BUDGETING FOR CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENTS: HOW PERFORMANCE-BASED BUDGETING COULD HAVE REDUCED BUDGET DEFICITS

The recession of 2007-09 resulted in large budget deficits for municipal governments in the U.S. One of the major causes was the use of traditional line-item budgeting. Research has shown that line-item budgeting is particularly ineffective during times of fiscal turbulence and uncertainty as policy-makers tend to overestimate anticipated revenues during recessionary periods while underestimating the growth rate of expenses. Further complicating the budgetary process is the large, and growing, amount of employee health care and pension unfunded liabilities. Municipal governments that employed performance-based budgeting, however, experienced budgetary deficits that were significantly smaller and whose duration was measurably shorter, suggesting that this process of budgeting provided significant advantages.