Participatory budgeting in a time of fiscal crisis

By Daniel Cash, One KC Voice

State and local governments are feeling the effects of the ailing economy. Many have already slashed programs and services to reduce spending. What role should citizens play in determining which programs get cut and which survive this crisis? How can the public be involved in making these difficult decisions?

A 2009 study conducted for the U.K. Department for Communities and Local Government, Empowering communities to influence local decision making, identified a process known as participatory budgeting as “a tool for empowerment that can have a significant impact in a range of contexts and settings and the potential to provide transformational political change.”

Learning from social research practices

By Stephanie Williams, MARC Public Affairs Specialist

What is the relationship between social research and public involvement? And are the two fields mutually exclusive? Not exactly.

For decades, social researchers have made careers and answered questions using quantitative and qualitative research methods. The designs are ideally carefully constructed to ensure that the results are representative of the population being studied and can be generalized to other areas or different circumstances.

Public involvement has long sought to link citizens to decision-making processes on a wide range of topics. Public involvement is many things — an exercise in community cohesiveness, an agent of cultural change, a way to break down barriers among stakeholders — but in and of itself, it is not social research.

But public involvement practitioners may benefit from looking at their methods through the lens of a social researcher. What population am I studying? How can I ensure the voices that need to be heard on this issue are included in the process? Can I make the assumption that people who are similar to my participants feel the same way about the topic we discussed? If the process intends to get a glimpse of a broader community’s feelings on an issue, calculated steps should be taken before the process begins to answer these questions.

By increasing their familiarity with social research practices, public involvement practitioners can broaden their scope of potential approaches to process development. The process itself will ultimately be cleaner and better planned. After all, sometimes when we need to do social research, we instead do public involvement, either because of limiting factors such as time or money, or because it’s what the client expects. As practitioners, we need to be clear enough on the relationship between these two fields to know what the project demands.

The state of the region

By Daniel Cash, One KC Voice Program Coordinator

What is the role of the citizen, in citizen engagement?

We recently completed two major projects that have the potential to have a great impact on quality of life in the Kansas City region over the next 20–30 years. The first, Imagine KC, asked citizens to imagine a sustainable Kansas City — where growth and infrastructure are managed, and personal and corporate behaviors adapt to create an environmentally balanced region. The second, Transportation Outlook 2040, looked at regional policies that will guide future transportation investments.

They were huge successes, with participation from large numbers of citizens in open and candid discussion about difficult issues. In the case of Imagine KC, the conversation reached into about 73,000 households through a live telecast on KCPT public television. Transportation Outlook 2040 engaged citizens across demographic categories and in every county in the region.

Although we had record numbers of participants in these projects, we know some either chose not to participate or didn’t hear about the opportunity to contribute their voices. How do we engage them? Are the voices of some segments of our population simply not heard? What role does individual choice play in engagement?

I recommend you take a few minutes out of your busy day and view the “Song of a Citizen” series of op-eds. Song of a Citizen’s producer, Jeffrey Abelson, has recorded eight great thinkers (so far) who share their thoughts about democracy, or in his words, “re-linking the self to self-government.”

I especially suggest you watch Michael X. Delli Carpini’s (dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at UPenn) piece entitled “Constant Vigilance” and Rick Shenkman’s (historian, NY Times best-selling author, and founder of the History News Network) video entitled “Are citizens up to the job?”

What are your thoughts on these videos? What is the state of citizen engagement in the Kansas City region?

Engaging beyond the local level

From time to time, we’ll highlight opportunities to engage at the national or international level.

In light of last night’s Congressional address, we want to take this opportunity to mention what the President’s office is doing to encourage public participation.

The Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs (OPL-IGA) is promising to “bring new voices to the table, build relationships with constituents.” Visit its Web site to learn more. Here is the purpose of this newly-minted resource, in its own words:

“OPL-IGA takes the Administration out of Washington and into communities across America, stimulating honest dialogue and ensuring that America’s citizens and their elected officials have a government that works effectively for them and with them.”

As a civic engagement program that believes in the inherent value of two-way communication and collaboration, maybe we’re biased … but we see this as a great step forward in improving communication among leaders and constituents at the local level and the national level. Our society has been content for too long to make decisions in silos based upon fractured, piecemeal information.

Echoing the President’s words regarding the stimulus package, perhaps the OPL-IGA’s effort isn’t the perfect solution, but at least we’re doing something, and we might — we just might — be moving in the right direction. We’re at least opening up lines of communication. The goal is to keep that communication positive and constructive rather than opening a forum that breeds discord and distress. In times like these, that would be all too easy to do. These are issues that the staff creating the OPL-IGA’s engagement opportunities will have to carefully weigh while developing their tools. But we look forward to promoting more opportunities to engage through this resource.

And speaking of times like these, check out Recovery.gov. You can give feedback on how you feel your money is being spent in terms of the new stimulus package, and how the recession is affecting you. We hope that this new transparency at the national level will have some carryover to the local level, and that governments everywhere will be providing new ways, even in times of budget shortfalls, to show their work and engage the people they serve.

Take a look and let us know what you think.