Building better budgets

As with all Institute publications, the views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Institute’s members or Board of Directors. [...] The focus of this Commentary is municipal preparation and are the principal opportunity governments’ annual fiscal footprint: the aggregate for citizens, their elected representatives and the figures for revenue and spending in a fiscal year. [...] At the opposite end of To reiterate, our key premise is that a smart non- the cycle, municipalities publish audited financial expert should be able readily to compare municipal reports that show actual revenue and spending over spending using only the main tables in the city’s the year. [...] In their financial reports, they do not budget, while also producing an “operating” budget record the entire cost of these items as expenses for items to be consumed and expensed during the in the year of the cash outlay, but show the annual year.4 Some municipalities present and vote capital 2 Many provinces also require that municipalities submit their final financial results to its ministry res [...] Their online budgets use originally reported, in the financial report; accounting that is inconsistent with their financial In addition, councillors should vote the budget reports, do not present the municipality’s full fiscal before – or failing that, very shortly after – the start footprint in the headline estimates, and provide of the fiscal year, so they are approving spending no reconciliatio