AGA TOPICS Newsletter

St. Louis County Brings its Budget to the People in Easy-to-Read Format

St. Louis County, in northeastern Minnesota, is the largest county east of the Mississippi River, covering more than 7,000 square miles. While roughly half the population of about 200,000 is clustered around Duluth, the remainder are scattered across smaller towns, mining and farm communities, with an average of 32 people per square mile.

Communicating with citizens is just one of the many challenges government officials face in serving this population every day. But in recent years, the county has been focusing on making budget and government performance information easier to understand, said Linnea Betzler Mirsch, an analyst with the administration department. So when she saw AGA’s guidelines for developing Citizen-Centric Reports, she suggested the county use them to provide budget information to the public. “Having that common framework and structure to use made us say, OK, we’re doing it and we’re doing it quickly,” Mirsch said.

St. Louis County released its Citizen’s Guide to the Budget with its $334 million proposed 2008 operating budget last month. In four pages, the document covers county demographics, the commissioners’ priority areas and budget objectives, progress on those priority areas in 2007, budget highlights, upcoming challenges and the county’s economic outlook—information used by reporters in newspaper articles on the budget. “We’re happy to see that contextual information get communicated with the numbers,” Mirsch said. County commissioners are handing out copies of the report and fielding questions from citizens.

The effort is part of a national project, initiated by AGA, to encourage governments to make fiscal information more accessible to citizens. Budget documents are typically hundreds of pages long—400 pages in St. Louis County’s case—and just too daunting for most people. AGA’s format for four-page reports has been used in small cities—such as Saco, ME—large ones, such as Portland, OR—along with villages, counties and the state of Oregon.

St. Louis County also launched www.stlouiscounty.org/budget, which offers a dollar bill graphic that shows how tax dollars are broken down, basic information about the adopted budget and links for additional information. Mirsch said this specific webpage was viewed about 2,800 times in the first two weeks the budget was released, and the Citizen’s Guide to the Budget was downloaded 200 times.

Mirsch said the county already had the data needed to fill in the report, but the real difficulty came in deciding which areas to highlight on Page 2, “How We Have Progressed.” County infrastructure rose to the top of the list, mainly because the Interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis sparked so much public concern, prompting residents to call the county the next day to ask about the safety of bridges and roads in their own neighborhoods. Discussing future challenges was also difficult to narrow down. “Providing the detail and analysis of economic information county administration feels is necessary and helpful without overwhelming people is a challenge.”

Mirsch said the county is also reporting performance information and has sought public feedback on priority areas and performance in those areas. She said the Citizen’s Guide to the Budget will be discussed in future focus groups as an example of a document that seeks to improve understanding of government operations. Officials will ask: “Is this an improvement? Can it be even better?”

So far, the documents have produced nothing but positive feedback, Mirsch said. “So it’s definitely been a success, and it’s definitely something we will continue to do.”

By: Christina M. Camara