is a 90 percent chance that 

next year’s revenue will be between 

$19 million and $21 million. 

I give an 80 percent chance that the 

new sales tax law will pass by the 

start of our next fiscal year. 

EXHIBIT 2 | RESULTS OF “PRETEST” OF CALIBRATION TRAINING PARTICIPANTS 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

GFOA Participants: Binary Calibration Curve 

Before Training 

Perfect Calibration 

Allowable Error 

50% 

50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

Expected Percent Correct 



in fact, they had better information about 

the correct answer than they thought they 

did. But as soon as the participants believed 

their estimate has a reasonable chance of 

being right, overconfidence crept in. 

Mitigating or eliminating overconfidence 

bias is why calibration training is 

necessary. Quantifying your estimates 

of uncertainty is not simply a matter 

of replacing words such as “likely” or 

“probable” with numbers like “80 percent” 

or “4 in 5 chance.” We need to take steps to 

make the numbers as accurate as possible. 

Ideally, we would use data to come up with 

our estimates of uncertainty. For example, 

if your annual hotel tax forecast has been 

within +/– 5 percent of actual revenue for 

each of the last ten years, then it is a good 

bet that next year’s forecast will be within 

that range as well (assuming your forecast 

method remains substantively similar). But 

the data for estimating uncertainty is often 

unavailable or incomplete, and there isn’t 

the time and/or resources to get more data. 

In this case, the estimator will be forced to 

rely on their judgment, at least in part. 

Calibration training moves the 

participants closer to the green line. 

Exhibit 3 shows results from training with 

an added blue line. We can see that, at all 

points, the blue line is closer to the green 

line and is even within the gray lines at a few 

points, which indicates perfect calibration. 

HOW DOES CALIBRATION 

TRAINING WORK? 

Calibration training helps people 

recognize overconfidence bias and 

mitigate it. It does this by providing 

immediate feedback on the quality of 

a high volume of predictions made by 

the participant. In other words, the 

participants make a lot of predictions and 

then find out how well they did right away. 

Rapid feedback is essential to learning. 

The predictions that participants 

make come in the form of difficult “trivia 

questions,” where it is highly unlikely that 

the participants know the right answer 

(without looking it up). 

These questions were asked in two 

formats. One format was true/false, where 

participants picked either true or false as 

their answer and then assigned a level of 

confidence to their answer. For example, a 

question might be: “True or false? A gallon 

of oil weighs less than a gallon of water.” 

Though you may not know the exact weight 

of either, you may recall that oil floats on 

water; therefore, oil probably weighs less. 

For that reason, you predict the statement 

is true and give your answer a high level of 

confidence (90 or even 100 percent). 

Other questions might be harder. For 

example, “Mars is always farther away 

from Earth than Venus.” Imagine you 

After one half-day of calibration training, participants get 

much closer to 90 percent correct for their range questions. 

This prepares them to develop ranges for situations they 

might encounter in their work life, such as a range of 

potential yields for a revenue source. 


EXHIBIT 3 | RESULTS OF “POST-TEST” OF CALIBRATION TRAINING PARTICIPANTS 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

GFOA Participants: Binary Calibration Curve 

Before Training 

After Training 

Perfect Calibration 

Allowable Error 

50% 

50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

Expected Percent Correct 

have no idea, so you guess true.…but 

you rate your confidence at 50 percent, 

which indicates you basically flipped a 

coin to get your answer. Most questions 

are somewhere in between, where 

the participant has some idea of the 

correct answer but is not highly certain. 

Participants usually overstate their 

confidence at the start of the training and 

learn to be more circumspect about their 

predictions as the training progresses. By 

answering many questions and getting 

feedback, participants learn to more 

accurately assess the chance that they are 

correct. This prepares them to develop 

real-life predictions, like whether some 

important event will come to pass (for 

example, whether a major retailer in the 

community will close in the next year). 

In the other format of the trivia 

questions, participants are asked to define 

a range where they are 90 percent sure 

the correct answer lies within the range. 

For example, “What is the wingspan, in 

feet, of a Boeing 737 aircraft (the type 

of plane used by Southwest Airlines)?” 

Unless you are an aeronautical engineer, 

you probably don’t know the exact answer 

and would need to make a projection. 

You are not making a wild guess because 

you have information to go on. You may 

have been a passenger on such a plane 

or have seen it in pictures, so you have 

an idea of how big it is. However, it will 

still be a highly uncertain forecast for 

you. Picking a single number, like “75 

feet” is of limited use because it doesn’t 

express your uncertainty and the degree 

of risk that you might be wrong, so the 

calibration training asks participants to 

express their forecasts as a 90 percent 

confidence range. Put another way, they 

pick a high and a low value where they are 

90 percent confident that the value will be 

in between. For example, they might say, 

“I’m 90 percent confident that the 

wingspan is between 65 and 100 feet.” 

As it turns out, the actual wingspan is 

113 feet. Making the range too narrow 

is a common problem for participants; 

this is overconfidence bias in action. 

When participants first try forecasting 

90 percent confidence ranges for a large 

number of trivia questions, the correct 

answer falls outside of their ranges for 

around half of their estimates. If they 

are truly “90 percent confident,” then 

the correct answer should fall outside of 

36

EXHIBIT 4 | 90 PERCENT CONFIDENCE INTERVAL SHOWN AS A BELL CURVE 

5% 90% 

5% 

Rather than estimating the blue portion, many people find it easier to estimate each green portion separately. 


EXHIBIT 5 | PERCENT CORRECT OVER SUCCESSIVE PRACTICE ROUNDS 

100% 

80% 

60% 

40% 

20% 

0 

A B C D E F 

their ranges in only 10 percent of their 

forecasts (as in, 90 percent of the forecasts 

should be correct). After one half-day of 

calibration training, participants get much 

closer to 90 percent correct for their range 

questions. This prepares them to develop 

ranges for situations they might encounter 

in their work life, such as a range of 

potential yields for a revenue source. 

Participants do not learn purely through 

trial and error. They also learn techniques 

to help them make better predictions. For 

example, they learn to estimate each side 

of their ranges separately. When people 

think of a “90 percent confidence range,” 

they tend to generate both ends of the 

range simultaneously. Considering each 

side separately, however, causes people to 

slow down and give more consideration to 

their estimate (see Exhibit 4). Looking at 

Test 

Past Objective Allowable Team 

one side of the range at a time reframes the 

questions from “90 percent of the time the 

correct answer will be in this range” to: 1) 

“Only five percent of the time the correct 

answer will be higher than my upper 

value”; and 2) “Only five percent of the time 

will the correct answer be lower than my 

low value.” (The five percent on either side 

of the range adds up to 10 percent—a 100 

percent minus 10 percent is 90 percent 

for your 90 percent confidence interval.) 

Five percent is only 1 out of 20! When 

participants consider that the correct 

answer can only go beyond a given side of 

their interval 1 out of 20 times, it causes 

them to adjust that side of their interval. 

In Exhibit 5, we can see how 

participants improved as they completed 

multiple rounds of feedback and 

incorporated the ideas from the training 

in their estimates. The graph focuses on 

the range questions, and the “percent 

correct” means the proportion of times 

the value fell within the 90 percent 

confidence interval that the participant 

defined. By the sixth round, the 

participants were quite close to the gray 

line, which is the allowable error. 

Finally, some readers may wonder why 

the “objective” in Exhibit 5 (the green line) 

is only 90 percent correct instead of 100 

percent correct. This is because scoring 

100 percent on the test is easy—just 

make all your ranges infinitely wide. For 

example, you might set your range for 

the wingspan of a 737 aircraft between 1 

and 1 million feet. You are guaranteed to 

be “correct.” However, such wide ranges 

do not have much, if any, practical use 

in real-life estimation problems. The 

training aims to create balance, with 

ranges narrow enough to focus in on the 

90 percent most likely possible values 

but still wide enough to not fall victim to 

overconfidence bias. 

APPLICATIONS OF CALIBRATION 

TRAINING 

In this section, we’ll discuss three possible 

applications of calibration training for the 

work of the finance officer. We invite you 

to also consider other applications. 

First, it equips finance officers to 

communicate uncertainty in their 

forecasts and estimates. Research shows 

that people prefer advisors who quantify 

their uncertainty but are still confident. 2 

To illustrate, a revenue forecast might be 

presented in these ways: 

• “I’m 75 percent certain that revenues 

will increase by at least one percent 

next year.” 

• “I’m 90 percent certain that revenues 

will be between $50 million and $55 

million next year.” 

Our examples omit hedging language like 

“maybe,” “I’m not sure, but…,” and so on. 

The statements come across as confident, 

even though expressed as a probabilistic 

likelihood. 

We can also use the second bullet 

to illustrate overconfidence bias. 

Overconfidence causes people to make 

their ranges too narrow, often by around 

50 percent. 3 Revisit the second example 

and imagine that the person who made 

that estimate has calibrated. In contrast, 



Pro Tip For Communicating Uncertainties 

Probabilities like 90 percent are an abstract 

concept and can be difficult to grasp for 

people who aren’t accustomed to thinking 

in probabilities. Research suggests that 

ratios are easier for people to grasp. 6 

For example, rather than saying, “I’m 

90 percent certain revenues will be…,” 

one could say, “There is a 9 in 10 chance 

revenues will be….” 

an overconfident estimator might say, 

“I’m 90 percent certain that revenues will 

be between $51 million and $54 million.” 

This is a range of only $3 million, 

compared to the $5 million range given 

by the calibrated estimator. In other 

words, the overconfident estimator has 

left less room for error and increased 

the chance of a bad decision. Calibration 

training helps you reach intervals that 

are of the right size, given your degree of 

certainty for the question at hand. 

For many applications in public 

finance, the government needs to settle 

on a single number. For example, you 

can’t put a range of possible revenues 

in your budget—but you can use the 

range to assess the risk you’re taking 

on by adopting any given number for 

your budget. The GFOA book Informed 

Decision-Making through Forecasting: A 

Practitioner’s Guide, 4 provides several 

case examples of how local governments 

have applied ranges when presenting 

forecasts. To summarize one application, 

the range of possible future revenues 

could be presented to the governing 

board, with the midpoint of the range 

considered the single most likely 

outcome. If the board were to adopt 

an expenditure budget equal to this 

midpoint, they give themselves 1:1 odds 

(or a 1 in 2 chance) of a deficit. This is 

because there is a 50 percent chance of 

revenues being less than (or more than) 

the midpoint of the estimate. 

Many elected boards wouldn’t like 

those odds and would prefer to give 

themselves a better chance of avoiding 

a deficit at the end of the year. In one 

of our case studies, the finance officer 

facilitated a conversation about the odds 

the elected board would prefer. The board 

landed on a spending plan that provided 

2-1 odds (or a 2 in 3 chance) of producing 

a surplus, which was more aligned with 

the board’s goal of building up reserves 

after a recent natural disaster. So, they 

landed on a single number for the budget 

but were also fully aware of the degree 

of risk that number represented. After 

a few years, when the reserves had been 

replenished, the board opted for lower 

odds of budgetary surplus (though still 

better than 1 in 2) by picking a higher 

number for the expenditure budget. 

You can download a spreadsheet to 

help you with the process described in 

this paragraph as part of an online article 

published by GFOA titled “Silicon Valley 

Bank and Stress Tests: What Can Local 

Governments Learn?” 5 After looking at 

the spreadsheet, you will probably be able 

to think of other applications for inserting 

subjective estimates of probabilities into 

larger quantitative models. 

The second practical application of 

calibration training is that it helps the 

finance officer avoid the “illusion of 

communication” when discussing risks. 

The illusion of communication is when 

people use vague terms to communicate 

uncertainty, such as “likely,” “probably,” 

and more. The problem is that people 

often have very different numbers in 

mind when asked to quantify these terms. 

To illustrate, one study of military 

intelligence examined a set of standard 

terms that intelligence officers were 

supposed to use to describe their 

certainty of military threats. 7 The order 

from most to least certain was: 1) “highly 

likely,” 2) “likely,” 3) “probable,” and 4) 

“unlikely.” When the intelligence officers 

were asked to quantify their uncertainty, 

the results exposed these standardized 

terms as worthless. For example, it 

turned out that some intelligence officers 

thought “highly likely” meant anything 

with more than a 50 percent chance of 

occurring, while others thought it meant 

a chance of 90 percent or more. “Likely” 

and “probable” meant essentially the 

same thing, given the quantities the 

officers assigned. And the range variation 

in the quantitative definitions the officers 

came up with resulted in some officers 

using “probable” (the term intended to 

describe the second lowest chance) to 

describe the same percent chance that 

other officers described as “highly likely” 

(the term for the highest chance). You can 

see this illustrated in Exhibit 6. 

EXHIBIT 6 | FREQUENCY WITH WHICH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS 

ASSIGNED QUANTITATIVE VALUES TO SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTIONS OF RISKS 

The blue bars represent how often a given quantitative measure (such as, 20%) was believed to describe what a 

given subjective term (such as “unlikely” meant). The higher the bar, the more frequent the belief. 

Highly Likely 

Likely 

Probable 

Unlikely 

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 


38

EXHIBIT 7 | A CONVENTIONAL RISK MATRIX 

RISK 

PROBABILITY 

Frequent 5 

Occasional 4 

Remote 3 

Improbable 2 

Extremely 

Improbable 1 

RISK SEVERITY 

Catastrophic A Hazardous B Major C Minor D Negligible E 

5A 5B 5C 5D 5E 

4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 

3A 3B 3C 3D 3E 

2A 2B 2C 2D 2E 

1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 

The illusion of communication is not 

limited to military intelligence. Many local 

governments have probably fallen into the 

same trap by using the popular “heat map” 

style of risk matrix, as shown in Exhibit 7. 

It is easy to imagine the same problem with 

the terms on either axis of Exhibit 7. This 

is not just a theoretical problem. Research 

into how these kinds of risk matrices affect 

real-life decisions has concluded that 

“[qualitative] risk matrices should not be 

used for decisions of any consequence.” 8 

Calibration training prepares the 

finance officer to replace vague terms with 

meaningful, quantified, and calibrated 

estimates of uncertainty. For example, you 

could imagine a version of Exhibit 7 where 

the two axes are replaced by ranges of 

percent likelihood that the risk will occur 

and a potential dollar loss on the other. 

There are also other presentation methods 

that quantify risks into probabilities as a 

fundamental design feature. One example 

is called a “loss exceedance curve.” You can 

see examples applied to cyber security risk 

in the GFOA report Cyber Risk Savvy. 9 

The third practical application of 

calibration training is that it hones 

our intuitions about chance and 

prepares us to think probabilistically. 

According to The Great Mental Models 

project: 10 “Successfully thinking in 

shades of probability means roughly 

identifying what matters, coming up with 

a sense of the odds, doing a check on our 

assumptions, and then making a decision. 

We can act with a higher level of certainty 

in complex, unpredictable situations. 

We can never know the future with exact 

precision. Probabilistic thinking is an 

extremely useful tool to evaluate how the 

world will most likely look so that we can 

effectively strategize.” 

The benefits of probabilistic thinking 

are measurable. For example, one study 

showed that exposing participants to 

probabilistic training was associated 

with as much as a 50 percent increase 

in the accuracy of their predictions. 11 

Having a general idea how a revenue might 

perform is one thing. However, being 

able to examine the question of revenue 

yield from multiple vantage points and 

think about how new information might 

cause you to adjust your probabilistic 

expectations can be much more powerful. 

CONCLUSION 

Public finance officers deal with 

uncertainty and risk across many 

domains of public finance, including 

forecasts, rainy day funds, insurance, and 

more. The ability to think probabilistically 

enhances a finance officer’s ability to 

make savvier decisions about risk and 

uncertainty. Calibration training hones 

probabilistic thinking skills. Even better, 

it provides a basis for communicating 

quantified probability estimates to 

others. These skills are essential for 

helping the finance officer guide their 

local government in testing assumptions 

in an uncertain world. This allows the 

finance officer to be a bona fide decision 

leader—someone who doesn’t only make 

good decisions themselves but can also 

help others make wise decisions. 12 

Shayne Kavanagh is senior manager 

of research in GFOA’s Research and 

Consulting Center. Doug Hubbard 

is chief executive officer of Hubbard 

Decision Research. Philip Martin is chief 

operating officer of Hubbard Decision 

Research. Robert Weant is senior analyst 

at Hubbard Decision Research. 

GFOA’s “Budget Officer as 

Decision Architect” (Jason Riis 

and Jared Peterson, GFOA, 

February 2023) offers a complete 

discussion of the finance officer’s 

role in helping their governments 

make better decisions. The ideas 

in this article support the skills 

needed to be a decision architect. 

READ THE ARTICLE: 

gfoa.org/materials/gfr0223- 

decision-architect 

1 

Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable 

Story of Risk… (Wiley: 1998). 

2 

Celia Gaertig and Joseph P. Simmons, “Do people 

inherently dislike uncertain advice?” forthcoming, 

Psychological Science, 2017 (available at SSRN: ssrn. 

com/abstract=3041566). 

3 

Jack B. Soll, and Joshua Klayman, “Overconfidence 

in interval estimates,” Journal of Experimental 

Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 

2004. 

4 

Shayne Kavanagh and Daniel W. Williams, Informed 

Decision-Making through Forecasting: A Practitioner’s 

Guide, GFOA, January 2017. 

5 

Shayne Savage, Sam Savage, and Matthew 

Raphaelson, “Silicon Valley Bank and Stress Tests: 

What Can Local Governments Learn,” GFOA (gfoa.org/ 

silicon-valley-bank-and-stress-tests-what-can-localgovernments-learn). 

6 

Chip Heath and Karla Starr, Making Numbers Count: 

The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, (Avid 

Reader Press/Simon & Schuster: 2022). 

7 

Richards J. Heuer, The Psychology of Intelligence 

Analysis, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1999. 

8 

Philip Thomas, Reidar Bratvold, and J. Eric Bickel, 

“The Risk of Using Risk Matrices,” SPE Economics and 

Management, 6(02), 2013. 

9 

Shayne Kavanagh, Rob Roque, and Teri Takai, “Cyber 

Risk Savvy,” GFOA, January 2022. 

10 

The Value of Probabilistic Thinking: Spies, Crime, and 

Lightning Strikes, Mental Modes, fs blog, Farnam Street 

Media. 

11 

In Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power 

of Real Productivity (Random House Publishing: 2016), 

author Charles Duhigg discusses the results obtained 

by the “Good Judgment Project” in their forecast 

experiments. 

12 

Decision leader is a term from: Don A. Moore and Max 

H. Bazerman, Decision leadership: empowering others 

to make better choices (Yale University Press: 2022. 


40

THE ROLE OF A CITY ECONOMIST 

A Key Role 

Why economists offer an essential skill set to local governments 

BY DEEPAYAN DEBNATH, MATTHEW LUE, ALEX TABB, AND MARK MACK 


Local governments 

often spend 

thousands (if not 

millions) of dollars 

on research. In 

many instances, 

cities hire 

traditional analysts 

from diverse 

backgrounds to perform accounting, 

budgeting, and financial policy analysis— 

and still, they often need to hire consulting 

firms to conduct research. 

The field of economics teaches a 

data-driven approach to problem-solving 

that can be lacking in other disciplines. 

Examples of municipal governments 

with “in-house economists” suggest that 

their skills and training enhance a city’s 

proficiency in analyzing policy and reduce 

its dependence on consulting firms. For 

instance, upon hiring an economist, the 

City of Columbia, Missouri, performed an 

in-house cost-of-service study for their 

water utility. Based on this study, they were 

able to adopt a water rate increase in the 

FY23 budget. In this case, the city not only 

reduced its consulting expenses, but the 

finance department collaborated with the 

Department of Water and Light to develop 

an ongoing relationship and the work was 

finished promptly. This example highlights 

how economists can be especially helpful 

to cities that manage utilities, airports, 

parking, and other business-like activities. 

Economics in governmental 

budgeting and fiscal policy analysis 

“Economics” and “finance” are often 

seen as synonymous; however, they 

are not quite the same. While both are 

concerned with the distribution and 

movement of money and assets, finance 

fundamentally refers to the techniques 

used to manage money and resources, 

whereas economics is the broader study 

of decision-making. In the context of local 

government, the finance department 

serves two key roles: maintaining 

balance sheets and budgeting. An 

accounting team is vital to performing 

the former, but including an economist 

can bring academic rigor to the latter 

by improving accuracy in the budget 

process and expanding the applications 

of traditional budgeting functions 

throughout the city, resulting in a more 

data-driven approach to decision-making. 

An economic division can add valuable 

input for fact-based decision-making. 

Economists have a widely applicable 

skill set that makes them valuable 

as in-house consultants for policy 

analysis and quantitative projects of 

any sort. Economists have a competitive 

advantage over traditional analysts 

when it comes to forecasting revenue. 1 

This skill set can be leveraged to help 

accountants with tasks such as building 

the demographic and retail sales tables 

needed for the annual comprehensive 

financial report (ACFR). Because 

of this, many cities have already 

established an economic division or 

added duties that are traditionally 

performed by an economist. 

A vital role of the finance department 

is keeping track of the organization’s 

finances to meet federal regulations 

and credit rating agency targets. 

Organizations often need more 

than basic accounting expertise to 

ensure that they fully understand the 

decisions they make. This principle 

is doubly important in the context 

of public finance, where staff are 

entrusted with the financial resources 

of their neighbors. Finance officers 

have an obligation to make data-driven 

decisions, pursue sound objectives, 

and operate efficiently. Economists are 

trained to perform these tasks and are 

equipped with the skill set needed to 

execute them. 

Lessons learned from privatesector 

economists 

The private sector has embraced a 

research-based approach to decisionmaking. 

For instance, the economics 

team at Wal-Mart informs the 

organization’s staffing, stocking, and 

promotional decisions with time-series 

forecasting models. 2 Economists at 

Google, Uber, Amazon, and other tech 


THE ROLE OF A CITY ECONOMIST 

giants use the firms’ vast troves of 

data to answer strategic questions 

regarding everything from marketing to 

budgeting and even anti-trust lawsuits. 

Their economists operate as one of the 

critical components for enterprise-level 

planning and management. They also 

act as a medium through which many 

departments work together to meet their 

organization’s strategic goals. 

In some cases, the public sector is less 

likely to adopt quantitative methods 

like those discussed in this article, but 

some private-sector approaches can 

be useful to local government. Robust 

forecasting and analysis, for example, 

are essential to a city’s financial health, 

and greater collaboration among city 

departments and the finance office can 

improve financial management, even if 

it works well already. 

Balancing the priorities of 

departments, agencies, and enterprises, 

along with the values of residence 

and other constituencies, like local 

business interests, can be challenging. 

A dedicated economic division or a staff 

economist can help introduce better 

empirical tools that can be used for 

informed decision-making and help 

effectively employ and integrate these 

ideas across the entire government. 

While economists typically shy away 

from direct policymaking, they readily 

provide input and prepare useful 

predictions and what-if scenarios. City 

managers or the mayor can work with an 

economist to evaluate their priorities, 

justify their decisions, and implement 

policies. 

An example of use tax, water rate 

increase, and adult-use marijuana 

sales tax 

Instead of just defining what use tax is, 

an economist, in collaboration with the 

finance director at the City of Columbia, 

conducted an in-depth forecasting of the 

additional use tax revenue and specified 

how that would be used in public safety 

and infrastructure. Unlike in 2018, 

in 2022, the citizens embraced the 

detailed information and voted “yes” 

to a use tax. 3 (See Exhibit 1.) Since it 

was passed the city’s sales tax revenue 

is anticipated to increase annually by 

$5 million. 

Columbia’s economist collaborated 

closely with the city’s Department of 

Water and Light to develop a water utility 

revenue-expenditure forecasting model, 

which was extensively used to analyze 

several alternative rate structures. 

During the process, the economist 

regularly consulted with the city council 

to ensure that the rate structure was 

congruent with the diverse needs of 

the populace. The council adopted the 

EXHIBIT 1 | VOTERS APPROVED A CITY OF COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, USE TAX 

rate change with the FY23 budget, and the 

subsequent revenue is expected to increase 

by $1 million annually. 4 

When the State of Missouri legalized 

adult-use marijuana in 2022, the City 

of Columbia reached out to the City of 

Boulder, Colorado, to learn from their 

experience in 2014. The economic analyst 

estimated that Columbia might collect 

an additional $400,000 to $1 million in 

revenue annually in the form of a three 

percent selective sales tax on recreational 

marijuana. The estimate was subsequently 

used to design a spending agenda for the 

new revenue, which was later approved by 

the voters. 5 

The broader role of a city economist 

Simple forecasting methods and budget 

analysis are sufficient for smaller 

municipalities, but growing cities 

should treat the data available to them 

with the same reverence as private 

organizations. Larger populations bring 

higher revenue and expenditures, more 

extensive administration, and more 

sophisticated projects and services. All 

of this requires greater accountability to 

these constituencies, which often means 

more frequent budget and policy reports 

that go beyond the normal subject matter to 

include analyses of the city’s social 

and economic trends. 

In larger cities, such as Chicago, Illinois, 6 

the Office of Budget and Management 

serves as a central hub for the data from 

departments, enterprises, and agencies 

that comprise local administration. No one 

step can be taken to immediately improve 

the depth and breadth of a city’s analysis; 

this sort of evolution takes time and effort. 

One step that can be taken, however, 

is adding staff who are responsible for 

pursuing this change. An economist 

can develop interdepartmental ties and 

enhance the capabilities of the budget 

office beyond just producing a budget. 

Consider an unpopular policy change 

such as a utility rate hike or a tax 

increase. Both will almost certainly be 

met with some resistance—which is not 

unwarranted. People may ask several 

reasonable questions, including why is 

this necessary, how will it affect us, what 

will this achieve, is it fair, and how do 

we budget for this? Traditionally, local 

governments would spend significant 

42

time and money hiring consultants to 

answer these questions. 

A dedicated economist can apply 

their skillset to present this data 

intuitively and craft a coherent story 

from it that accurately reflects reality. 

In pursuing the strategic goal of greater 

transparency, the economist at the 

City of Columbia created a dashboard to 

represent the city’s monthly sales tax 

revenue. 7 An economist can provide 

forecasting and what-if scenario 

analyses to make more confident 

assertions about the future and manage 

expectations in a scientific manner. 

Questions that are financial in nature 

can go unanswered because of a lack 

of in-house expertise. For example: 

what happens if the airport moves from 

free parking to a paid system? How 

would a new parking pricing scheme 

affect congestion downtown? What 

are the most effective options to offset 

financial loss due to a decline in tax 

revenue collection? What are the total 

costs and benefits of expanding public 

health services? How do socioeconomic 

factors vary across the city, and does 

the chosen funding allocation reflect 

the corresponding priorities? 

The wide range of topics for which 

a government might use economic 

consultation means that having an 

in-house economist can produce faster 

and less expensive recommendations. 

Municipalities have extensive 

inventories of data, and connecting 

these data sources can push the 

boundaries of what types of questions 

can be answered. Having an existing 

relationship with an expert on empirical 

analysis can help governments channel 

good ideas into innovative applications. 

Another, less obvious benefit is that city 

economists can act as a bridge between 

departments. Establishing a permanent 

economic consultant with a widely 

applicable skillset opens the door to new 

The above photo is of the downtown parking structure operated by the City of Columbia, Missouri. 

There is always potential to increase parking revenue by implementing a variable rate structure. 

A city economist can perform the analysis required to implement such rate structures. 

relationships, greater transparency, and 

new projects among departments. 

This collaborative aspect goes beyond 

city limits. A wider network of dedicated 

economic analysts can facilitate 

inter-city collaboration and help local 

governments adapt more effectively in 

a rapidly evolving world. For instance, 

the data sharing between Columbia and 

Boulder produced a sound and useful 

estimate for Columbia’s future marijuana 

tax revenue. Be it an innovative 

methodology, a best practice, or simply 

sharing a government’s experience 

and data, collaboration between 

governments is beneficial and a natural 

extension of an economist skillset. 

Size matters 

Smaller governments often face fewer 

policy-related decisions than larger 

organizations, so the impact of an inhouse 

economist is likely diminished in 

smaller municipalities. Based on the 

preliminary experience observed, the 

impact of an in-house economist is most 

valuable in fast growing communities 

and/or those with populations greater 

than 100,000. As cities grow, the need 

to expand the depth and breadth of 

financial reporting and policy analysis 

will grow hand-in-hand. Citizens, 

businesses, and city administrations 

can benefit from greater transparency, 

insightful analysis, and decisionmaking 

that is rooted in an objective 

analysis that methodically ties a city’s 

policies to its strategic goals. 

Deepayan Debnath, who has a Ph.D. in 

Agricultural Economics, is an economist 

for the City of Columbia, Missouri. 

Matthew Lue is finance director for 

the City of Columbia. Alex Tabb is an 

economic analyst for the City of Columbia. 

Mark Mack is a senior manager in GFOA’s 

Research and Consulting Center. 

1 

Economist at the City of Columbia uses time series econometrics ARIMA model to forecast monthly sales tax. (app.powerbigov.us/ 

view?r=eyJrIjoiZGIyODk2ZWUtODQzNS00YTVlLTkxYzctNzA1ZDUxYmMzMDdhIiwidCI6ImM5MzMwZTA2LTY4YTAtNDE3NC04NviGE5LTI3MWIwZDViODgxMiJ9) 

2 

Data + AI Summit 2022 North America/Virtual sessions on YouTube are available at databricks.com/session_na21/demand-forecasting-platform-at-scale-that-drives-operational-efficiency-reduceswaste-at-walmart. 

3 

The text of Prop One is available at como.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Ordinance-6.pdf. 

4 

The City of Columbia’s adopted FY2023 budget is available at como.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/FY-23-Adopted-Budget-FINAL-DRAFT-9-28-22.pdf. 

5 

Learn more about the City of Columbia’s Prop 1 marijuana tax at como.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Marijuana-Tax-Report.pdf. 

6 

See the City of Chicago’s data portal at https://data.cityofchicago.org/. 

7 

See a government data portal at app.powerbigov.us/ 

view?r=eyJrIjoiZGIyODk2ZWUtODQzNS00YTVlLTkxYzctNzA1ZDUxYmMzMDdhIiwidCI6ImM5MzMwZTA2LTY4YTAtNDE3NC04NGE5LTI3MWIwZDViODgxMiJ9. 


44

FISCAL MAPPING 

Map the Way to 

Smarter Funding 

BY AMELIA VAUGHN AND ED HARRINGTON 


As a government finance 

official, have you ever 

been asked, “How much do 

we spend on children and 

youth?” This is a question 

that advocates—and 

lawmakers—are pushing 

to answer, but they usually 

can’t answer it by themselves. Children’s 

Funding Project Chief Executive Officer 

Elizabeth Gaines was able to address 

this concern early in her career, during 

the time when she was fighting to secure 

Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement 

dollars for young people in her home 

state of Missouri. After creating a fiscal 

map—an analysis of all public funding 

currently available for children and 

youth—she convinced lawmakers to 

invest a dedicated $20 million to youth 

development programs. 

Even though government budget 

documents are public, it can be 

challenging to find and analyze the 

details and synthesize all the fiscal 

data into an accurate and meaningful 

summary. Funding streams from 

almost all departments of a city or 

county’s organizational chart support 

children, youth, and families in some 

way. Most of our budgeting systems do 

not easily lend themselves to answering 

complex questions about a government’s 

collective investments in a specific area. 

Yet, knowing the answer is imperative 

for making informed and aligned 

budgeting decisions to support better 

outcomes within our communities. 

This is where fiscal maps can help— 

and where your position and expertise 

as a government finance officer are 

essential. As a knowledgeable financial 

leader, you are best equipped to extract 

key funding details from the myriad of 

complex budget documents and distill 

that data into a format that lawmakers, 

advocates, and community members 

can use and understand. 

What is a fiscal map? 

A fiscal map is a user-friendly tool that 

government officials, advocates, and 

community members can use to analyze 

public spending. While the fiscal maps 

we do focus on spending for children, 

finance officers can use fiscal maps 

to scour budgets for spending on any 

population or service area. At its core, 

a fiscal map shows the characteristics 

and intended purposes of funding 

streams, including the specific types 

of services supported or age ranges and 

populations eligible to receive funding. 

A fiscal map looks at the funding 

landscape at a certain point in time and 

answers a fundamental question: who 

(level of government/specific agency) 

invests how much (appropriated/ 

obligated amount of money) and in 

what (specific age groups/types of 

programs and services)? You can think 

of these maps as another opportunity 

to engage in GFOA’s Rethinking 

Budgeting Initiative by offering new 

ways to help communities improve 

their budget information. 

A fiscal map can make your work 

as a finance officer more meaningful 

and effective by providing clear, 

readily available answers to common 

questions like these: 

• How much of our total budget 

supports children and youth? 

• How does our community fund a 

specific service, like child care? 

• Do we spend more money on positive 

youth development or deeper 

interventions after problems occur? 

• What federal grants are we 

accessing—and which ones are we 

not accessing, but should? (For 

additional information about federal 

funding in fiscal maps, check out the 

sidebar, “Federal Funding Streams 

for Children and Youth Services.”) 

Most importantly, a fiscal map 

positions you—the primary expert 

on your locality’s budget—to help 

policymakers with their decisions to 

invest more in our youngest generation. 



EXHIBIT 1 | POUGHKEEPSIE CHILDREN’S CABINET FISCAL MAP FOR FY19 

A sample fiscal map dashboard 

Source: Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet, Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet Fiscal Map-FY19 

Understanding the fiscal 

mapping process 

Advocates—including government 

officials and local leaders—come to us at 

Children’s Funding Project for coaching 

or to produce a fiscal map when they 

are interested in improving how their 

communities, cities, counties, towns, 

and states fund services for infants, 

toddlers, children, and youth. The fiscal 

map can provide a comprehensive view 

of all funding available for children and 

youth over multiple years to show how 

investments have changed over time. 

Alternatively, the fiscal map can offer a 

quick snapshot of the funding available 

for a specific service area, like early 

childhood care and education. The latter 

can be useful as precursory research 

needed to mount a campaign for new 

funding or to help lawmakers quickly 

determine how to allocate new funding. 

To kick off the fiscal mapping process, 

a group of core decision makers convene 

and determine the scope of the fiscal 

map, based on the community’s goals. 

This core group usually includes leaders 

from local government, children’s 

cabinets, and other community-based 

organizations. Then, we determine the 

best avenue for collecting data based 

on the leadership group’s relationships 

with budget holders. When finance 

officers are part of the fiscal map 

initiative and core decision-making 

group from the start, they offer a fast 

track to data collection, which often is 

the most challenging part of preparing 

an accurate and complete fiscal map. 

(See Exhibit 1.) 

The fiscal map translates this budget 

data into tools (presented as a robust 

spreadsheet and/or an interactive 

dashboard that help users view and sort 

the funding data) that a community 

can use to meet its goals for funding 

children and youth services. The data 

categorizes each funding stream by two 

types of variables: 

1. Administrative characteristics, 

such as the administering agency, 

typical local recipient of the funding, 

funding cycle, and whether there 

are provisions for coordinating with 

another funding stream. These 

characteristics help a locality 

understand the flow of funding 

into the community and provide 

information on how to better 

Federal Funding Streams for 

Children and Youth Services 

The Federal Funding Streams for Children 

and Youth Services database helps 

communities find federal funding available 

to states, tribal areas, counties, cities, 

towns, school districts, and local nonprofit 

organizations to support children and youth. 

This database, published by Children’s 

Funding Project in May 2023, catalogs the 

purposes and key characteristics of more 

than 280 federal funding programs—funded 

across 12 federal agencies—that support 

children and youth from ages 0 to 24 years. 

Finance officers can search the database 

by a specific funding stream name or 

by descriptive characteristics such as 

the age range the grant serves, specific 

services or programs the funding 

supports, and the level of intervention 

offered. Finance officers can use the 

database to support their fiscal mapping 

efforts in a variety of ways: 

• Track federal investments in categories 

over time. 

• Learn about funding streams that are 

available for specific service types or 

age groups. 

• Identify the federal funding streams 

a community currently receives to 

include in a fiscal map. 

• Identify new federal funding sources 

the community could access to support 

its goals. 

In the fall, we will release an updated 

version of the database that will include 

new functionality allowing users to search 

for federal funding available in each state. 

Use the Database 

Find federal funding that supports programs 

or services for youth in your community 

at childrensfundingproject.org/federalfunding-streams 

46

align current funding, including 

potentially blending or braiding 

funding streams. 

EXHIBIT 2 | ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS TO PUT THE FISCAL MAP DATA INTO CONTEXT 

2. Descriptive characteristics, such as 

the services those funds support, 

eligibility criteria for recipients of the 

funds, or desired outcomes. These 

characteristics provide a childcentered 

view of the budget. This view 

illuminates where the potential needs 

for additional funding exist and can 

be used for advocacy for a specific 

service area or age group. 

As the fiscal map report is developed, 

the project’s core decision-makers can 

include additional pieces of analysis 

that put the fiscal map data into context 

with the community’s population, 

demographics, and other identifying 

characteristics. (See Exhibit 2.) These 

additional components could include: 

• A per capita estimate of the amount 

invested per child, potentially even 

across age groups; 

• Percent of the total budget invested in 

children and youth compared to the 

percent of children and youth in the 

community’s population; 

• Or a view of how federal relief funding 

or other historic investments in 

the community affect the funding 

landscape at a given point in time. 

Depending on the scope, starting a fiscal 

map takes from four months (for a quick 

map) to 12 months (for a comprehensive 

map). Even though the process is time 

intensive, once you have a map, it is 

easier to update it annually. Mainly, this 

requires updating the dollar amounts 

and adding any new funding streams— 

tasks that finance officers can support 

to make data collection more efficient 

and accurate. 

As a finance officer, your involvement 

in creating the initial fiscal map will 

save time in the long term, especially 

if you must regularly provide analyses 

on investments for grant reporting 

requirements or to support the work 

of a children’s cabinet and/or other 

local groups. Additionally, a fiscal map 

makes content from complex budget 

documents more accessible to nonexperts. 

Above all, it provides a bridge to 

inform policymakers, public officials, 

and the community about the work you 

Additional information such as a per capita estimate of the amount invested per child puts a 

fiscal map into context with a community’s population. 

Source: New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families, Youth Spend 2022: New Orleans Investments in Youth and Children 

do and offers an important starting 

point for deeper conversations about 

how a community’s policy goals and 

needs show up in its budget. 

Building a movement of 

transparent, accessible 

budget data 

In 2022 alone, Children’s Funding 

Project worked with 31 communities 

and states interested in supporting 

additional services for children and 

youth. When communities and states do 

not have sufficient funding to support 

children and youth, they can’t improve 

the systems and supports that children 

and youth need to thrive. Fiscal 

maps represent the first step toward 

improving outcomes for kids by making 

budget data more accessible and 

transparent. Once a place knows what it 

currently invests, then it can determine 

how much money it needs to meet its 

goals, strategize how to better align 

existing resources, and raise additional 

funding if necessary. (See Exhibit 3.) 

Some of our community partners— 

such as New Orleans, Louisiana, and 

Denver, Colorado—have a history of 

fiscal mapping with a small team. 

Now they are considered pioneers in 

the child and youth field for having, 

updating, and sharing this budget data 

for public use. For instance, Children’s 

Funding Project created the first 

edition of the fiscal map for the New 

Orleans Mayor’s Office of Youth and 

Families in 2020. During the entire 

project, a deputy director of the office 

collaborated with us to learn the fiscal 

mapping process and connect us to the 

appropriate budget holders for data. The 

deputy director knew the key people 

to involve and the general funding 

streams to include, while we knew how 

to categorize and analyze the data. 

The mayor endorsed the release of the 

fiscal map and promised to make it a 

part of the city’s annual budget process. 

Since then, the office has released two 

additional iterations of the fiscal map 

that the New Orleans team updated 

on its own. Additionally, the fiscal 

map is publicly available, and other 

organizations and community members 

have used it to advocate for additional 

funding to support the city’s youth 

master plan efforts. The city’s annual 

investments in children and youth have 

increased from $40 million in 2020 to 

$53 million in 2022. 



“The fiscal map helped us understand 

where the public dollar is being invested 

for young people and what percentage 

of that money is in positive youth 

development versus punitive lanes,” 

said Karen Evans, executive director 

of the New Orleans Children and Youth 

Planning Board, which collaborated 

with the city’s Office of Youth and 

Families on the fiscal map. “The fiscal 

map journey helped us answer some 

questions and helped us think about 

where our resources are going, and 

how we then take that knowledge and 

advocate for additional funding.” 

To help other communities realize 

the benefits of fiscal mapping that New 

Orleans and Denver experienced, we 

began working with an initial cohort 

on child and youth fiscal mapping in 

2022 to develop a publicly accessible 

and unified national database of 

public spending for kids by state. The 

first year of the cohort included 15 

state partners that worked with us to 

standardize the process for tracking and 

documenting state-level spending on 

services and programs for children and 

youth. Each state partner team created 

a comprehensive fiscal map with us 

that includes federal and state funding 

for individuals ages 0-24 years for 

fiscal years 2019-2021. The partners 

committed to make the final fiscal 

maps publicly available, to use the data 

for strategic public financing, and to 

continue the process of fiscal mapping 

past the cohort’s pilot year. 

Another goal of the state-level cohort 

is to inspire a similar movement and 

database of unified local fiscal map data 

to make it easier for local leaders to see 

how their peers in other jurisdictions 

fund their goals for kids. Additionally, 

an existing state map provides a list 

of all the potential funding streams 

available in the state. Local leaders can 

use the state fiscal map to determine 

how much of those funds land in 

their local area. Then leaders and 

advocates can add additional, locally 

sourced funds to the map to create a 

comprehensive picture of funding in a 

community. This is another area where 

finance officers are essential and can 

help their local fiscal map team follow 

the flow of funding to the local level. 

It’s important to keep in mind that 

while a single fiscal map report is 

compelling, a community needs to pair 

its fiscal map with additional public 

financing strategies to realize true 

impact. Fiscal mapping shows a state 

or community what it currently invests, 

but it also begs a big question: what 

next? We are working with past and 

current partners to leverage their fiscal 

map data in several ways: 

Advocates from Whatcom County, Washington, used a fiscal map to identify funding available for early childhood care 

and educational support in the county. Building on information from the fiscal map, the group launched a successful 

campaign that resulted in an estimated $10 million in annual funding for high-quality, affordable childcare, mental 

and behavioral health services and housing programs for vulnerable infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children. 

• Aligning current funding streams to 

make better use of existing funding 

to support children and youth. 

For example, Oakland Thrives, in 

California, is aligning its fiscal map 

data with a ten-year plan to improve 

the health and well-being of Oakland’s 

children and families, using it to 

prioritize areas of funding and 

strategies for reauthorizing several 

local voter-approved children’s funds. 

• Identifying potentially untapped 

grants or funding opportunities to 

pursue by comparing their fiscal 

maps to our recently released Federal 

Funding Streams for Children and Youth 

Services database. 

• Partnering with children’s cabinets 

and finance officers to automate 

future data collection through 

data sharing agreements or budget 

software. The Minnesota Children’s 

Cabinet has been particularly 

successful in partnering with the 

state’s Office of Management and 

Budget to collect fiscal mapping 

data through budget software. 

• Promoting legislation, executive 

orders, and/or data sharing 

agreements to codify the practice 

of fiscal mapping, like New Orleans 

has done. 

• Determining the funding needed to 

meet a specific goal and the funding 

methods available to generate 

additional revenue. For instance, 

advocates from Whatcom County, 

Washington, worked with us on 

a fiscal map to identify funding 

available for early childhood care, 

education, and support in the county. 

Building on the information from 

the fiscal map, the local group then 

launched a campaign to create a 

dedicated source of funding for 

children in the county. The effort 

succeeded when Whatcom voters 

approved the Healthy Children’s Fund 

in November 2022. The fund will raise 

an estimated $10 million annually 

to fund high-quality, affordable 

childcare, mental and behavioral 

health services, and housing 

programs for vulnerable infants, 

toddlers, and preschool-age children. 

48

EXHIBIT 3 | SCOPE OF CHILDREN’S FUNDING PROJECT FISCAL MAPS 

Source: Children's Funding Project 

• Transparency. GFOA members 

can help advocate for more budget 

transparency because it is a 

good thing. The intention is not 

to take money from one program 

and give it to another, but to 

support evidence-based decisionmaking 

and civic engagement. 

• Time. The time required will vary 

depending on the goals and scope 

of the fiscal map. The first year is 

always the most time intensive. Once 

you set the people and processes to 

update annually, though, you get the 

benefits of expediency and data over 

time. It also is worth consulting your 

champions and project managers to 

see if they have tried to complete a 

fiscal map in the past. Lots of places 

have, but the data often ends up 

incomplete or is not kept up to date. 

How to get involved in 

fiscal mapping 

Working with government staff across the 

country, we know that many offices are 

understaffed and overburdened. You may 

even be reading this and thinking that a 

fiscal map sounds great in theory, but it 

feels overwhelming. But with the right 

partnerships, you can create a useful and 

meaningful fiscal map even with limited 

resources. In fact, a local children’s cabinet 

or advocacy group may have already 

approached you for fiscal map data. These 

partners are well suited to manage the 

fiscal map project while you provide direct 

access to financial information. This is an 

opportunity to serve your constituents— 

it’s the reason you were elected or 

appointed—and help people understand 

how their governments spend their money 

to provide services they care about. 

Whether you lead the process or 

simply contribute valuable data, your 

participation ensures the fiscal map is 

accurate, complete, and useful. You will 

also need help and the right conditions. 

Below is a list of who and what you 

need to support a successful fiscal map 

for your state or local government: 

• Champion. A champion is a government 

leader or appointed coordinating body 

that can make a fiscal map a unified 

priority. Do you have a children’s 

cabinet, or has your governor or 

mayor declared children and youth 

issues a priority? If so, ask that 

leader to advocate for the fiscal map. 

You and your fellow GFOA members 

also can champion the project and 

promote its value and importance. 

• Project Manager. The project 

manager sets the goals and scope 

of the fiscal map and compiles, 

analyzes, and disseminates the 

final data. Your office of families 

and youth (if your community has 

one) and/or a strong intermediary 

or advocacy organization can 

serve this purpose. GFOA members 

can advise the project manager 

throughout the process by 

providing data and reviewing final 

deliverables. Your assistance with 

collecting data is critical—without 

data, there is no fiscal map! 

• Readiness. If the fiscal map is going 

to succeed—and function as more 

than a static report—your community 

needs a desire to use the data. You, 

along with your champions and 

project managers, must determine 

if your local leaders and advocates 

are prepared to use the fiscal map 

data to shape future budget decisions 

and for planning and advocacy. 

Because a fiscal map requires data 

and input from all child- and youthserving 

agencies, it can unify disparate 

government departments under the 

common vision of improving services 

for your community. Most importantly, 

you don’t have to tackle this effort alone. 

The Children’s Funding Project is here 

to advise and guide you through the 

process. If you’re ready to reach a new 

level of leadership and make your budget 

documents more accessible, reach out 

to us at childrensfundingproject.org. 

We can discuss what initiatives may 

be underway in your area, explore 

the potential for starting a new fiscal 

map, and connect you with tools and 

resources to support you along the way. 

Amelia Vaughn is co-director of research 

capacity at Children’s Funding Project. 

GFOA member Ed Harrington is former 

controller for the City and County of 

San Francisco and board member for 

Children’s Funding Project. 

Children’s Funding Project is a nonprofit 

social impact organization that helps 

communities and states expand 

equitable opportunities for children 

and youth through strategic public 

financing. For more information, go to 

childrensfundingproject.org. 


50

CRUSHING ASSUMPTIONS 

Crushing Assumptions 

in Two Simple Steps 

BY SUSAN ROBERTSON 

©2023 ANNA GODEASSI C/O THEISPOT.COM 

Can past experience stand in 

the way of new ideas? How to 

break the curse of knowledge 

and unlock visionary thinking. 

When we think about 

famous visionary 

thinkers, we 

subconsciously assume 

they have some magic 

characteristic that the 

rest of us don’t have or 

cannot achieve. But 

in reality the only magic they have is an 

intuitive understanding of how to avoid 

some very common creative thinking 

blocks. One of those blocks is the curse 

of knowledge (a cognitive bias) or mental 

shortcut that all humans share. 

Stuck inside the box: the curse 

of knowledge 

You’ve almost certainly heard the term 

“thinking outside the box.” And you’ve 

probably (at some point in your career) 

been asked to think outside the box. But 

without any understanding of why the 

box is there or how it was created, it’s 

hard to know how to break out of it. The 

reality is that we each create our own 

“box” through this curse of knowledge. 

To understand this concept, imagine 

for a moment that your task is to think 

of new ideas for salad dressing. Try to 

come up with a few in your mind right 

now—don’t skip ahead! 

Chances are, the ideas that came to 

your mind were incremental variations 

of existing flavors or ingredients. You 

may have thought of fruit-flavored 

dressing or spicy chipotle dressing. Or 

perhaps dressing that is flavored like 

your favorite cocktail or dessert. All 

interesting ideas if you are only looking 

for ideas that don’t change the current 

nature of salad dressing or the way it’s 

currently manufactured, packaged, 

sold, or used. The task was to find new 

ideas for salad dressing. That challenge 

was not limited simply to new flavors, 

but your brain likely limited your 

thinking to mostly just new flavors. 

Here’s why incremental ideas tend 

to be the first (and sometimes the only) 

kind of ideas to emerge. All humans rely 

on past knowledge to subconsciously 

try to shortcut problem-solving. We 

instantly—and subconsciously—call 

on everything we know from the past 

to come up with solutions for the new 

problem. While this ability to call on 

past learning is an incredibly useful 

trait in many situations (it’s one of 

the reasons we’re at the top of the food 

chain), when you’re looking for new 

ideas and solutions, it actually becomes 

a significant barrier. It limits your 

thinking to nothing apart from slight 

variations on what already exists. 

The minute you saw the words “salad 

dressing,” your brain made a bunch of 

instantaneous assumptions that you’re 

likely not aware of. Those assumptions 

were probably things like: 

• Salad dressing comes in a bottle. 

• It’s liquid. 

• It’s stored in the refrigerator. 

• It’s used on lettuce. 

• Salad is eaten from a bowl or plate. 

• Salad is eaten with a fork. 


CRUSHING ASSUMPTIONS 

The nature of the ideas that arise after crushing 

the embedded assumptions is dramatically 

different from the ideas that came before. 

Using the salad dressing challenge 

again, now assume one of the above 

“facts” doesn’t have to be true. What 

ideas could you come up with then? You 

might think of ideas like: 

• Salad dressing that you heat in the 

microwave (not cold). 

• Dressing for fruit or for meat (not used 

on lettuce). 

• A powder whose full flavor is 

activated when it contacts the 

moisture of the lettuce (not liquid). 

• Salad dressing in the form of a wrap, 

so you can eat the salad on the go 

(salad isn’t served on a plate). 

• Salad dressing in the form of an edible 

skewer (salad isn’t eaten with a fork). 

As you can see, the nature of the ideas 

that arise after crushing the embedded 

assumptions is dramatically different 

from the ideas that came before. That’s 

because your brain is no longer limiting 

your creativity with artificial guardrails 

that may not actually exist and that you 

weren’t even consciously aware of. 

Interestingly, the more expertise 

you have in an area, the more of 

these limiting assumptions you have 

subconsciously embedded in your 

thinking. So, as an expert in your 

field, you likely have many embedded 

assumptions that you’re not aware of, but 

that are likely impeding your creative 

thinking in a significant way. 

The cure: Assumption Crushing 

Fortunately, there is an antidote to 

the curse of knowledge. Assumption 

Crushing is a technique that involves 

consciously surfacing and challenging 

our hidden assumptions. 

ASSUMPTION CRUSHING STEP 1: 

Bring your subconscious assumptions 

to the surface by generating a long list of 

statements that start with things like: 

• Well, in our business, everyone knows... 

• We have to.... 

• Our product or service is/does/has.... 

• Well, of course…. 

• We could never.... 

Be sure to list some obvious, superficial, 

or seemingly trivial “facts,” observations, 

processes, and more. Sometimes 

breaking the obvious ones can lead to 

the most innovative ideas. For example, 

the fact that salad dressing is liquid 

seems fairly trivial. But breaking 

that assumption led to some truly 

breakthrough ideas. 

ASSUMPTION CRUSHING STEP 2: 

Once you’ve come up with a long list, pick 

one point that may not have to be true, 

and start thinking of new ideas based 

on breaking that rule. Then pick another 

and do it again and again. You’ll amaze 

yourself with the innovative ideas you 

come up with. 

Remember that the curse of knowledge 

is based on experience and expertise. 

Many people often assume that the best 

way to get new thinking, new ideas, 

and new solutions is to bring together 

a bunch of experts on the topic. But the 

reality is that all those experts will have 

a very similar set of subconscious mental 

frameworks. (They’ll all have essentially 

the same curse of knowledge.) A better 

way to generate new ideas is to invite 

a few experts, and then several other 

people with different experiences, 

knowledge, and perspectives. Those 

non-experts will help force the experts to 

confront and overcome the curse. 

The curse of knowledge is a formidable 

adversary that exists in our brains all the 

time and hinders our visionary potential. 

By embracing Assumption Crushing, 

we can shatter the chains that confine 

our thinking and unlock the path to 

visionary breakthroughs. 

Susan Robertson is a creative thinking 

expert with more than 20 years of 

experience speaking and coaching in 

Fortune 500 companies. 


52

The Alliance for Excellence in School Budgeeng is 

for school districts interested in GFOA's Best 

Praccces in School Budgeeng. As part of the 

Smarter School Spending iniiaave, the Alliance first 

met in 2015 and includes a diverse group of districts 

from across the United States. Member districts 

range in size from several hundred students to 

several hundred thousand students, represennng a 

broad range of student performance and other key 

demographics as well. 

Join the Alliance 

in Chicago this fall! 

The Alliance for Excellence in School Budgeeng Fall Meeeng, 

November 2-3, in Chicago, Illinois, is a workshop-style 

conference that features case studies, best praccce examples, 

and important networking opportuniies with peer 

organizaaons. 

Scan for featured topics and event registraaon.

54

AFTER ACTION REVIEWS 

Positive Change 

in Action 

How to Build Trust and Expertise with After Action Reviews 

BY JAKE MAZULEWICZ 

©2023 CHRIS GASH C/O THEISPOT.COM 

Do you lead your team to 

learn primarily from 

successes or from 

failures? 

Many leaders argue 

that their teams are 

just too busy to spend time discussing 

why a successful project went well. They 

just wrap up quickly and then dive into 

the next project. 

So, the unspoken insights and 

unwritten lessons learned from that 

project rarely get shared or discussed. 

Often, they just get forgotten in the frenzy 

of working on project after project. 

Would you hire an engineer to build 

you a bridge if all that engineer ever 

studied was how bridges collapse? Would 

you hire a recruiter to find you a job if 

all that recruiter ever studied was how 

people get fired? 

The best leaders help their teams learn 

regularly from their successes, not just 

occasionally from their failures. 

But learning from success happens 

automatically—doesn’t it? 

AFTER ACTION REVIEW 

Soldiers perform complex, dynamic, 

and often dangerous missions, and they 

want to learn as much as they can from 

each one. In the 1980s, leaders in the 

U.S. Army realized that they needed a 

practical way to help soldiers share the 

unspoken insights and unwritten lessons 

they learned from their missions. They 

realized that sharing tribal knowledge 

and applying tacit skill were key to 

winning wars. And since it was the 

Army, they developed a process—a 

non-punitive, semi-structured, postjob 

team debrief called an after action 

review (AAR). 

After action reviews have proven so 

wildly effective that every branch of 

the military now uses them. And for 

some units like flight crews and special 

operations forces, AARs are almost a 

religion. They’ve been called “one of the 

most successful organizational learning 

methods yet devised.” 

The process of leading a basic AAR is 

simple. Soon after your team completes 

a project, gather them in a private space 

for about 30 minutes, and ask these four 

questions: 

1. What did we set out to do? 

2. What did we actually do? 

3. How did it turn out the way it did? 

4. What will we do differently next time? 

WHY USE THESE QUESTIONS? 

Have you ever had a discussion 

degenerate into a fact-free “war of 

opinions?” That’s the fate you’ll suffer 

if you start a debrief by asking for 

opinions. True, questions three and 

four are subjective, and do indeed ask 

for opinions. But notice that questions 

one and two are much more fact-based. 

It may seem silly to ask, “What did we 

intend to do in this job?” But different 

people have different goals for the same 

job. The accountant on your team may 

have intended to maximize revenue. 

The safety specialist on your team 

may have intended to reduce the risk 


AFTER ACTION REVIEWS 

The best leaders help their teams learn regularly from 

their successes, not just occasionally from their failures. 

of injuries. The team leader may have 

wanted to finish the job ahead of schedule 

and under budget. So always start your 

after action reviews by getting facts with 

questions one and two before getting 

opinions with questions three and four. 

“What went well, and what went 

badly?” This may seem like a great 

question for a debrief. After all, it cuts 

straight to the point, right? Here’s the 

problem. This question nudges us to 

discuss blame, not improvements. And 

blame stops learning in its tracks. Look 

at the four after action review questions. 

There’s no hint of fault, failure, or blame 

in any of them. That’s intentional. After 

action reviews focus on learning, not 

blame. Make sure you keep that focus in 

every AAR you lead. 

Soldiers are fond of sayings like “no 

mission plan ever survives contact 

with reality” or “the planning is more 

valuable than the plan.” And in reality, 

the percentage of complex missions that 

go exactly according to plan is nearly 

zero percent. Soldiers and other experts 

in complex, dynamic systems know that 

in any given job, there’s always a gap 

between what we plan to do and what we 

actually do. Notice how question one asks 

about the plan. Some call this “work as 

imagined.” Question two asks about the 

actual job; some call this “work as done.” 

When you lead your after action reviews, 

use questions one and two to explore this 

critical gap, but not eliminate it. 

THREE COMMON MISTAKES 

AND HOW TO AVOID THEM 

1. Successes versus failures 

Some leaders do AARs only for accidents 

or errors. If you do that, your team will 

quickly associate AARs with failure. And 

they’ll give short, vague answers to get 

it over with as fast as possible. So, lead 

about 80 percent or more of your AARs for 

successful projects. That way, your team 

will learn to trust the process and value 

the results. 

2. Now versus later 

Unspoken insights and lessons learned 

are the most valuable things a team can 

discuss in an after action review. Those 

unspoken ideas have a half-life of hours 

or less. So, if you wait a day or more to 

lead your AAR, much of the priceless, 

unspoken wisdom will already have 

been lost, perhaps forever. So, lead the 

AAR as soon as the project wraps. 

3. Leader versus facilitator 

Most leaders like to answer questions, 

and that’s usually a good thing—but not 

in an after action review. If you give in to 

the temptation to answer the questions, 

you’ll shut your team down until the 

only person talking is you. So, in an 

after action review, remember that the 

leader is the person who talks the least. 

Choose your AAR leaders accordingly. 

If you want a low-cost, low-risk way 

to build trust and expertise on your 

team, you will likely never find a more 

practical method than leading after 

action reviews. 

Jake Mazulewicz, Ph.D. previously 

served as a firefighter, an EMT, and a 

military paratrooper, and is now the 

director at JMA, LLC. 

©2023 CHRIS GASH C/O THEISPOT.COM 

56

Are you up for a 

challenge? 

GFOA is seeking outstanding examples 

of effeccve communicaaon of financial 

informaaon, following the principles 

outlined in our report Fiscal Fluency 

Made Easy. This could take the form of 

a PowerPoint presentaaon, a report, a 

video of a presentaaon delivered at an 

elected board meeeng, or any other 

medium that best demonstrates how 

you have applied the concepts of Fiscal 

Fluency. 

Scan to read the report 

and enter the challenge. 

Deadline to enter: January 15, 2024 

The grand prize winner will receive an all-expenses paid trip to GFOA's 118th Annual 

Conference in Orlando, Florida, June 9-12, 2024. 


Did you know that 

as a GFOA member 

you get free access 

to our online Member 

Community? 

Ask Quessons | Offer Insight | Share Resources 

community.gfoa.org 

Accve government members can log in with their GFOA username and password.

In Practice 

FINANCE | ACCOUNTING | PERSPECTIVES | INTERVIEWS 

FINANCE 

CITY OF ISSAQUAH, WASHINGTON 

Contribution Versus Collaboration 

BY KATIE LUDWIG 

The City of Issaquah, 

Washington, has a mission: 

to “enhance lives through 

public service.” Its vision is to 

“be a progressive, customerfocused, 

sustainable organization that 

values its employees and is committed 

to innovative solutions.” City staff 

support the mission and vision by 

living out the city’s “SALMON values”: 

S ustain trust. We make trust the 

foundation of our relationships and 

cultivate it daily. 

A ct with integrity. We hold ourselves 

accountable to the highest standards 

in all we say and do. Our actions are 

consistently respectful, direct, honest, 

and transparent. 

L ead with respect. As selfless leaders, 

we take the initiative to engage others 

and create the momentum to accomplish 

the city’s vision for the interest of all 

stakeholders. 

M aster communication. We sustain 

an effective, compassionate, and 

approachable team environment 

through our actions and words, while 

understanding that there are different 

communication styles. 

O wn your actions. We are accountable 

for our actions while actively supporting 

each other to create an atmosphere 

that leverages our strengths as well as 

encouraging employee growth. 

‘N gaged. We are enthusiastic, focused, 

dedicated, and productive employees 

who are proactive in our service to the 

community. 

While these values don’t explicitly 

mention collaboration, Dale Markey- 

Crimp and Susie Monsell in the city’s 

Finance Department believe it is 

essential to their work. 

Markey-Crimp, Issaquah’s citywide 

performance measurement and 

management program analyst, has 

worked for the city for two years. 

“My role has shifted a lot since I’ve been 

with the City of Issaquah,” she said. 

“I came in as a management analyst for 

performance and budget, and worked very 

closely with Susie on the budget the first 

summer and fall that I was on staff. My 

role has shifted over time to really focus 

more on performance with a lens on how 

performance and data-driven storytelling 

supports departments in making the case 

for their budgets. Probably the bulk of my 

role is around performance measurement 

and management across all departments, 

data analysis and data visualization, 

program evaluation and improvement, 

and then data-driven storytelling.” 

Markey-Crimp explained that she 

works closely with both the Finance 

Department and the Executive Office. 

“I sit within Finance and meet most 

regularly with our finance director, 

although I would say a lot of my work 

is ‘side quests’, and most of those side 


IN PRACTICE | FINANCE 

quests come from the Executive Office. 

In addition to performance, I do a lot 

of project management, and even with 

performance, a lot of those projects come 

from the Executive Office, even though 

they’re often used within the context of 

our budget.” 

Monsell is the city’s budget manager. 

Her role is focused on developing, 

maintaining, and monitoring the budget 

and assisting departments on budgetrelated 

matters, including budget 

amendments. She started with the city in 

April 2019 as budget analyst. “I’ve been 

in and around the city’s budget for four 

and a half years, and it has changed a lot. 

One of the biggest changes is that when 

I started, we had an annual budget, and 

we now have a biennial budget.” Monsell 

also coordinates the development of the 

city’s capital improvement plan, which 

alternates every other year with the 

development of the operating budget. 

WHY IS COLLABORATION 

IMPORTANT? 

Monsell sees her role as supporting the 

departments in achieving their goals. 

“More often than not, my role is doing 

something on behalf of someone else. My 

role is to build the budget, maintain it, get 

it through city council, and more, but it’s 

not the Finance Department’s budget. It’s 

not the budget manager’s budget. It’s the 

entire city’s budget. So much of what the 

city wants to be able to do—whether it’s 

continuing to provide the same services 

or providing a new program—becomes 

reality through the budget process, so 

I think of my role as a supporter of these 

other functions,” she said. 

Markey-Crimp sees her role in a 

similar light. “My work at its essence 

is understanding and sharing how the 

city is performing on the promises it’s 

made to the community. I can’t do that 

without working with departments 

because it is their work that we’ve made 

promises to the community about. For 

me, collaboration often means really 

understanding the work of all the people 

around me, so that I can help them tell 

their story—which hopefully leads back 

to more investment in their work. I can’t 

do my job without gaining the trust 

of my coworkers and getting them to 

want to come to the table with me,” she 

explained. 

Human connection, 

trust-building, and 

empathy-building need 

to be established before 

collaboration can occur.” 

DALE MARKEY-CRIMP 

CITY OF ISSAQUAH 

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT 

AND MANAGEMENT ANALYST 

“I am someone with significant control 

issues,” Monsell said. “I’m a details 

person, and being in Budget, I live and die 

by how accurate or detailed something 

is, and I want to be able to explain it down 

to the dollar. It’s often a challenge for me 

when working with other people on the 

budget or the capital improvement plan, 

that I find myself thinking, ‘Well, I know 

how I can do this better. I don’t have to 

deal with this other person. I can do this 

faster. I can do it better.’ But the problem 

is that once the budget is adopted, that’s 

the departments’ budget. They’re the ones 

who have to own the actual work. They 

have to make sure that they’re spending 

the dollars. They need to be aware of 

what’s in it, and they need to know what 

went into those decisions.” 

This realization has prompted Monsell 

to focus on developing a budget process in 

which department staff play a more active 

role. “Yes, I could probably put in their data 

faster, I could probably process it faster. I 

could make it look exactly the way I wanted 

it to look—but then I’m the only one who 

knows how it works,” Monsell explained. 

WHAT COLLABORATION IS 

AND WHAT IT ISN’T 

“Collaboration equals working together 

on something versus contributing to 

something,” Monsell said. 

Markey-Crimp agreed and lamented 

that sometimes collaboration can become 

a “false flag” and leave people feeling 

resentful when “collaboration” is really 

“I need you to do something for me, so 

I’m going to call this collaboration, and 

then it can be done to you,” she said. 

She explained that real collaboration 

involves “two or more parties coming to 

the table and seeing that time together, 

that product, whatever comes out of that as 

something that is mutually beneficial.” 

“I think that’s the challenge—when 

we’re not necessarily putting in the human 

connection work or building empathy to 

collaborate, and we’re looking for people 

to contribute to something,” Markey- 

Crimp said. “Sometimes contribution is 

appropriate. It’s just that when we call 

it collaboration, but what we want is 

contribution, we’re misleading people.” 

This dynamic can also negatively affect 

public engagement, according to Markey- 

Crimp. “I think there’s a similar thing we do 

with the public, where we come to the table 

and say, ‘Hey, we want you to collaborate 

with us on this idea, or this project, or this 

plan,’ but really, we’ve already formulated 

what we want,” she said. “I think that’s 

local government at its worst. Human 

connection, trust-building, and empathybuilding 

need to be established before 

collaboration can occur.” 

CHALLENGES TO COLLABORATION 

“It’s a challenge to find the right balance 

for coordination, collaboration, and 

connection in a remote or hybrid 

environment,” Monsell said. “I’m one of 

those rare people who, given the option, 

would love for things to go back to exactly 

the way they were before the pandemic. 

One of the main reasons this hybrid or 

remote environment is challenging to me 

is that I feel like interactions have become 

very transactional, and that it’s harder to 

feel that connection. I often find myself 

over-communicating and over-connecting, 

trying get back to some semblance of what 

that felt like before the pandemic.” 

Local governments need to encourage 

more spontaneous remote interactions, 

like picking up the phone and calling 

each other when they have questions, 

Markey-Crimp said. “I think there’s a lot 

of overscheduling that happens when 

we work in a hybrid environment that 

prevents that natural connection.” 

60

She went on to explain that without that 

connection, “you get to the table, and 

someone’s got a fully baked plan, and 

they’re asking you to contribute to it, not 

collaborate on it.” 

COLLABORATION IN ACTION 

Monsell shared how the city worked 

together on its capital improvement 

plan (CIP) this year as a good example of 

collaboration in action. “This is the third 

CIP I’ve been part of since I came to the 

city, and for each of the last three we’ve 

worked hard to build in more input from 

the departments, so it’s not just Finance 

saying, ‘All right, this is what we need. 

This is the ultimate product that we’re 

going to implement.’” 

This year, city staff collaborated to 

develop selection criteria for CIP projects. 

A group that included representatives 

from several departments developed 

the criteria and finalized the definitions 

and descriptions of each criterion. The 

group deliberated over several weeks 

about the criteria and how they relate to 

the city’s priorities. The purpose of this 

collaboration was twofold: to ensure that 

the plan would be approved by the city 

council and to make sure the city was 

effectively communicating the plan to 

the community. 

“Successful collaboration comes 

from psychological safety. It’s not 

just about doing the communicating; 

it’s about being in an environment in 

which communication can happen 

productively,” Markey-Crimp said. 

“I think Susie and I are pretty lucky. 

We maintain a lot of relationships 

across the organization where we feel 

like we can disagree in a way that 

doesn’t feel so painful that we can’t 

have the conversation. But it’s taken 

us a lot of time to get to that place, even 

with just some colleagues, and those 

are the places where the most magical 

collaboration happens.” 

Markey-Crimp’s work with the city’s 

Human Services team is another 

example of collaboration. “They are 

the leaders in our organization around 

performance measurement and 

management, and telling their story 

with data,” she said. “And it has led to 

some significant financial investments 

in the work that they’re doing. That 

happened because they’ve been so great 

about gathering data and demonstrating 

its impact, and coming up with new 

programs that are based on the analysis 

that they’ve done, so they keep coming to 

me for support.” 

Markey-Crimp credits the Human 

Services team with understanding their 

limits and reaching out for assistance. 

“From the start, they were able to 

acknowledge the boundaries of what they 

could do. They knew they needed to be 

able to do something differently, but they 

didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do 

it, and they were willing to acknowledge 

that,” she said. “I don’t think local 

government is always structured in a way 

that allows us to admit that and to look for 

help outside of our departments.” 

VISION 

We, as City of Issaquah employees, are committed to: 

The City of Issaquah will be a progressive, customer-focused, sustainable organization that values its employees and is committed to innovative solutions. 

MISSION 

We enhance lives through public service. 

SUSTAIN TRUST ACT WITH INTEGRITY LEAD WITH RESPECT MASTER COMMUNICATION OWN YOUR ACTIONS ’NGAGED 

We make trust the foundation 

of our relationships 

and cultivate it daily. 

We hold ourselves and each 

other accountable to the 

highest standards in all we 

say and do. Our actions are 

consistently respectful, direct, 

honest and transparent. 

As selfless leaders, we take 

the initiative to engage 

others and create 

momentum to accomplish 

the City’s vision for the 

interest of all stakeholders. 

We sustain an effective, 

compassionate and approachable 

team environment through our 

actions and words, while 

understanding that there are 

different communication styles. 

We are accountable for our actions 

while actively supporting each 

other to create an atmosphere that 

leverages our strengths, as well as 

encourages employee growth. 

We are enthusiastic, focused, 

dedicated and productive 

employees who are proactive in 

our services to the community. 


IN PRACTICE | FINANCE 

went and made those personal connections 

on the front end,” she explained. 

Issaquah’s citywide Strategic Plan outlines the city’s goals, which Dale Markey-Crimp strives to 

support through her work. “My work at its essence is understanding and sharing how the city is 

performing on the promises it’s made to the community,” she says. 

PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR 

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES 

TO COLLABORATION 

Take time to figure out the big picture 

and understand everyone’s role. Markey- 

Crimp and Monsell both emphasized 

that having a shared understanding 

of the overall goal is an important 

precursor to effective collaboration. 

“I always think about that Rumi 

poem about the elephant in the dark 

and how much of our work is that we 

all have our hands on one part of the 

elephant,” Markey-Crimp said. “I’m not 

even talking about the massive range of 

government work. I’m saying in a single 

project, we all have our hands on one 

part of the elephant, whether that be the 

plan and its goals, or the budget and its 

expenditures, or the implementation, or 

the performance and impact measuring. 

No project is just one of those things. 

We have to collaborate to do our work 

completely, but that requires everyone 

realizing that the elephant in the dark 

is not just the part they’re touching 

and that what we’re touching is not 

always the most important piece.” 

Local government staff are often 

juggling many different projects 

and priorities, so time is a precious 

commodity—but Markey-Crimp believes 

there is a value in colleagues taking 

the time to talk about what part of the 

elephant in the dark they are each 

touching so they can gain understanding 

and a sense of shared ownership. “I’ve 

been working on some data analysis 

around our procurement and payment 

processes, and there’s been some tension 

and some anecdotes that are turning into 

stories about where the bottlenecks are, 

from when we start negotiating a contract, 

all the way to when we pay someone for 

the work they do, and where those things 

are not moving as they should. It has a 

lot to do with this story, which precedes 

both of us, about ‘the black box of finance,’ 

and a lot of that is because we don’t do a 

good job telling the story of what we do. I 

think it sets up an expectation that as an 

internal service we’re just an extension of 

their administrative team, and that our 

work is simply responsive to their need.” 

Markey-Crimp would like to see Finance 

staff—not directors and managers, but the 

staff members doing the work to process 

invoices and review contracts—going to 

speak to employees in other departments 

about what they do. “I don’t quite know 

why we don’t, except it seems like that’s a 

‘nice to have’ rather than essential. We’re 

taught that we’re too impossibly busy to do 

that, but we would be less busy spending 

our time emailing back and forth if we 

Develop shared expectations. In addition 

to understanding the big picture, Markey- 

Crimp also thinks developing shared 

routines and expectations can aid in 

collaboration. “One thing I’m noticing in a 

project I’m working on now is that we don’t 

have a clear and shared expectation,” she 

said, adding that Finance’s goal is to process 

invoices that come to them within two 

days—but staff in the other departments 

don’t know that, creating uncertainty and 

frustration surrounding the process. The 

situation would benefit if Finance and 

the departments worked together to set 

expectations for how they can work together 

moving forward, she said. “That takes a 

level of self-reflection and ownership, to be 

the one to offer a bit of vulnerability around 

why things haven’t worked well. That’s a 

hard thing to do as a human, and it’s even 

harder when you don’t have a pre-existing 

relationship with someone.” 

Earn trust by following up and following 

through. An important part of earning her 

colleagues’ trust is “following through on 

what I said I would do,” Monsell said. “It 

has to be a two-way street, so the people 

I’m asking for information, they know 

when they come to me for something, 

they’re going to get the same kind of 

response time back.” 

Monsell also mentioned the importance 

of asking for more time to complete a project 

or task, if needed. “If you said, ‘I’ll get this to 

you on Tuesday, and we can continue this 

discussion then,’ and if you’re not able to 

do it by Tuesday—because things happen— 

then communicate that. It seems like such 

a simple thing, but it has been massive for 

me in building those relationships and 

getting what we all need.” 

Finance staff can build trust by listening 

to their colleagues and incorporating their 

feedback into processes, Monsell added. “As 

we go through these iterative processes— 

multiple budgets and multiple CIPs—we 

incorporate the feedback we hear from the 

departments.” 

Ask open-ended questions. One of the 

strategies Monsell has found especially 

helpful in encouraging true collaboration 

is asking open-ended questions. “To me, 

that’s one of the big differences between 

collaborating and just contributing. 

Contributing is ‘I have this specific question 

62

for you. What’s the answer?’ Whereas 

with collaborating, it’s ‘What do you think 

about this? What am I missing? What else 

needs to go into this? Are you okay with 

this? Do you have any concerns?’ I get 

far better feedback when I do that; it’s far 

more collaborative. The other person feels 

like they’ve had a hand in building it just 

as much as I have,” she said. 

Markey-Crimp agrees that asking 

open-ended questions is an effective 

strategy for encouraging collaboration 

and believes it requires some humility 

and a willingness to be vulnerable. “You’re 

telling the other person, ‘I see you as an 

expert in this and I’m acknowledging my 

own shortcoming. I am not an all-knowing 

person.’ That’s maybe vulnerability 

with a lowercase v, but it is an act of 

vulnerability,” she said, adding that there 

is value in managers modeling this kind 

of vulnerability, helping others begin 

to realize they aren’t expected to know 

everything either. “When you give people 

opportunities to see others acknowledging 

the boundaries of their own expertise, 

that’s when collaboration happens.” 

Meet in person when you can. Monsell 

believes that working remotely can be 

isolating and lead to people becoming too 

internally focused. 

“When you’re working by yourself, for 

the most part, you have fewer meetings, 

fewer calls, and fewer interactions with 

other people. I had very few meetings 

when it wasn’t budget season, and I found 

myself becoming guilty of something 

that I resented in other people, which 

was when you’re trapped in that world all 

on your own and you are so focused on 

your work, your deliverables, and your 

responsibilities, it’s so easy to believe 

that what’s most important to you is 

the most important thing to everybody 

else, too,” Monsell said. To combat this, 

she tries to meet with people in person 

as often as possible. “Being able to see 

when someone is extremely busy, even 

without having to ask them, makes a huge 

difference,” she said. 

During the conversations about CIP 

selection criteria, about half the people 

participated remotely and half inperson, 

she added. “What we got from the 

people who were in the room was more 

collaborative than what we got from some 

of the remote folks because when you’re 

remote, it’s hard to know when to jump in. 

Once the budget is 

adopted, that’s the 

departments’ budget. 

They need to be 

aware of what’s in 

it, and they need to 

know what went into 

those decisions.” 

SUSIE MONSELL 

CITY OF ISSAQUAH 

BUDGET MANAGER 

You can’t just open your mouth to signal, 

‘Alright, I’m ready to say something now.’” 

Meeting with people in person is also 

necessary for trust and empathy to take 

root in the organization, Markey-Crimp 

said. “Part of sustaining trust is building 

empathy, and part of building empathy is 

knowing what the experience is for that 

person, day in and day out. When I meet 

with a colleague in person and they’re 

constantly bombarded with people 

walking by their office and asking them 

questions, that is useful context for me 

to have when I think about how to get that 

person’s time and attention,” she said. 

“It’s also important for me to be able to 

thank them when they are closing that 

office door to spend time with me. I can’t 

put enough emphasis on the importance 

of interpersonal connection. Now, that 

doesn’t mean that we meet in person 

every time. Clearly, we leverage the 

flexibility of the computer to do a lot of 

our work.” 

Know when it makes more sense to 

meet virtually. “Be intentional about 

connecting online when it is useful,” 

said Markey-Crimp. “Susie and I learned, 

when collaborating in the 2021 COVID 

era, is that when you are screen-sharing, 

looking at documents or financial data 

systems, it’s actually easier to do that 

over the computer than doing it in person. 

The last thing you want to do is lean 

over someone’s shoulder and breathe on 

them from behind while they show you 

something.” 

Avoid surprises by communicating 

consistently and intentionally. Monsell 

emphasized the importance of consistent 

communication and giving people 

advance notice. “One of the biggest things 

that I do now, when I have instructions 

coming out, or we’re launching data 

entry, is to be saying for months ahead 

of time, ‘By the way, we’re going be doing 

this in March, and you’re going be getting 

this from me in April.’ I feel almost like 

a nuisance, but it’s been so effective. By 

the time we get there, they’ve known this 

was coming for three months, and it’s not 

a surprise,” she explained. 

“I totally agree,” Markey-Crimp said. 

“I do the same thing around our annual 

performance data entry, and I send out a 

monthly email to all the data stewards.” 

Markey-Crimp added that she has 

found success in being very intentional 

about the purpose of a meeting and 

being prepared for it. She strives to cocreate 

the agenda with whoever will be 

attending the meeting with her. “I send 

my agendas for my quarterly meetings in 

advance and say, ‘Hey, look at this, this 

is what I want to do. Anything you want 

to add?’ Very rarely does anyone have 

anything they want to add, but at least 

I’m not showing up and surprising them.” 

Celebrate success and express thanks. 

“Setting people up for success is great, 

but let’s also celebrate them when they do 

the things successfully,” Markey-Crimp 

said. For example, when she sends out an 

email reminding people that something 

is due in two weeks, she includes a 

thanks to those who have already 

completed the assignment. “Wow, do a 

bunch of people try to accomplish it as 

soon as possible after they see that folks 

do want to see great work! You have to 

thank people when they do what you need 

them to.” 

Katie Ludwig is director of resource 

development in GFOA’s Research and 

Consulting Center. 


IN PRACTICE | ACCOUNTING 

ACCOUNTING 

Inside Stories #1 

Distinguishing Between Internal Cash Flows 

and Internal Resource Flows 

BY MICHELE MARK LEVINE 

As we often discuss, the Governmental 

Accounting Standards Board (which defines 

the generally accepted accounting standards 

for governments) uses a financial reporting 

model based on the financial accountability 

of elected officials. In government, financial statements can 

include any number of legally separate governmental entities 

in cases where elected officials of one government are 

financially accountable for the affairs of other governments. 1 

In this article (and in several future GFR articles), we’ll 

explore some of the complexities that arise from this 

special form of consolidation, termed a financial reporting 

entity. Some of the topics may seem straightforward when 

viewed in isolation, but submissions to GFOA’s Certificate 

of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting 

Award program demonstrate that many governments 

struggle to properly account for these internal activities. 

For a refresher on when and how multiple governments 

should be included in a single financial reporting entity, 

please review the article, “Puzzling Pieces: Component Unit 

Identification, Classification, Disclosure, and Display,” in 

the April 2022 issue of GFR (available at gfoa.org/materials/ 

gfr422-puzzling-pieces). 

Before we jump into the first topic of the series, one 

more refresher may be helpful: what is meant by the term 

reporting unit. Reporting units within a financial reporting 

entity do not have a one-to-one correspondence to the 

individual legally separate governmental entities in that 

financial reporting entity. A reporting unit may be a single legal 

governmental entity; however, it can also be simply a part of 

a legal entity, or even an aggregation of multiple legal entities. 

Specifically, a reporting unit may be: 

• A single legal entity such as general or special purpose 

government (for example, a primary government total, an 

individual discretely presented component unit, or DCPU). 

• A part of a government, such as: 

– Governmental activities reported in government-wide 

financial statements. 

– Business-type activities reported in government-wide 

financial statements. 

– An individual fund or segment (such as, a major 

governmental or enterprise fund in fund financial 

statements within the basic financial statements, or any 

individual fund in combining financial statements). 

– An aggregation or consolidation of individual funds (as in, 

total nonmajor governmental funds, total governmental 

funds, total internal service funds). 

• An aggregation or consolidation of governments (for example, 

a total of all the discretely presented component units of 

a primary government, an entity-wide total of a primary 

government and its component units). 

Generally, a reporting unit corresponds to a column displayed on 

a government’s statement of net position. 


64

To account for and report internal activity properly, we must 

distinguish between intra-entity transactions 2 and other events 

that result in reportable resource flows (such as revenues and 

expenditures/expenses) between reporting units within a 

financial reporting entity, on one hand, and other intra-entity 

cash flows that occur when one reporting unit within the 

financial reporting unit simply receives or disburses cash 

related to activities that are properly reported entirely in another 

reporting unit, on the other hand. 

Transfers between funds, the interfund equivalent of 

nonexchange transactions, and payments for interfund services 

provided and used represent inflows of resources to the receiving 

fund and outflows to the paying fund. This would be the case if a 

parks department operating in a government’s general fund pays 

usage-based water fees to a water fund. Similarly, nonexchange 

payments by one government to another (for example, a primary 

government providing an operating subsidy to a discretely 

presented component unit transit authority) and exchange or 

exchange-like payments by one government to another (such 

as, the primary government paying a lump sum to the transit 

authority to provide monthly transit passes to its child welfare 

caseworkers) represent inflows and outflows of resources. 

In contrast, the initial inflow or outflow of cash through 

one fund—essentially, a conduit—when the cash is received 

or paid on behalf of a second fund that properly accounts for 

the underlying activities, should not be recorded as a revenue 

or expenditure/expense in that conduit fund. The use of one 

fund as a conduit for another generally occurs as a matter of 

convenience, when a general operating bank account associated 

with one fund is used for all or most activity of a government, or 

when analysis is required to properly identify the composition 

of cash flows (as in, when taxes levied for different purposes 

are received in a single account or payroll attributable to 

employees of all funds is initially paid through one account). 

In these cases, the payments or receipts should result in an 

interfund receivable and payable between the two funds, and a 

simultaneous resource inflow or outflow for the second fund. 

For example, assume that all cash from the state in which a 

county is located comes via electronic funds transfer into the 

county’s main operating bank account, which is associated 

with the county’s general fund. Further assume that the 

county receives $100,000, which is an unrestricted operating 

subsidy from the state for the county’s bus operations, which 

are accounted for in a transit enterprise fund. On the date of the 

receipt, the general fund would record: 

DR. Cash $100,000 

CR. Due to transit enterprise fund $100,000 

To record receipt of state grant revenue for transit operations on 

behalf of the transit fund 

On the same date, the transit fund would recognize its grant 

revenue and the amount due from the general fund. 

DR. Due from general fund $100,000 

CR. State transit operating grant revenue $100,000 

To record receipt by the county’s general fund of state transit 

operating grant revenue 

Notice that only the transit fund—the fund that is entitled to 

the grant—recognizes a resource flow (revenue). There is no 

The initial inflow or outflow of cash through 

one fund—essentially, a conduit—when the 

cash is received or paid on behalf of a second 

fund that properly accounts for the underlying 

activities, should not be recorded as a revenue 

or expenditure/expense in that conduit fund. 

resource flow in (no operating statement effect on) the general 

fund; only its balance sheet accounts are affected. 

Ultimately, the cash may be moved to the transit fund, in which 

case the general fund would record an entry that is the exact 

reverse of the one shown above (debit due to transit enterprise fund 

and credit cash), and the transit fund would debit cash and credit 

due from the general fund. It’s also possible that the general fund 

might use the cash to make payment on behalf of the transit fund, 

such as if payroll for transit employees is paid by the general fund. 

Assuming that the full $100,000 is used to pay transit salaries, 

the entries would be: 

On the date payroll, the general fund would record: 

DR. Due to transit enterprise fund $100,000 

CR. Cash $100,000 

To record transit employee payroll paid on behalf of the transit fund 

On the same date, the transit fund would recognize its payroll 

expenses and the reduction of the amount due from the general 

fund. 

DR. Payroll expense $100,000 

CR. Due from general fund $100,000 

To record payment by the county’s general fund of transit employee 

payroll 

Notice again that only the transit fund—the fund that is responsible 

for the payroll costs—recognizes the outflow of resources. 

Unfortunately, many governments incorrectly recognize 

inflows and outflows in the fund from or to which the initial 

cash flow occurs, rather than treating it as simply the cash 

conduit, effectively ”grossing-up” the reported resource flows 

in that fund. In our initial example, the entries might have 

been erroneously recorded as follows: 

Upon receipt of grant funds from state: 

DR. Cash $100,000 

CR. State grant revenue $100,000 

To record receipt of state grant revenue for public health and for 

transit operations in the transit fund 

Then, when the money is moved to the transit fund, these 

governments erroneously recognize transfers—other financing 

sources or other financing uses—which are resource flows in 

governmental funds: 

DR. Transfer to transit fund $100,000 

CR. Cash $100,000 

To record transfer of state grant revenue for public health and for 

transit operations in the transit fund 


IN PRACTICE | ACCOUNTING 

Unfortunately, many governments incorrectly 

recognize inflows and outflows in the 

fund from or to which the initial cash flow 

occurs, rather than treating it as simply the 

cash conduit, effectively ”grossing-up” the 

reported resource flows in that fund. 

Interfund balances (“due to” and “due from”) and transfers 

are eliminated when fund financial statements are consolidated 

into government-wide financial statements, when the funds 

involved are reported in the same government-wide reporting 

unit (as in, both are governmental activities or both are 

business-type activities), or in the government-wide statements, 

when activity crosses between governmental and businesstype 

activities. The interfund services provided and used—the 

interfund equivalent of exchange or exchange-like transactions 

(such as, the transit fares paid for the child welfare case 

workers)—are not eliminated, as doing so would understate 

operating costs of the customer fund and understate operating 

revenue of the supplier fund. 

Now, what if the cash conduit reporting unit was not just in 

a different fund from the reporting unit to which the activity 

belongs, but the two are discrete entities within the financial 

reporting entity? This would be the case if, in the example 

above, the state transferred the transit subsidy to the county 

as before, but the county’s transit was operated by a transit 

authority that was a discretely presented component unit 

(DCPU) rather than an enterprise fund of the county. The 

answer here is substantively the same as when both parties 

were funds of the primary government, except that the county 

would report an amount payable to the transit authority (rather 

than an interfund “due to”) and the authority would report an 

amount receivable from the county (rather than an interfund 

“due from”). If the amounts are material, these payables and 

receivables should be reported separately from amounts 

payable to, or receivable from, parties external to the financial 

reporting entity in both the primary government’s and the 

DPCU’s reporting units. Eliminations between the primary 

government and the DPCUs, like what was described above 

for interfund activity, would be required only if a financial 

consolidated reporting entity-wide total were presented, which 

is fairly uncommon. 

Michele Mark Levine is director of GFOA’s Technical Services Center. 

By mis-recording in this manner, the general fund is reporting 

both an inflow (grant revenue) and an outflow (transfer out 

to transit fund), improperly “grossing up” activity reported by 

the fund. In addition to overstating both inflow and outflows 

in the general fund, this effectively reclassifies the operating 

subsidy provided by the state to look like an operating subsidy 

(transfer) from the county in the transit fund’s financial 

reporting. 

Instead of recognizing a transfer, the general fund in this 

example might have reduced the reported state grant revenue 

(for example, reversing the initial erroneous entry by debiting 

state grant revenue and crediting cash) when paying the 

transit fund. Then, if both transactions occurred in the same 

financial reporting period, the net effect would be the same as 

the illustration of the correct entries above. During the period 

between the cash receipt by the general fund and payment 

of funds over to the transit fund, however, the general fund’s 

revenue would be overstated, as would its assets, and the 

amount due to the transit fund would be understated, while the 

transit fund’s revenue and assets would both be understated. 

COMING UP 

Watch this space for more Inside Stories 

discussing other topics related to activities internal 

to a financial reporting entity or with related 

parties, such as accounting for certain complex 

financial activity with blended component units, 

joint ventures, and the appropriate reporting 

and disclosures when defined benefit pensions 

and other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are 

provided to employees of multiple reporting units 

within a financial reporting entity that represents 

as a single employer in a pension or OPEB plan. 


66


IN PRACTICE | PERSPECTIVE 

PERSPECTIVE 

The Fiscal Cliff 

BY KATHERINE BARRETT AND RICHARD GREENE 

Over the summer of 

2023, the fiscal status 

of local governments 

and states appeared to 

be in reasonably good 

condition. Property values—especially 

for homes—were strong, so property 

taxes were holding up well, according 

to Farhad Omeyr, program director of 

research and data for the National League 

of Cities. And “to my surprise,” he said, 

“we weren’t seeing a plateauing of sales 

taxes.” Meanwhile, local governments 

were accumulating money in their 

rainy-day funds, at the same time, as 

inflation appeared to be slowing. There 

was growing hope that the economy, 

as a whole, might be heading for that 

much-hoped-for “soft landing.” 

That’s the good news. But don’t count 

on it lasting forever. A series of stresses 

and strains on towns, cities, and counties 

are unquestionably heading our way. 

Some of the biggest challenges will be felt 

when the huge sums of money that have 

been buttressing public-sector balance 

sheets begin to fall away. The American 

Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), including the 

State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, 

for example, contributed $350 billion 

to states, cities, counties, territories, 

and tribal governments. But that money 

needs to be obligated by the end of 2024 

and spent by December 31, 2026. 

At that point, it won’t be so much a 

question of if but when many places will 

be confronting a darker fiscal world, 

which William Glasgall, senior director 

of public finance at the Volcker Alliance 

and fellow at the Penn Institute for Urban 

Research, has described as a fiscal cliff. 

This cliff represents a combination 

of slowing revenues and cascading 

expenditures. Beverly Bunch, professor at 

the school of public management and policy 

at the University of Illinois and author of an 

upcoming report about the topic, predicts 

the advent of major spending issues 

“related to health access and affordability, 

including mental health and substance 

abuse; others associated with the aging 

of our population, including pensions; 

adaptation to change (like remote work); 

and continued economic development 

needs.” 

One of the biggest challenges faced on the 

expenditure side of the ledger is the specter 

of emergencies. While the pandemic may 

have been an unprecedented catastrophe, 

climate change appears to ensure that 

unpredictable expenses will continue to hit. 

Consider this summer’s national heat wave. 

Based on a study of the Commonwealth of 

Virginia, the Center for American Progress 

extrapolated those costs attributed to 

extreme heat, including emergency room 

visits and hospital admissions, and found 

©2023 JAMES YANG C/O THEISPOT.COM 

68

NATIONAL GUARD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO 

that they will likely add about $1 billion to 

healthcare costs, many of which are born 

by governments. 

The Town of Bluffton, South Carolina, 

which has a population of 27,000 and is 

located in the low country of the state, 

is carefully preparing for the inevitable 

ill effects of climate change. “The rising 

sea levels mean we have very high 

tides around us,” Chris Forster, Bluffton 

assistant town manager, said. “As the 

water levels rise, they hit the septic tanks, 

and when the tide goes back out, it affects 

the quality of the water.” The community 

used a study by the University of Florida 

to determine the costs of recovering 

from the damage to infrastructure when 

climate change-related events hit and has 

ensured that sufficient funds are available 

in the community’s rainy-day fund. 

This preparation for an uncertain future 

contributed to the town’s recent bond rating 

increase to AAA by Moody’s, Forster said. 

But many communities aren’t following 

Bluffton’s lead and will find themselves 

hard pressed to pay the bills when the 

next natural disaster hits. “We have to be 

prepared for these things,” Bunch said. 

“The question is only when and what 

magnitude.” 

Even absent infrastructure-destroying 

hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and so 

on, another element pushing localities 

toward a fiscal cliff is the need for huge 

sums of money for roads, water, and 

buildings, beyond what is being supplied 

by the federal government through sources 

like the Infrastructure Act. 

Glasgall said: “The good news is that 

there is a lot of money in the infrastructure 

bill and the Inflation Reduction Act. But 

there’s still a big shortfall in necessary 

infrastructure maintenance dollars. State 

and local governments provide 80 percent 

of the funding for public infrastructure in 

the United States, and that’s out of their 

own taxes, fees, gasoline taxes, tolls, 

water charges, sewer charges, and so on. 

And more money is going to be necessary 

if we’re going to have a 21st century 

infrastructure. We need to be able to handle 

electric cars and trucks. And we have a lot 

of bridges and water plants out there that 

are at the end of their useful life.” 

Also, with a workforce shortage that’s 

ravaging the capacity of localities to deliver 

the services they’ve promised, it seems 

A series of stresses and strains on towns, cities, 

and counties are unquestionably heading our way. 

nearly inevitable that the cost of labor 

is going to rise. “The labor market is just 

so hot that wages are going up,” Emily 

Mandel, senior economist of Moody’s 

Analytics, said. “They’re already rising 

now, and given the private sector’s pace, 

there is going to continue to be a lot of 

competition for those workers.” 

As for the revenue side of the 

equation, growing pressures are also 

imminent. “The pace at which revenues 

have been going up is going to taper,” 

Mandel said. “It’s not sustainable. The 

economy is slowing from where it is 

today, based on interest rates being 

higher and the Federal Reserve doing all 

it can to slow down the economy.” 

And although the price of housing has 

been a robust driver of higher property 

taxes, “we’re already beginning to 

see some reductions in home values,” 

Mandel said. Of course, there will 

be a delay between softening prices 

and the actual reduction in property 

taxes because it’s not until homes are 

reevaluated that this impact will be 

seen. Mandel makes it clear that she’s 

not anticipating any kind of housing 

bust as we’ve seen in years past, “but 

we’re expecting a decline nonetheless.” 

What’s more, there’s a great deal 

of uncertainty about property taxes 

emanating from commercial real 

estate as downtowns suffer from the 

Above, downtown Montpelier, Vermont, is 

nearly submerged in floodwaters from the 

overflowing Winooski River after record rains 

fell on the northeastern region in July of this 

year, resulting in hundreds of rescues and 

forcing evacuation of thousands of people. 

introduction of remote work. “It’s going to 

be an adjustment process,” Mandel said, 

“and cities are going to have to rethink 

what to do when many of their office 

buildings aren’t so full.” 

Finally, though the states have been 

preparing themselves carefully by 

avoiding using federal one-time money on 

long-term expenditures, a number have 

made significant tax cuts. “So, they’ll be 

bringing in less money, particularly on 

the personal income side,” says Mandel. 

“No one is going to say we’re going to 

cut taxes and give less money to our 

localities, but that could be an impact of 

those cuts. Revenue growth has been so 

strong in recent years, and these tax cuts 

are so new that we haven’t even begun to 

see what’s going to turn out.” 

Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene are 

principals of Barrett and Greene, Inc., at 

greenebarrett.com. They are advisors to GFOA, 

senior advisors and columnists for Route 

Fifty, NAPA Fellows, senior advisors to the 

Government Finance Research Center at the 

University of Illinois, and senior advisors to the 

American Society for Public Administration. 


IN PRACTICE | PERSPECTIVE 

PERSPECTIVE 

Celebrating Sui Generis 

BY JUSTIN MARLOWE 

In December 2010, Meredith Whitney, 

the Wall Street analyst who famously 

predicted the financial crisis of 2007 

to 2008, appeared on 60 Minutes 

and declared that 50 to 100 major 

U.S. states and localities would default 

on their municipal bonds in the coming 

months. More than $60 billion flowed 

out of municipal bond mutual funds 

during the next few weeks in one of the 

largest sell-offs in market history. 

Fortunately, if a recent trend in 

the municipal market technology 

continues, these types of abrupt, 

market-wide dislocations might 

be a thing of the past. That’s both a 

challenge and an opportunity for state 

and local finance professionals. 

The famous “Meredith Whitney 

sell-off” is a wonderful illustration of 

what makes the municipal bond market 

fascinating to some and frustrating to 

others. Today there are roughly one 

million individual bonds sold by more 

than 50,000 individual issuers, backed 

by dozens of revenue streams and 

credit enhancements. That’s orders of 

magnitude more variety than corporate 

bonds, U.S. Treasuries, or other fixedincome 

investments. Simply put, 

each municipal bond is sui generis, 

the timeless Latin phrase to describe 

something that’s “of its own kind.” 

But none of that uniqueness was 

on the minds of investors who heard 

Meredith Whitney and ran for the exits. 

They sold shares in municipal bond 

mutual funds as fast as they could, 

presumably with limited knowledge of 

whether those funds held the specific 

bonds that might be headed for trouble. 

Critics say this type of sell-off 

illustrates one of the municipal market’s 

big flaws. Investors cannot keep track 

of hundreds or thousands of individual 

governments, especially when financial 

and other information about those 

governments can be difficult to acquire. 

Instead, critics argue, state and local 

governments ought to make investors’ 

job easier by sticking to simple bond 

structures backed by robust, generic 

revenue streams. They believe such 

streamlining will produce lower cost 

of capital and better accountability for 

taxpayers. Market proponents say these 

eccentricities are unavoidable, given 

the countless variations in state statute 

and local policy. They believe the 

market is far from perfect, but it works 

well enough, all things considered. 

Fortunately for municipal bond 

investors, some recent advances in 

financial market technology are 

helping to split the difference between 

these views. 

Municipal bonds are at the core a 

retail market. People buy them to save 

for retirement, college, and other future 

financial needs. That’s why roughly 70 

percent of the $4 trillion in outstanding 

municipals are held, directly or 

indirectly, by individuals. 

That’s why there’s a massive 

investment advisory industry to help 

individual investors buy munis. For 

decades that industry’s go-to product 

has been mutual funds. Hundreds of 

mutual funds cater to muni investors, 

©2023 JAMES YANG C/O THEISPOT.COM 

70

including nearly 100 funds focused on 

individual states to maximize investors’ 

tax advantages. 

Mutual funds come with two big 

disadvantages, though. For one, 

investors don’t control what goes into 

the fund’s portfolio—that’s the portfolio 

manager’s job. And even more important, 

if everyone else sells their shares at 

once, the fund’s value can decline 

quickly. For proof, look no further than 

the Meredith Whitney episode. 

In a perfect world, individual 

investors could realize the tax benefits, 

safety, and sophisticated investment 

management of a mutual fund, but with 

more direct control over the portfolio’s 

composition and management strategy. 

In the real world, a “separately managed 

account” (SMA) achieves just that. 

An SMA is, in effect, a private mutual 

fund. High-net-worth individuals 

willing to invest seven or eight figures 

can hire a portfolio manager to manage 

their bonds like a mutual fund. They 

specify the investment goals, and the 

portfolio manager regularly buys and 

sells bonds to keep the portfolio aligned 

with those goals. It’s also common to see 

muni SMAs designed around particular 

themes like sustainability or social 

impact. 

Of course, this is easier said than 

done. A typical SMA portfolio manager 

tends to dozens or even hundreds of 

individual portfolios, each with its own 

time horizon, risk preference, and tax 

concerns. Those portfolios will hold 

some, but not all, of the same bonds. 

Some portfolios don’t overlap at all. 

Following thousands of individual 

bonds and how they interact is like a 

giant game of three-dimensional chess. 

That seems daunting, but it’s much 

more tractable with help from new 

financial technology. SMA portfolio 

managers today have powerful 

algorithms that can identify specific 

bonds that address a specific investment 

objective for a particular portfolio. Need 

an AA-rated, short duration bond from 

a rural North Carolina school district 

with excellent test scores? Today’s 

portfolio management systems will find 

bonds that fit the bill, scan the dozens 

of broker-dealers who might have those 

The far more important take-away is that the growth of 

SMAs means all municipal bonds can find a home. 

bonds to sell, reanalyze the portfolio, 

and then sell a different bond that no 

longer meets that investor’s objectives, 

all with just a few keystrokes. This type 

of integrated analytics and execution 

capability was unheard of in the 

municipal market until now. 

These technological breakthroughs 

have unleashed explosive growth in 

muni SMAs. Securities and Exchange 

Commission (SEC) data show that in 

January 2018, there were roughly $500 

billion (in 2023 dollars) of assets under 

management in individual investor 

muni SMAs. In January 2023, it was a 

little less than $900 billion, and some 

estimates have it exceeding $1 trillion. 

In 2018, the ten firms with the highest 

muni assets under management in 

SMAs held around $150 billion (in 2023 

dollars). Today they hold $350 billion. 

That’s a 133 percent increase in just five 

years. Today, there are approximately 

4,200 investment advisors in the muni 

SMA business. That’s up from about 

3,600 in 2018. As expected, much of 

this growth has come at the expense of 

traditional mutual funds. Mutual funds 

held a little less than a trillion dollars 

in municipals at the end of 2018. At the 

end of 2022 they held $746 billion. 

What does this mean for state and 

local finance professionals? SMA 

portfolio managers need the most 

recent information possible about 

your financial position, fiscal policies, 

capital investment plans, and so 

forth. That means debt management 

fundamentals like reliable financial 

reporting and proactive investor 

relations are more important than ever. 

But the far more important takeaway 

is that the growth of SMAs means 

all municipal bonds can find a home. 

Calls to standardize bond structures 

or to adjust borrowing strategies to 

accommodate investment expectations 

seem less salient when every big 

investor has a private mutual fund. For 

today’s municipal bonds, with apologies 

to Meredith Whitney, sui generis might 

just be OK. 

Justin Marlowe is a research professor at 

the University of Chicago, Harris School of 

Public Policy, and a fellow of the National 

Academy of Public Administration. 


IN PRACTICE | INTERVIEW 

WITH ANNE BAKER 

Administrative Services Director, City of Florence, Oregon 

BY MIKE MUCHA 

Mike Mucha, GFOA’s deputy 

executive director, spoke with 

Anne Baker, the administrative 

services director for the City 

of Florence, Oregon, about 

her career in public service, 

volunteering with membership 

organizations, certification, 

and the most important 

skills necessary for finance 

professionals to become leaders. 

Mike: Can you start by describing 

your current role with the City of 

Florence? 

Anne: As administrative services 

director, I oversee finance, information 

technology, utility billing, and the 

municipal court. We have a pretty 

wide scope, everything from financial 

reporting to providing water and sewer 

service to citizens. I have an IT manager 

and finance manager who help with 

most of the meat of the department, 

and in my role, I focus more on working 

with our city manager and council, and 

making sure that we can effectively 

communicate needs from across the 

city so we can make good decisions 

about the use of city resources. 

What are the biggest challenges 

facing Florence? 

The biggest challenge is hiring and 

maintaining employees. Florence is 

a rural and located in a remote area of 

Lane County, Oregon. We are about 90 

minutes from the city of Eugene and 

have a population of approximately 

9,600. I’m sure our challenges at the 

city are not unique and I know that 

others in Florence, including many 

businesses, struggle to hire. For 

example, in addition to not having 

enough accountants or police officers, 

we also have a shortage of doctors. Our 

community is an attractive retirement 

destination, and we are growing, but we 

don’t have the places for new people to 

live—specifically younger individuals 

who would be able to fill open jobs. From 

a city perspective, we also can’t afford 

to pay what others do. I’ve been with 

the city for four and a half years. During 

that time, I don’t think the city’s police 

department has been fully staffed. 

When we are able to hire new officers, 

we get them trained, and they have a 

tendency to move on for higher salaries. 

Have you been able to work on 

these issues? 

Recently, the city has been having 

more discussions about how to create 

incentives for younger generations to 

locate here. We also have an initiative 

to create more affordable housing and 

two planned projects. In my role, as 

administrative services director, I have 

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF FLORENCE, OREGON 

72

een involved in those discussions and 

have enjoyed it. This position has put me 

out there and I’m more aware of issues 

in the community. In my past positions, 

I would tend to work on issues related to 

just the finance department. 

How did you initially get involved in 

government? Were you always drawn 

to public service? 

I got started late in my career. I have 

a bachelor’s degree in business 

administration/accounting and one 

in computer science, but I earned both 

after I turned 30. At the time, I intended 

to get my CPA and work for one of the big 

six accounting firms; however, when 

I was in school, I took a governmental 

accounting class. I really liked learning 

about fund accounting, I was pretty good 

at it, and my professor encouraged me 

to think about a career in government. 

When I graduated, I applied for jobs at 

a local CPA firm and with Josephine 

County. I interviewed at both and 

decided to give government a chance. 

And now over the last 25 years, 

you’ve worked in a variety of positions 

for five different governments. 

What has led to your success? 

I always have to be learning something 

new. For example, when I started with 

City of Albany, the city received the 

GFOA award for budget and annual 

comprehensive financial report 

(ACFR). I took on the task of putting 

together the city’s first popular 

annual financial report (PAFR). In 

preparing the PAFR, I had to learn the 

idiosyncrasies of financial statements. 

I also had to learn how to communicate 

technical information in a way that 

citizens understand. That helped me a 

lot when it came later to working with 

elected officials. 

that I really didn’t like tax accounting. 

I also realized that government offers 

a better work-life balance. It’s not 

that I wasn’t putting in a lot of hours, 

but I appreciate that I am able to take 

vacation when I need to. 

About that time, I also got involved 

with the Oregon GFOA (OGFOA) which 

continued to encourage me to look for 

new opportunities in local government. 

I really feel that each of my positions 

has set me up for success with for the 

next one. I took advantage of the OGFOA 

network for new opportunities. I didn’t 

get every job I applied for, but I didn’t 

give up. When I didn’t get my dream 

job, I was able to realize that it wasn’t 

because I wasn’t qualified, it was 

because the competition can be fierce— 

and that is a good thing. 

I want to discuss your involvement 

with OGFOA. What is it like being 

part of that organization? 

It can be a lot of work, but very much 

worth it. At first, I was a bit hesitant 

to get involved. I wanted to be good at 

my job, but also thought I could hide in 

the background. For a while, that did 

work. I was able to take advantage of 

educational opportunities and meet 

peers in other organizations. But at 

one of the conferences, I got roped into 

the IT committee for the organization. 

What they were doing intrigued me 

and seemed to leverage some of my 

academic background. Once I got more 

involved, I really started having fun. 

The more people I met, the more fun 

I had and the bigger my network grew. 

I ended up with more and more people 

who I could lean on, and the value of 

OGFOA really became clear. Those 

individuals then pushed me to take 

that next step in my career, pursue 

the new opportunity, and continue 

to learn. I pursued my certification 

through OGFOA and later also joined 

the certification committee. When I 

moved to the City of Albany, my boss 

was very supportive of my involvement 

in OGFOA and I took advantage of the 

opportunity to join the governing 

board of OGFOA, which then led to me 

becoming president of OGFOA in 2013. 

Have you ever considered options 

outside of government? 

In between my positions at Josephine 

County and Benton County, I graduated 

from University of Oregon with a master 

of accounting degree. As part of the 

program, you had to participate in a 

recruitment process, so again I put in 

an application to work at a CPA firm. 

I ended up working there as an intern 

and thought of switching, but I realized 

Anne Baker (left) and some of her team members in the City of Florence Administrative Services 

Department get into the holiday spirit. 



For someone who initially wanted to 

hide in the background, what was it 

like being president? 

At some point after becoming president, 

I realized that you had to get in front 

of everyone and talk. I would say that 

I’m more of an introvert, but I learned 

through my OGFOA experience that I 

can be more extroverted if I need to. 

Public speaking was hard at first, but 

now not so much. This experience has 

definitely helped me when I have to 

present in front of council, talk with the 

public, or broadcast meetings online. 

During my time with OGFOA, we also 

changed our name from the Oregon 

Municipal Finance Officers Association 

to the Oregon Government Finance 

Officers Association. We wanted 

to expand to better serve members 

from special districts, schools, the 

state, and other governments without 

those individuals assuming we only 

served cities. It also helped us align 

better with the Government Finance 

Officers Association. I’m proud of the 

partnership that we’ve been able to 

build with GFOA. 

As a member of both GFOA and 

OGFOA, how do you differentiate the 

benefits you get from both? 

I haven’t always been able to be a 

member at both. Up until my job with the 

City of Florence, I was not a member of 

GFOA, and it wasn’t until I got to the City 

of Florence that I was able to travel to a 

GFOA event. I believe the work that the 

state GFOA does is an extension of GFOA, 

and the state association works for me in 

a way that GFOA can’t. GFOA can’t offer 

training on state-specific issues like 

unique Oregon laws and regulations. 

Oregon has a very specific budget 

process that is probably different from 

all others. I look to GFOA for overarching 

best practices, information on GASB 

updates, or larger industry trends. I 

look to the state association for specific 

issues. For example, recently I was able 

to find out about information related 

to public meeting requirements in this 

state from OGFOA. 

I also believe that state organizations 

had an advantage in the past with 

networking groups and were able to 

encourage better levels of participation; 

however, that might be changing. The 

pandemic taught us all how to work 

remotely and that we can network 

remotely too. About a year ago, I joined 

GFOA’s Women Public Finance Network 

(WPFN) and look forward to getting 

more involved in the programs that 

they offer. 

How would you recommend that 

others get involved in either GFOA 

or their state association, knowing 

it can be difficult for some to make 

that initial connection? 

Go to a conference, and when you 

are there, really try to participate. 

I do see a lot of members who just 

attend sessions but don’t really take 

advantage of all that a conference 

can offer. If I was talking to someone 

who’s new to government, I would also 

encourage them to join a committee 

or smaller group organized around 

issues you care about. Having this 

small group of peers to learn from or 

just discuss issues with is extremely 

beneficial. I really enjoy learning from 

others in committees. Our issues aren’t 

our issues alone. You never know when 

you will meet someone who can help 

or offer something insightful. For me, I 

just needed to step outside my comfort 

zone and realize that others are in a 

similar situation. Once you do, it’s fun. 

You have been involved with the 

Professional Finance Officer 

Certification program with OGFOA 

and became a GFOA Certified 

Public Finance Officer in 2013. 

What led you to pursue the CPFO? 

Again, I think it was my desire to take 

on more. In prior positions, my main 

focus was budgeting, but I knew that 

eventually, to achieve my career goals, 

I would need knowledge to manage 

an audit, issue debt, understand 

government investing, and more. 

CPFO was a great program that forced 

me to study—even when my current 

position made it difficult. I learned a 

lot. The exams were tough, but that 

means it was worth it. For a while, I felt 

like the Blue Book was my best friend. 

Which exam was the most difficult? 

I passed all on my first try except for 

treasury. That one took two tries. 

Become a CPFO 

Learn more about GFOA’s CPFO 

program, the next step as you 

prepare for leadership positions 

in state and local government. 

gfoa.org/cpfo 

Has your investment in CPFO paid off? 

Having a CPA license or a CPFO designation 

is a preference for most jobs that I’ve 

applied for. It does open doors and can set 

me apart from other applicants. For those 

hiring managers who may not understand 

the details of public finance, it can also 

provide credibility and recognition that 

I do have the necessary skills. I’m also 

proud of meeting the requirement for 

ongoing education. Having to accumulate 

continuing professional education (CPE) 

credits means that I commit to staying 

current. Now I have to stay informed on 

current best practices and don’t want to 

waste the hard work that I put in to get the 

CPFO in the first place. I really believe that 

I wouldn’t be able to do my job well without 

ongoing training, and the CPFO makes it 

easier to get approval for that training. 

At GFOA, we talk all the time about 

needing to learn both technical skills 

and leadership skills. What leadership 

skill do you think is most important for 

finance officers? 

The ability to communicate. Good 

communicators not only convey goals 

and expectations clearly, but also engage 

in active listening. You need to be open 

to feedback, either good or bad. If you 

don’t listen, you won’t understand how to 

resolve conflicts, keep your team aligned, 

or build trust. 

I have also learned that having the 

ability to recognize and understand 

your emotions is important. Things in 

government can get emotional—whether 

we fund a project or not, can afford raises 

or not, or shift policy to benefit some 

in the community. Understanding and 

listening is important for you to better 

consider different viewpoints and remain 

composed under pressure. 

74

A coastal city in Lane County, Oregon, Florence lies about 60 miles west of Eugene and has a population of nearly 10,000 residents. 

As leader of your department, and 

one with many functions, how do you 

keep everyone aligned and working 

as a cohesive team? 

Divisions can tend to silo themselves. I 

try to instill in them that because you are 

in finance or IT, what they do can impact 

everyone. If they realize how connected 

our functions are, they will think about 

Good communicators not only convey goals and 

expectations clearly, but also engage in active listening. 

You need to be open to feedback, either good or bad. If 

you don’t listen, you won’t understand how to resolve 

conflicts, keep your team aligned, or build trust. 

Overcome Differences with GFOA’s Perspectives program 

This online learning experience equips participants with science-backed skills to 

improve communicaton and manage political issues in the workplace. Learn more: 

gfoa.org/perspectives 

strategies or actions and how it impacts 

everyone. I also think this leads to better 

discussions with our team at a strategy 

level. I try to encourage dialogue within 

the team and feel that this also can help 

encourage people to ask for help if they 

need it. Hopefully no one is left out. 

Opinions do matter. It doesn’t mean that 

we will always agree, but we shouldn’t 

be afraid to hear an opposing or 

slightly different view. 

Did you always think you would end 

up as a leader in city government? 

That’s a good question. When I 

interviewed in Josephine County, the 

finance manager who interviewed 

me asked where I saw myself in five 

years, and I said I wanted his job. I did 

want to move up and did set my sights 

on being a finance director. 

Any desire to move up even further 

on the organizational chart? 

No! I want to stay away from being 

a city manager. I’ve seen that up 

close and don’t like it. I do like the 

added responsibilities I have as 

administrative services director, 

though. In Florence, much like in 

other smaller cities, administrative 

functions are grouped, and I enjoy 

working with IT. I would encourage 

anyone in a similar position to get 

involved in other projects and teams. 

Get exposed to new areas. I’m not an 

expert in IT, even though I manage 

it, but understanding the big picture 



with IT means I can better understand 

the big picture with finance. The 

same is true with other functions and 

departments here at the city. 

Any other advice on working with 

staff from outside the finance 

department? 

Make sure you have a good team, and 

then trust them. Rely on your team 

to help you find the best way to solve 

problems. 

Great advice. Now a few questions 

to wrap up our interview. Is there 

anything you would do differently 

in your career? 

Start earlier. I also wish I would have 

been more confident in my abilities 

earlier on. I wanted to move up, but 

I let doubt creep in more than I should 

have. My abilities were there—I just 

needed to realize it. 

What is one thing you would change 

about local government finance if 

you could? 

There are a lot of things I would change, 

but I’m not sure everyone would agree 

that they would be for the better. Right 

now, one change I’m confident in is 

that GASB needs to really look at what 

The people I know 

in public finance are 

educated, ethical, and 

hardworking. They 

are here because they 

believe they can help 

provide the community 

with the best service, 

with what resources are 

available. And they care. 

they are doing and the impact that it 

has on smaller jurisdictions. Some of 

the most recent standards have had 

big monetary impacts for our city. We 

don’t have the staff to handle the new 

reporting requirements, so we rely on 

consultants, and they are expensive. 

The costs also seem to continue to 

grow as reporting becomes even more 

complicated. It takes us away from 

funding services or helping solve 

problems in our community. I don’t 

think GASB realizes the stress they put 

on small governments. 

What is one thing that most people 

outside of the profession get 

wrong about public finance or local 

government? 

Waste. I hear a lot that governments 

have no problem spending money and 

that employees are lazy. This makes me 

mad. Coming into work every day, what 

I see are people who chose to be here 

because they want to make a difference. 

The people I know in public finance are 

educated, ethical, and hardworking. 

They are here because they believe they 

can help provide the community with 

the best service, with what resources are 

available. And they care. 

Last question. If you had ten words 

to persuade someone to pursue a 

career in local government, what 

would you say? 

Ten words is not nearly enough, but I 

will say that working for government is 

an important job. We are trusted by the 

community. We can see the direct impact 

of our work. We can also advance in our 

profession and become leaders. I think 

I’m a pretty good case for that. OK, here 

are ten words: Government work brings 

pride in your job and your community. 

Mike Mucha is the deputy executive 

director of GFOA. 

76

The Right Skills 

for the Role 

AN 

INTERVIEW WITH GLENYS SALAS 

BY JARA KERN 

Jara Kern of Right Angle Studio spoke with Glenys R. Salas, director of 

budget and fiscal analysis for the City of Saco, Maine, about transitioning 

from the private to public sector, using data to drive better decision 

making and continuous improvement, and how government finance 

professionals can make more of their networks and connections. 


Glenys has followed a 

unique career path to 

her role in government 

finance. After earning 

a Bachelor of Science 

in business with a 

focus in marketing, 

she moved into marketing analytics 

roles with Unilever, NUK USA, and Ai 

Media Group. In 2017, with a newly 

kindled interest in electoral politics and 

local government, she joined the City of 

Saco as finance director and treasurer. 

In the six years since, her role has 

expanded as she has shaped processes 

and planning in her community. 

Glenys is also active in GFOA’s Women’s 

Public Finance Network and serves on 

the board of the Maine Municipal Tax 

Collectors and Treasurer’s Association. 

Making a leap—of sector, skills, 

and community 

Early in her career, Glenys found her 

marketing sweet spot in data analytics 

roles. Business analytics unlocked 

opportunities to drive growth and 

continuous improvement—and to see the 

results in business growth. 

At the time, Glenys was living in the 

New York City area, but when the finance 

director position at the City Saco opened 

up, Glenys saw it as a chance to make 

the leap to the public sector. Located 

just south of the Portland, Maine, area, 

Saco is home to a population of 19,000 

residents—and is rapidly growing. 

The challenge lay in navigating the 

transition. Fortunately for her, as she 

recalls, “The city administrator was open 

to thinking differently when filling the 

role. He wanted to bring in someone who 

had a data mindset and tech experience 

and was willing to think creatively about 

what a finance director for a midsized 

municipality in Maine could look like.” 

While working in data analytics roles, 

Glenys had earned a master’s degree in 

data analytics from Villanova University. 

Her education and experience prepared 

her to understand the software and 

reporting side of finance in a different 

way. “Because I had become interested 

in government and we wanted to move to 

Maine, the role was a perfect fit.” 

Glenys was eager to bring her skills 

to her new role—and immediately saw 

opportunities to do so, starting with the 

budget process. She led two key projects 

for the city. The first was transforming 

the text-heavy budget presentation into a 

more visually driven, audience-friendly 

format. “Reporting, analytics, and data 



“Reporting, analytics, and data visualizations can all make 

the budget easier for people to understand. So, I took the 

budget presentation, which was word- and number-heavy, 

and made it more visual.” 

visualizations can all make the budget 

easier for people to understand. So, I took 

the budget presentation, which was wordand 

number-heavy, and made it more 

visual with charts, graphs, and icons.” 

She also used her marketing 

background to change the budget 

conversation. “In marketing, everything 

starts with the product, and it drives price 

and budget. The product of government 

is our services to the community,” 

Glenys explained in relating how she 

repositioned the budget conversation to 

start with city services rather than cost. 

“Services are the foundation of what 

we do, and the foundation of a strong 

community. Good service delivery draws 

more people to a community, which 

results in rising property values and 

more revenue. This, in turn, can fund the 

necessary cost increases on existing city 

services as well as new city services.” 

Glenys pointed out that it took two or 

three years for the nature of the budget 

conversation to fully shift—but it did. “In 

the last two or three budget cycles, the 

conversation has been about what more 

we can do for the community of Saco, as in 

what services we can add. We haven’t had 

a conversation about cuts for years. This 

change has been great for our citizens 

and for our staff, who feel much more 

comfortable and confident in front of the 

council when talking about the budget.” 

Six years into her tenure with the 

City of Saco, Glenys oversees the budget 

process from start to finish, managed in 

collaboration with the city administrator. 

She is also responsible for all reporting 

related to the budget and to Saco’s 

annual comprehensive financial report. 

Glenys also administers the annual 

audit and leads work related to financial 

planning and financial analysis, 

including coordinating the city’s annual 

capital planning process, in addition to 

participating in several city committees, 

including the long-range planning 

committee. She is particularly passionate 

about strategic planning. “I love thinking 

about the strategic plan and how we can 

make it a reality. Our capital planning 

process now goes out 30 years, so we can 

think really long-term.” 

Glenys and her family also live in Saco, 

and she relishes when her work has a 

positive influence on the community. 

She describes a parking lot by one of 

Saco’s beaches that used to be unpaved, 

leading to parking and access problems. 

“When I first started, I advocated for 

paving it. It took three years of talking to 

the Department of Public Works, but we 

got it done. Now it’s paved and striped, 

and the parking is no longer a problem. 

It’s very rewarding to see the results in 

our community when things are done 

right in the finance office, as well as other 

departments.” 

Glenys sees opportunities for others in 

the private sector to make the transition 

to a career in local government finance. 

In her opinion, some roles make the 

transition more easily than others. She 

pointed to experience in government 

auditing for CPA firms or government 

services in banking as examples of roles 

that can offer fast transition. Other types 

of experience may require a bigger leap, 

but a business background provides a 

solid foundation. Glenys has sage advice 

for anyone considering the transition: 

“Get involved with your local government 

as a citizen, through committees. 

Volunteer your time and start to build 

connections with people working in 

local government. They will know of 

opportunities and open roles.” 

Harnessing the power of technology 

Glenys’s marketing background was key 

to repositioning the budget conversation. 

In much the same way, her education 

in data analytics has been essential to 

driving change in her role with the City of 

Saco. With her skills and experience, she 

has been able to identify opportunities 

for process improvement and shorten the 

learning curve for implementing systems, 

tools, and automated processes to go from 

data to decision making more quickly and 

effectively. 

She shared a few transformation 

examples. “When I started,” she explained, 

“there were a lot of workarounds because 

the general ledger account codes were 

not configured the way the reporting was 

configured. So, I cleaned up all the general 

ledger account codes because I understand 

both how these tables work together and 

how important good foundational data 

labeling is to reporting.” This change made 

78

eporting easier, more precise, and 

more efficient. Using her data analytics 

background, Glenys also changed the 

way capital asset infrastructure data 

was imported into Saco’s financial 

software, and she has been able to apply 

statistical analysis to the community’s 

tax bills—which has been useful while 

navigating a period of tax increases. The 

changes she has implemented have also 

improved forecasting, especially when 

it comes to tax increment financing 

(TIF) districts. With 30 percent of 

Saco’s assessed valuation captured in 

TIF districts, it’s important to be able to 

forecast anticipated revenue accurately 

and easily out a decade or more in 

evaluating such measures as 30-year 

bond issuance. 

Harnessing the power of technology 

has enabled Glenys and her team to work 

smarter. Today, more opportunities 

are on the horizon with automation, 

AI, and machine learning. While 

governments navigate the promise and 

pitfalls of these emerging technologies, 

Glenys noted, “AI is only as effective 

as the data you put it into, so if you’re 

not inputting really good detail on 

your invoice entry, capital assets, or 

infrastructure management, you’re 

going to be challenged with applying an 

AI model with precise output. Smaller 

municipalities like Saco don’t always 

have enough input information.” 

Capital planning for a growing 

municipality 

Saco’s growth has driven an increased 

focus on infrastructure and capital 

planning. Since moving into the role of 

director of budget and fiscal analysis, 

Glenys has increasingly focused on capital 

planning and the city’s 30-year plan. She 

and her team have built custom forms 

that allow department heads to input 

capital asset projects into the capital 

planning process at any point during 

the year. In addition, she has focused on 

importing infrastructure management 

“Good service delivery draws more people to a community, 

which results in rising property values and more revenue. 

This, in turn, can fund the necessary cost increases on 

existing city services as well as new city services.” 

data into the financial planning software 

for analysis and reporting. Recently 

the department rolled out a scorecard 

to measure sustainable funding levels. 

Together, these tools have helped Glenys 

and her team identify opportunities for 

continuous improvement, down to specific 

utilities and projects. She pointed to 

growth as evidence of progress: “Ten years 

ago, the city allocated only $60,000 a 

year to manage our infrastructure assets. 

Now, after a decade of focused work, 

our capital plan is $8 million annually.” 

The city has produced materials on this 

transformation to share the process and 

results with other midsized municipalities 

undertaking capital planning. 

Maximizing the benefits 

of membership 

Glenys is a member of New England 

States GFOA and Maine GFOA, as well as a 

member of GFOA’s Women’s Public Finance 

Network (WPFN). She is a frequent 

contributor to GFOA’s online member 

communities. She also serves on the board 

of the Maine Municipal Tax Collectors and 

Treasurer’s Association. Ultimately, she 

sees membership and participation as 

express routes to accessing information 

and building a vibrant network. 

“Coming from the private sector, I 

had a lot of questions, and I didn’t know 

where to go for answers. GFOA’s online 

member communities offered great 

guidance, including a suggestion on a 

capital planning software that I’ve just 

implemented. I also enjoy providing input 

to others. Whether you log in once a week 

or once a month, it will benefit you.” 

She values building relationships 

through WPFN that help her better balance 

work and home, as well as accessing 

robust training and certification through 

the Maine Municipal Tax Collectors and 

Treasurer’s Association. Some smaller 

communities in Maine may not have 

their own finance officer, so participating 

in the association is a way to build 

connections across the state. “Building 

your network through membership 

and participation is one of the best 

ways to advance your knowledge and 

make new connections. It’s absolutely 

worth the time you invest in it.” 

Jara Kern is a marketing strategist at 

Right Angle Studio. 


ASSURED GUARANTY MUNICIPAL CORP. — ASSURED GUARANTY CORP. — NEW YORK, NY 

80 

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