1st Edition

Public Budgeting Policy, Process and Politics

By Irene S. Rubin Copyright 2008
    530 Pages
    by Routledge

    530 Pages
    by Routledge

    Some of the best writings on public budgeting and finance can be found in the journals that ASPA publishes or sponsors. For this volume editor Irene Rubin has brought together the best of these articles - emerging classics that address the most important theoretical and practical problems underlying public budgeting.The anthology is organized topically rather than historically, with an effort to delineate the issues needed to understand some of the more recent controversies in the field. Rubin's introductory essay and section openers frame the key issues and provide historical context for each article. The collection begins with descriptions of what public budgeting is, where it comes from, and what it is for. It moves on to the relationship between budget processes and outcomes, constraints on budgeting, the legal context in which it operates, and adaptations to those constraints such as contracting out.The book concludes with a discussion of the ethics and norms that underlie budgeting in a democracy. Throughout the anthology, the emphasis is on areas of disagreement and debate, so students can get involved and explore different viewpoints.

    Introduction; Part 1. What Is a Public Budget? Origins and Purposes; 1. Making "Common Sense" Out of Federal Budgeting, Joseph White; 2. Who Invented Public Budgeting in the United States? Irene S. Rubin; 3. The Road to PPB: The Stages of Reform, Allen Schick; Part 2. Budgeting in a Democracy; Institutional Arrangements; 4. Paradox, Ambiguity, and Enigma: The Strange Case of the Executive Budget and the United States Constitution, Naomi Caiden; 5. The Executive Budget: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed?, Bernard T. Pitsvada; 6. The End of Executive Dominance in State Appropriations, Glenn Abney and Thomas P. Lauth; 7. Budgeting by the Ballot: Initiatives in the State of Montana, Krishna K. Tummala and Marilyn F. Wessel; Part 3. The Roles of the Key Budget Actors and Decision Making; 8. The Office of Management and Budget in a Changing Scene, Frederick C. Mosher and Max O. Stephenson, Jr.; 9. The Shifting Roles of State Budget Offices in the Midwest: Gosling Revisited, Kurt Thurmaier and James J. Gosling; 10. Courts and Public Purse Strings: Have Portraits of Budgeting Missed Something? Jeffrey D. Straussman; 11. Federal Agency Budget Officers: Who Needs Them?, Herbert G. Persil; 12. The Budget-Minimizing Bureaucrat? Empirical Evidence from the Senior Executive Service, Julie Dolan; 13. Police Budgeting: Winning Strategies, Charles K. Coe and Deborah Lamm Weisel; 14. Aaron Wildavsky and the Demise of Incrementalism, Irene Rubin; 15. Decision Strategies of the Legislative Budget Analyst: Economist or Politician? Katherine G. Willoughby and Mary A. Finn; Part 4. The Budget Process; 16. Ten Years of the Budget Act: Still Searching for Controls, Louis Fisher; 17. Deficit Politics and Constitutional Government: The Impact of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, Lance LeLoup, Barbara Luck Graham, and Stacey Barwick; 18. The Budget Enforcement Act and Its Survival: Congress Hears from Experts, Philip G. Joyce; 19. Does Budget Format Really Govern the Actions of Budgetmakers? Gloria A. Grizzle; 20. Participatory Democracy and Budgeting: The Effects of Proposition 13, Jerry McCaffery and John H. Bowman; Part 5. Constraints; 21. Changes in Intergovernmental Fiscal Patterns, George F. Break; 22. At What Price? Costs of Federal Mandates Since the 1980s, Marcella Ridlen Ray and Timothy J. Conlan; 23. The Inflexibility of Contemporary Budgets, Bengt-Christer Ysander and Ann Robinson; 24. Re-establishing Budgetary Flexibility, Ann Robinson and Bengt-Christer Ysander; 25. Entitlement Budgeting vs. Bureau Budgeting, Joseph White; 26. Constraint and Uncertainty: Budgeting in California, Naomi Caiden and Jeffrey I. Chapman; 27. Restraint in a Land of Plenty: Revenue and Expenditure Limitations in Texas, Glenn Hahn Cope and W. Norton Grubb; 28. Budgeting Rights: The Case of Jail Litigation, Jeffrey D. Straussman and Kurt Thurmaier; Part 6. Privatization and Contracting; 29. Competition and Choice in New York City Social Services, E.S. Savas; 30. The Need for a Privatization Process: Lessons from Development and Implementation, Bruce Wallin; Part 7. Budget Norms and Ethics; 31. Budgetary Balance: The Norm, Concepts, and Practice in Large U.S. Cities, Carol Lewis; 32. Federal Budget Concept-Bright Lines or Black Holes? Thomas J. Cuny; 33. Accountability and Entrepreneurial Public Management: The Case of the Orange County Investment Fund, Kevin P. Kearns; 34. The Lottery and Education: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul? Charles J. Spindler; 35. The Monster That Ate the United States Senate, Bill Dauster; Index; About the Editor.

    Biography

    Irene S. Rubin received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1977. She taught at the University of Maryland College Park from 1979 to 1981, and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, from 1981 to 2004, when she retired from teaching. She has spent her professional career studying the fiscal problems of federal, state, and local governments. Among her books are Running in the Red: The Political Dynamics of Urban Fiscal Stress; Class Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States; Balancing the Federal Budget: Eating the Seed Corn or Trimming the Herds; and The Politics of Public Budgeting.