Comparing Budget Process Transparency for St. Paul, MN to Lake County School District
After attending all the budget workshops for the Lake County (FL) School District (LCSD) this past year, I have started searching for better examples of budget transparency & budget management by government agencies. The LCSD system of budget approvals is a mess, and mostly the fault of the outgoing elected Supt., Anna Cowin, and her staff, who use a haphazard system, don't provide complete info to the Board, and do not make it easy for the public to follow the discussions.
So, here is a look at what the City of St. Paul, MN does just to make it much easier for the taxpayer to get meeting notifications and see budget hearing agendas and VIDEOS. LCSD has a total budget of over $650-million, and 5000 employees. St. Paul has a SMALLER budget and under 3000 employees, but provides significantly better systems and information related to budgets for the taxpayers:
1. First, you can go to their website and sign up for email notifications on several different types of subjects, INCLUDING notification about budget meetings. LCSD has NO notification function at all for any issue or meeting - the taxpayer must search the website and find the "special meeting" agendas, open them to see if they include budget topics. The same for the main Board meetings. There is a SECRET meeting notification email of a press release with meeting agendas, but you have to know it exists, and get on the email list used by the Supt. office. Otherwise, you can only look at the calendar on the LCSD website and see if an agenda is posted (not the press release, which lists upcoming and REVISED meeting details). At the very least, LCSD should create a menu item "Meetings" and provide the most current press release, as well as links to the calendar. LCSD also needs an email meeting notification subscription feature that visitors can sign up for.
2. St. Paul uses a very clean website design from a firm specializing in government websites: http://www.civicplus.com/ .
3. I signed up for the SP budget emails, and received a list of planned meeting dates AND budget subjects to be discussed at each specific meeting - the calendar was for several future months. Upon opening the document they sent me, you can go to THIS link and see all the details. You can see the dates and agendas for the upcoming meetings, AND you can see and watch videos of the last TWO YEARS worth of specific budget hearings. In contrast, LCSD doesn't put any committee specific info or agendas on their website. You can only get a meeting agenda, then search it to find a generic term of what will be covered. For instance, SP's budget calendar says the specific dept. budgets that will be reviewed at a meeting, but LCSD doesn't provide a clue, not even at the meetings.
4. I have found that LCSD budget "hearings" are very hard to follow. They don't tell the audience what is being discussed, and refer to handouts only given to the Board, staff and unions. Copies of the handouts are NOT available online or for the public.
5. St. Paul has a specific budget committee with agendas LIKE THIS DETAILED AGENDA while LCSD has no formal budget committee, thus the budget is mostly reviewed in daytime during scheduled "special meetings" that cover many other topics. LCSD needs to establish a formal budget committee and hearing process that is separate from all other Board topics.
6. St. Paul makes VIDEOS available for each budget committee meeting in the last two years. They have a cool video interface and good quality video. (Naturally, this costs some dollars, but if meetings are in the daytime, it is the only way to provide transparency on budgets to people who can only view it at night via the Internet ). The videos are available at the link in item 3 above. The video player used also shows the agenda, and you can click on links in the agenda to jump to the video portion related to the agenda item. WOW!!!
7. The St. Paul meeting list also has a column for minutes of meetings, but apparently they rely on videos and do not provide meeting transcript minutes. LCSD creates minutes of meetings, but they can be a MONTH or more before being ready. In contrast, St. Paul has the meeting video up on the website within two days.
8. LCSD ONLY provides a copy of the "summary" annual budget HERE, but you have to search for it by flipping through menus under "Finance" to locate it. The LCSD budget summary is ONLY 15 pages for the $650-million district. There is no explanation of the budget process or links to budget meeting info. However, St. Paul provides a 497 page main DETAILED budget page HERE that explains the process, then has links to copies of the budget, scheduled meetings for the upcoming year and links to videos of budget meetings. This is separate from the page we described above that just lists budget meetings. LCSD needs to provide a main page with an explanation of the budget process, links to scheduled meetings, budget copies, etc.
9. LCSD commingles normal operating expenses and revenues with capital expenditures. The result is a distorted "budget total" that can fluctuate wildly from one year to the next depending upon what is being spent on school construction. IN CONTRAST, St. Paul provides SEPARATE 130 page DETAILED operating and captial expenditure budgets so the operating expenses can be more accurately compared from one year to the next.
Recommendations
It is time LCSD made the meetings and budget hearings more transparent by:
- adding ability for taxpayers to sign up for email notifications of all meetings and press releases.
- creating a separate budget committee like St. Paul with separate meetings and agendas
- posting of TIMELY (within 1-3 days) meeting minutes or videos on the website
- posting of all supporting discussion documents on the website 3-5 days BEFORE the meeting
- posting of all actual meeting presentations, documents on the website by agenda topic within 3-5 days after the budget hearing
- LCSD needs to split out capital budgets and spending from operating budgets and spending so fluctuating capital spending does not distort year to year comparisons.
- LCSD needs to provide the FULL, detailed budget in both proposed, revised and final versions on the website within 3-5 days after creation. Only providing a 15 page annual budget summary is NOT acceptable. This should be done for both the operating budget as well as a separate detailed capital budget.
- LCSD needs to add a "budget" homepage with a description of the budget process and timeline, with links to related budget documents, minutes, etc.
- LCSD also needs to research transparency methods used by other agencies, identify the best ones, and implement them.
Next time:
- We will examine actual LCSD budget regulatory formats vs other agency easier to use examples
- Discuss quality of details provided for budget decisions
- Evaluation of what is NOT presented to the Board for approval.
vj

Recent Comments