A view from the metroeast

A VIEW FROM METRO EAST

In the world of letters, budget
writing is an art form unto itself

by James Ylisela Jr.

Journalism students hate budgets. Each fall, Northwestern University graduate students who cover city beats for our Medill News Service trudge unhappily into our Chicago newsroom, lugging thick budget books that contain mind-numbing detail on spending and revenue projections for Chicago and Cook County governments. My charges have the look of the condemned, sentenced to excruciating hours of staring at columns of numbers they have no desire to understand. "If I liked math," more than one student has informed me over the years, "I would have gone to business school."

I love budgets. All those numbers tell stories about how officials are plotting to get their hands on our money and about all the creative ways they've devised to spend it. Politicians are loath to share any real information with the rest of us, but budget documents force them to lay out explicit descriptions of their priorities. So our leaders surround their calculations with a thick layer of protective prose that makes Ulysses read like Dr. Seuss.

Think of it as Abstract Expressionism: Everyone pretends to know what the budget shows, but it's open to interpretation.

In the world of letters, budget writing is an art form unto itself. Think of it as Abstract Expressionism: Everyone pretends to know what the budget shows, but it's open to interpretation. Let's be honest. When trying to understand James Joyce, who hasn't taken a quick peek at their Cliff's Notes? And so it goes with the stream of consciousness known as the annual budget message. Here's a quick cheat sheet to help you interpret local government's version of fuzzy math.

• A budget is always balanced. Every hard-earned taxpayer penny is assigned its rightful place on the spending side of the ledger, and it all comes out perfectly. No matter that the budget has no basis in reality. Never mind that within the next year, the fickle forces of the economy will cause revenues to jump and dip, and spending to rise and fall, prompting our leaders to cut a program or leave a few jobs unfilled. At this very special moment, the planets are aligned, and all budgets come out even.

• There are never new taxes, especially property taxes. We'll get budget enhancements, user fees and alternative revenue sources, but never any actual taxes. In his recent address to the Chicago City Council, Mayor Richard M. Daley assured aldermen that "we can keep our city moving forward and protect taxpayers, without asking them to pay any new or higher taxes or fees."

As I've mentioned before, that's because last year the mayor raised property taxes to the hilt — for the next four years. So, while it's technically true that the 2001 city budget doesn't contain new property tax increases, Chicago's actual property taxes will still rise. That's classic budget craft.

But if officials must raise taxes, they make sure to point out how trivial they are. In this year's budget message, Cook County Board President John H. Stroger Jr. asked county commissioners to "broaden our revenue base with a nominal parking tax of up to $1." This "non-real-estate alternative revenue source" will bring in a mere $19 million next year, Stroger said.

• Government is smaller, but no workers lose their jobs. Instead, officials eliminate positions through "good management," "increased efficiencies" and better technology. Governments no longer downsize; they "right-size."

And those who are still working had better read the fine print. "Next year," Stroger announced, "our employees will start making contributions to their health care costs, and that will help. But we will need to take a long, hard look at salaries and benefits."

• Officials blame the other guy whenever possible. Politicians like to say their budgets would be in even better shape if not for the financial burdens imposed by (fill in another level of government). Cities and counties love to blame the states; states love to blame the feds. The highest term of art here is "unfunded mandates," which means "they make us do stuff for people and don't give us enough money to pay for it."

If you still can't figure out your local budget, turn to the summary page at the front of each budget document. Cook County's Vision 2001, for example, offers this by way of explanation: "The budget is prepared on an encumbrance accounting basis in which the current year's encumbrances are treated as expenditures in the current period on the budgetary operating statements."

Who says bureaucrats can't write?

James Ylisela Jr. teaches urban reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He's also consulting editor of The Chicago Reporter.