Participatory Budgeting in the United States

Benjamin GoldfrankSchool of Diplomacy and International RelationsSeton Hall University

September 21-22, 2017

Congress Hall, Ufa, Russia

Participatory Budgeting (PB) in the United States

Main points

• Incipient, comparatively small, but growing

• Design & financing too restrictive for major achievements

• Yet important inclusionary role & potential for improvement

• Challenges of funding, equity, and scaling up

Outline

1. Design of PB in the US

2. Finance & Regulation Frameworks

3. Implementation: origins & spread of PB in the US

4. Risks of & Solutions for Implementing PB

5. Achievements & Challenges of PB

Design of PB in the United States

• Usually restricted to certain individual city districts, not entire cities or states• 2 districts in San Francisco; 7 in Chicago, 31 in NYC (out of 11, 50, & 51)

• Focus on small infrastructure projects, not general priorities• 60% of approved projects for upgrading schools or parks (Public Agenda 2016, 27)

• Projects compete for voters• More competition than deliberation

• No criteria to favor the underprivileged

www.portoalegre.rs.gov.br/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Participatory-Budgeting-in-New-York-City

“Participatory Budgeting 2000: Good for the Whole World (or, Good for Everyone)”

From city-wide in Porto Alegre & Latin America… to city districts in NY & US

• Step 1: In public assemblies, residents discuss neighborhood problems, needs, and potential solutions – public projects

• Step 2: Groups of residents develop project proposals with technical help from city officials or civic associations

• Step 3: Residents vote on projects in person or online

• Step 4: The government allocates funds to the top-voted projects and implements them

Design of PB in the United States

Finance & Regulation Frameworks

• Funding restricted to a portion of a district’s capital budget

In New York, total PB spending in 31 districts = $40 million (Su 2017, 70)

= $4.70 per city resident

= Less than half of one percent of NYC capital budget ($16 billion)

• On average, across the US, districts allocate about $1 million per year to PB, roughly $10 per resident (Public Agenda 2016, 19)

Finance & Regulation Frameworks

• PB undertaken at the discretion of city councilors

• Over 20% of PB processes started in 2014 did not continue the following year (Public Agenda 2016, 18)

• Self-regulated by steering committee with support of city officials

• Wide variation in rules across cases

• Generally open to participation of youth & non-citizens

• Residents under 18 eligible to vote in most cases

• Documented & undocumented immigrants eligible in many cases

• 28% of PB voters in NYC in 2014 were foreign-born (Su 2017, 72)

• Little attention to directing resources to poor communities

• In city-wide processes like Greensboro, each district received same amount of money (Public Agenda 2016, 49)

• PB started late in the US compared to the rest of the world• PB started in one district of Chicago in 2009 by a city councilor advised by an

NGO, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), led by Joshua Lerner, who studied PB in Latin America

Implementation: Origins & Spread of PB in the US

Implementation: Origins & Spread of PB in the US

As of 2016, 14 cities in the US had PB in at least one neighborhood or district, almost all aided by PBP

Risks of & Solutions for Implementing PB

Main Risks

• Implementing PB involves significant time for both participants and city officials

• If little funding is dedicated, results will not be worth the time spent and the frustration of participants whose projects did not get funded

Solutions?

• Increasing $ • Higher voter turnout with more money allocated

• Focus on larger projects & programs city-wide

• Include criteria to devote resources to lower-income communities where projects can make larger impact

Challenges and Achievements of PB in the US

• PB is new to the US, making it hard to gauge long-term impacts and use those impacts to convince politicians to implement PB

• Focus on individual city districts, lack of criteria to favor poorer neighborhoods, and low levels of funding make significant achievements difficult

However…

• Inclusion of youth & immigrants

• Engaging citizens in public decision-making

• Voting in PB ranges from less than 1% to 7% of the PB voting age population

• Similar to participation rates in most Latin American cities with PB

• Against gloom of political crises across the globe and in the US –inequality, corruption, voter apathy, distrust in political parties & congress – PB has the potential to recharge citizen participation