Amid fiscal uncertainty, evidence-based budgeting comes to the fore

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A good-government nonprofit will host a virtual event designed to help counties determine whether budgetary decisions will, or did, produce the intended outcomes.

Results for America will host a five-week virtual event to help counties navigate fiscal uncertainty, and explore how evidence-based budgeting can help.

The virtual event, called the County Budgeting for What Works Sprint, will run from May 28 through June 25. It will bring participants together for 90-minute workshops once a week, hosted by the nonprofit that helps policymakers deliver better outcomes for their communities. 

The sessions are based on the organization’s County Evidence-Based Budgeting Guide, which it published April 9. It says that evidence-based budgeting can help county officials prove that their decisions will produce or did produce the intended results. The guide lays out five actions for county officials to take, including defining the word “evidence,” implementing templates that collect evidential information, establishing guidelines and targets for use of evidence, and reporting.

Sprint participants will “pick a place to embed [evidence practices], and then we’ll help them develop the implementation plan to carry that forward in their organization,” said Haley Kadish, associate director of local practice at Results for America. “Some organizations may want to, say, embed evidence in a budget request for new funding proposals. … Other organizations might be ready to embed evidence in ongoing funding requests. [We’re] really trying to help counties meet their teams where they are and then move forward with embedding evidence in their own way.”

The sprint and guide come at a time of inflation, decreasing federal aid and general fiscal unpredictability that is putting pressure on county leaders to ensure returns on their investments. And those payments are sizable: Counties invest more than $743 billion each year in programs and services that directly impact residents’ day-to-day lives.

“We’re in a situation where we really need to innovate, be efficient, be transparent,” said Abbe Yacoben, chief financial officer for Washoe County, Nevada.

Yacoben, who helped review the new guide, gave an example of how evidence-based budgeting looks in Washoe County. To study the effectiveness of a housing program, for instance, officials measure at certain time intervals how many people go from a shelter to permanent housing to see if there are improvements and if they can be tied to specific investments, such as hiring more case workers.

“We also look at factors that we don’t have any control over,” Yacoben said. “For housing, we’ll also look at deed-restricted housing units coming online to make sure the supply is there, because if we’re seeing an increase in people leaving the shelter for housing, but there's no increase in housing and they don't have anywhere to go, that may not mean we’re stumbling. That may mean that the housing supply is short, and then that’s a whole different question.”

Although budgeting is not new, an evidence-based approach may be for some counties. And changing processes is hard, especially when data is involved.

“I think that sometimes people are intimidated by using data to drive their decisions, because it’s additional work on the front end, but really, when I look at what we’re doing at the county, by looking at the board’s vision as the North Star and then connecting our programs and projects and outcomes to that, once you do that heavy lift up front, I find that it’s such a relief afterward,” Yacoben said.

The sprint is a good opportunity for counties that aren’t as far down the road with embedding evidence into their budget processes, Kadish said. They will start by working together on small pilot projects so that they can apply it in more and bigger ways later on their own. Evidence-based budgeting checks those boxes. 

“If the Board of County Commissioners asked us if something is successful, we need to be able to answer that with qualitative and quantitative data,” she said. At the same time, “if the public knows what we’re doing, what our logic is, how we’re measuring and feels that they have some input into that…I believe that will enhance transparency as well, not only with finance, but with all of the departments. It seems to be a win-win all around.”

The county’s own economy is in flux, she noted, with revenues from sales tax, which make up about a third of its general fund, flattening, and a cap on property taxes making finding new revenue sources difficult.

Yacoben said she sees this as an opportunity to work smarter. She pointed to how she and her team use Madison AI to summarize budgetary information for reports to the board. 

“Things like that enhance people’s job satisfaction,” she said. “It increases the ability to serve the taxpayer. It frees up people's time to do more complicated duties, which then increases productivity and efficiency. There’s so much technology and people are so hungry to learn new things and try new things, we’re on the precipice of something great.”

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