Pad 505 Assignment 3 Presenting the Budget

Budgeting is perhaps the most essential process involved in the United States government. While this process seems to exist only in the background, it is, in reality, what allows all other processes of government to function as they do. In order to satisfy the most necessities of modern society, changes must be made to each of the three major categories of the budget: the big five, the middle five, and the little guys.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The budget process for Indiana is unique. The budget for Indiana’s state government is prepared by numerous parties over a biennial time period, meaning every two years. The fiscal years begin on July 1st and end on June 30th of the following year. The budget process is comprised of four individual stages: preparation, adoption, implementation, and the audit.

Citizens of the United States are legally required to pay taxes and follow the laws of their government. Thus far, with only having four weeks of interning at the House of Representatives, I have learned a lot about governmental accounting and politics. For example, one of the biggest complaints of American people is their increasing tax rates. Every year, the government has the responsibility of negotiating and preparing a budget for the upcoming years based primarily on taxpayer dollars. There is a long process that goes into creating a budget and allocating appropriations. But what happens when a major event occurs that cannot be appropriated ahead of time? This research paper will explore the budget process and how taxpayer dollars contribute, how appropriations are made, and what happens to the budget when the nation experiences an unexpected natural disaster or terrorist attack.

According to Smith and Lynch (2004), expenditures and revenues represent as essential guidance for all departments and organizations to prepare a reasonable budget. Also, revenues and expenditures give specialist a reliable and valid opportunity to estimate the needed resources for the future (Smith and Lynch, 2004). This means successful guesses will be effectively proposed in the building the budget. Moreover, expenditures and revenues play an important role in building a balanced budget in terms of the State and local government, because they help the specialist to make educated decisions (Smith and Lynch, 2004). Equally important, is the necessity of expenditures in creating alignment with econometric models. According to Smith and Lynch, "… at the state level, analyst directly relate service expenditures to the state economy, and they relate education and criminal justice expenditures to state demographics and economic factors. They use models not only to predict likely expenditures but also to help policy makers understand the most sensitive factors that influence each functional activity". As Smith and Lynch mention, revenues and expenditures create a solid base of accountability culture inside any business whether it is private or governmental because each

The City of Indianapolis uses a performance budget. The budget reflects resource input and service output for various departments of the city. It creates a connection between the funds provided to the public, and shows the outcomes of the services. This way, it breaks down into departments and helps in evaluating spending from every department in a more in-depth way. The budget format creates clear standards by which to measure success, which is evident in its simplistic nature. The structure makes it easy to understand the key variables that inform each department’s allocation in line with the need to meet the city’s development agenda. It promotes program efficiency and ensures that the program is cost-effective, which ensures efficiency and effectiveness of resource allocation. It ties expenditures to each program in relation to the specific goal developed for the program, which helps immensely in ensuring that resource utilization align with the goal, thereby promoting program accomplishment. This budget makes it easy for the organization to modify resource allocation for various tasks, depending on whether they want to upscale or downscale the program.

The budget process in the United States begins with the development of the presidential draft of the state budget, which contains recommendations for prioritizing federal government. This document outlined the budget proposals for the next financial year and may propose changes to volume

Resources are the assets of the organisation. They include human, physical, financial, intangible and structural resources. In addition, these resources determine how much of operational plan can be implemented and how far the implementation can proceed.

COSTS: The program costs are mostly allocated to personnel and contractual services because of the nature of the program. The Social Services Department would have one full-time equivalent employee charged 35% of the time to the program to oversee the operations for the next three years. In addition to the full-time staff member, a part-time staff member will be hired to perform all functions related to carrying out day to day duties related to but not limited to contracted personnel scheduling for training sessions, classroom and equipment set-up, ordering supplies, recordkeeping of stipends associated with travel for offsite visits.

Districts may choose different types of budgeting systems. Sorenson & Goldsmith (2013) note that the most common types of budgets are; function/object budgeting, school-based budgeting, and zero-based budgeting (p. 134). Function/object budgeting is popular to use because it is aligned closely to FEIMS, however, this type of budgeting lacks detail for assessing the effective of programs which is critical in this budget model. Zero-based budgeting considers the priorities based on funding, and evaluates each program every year, but is very time-consuming to train the committee to analyze and account for each item. Lastly, school-based budgeting promotes a decentralized approach. “Such a budgetary system is advantageous because it enables the school-site team to exert significant influence not only on the budget development process but also on school policy and programmatic decisions”

A budget is a document that is used for planning financial information for activities that will occur in the future (Achim, 2014). For higher education organizations, budgets explain and manage the funds that are provided by stakeholders and show how funds are used to support the organizations’ missions (Palmer, 2014). Different budget strategies provide information on how funding assists the organization’s goals (Palmer, 2014). The budget process entails the budget policy, the limiting factor, budgets for revenue, creating the first draft of the budget, the negotiation process of the budget, the review of the budget, the final approval of the budget, and the final budget review (Achim, 2014). (108 words)

This paper will explain the role of an elected public official at the local city level. This city manager has the task of allocating a budget of $10 million dollars that will be matched up to 100% percent if federal standards are met. The report will be prepared for the mayor and city council. The report will address fund accounting, and financial controls. Other topics that will be address are control and management of public expenditures. The report will also explain government financial reporting requirements and analyzing financial statements as well as budgets and applying budgets as disciplinary process. Financial resources are vital and the management of those resources are essential for all organization to thrive.

It motivates the executives to define the basic objectives of the company, it gives a structure to the company by defining the responsibilities of each of the parts that forms the organization, it motivates and rises the participation of all workers of the company, it obligates to maintain a control document with historical data, it facilitates managers the use of resources, and it gives periodic evaluations and analysis.

A budget can be described as an allocation mechanism that the Government uses to distribute a nation’s resources amongst different economic sectors that serve or are existent within a country. The major source of Government resources distributed is taxes paid by resident or citizens of a given country. A budget is one tool that has a lot of political and economic significance since it controls a Government’s expenditures and it lays out a path that the economy will follow or at least try to follow in a given year.

Different types of budgets have been developed keeping in view the different purpose they serve. Budgets can be classified according to: