PUBLICATIONS

Time for Change
A Practical Approach to Rethinking Police Budgeting

Government Finance Research Center

Shayne C. Kavanagh, Clarence Wardell III, PH.D and Jennifer Park

Contribution from Chris Fabian, Co-Founder and CEO, ResourceX

December 2020

Budgeting with an Equity Lens

Government Finance Research Center

Chris Fabian, CEO, ResourceX

September 14, 2020

Local governments have the potential to make a substantial and lasting impact in creating equity for all the people in their communities. One of the most powerful levers for change is the budget.

Both Tacoma Washington and Denver are aligning policy goals associated with equity with program and service level changes. The foundation of both cities’ success is their clarity of purpose, as it comes to defining what they mean by equity. Read more...

Liberating Resources to Fund a Better Future

American Society for Public Administration, PA Times

Chris Fabian, CEO, ResourceX

December 1, 2019

The challenge facing many local governments is that they have new programs and services that have the potential to create a brighter future for their communities. But they perceive that they don't have the resources to launch these new efforts. Compounding that challenge, the cost of providing current services continues to increase, while budget shortfalls brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic put immense pressures on already constrained resources. Read more...

The Challenges and Promise of Program Budgeting

Government Finance Officers Association

Chris Fabian, CEO, ResourceX
Shayne Kavanagh, Senior Manager of Research, GFOA

October 2015

Program budgeting is an underlying assumption to many of GFOA's budgeting best practices, and being able to connect costs and outcomes associated with specific services is critical to communicating value to citizens. However, very few governments actually do this fundamental piece well for a number of reasons, including poor definition of programs and technical challenges in accounting for programs. Read more...

The Decade of Local Government

International City/County Management Association

October 2013

The next 10 years will most likely be a defining period for local governments, including your own. In a June 27, 2012, Governing magazine article, ICMA Executive Director Bob O’Neill declared this time as “the next decade [for local government] will be a time in which the fiscal woes of federal and state governments will leave local and regional governments on their own, struggling to balance the need for innovation against the necessity of making tough choices. Read more...

Anatomy of a Priority Based Budget

International City/County Management Association
Chris Fabian, CEO, ResourceX
Shayne Kavanagh, Senior Manager of Research, GFOA

March 16, 2011

While most governments today agree on the need to prioritize services and resource allocation, the key issue remains: how do you do that? This is a paper about our methodologies and process which are pioneering in the field of priority based budgeting, as well as some of our most successful stories from the work, namely: San Jose, Lakeland, Walnut Creek, Blue Ash, Grand Island, Chesapeake, Boulder and Fairfield. Read more...