A recent news about Vallejo, the first large California city that declared bankruptcy, provides interesting example of how members of community can take part to solve the problem of the city. The Northern California city’s Participatory Budgeting process empowers citizens to decide how to spend a portion of a public budget.
Vallejo became one of the first cities to ever implement Participatory Budgeting precisely because direct democracy is at the core of the process and the idea requires everyone in the room to know the realities of city budgeting inside and out. By getting its citizens to be involved in the budget process, the city hopes to restore trust and confidence in the local government, and make the whole budget process more transparent.
The California Forward Transparency Portal is devoted to presenting methods that encourage civic engagement by identifying and promoting best practices that raise the bar in government budgeting and decision-making. Participatory Budgeting (PB) reflects such principles and the process certainly increases transparency by cultivating a closer relationship between elected representatives and their constituents.
Councilwoman Brown brought Participatory Budgeting to Vallejo and has been an early proponent and advocate of this process in American cities since 2008. She embarked on educating and urging her colleagues on the dais to consider the approach as a pilot program due to revenues available from Measure B, a local tax measure approved by voters. This, according to Ms. Brown, is a way of giving back to the community and improving the image of Vallejo – from one of being the largest city to declare bankruptcy first in California to becoming the first city to implement Participatory Budgeting. Setting a new first gave Vallejo the opportunity to move on from a period of financial turmoil, and it appears the community was eager for such an opening to get involved and restore faith.
Vallejo is now holding a series of public assemblies which serve as brainstorming sessions. In a few months, the ideas presented by the public will be turned into concrete budget proposal.
