In 250 words.
In both good economic times and in bad, public managers will often need to review their budgets and suggest areas in which their budgets may be reduced. Read Question 1 at the end of Chapter 4 in your text and propose how you would approach reducing the School of Public Affairs at Enormous State University budget by 5%. Begin with the strategies offered in your text and try to find articles or information on how cutbacks are handled in your city or state.
This is Question 1 at the end of Chapter 4:
The data in the following table present revenues and expenditures by categorized type for the School of Public Affairs at Enormous State University. As with most elite programs at state universities, the school has accepted missions of teaching, research, and service to the university, state, and nation. The data include budgeted and actual data for three years and the proposed budget for fiscal 2008-2009. Your task as a budget analyst is to learn as much as possible about the operations of the school and its plans for the budget year just from these data. In particular, you should look for trends, changes in shares and ratios, and the categories that are particularly important in driving the finances of the school. A few notes about the reported data. First, the state appropriates money to the university and then the central administration distributes that money to the various operations on campus. That is the source of the state appropriation number-it has been assigned to the school, so this number for 2008-2009 is an actual. All others are part of the request. Second, the central administration charges the school for the services that it provides (central library, computer networks, etc.).
This charge is the assessment number in the table. It is based on school operations during the year so it is an estimate and it counts as a negative component in school revenue. Your answer to this exercise should include both your conclusions from your analysis and a list of questions that your analysis has led you to have for the person who prepared the 2008-2009 budget. Suppose the central administration has asked for each school to reduce its spending by 5 percent. Where would you suggest that the school turn to make that reduction?