PUBLICATIONS
ResourceX promotes addressing society's challenges and strives to impact change through data-driven, programmatic insights and action.
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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
The need for a new look at police and public safety has wide popular support. However, the path forward is not clear. Local governments need a way to reach good decisions about police funding—the traditional local government budgeting system is not up to the task.
Fortunately, a better approach is described by the GFOA’s Financial Foundations for Thriving Communities. It is based on a Nobel Prize winning body of work about how to make good decisions on shared resources, like a local government budget. These financial foundations consists of five ”pillars.” Read more...

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...