BUDGETS ARE THE HEART OF GOVERNMENT

Budgets are the heart of government. I honestly never thought I’d hear someone compare a budget to a heart in my lifetime. Preston Trigg proves me wrong and helped me understand budgets a little better and how they can help me write a story.


First rule of budgets? They are the root of all good—and evil. As many reporters will tell you, “follow the money” and you can snag a fantastic story. Every government agency must have a budget and in Florida all three levels of government are open to public eyes.

A bit of helpful information contained in budgets is the number of employees and information about the organization as a whole. Budgets are usually approved in late summer or earlier.

There are two and sometimes three basic portions of a budget: revenue, expenses, and debt.

Every budget contains an executive summary, and as reporters we have to be incredibly leery of these. Typically they are written in a way that sheds a light on all the fantastic points of the budget and amazingly skip all the questionable ones. Because of this a good reporter will completely bypass this summary and read the actual budget instead.

Budget officials are excellent sources for a reporter. They adhere to and are bound by their own set of ethical standards and they will typically tip you off if there’s something fishy occurring.

There are three types of expenses: personal, capital, and operating. A personal expense is the money associated with people like salaries and benefits. A capital expense is a onetime purchase of anything over one thousand dollars. An operating expense is usually reoccurring like utilities or leases.

Revenue is money coming into the government, typically by way of taxes, user fees or fines.

When you really look into a budget you can find a great story about how the community will be affected and whether the budget will be beneficial or detrimental.