49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore addressed his guests on a warm Chicago evening this week from his backyard, using the steps leading to his Rogers Park home as a stage. It was a fitting setting for the topic of the night: advances in participatory budgeting. Fitting, because participatory budgeting brings together government and people in a way that empowers the public to decide how to strengthen the community. In this case, that community is a single Chicago neighborhood.
The idea behind participatory budgeting (PB) is that public money decisions are funneled through a democratic process where the residents (in this case, in a neighborhood) decide how that money is spent. In the case of Moore, it is the Aldermen’s discretionary budget that is put to the people of the ward. The PB process, then, gives residents real decision-making power over budgets that impact them at the most local level. The end result, according to The Participatory Budgeting Project’s Josh Lerner, is a budget that is more equitable and targeted to community needs. I wrote about the practice itself more extensively here.
Proponents of PB say that putting budgeting power in the hands of residents results in stronger communities and a deepening of democracy. Alderman Moore said that the most important thing an elected official can do is let people lead. And he sees PB as just that: “a transformation of democracy by putting resourcing decisions directly in the hands of the residents.” Further, it not only creates more civically active citizens, it builds new community leaders.
PB has made some significant advancements recently in the wards that have adopted the process. For example, a high school in the Rogers Park neighborhood has given a portion of the school budget to students. They were provided with curricula and tools to usher the students through the PB process. This demonstrates that PB can be applied to all sorts of budgets, and to all types of citizens.
Further, the experimentation and recent advances in PB are not limited to Chicago. Lerner spoke of Seattle youth going through the process for a small portion of city funds. The students decided to focus on services for the homeless, demonstrating that the process has made them aware of their broader civic priorities.
Lerner spoke of the notice that has been taken recently at the federal level. The White House has recognized the power of PB endorsed it as a best practice in civic engagement. In fact, The Participatory Budgeting Project is working with the White House to get federal funding to use the process to allocate HUD funds locally. Imagine this being the way that many agency dollars get allocated at the local level.
I came away from the evening convinced that now is a good time to capitalize on the momentum of PB. Why now? After all, let’s face it, this is an election year. And just as in election years prior, we are inundated with soundbites around citizens losing faith and trust in our nation’s democratic institutions, especially those deemed political.
Part of the reason why I feel now is the right time is that, while PB has been around since 1989, technology has become woven into the fabric of cities and government to the point where it can spread the benefits of PB and accelerate the process. According to Hollie Russon Gilman in her book Democracy Reinvented, “citizen’s declining faith in political participation comes at a moment when remarkable advances in communications technologies offers increased agency…” She goes on to note that new technology “reduces barriers to entry for collective action.”
Further, with society leveraging new ways to connect with each other at a dizzying rate, I believe that there is a genuine desire for people to connect with their government as well. There is no better way to establish that connection than showing citizens that their decisions can directly impact the neighborhoods where they live.
Then there is the notion of trust. It may take years for an individual citizen to see the impact of federal budget allocations, no less policy and administration changes. When a citizen votes on a community-driven proposal, sees that proposal get funded, and then observes the results on his or her own street, library, community center, park, etc., trust is established.
Bringing people to the table to identify problems and solve them together starts to create stronger relationships between elected officials and residents. But it can go beyond the citizen-government relationship. One alderman at the event said that it broke barriers in his segregated neighborhood, giving residents from different areas a reason and opportunity to work together. So there is the citizen-to-citizen trust factor to think about as well. Strike while the iron is hot and you reap benefits at multiple levels.
Not every decision needs to be made in a directly democratic way. That, after all, why we are a republic. But if citizens get acclimated to process by which their ideas are heard, voted on, funded, and adopted, they will accept the power and responsibility required to make this effective. And if the process repeats over and over again, it simply becomes, to quote PBP, “part of the way government works”. Power becomes vested where it belongs: with the people.
