Your Tax Dollars at Work
“Your tax dollars at work”
Common commentary on the state of governmental operations. But what if you were given the opportunity to directly affect how your tax dollars were spent? One way of devolving control back to the people is participatory budgeting, pioneered by Brazil decades ago and just beginning its sixth cycle in New York City. New York’s program is the largest in America with district councils opting in to commit at least $1 million of their discretionary, capital budget to participatory budgeting. First, ideas are crowdsourced from the council district’s population, then delegates narrow down the proposals and create concrete proposals, which are ultimately voted on by any district resident over 14 years old regardless of citizenship status and eligibility to vote in general elections.
On one hand, participatory budgeting proposals reflect the kinds of local day-to-day problems that affect New Yorkers’ lives, with suggestions clustering around improvements to parks, schools and public transit. On the other hand, is the scope so limited as to be meaningless? For instance, in the 2015–2016 budget cycle, the proposal with the most votes in my home district, District 40, was voted for by a mere 800 of nearly 150,000 district residents as of the 2010 census (and voters can choose up to 5 projects of interest). Perhaps part of the problem is that the portion of the budget that projects can encompass is limited to small-scale, extremely local and typically no- to low-conflict problems that few people oppose except insofar as funding conflicts with their own pet projects. However, we could receive real insight into residents budgetary preferences on more controversial issues if participatory budgeting were expanded beyond the scope of these local projects, on the city, state and even national level.
Sources:
- Participatory Budgeting. New York City Council. http://labs.council.nyc/pb/
