Performance-Informed Budgeting: The Prospects and Problems

The notion of basing budget decisions on performance rather than precedent or politics is a powerful one, but also a concept that can be much more easily said than done. As many governments have attempted to make this shift, they often face technical, communication, leadership, and political challenges that make sustainability of performance-informed budgeting a rare occurrence. Speakers in this session will confront the obstacles that stand in the way and identify what budget leaders can do to prepare for this transition and recommendations for achieving success, transforming the budget function, and benefiting the community.

On the Campaign Trail: How to Navigate the Politics of Budgeting

Budgeting is hard work, and when politics is thrown into the mix, it's even tougher. Most budget professionals are adept at the technical aspects of budgeting–developing revenue forecasts, counting positions, and estimating spending, but navigating the political landscape is something that many finance professionals try to avoid, usually unsuccessfully. This session will provide tools for navigating political traps, confronting special interests, and earning widespread support for decisions while also building on concepts of equity, fairness, and accountability. Speakers will share examples of how they successfully navigated the politics of budgeting and provide advice on how to hone your political leadership skills.

Preparing School Districts for the ESSER Funding Cliff

ESSER funding is set to expire in September 2024. The underlying purpose of the funding was to address student learning losses during the pandemic. Many school districts used these funds to implement new strategies or initiatives to close the learning losses. With the expiration of ESSER funding on the horizon, school districts will need to determine which ones worked and which did not. This session will explore the basics of academic return on investment (AROI), including how to select a target program for the AROI analysis, the need for a clear definition of the intended outcome of an educational initiative, and the relative costs and benefits of different means to accomplish those outcomes.

Using Youth Fiscal Maps to Guide Decision Makers

Even though budget information is public and readily available, it is also not presented in a way conducive to answering complex questions about spending in specific areas or on important initiatives. However, knowing the answers to these questions is imperative for making informed and aligned budgeting decisions to support better outcomes within our communities. This session will explore how fiscal maps can help and how you, as a finance professional can 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. Speakers will highlight examples from the Children's Funding Project to show how complex budget information for government children service programs can be summarized and how to apply these lessons to other critical program areas.

Decision Architecture: Designing the Blueprint for a Better Budget

The traditional budget process in many governments can take the form of exercise in balancing revenues and expenses. This requires making decisions in a variety of areas including what strategies to pursue, where to raise revenue, and how much revenue to allocate to each major function or program. Making these kinds of decisions is not easy. It’s also often done by groups of individuals who may have different points of view. Making it more difficult, there is almost always some level of uncertainty and potentially fraught with opportunities for bias and inconsistency. In this session, speakers will discuss the skills of a decision architect and help you come up with a plan for designing a better budget decision-making environment.

Public Engagement That Works

Research has found that the traditional public hearing featuring public officials seated at the front of the room and speakers who get a short amount of time at the microphone often does more harm than good when it comes to building trust and connection between government and members of the public. With this in mind, GFOA is encouraging its members to rethink their approach to public engagement. Based on GFOA's research on this topic, this session will feature speakers who will explain why the current model isn't working and highlight case studies of local governments that have achieved better outcomes from their public engagement efforts.

Welcome to 2030. Long-Term Financial Planning in Government

As governments contend with new and more complex challenges in their communities, long-term financial planning has become even more important, as it is the key to ensuring that government can continue to provide the programs and services the community needs both today and in the future. While no finance professional can predict the future, GFOA believes it is the responsibility of all to develop financial forecasts, understand local demographic and socioeconomic trends, and project major changes revenues and expenses to position the organization to be successful in the future. This session will feature panelists who have prepared long-term financial plans for their organizations and provide tips for how to get started on planning for your own organization.

Leadership Workshop: Equity and Evidence-Based Budgeting

Many governments have explored “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. However, many also find the practical application much more difficult and nuanced that anticipated. This workshop will help government leaders approach budgeting for equity with concepts from evidence-based budgeting to define and identify program effectiveness and create an environment that leads to an decision-making processes. This session will focus on economic mobility, and attendees will explore examples and strategies for building a budget framework that leads to better and more equitable outcomes for the whole community.

Note: You will have to pre-register for this session. Stay tuned for details.

The Who, What, Where and When of Budgeting

Finance professionals have lots of options to consider when designing the budget process. Who should be involved? What is included in the process? When do you include critical elements like public engagement or strategic planning?  Where in the organization should we assign responsibility for the entire process? There's no one right answer to these types of questions, but it's helpful to understand the pros and cons of your options as you are deciding what makes the most sense for your organization. At this session, a panel of government budget leaders will discuss the who, what, where, and when of their budget process, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that the different options present.

Rethinking Budgeting in Action

Through its Rethinking Budgeting research initiative, GFOA has developed a new operating system for its approach to local government budgeting. At this session, speakers will discuss the underlying challenges of budgeting, the principles for addressing those challenges, and ideas for how the principles can be applied under different circumstances. You will also get a sneak preview of how GFOA plans to incorporate these findings into its budgeting guidance.

Budgeting in a Post-ARPA World

Many local governments across the United States have relied on ARPA funds (and other COVID-related financial assistance) to balance their budgets in recent years. In many cases, these one-time funds were used to pay for ongoing costs, resulting in structural budget deficits. As local governments face the expiration of ARPA funds, additional challenges have emerged, including decreasing commercial property values, rising inflation, and difficulty recruiting new employees--not to mention the threat of a recession. This panel will discuss strategies for improving fiscal sustainability and recommend steps that finance officers can take now to protect community priorities as federal relief disappears.

Show Me the Money: Options for Increasing Revenue

When a budget is out of balance, we often look first at cutting costs, but sometimes there is nothing left to cut, and as finance officers, we need to explore options for increasing revenue. In this session, speakers will outline different revenue options available to local governments, including user fees and different types of taxes, along with the risks associated with each option. Speakers will share their experiences and provide advice on how to move forward with establishing new fees and taxes or raising existing rates.

Beyond the Finance Office: Building a Collaborative Relationship with Parks and Rec

In many communities, the Parks and Recreation department is the primary way the public interacts with local government. Constituents and their families visit parks, join sports teams, learn to swim, and engage in other activities that greatly increase their quality of life. At the time, these programs can have some unique or complex finance, budget procurement considerations. To ensure this important work continues in our communities, finance staff and parks and rec staff must collaborate. At this session, you’ll hear from both finance and parks and recreation professionals about how they have developed more collaborative relationships and how that helps with purchasing supplies, processing payroll, budgeting for facilities, and more.