FEATURE
ANASTASIIA YANISHEVSKA/OGICHOBANOV/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
QC
FINANCE
Government Money And Citizens’ Trust
A tale of revenues, expenses and the key role they play in a democracy by Robert Inzer
I
’d like to provide a completely different perspective on why your city’s finances are important. There are a few givens. You already know that you are required by law to annually adopt a balanced budget. You know you need reserves for unexpected events (hurricanes, environmental disasters, pandemics, etc.). You know you want to monitor how much you are spending to hold your managers accountable for the resources you’ve provided them. You know you don’t want anyone stealing, so internal controls are important. What you may not have considered is the role municipal finance plays in supporting democracy.
52 QUALITY CITIES | SECOND QUARTER 2021
I’ve spent almost my entire career as a municipal finance professional, working first for the City of Tallahassee as city treasurer and then as clerk of the court and comptroller for Leon County . I recognized the importance of municipal finance as an important and necessary tool to govern but never thought of it as necessary for a democratic society. That all changed for me in the early 1990s. I was in my office in 1992 when I received a call from the Conference of Baltic States asking me to do training for newly elected municipal finance officers in Druskininkai, Lithuania. While I was
well aware that the Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989 and that the Eastern bloc countries were gaining their independence from Russia, that was about all I knew. I advised them that they had made a mistake, that I could hardly find Lithuania on a map. I was generally unaware of their history, culture and governance and could not speak the language. In short, I had nothing to offer them. Before they would take no for an answer, they suggested that I listen to what they wanted me to talk about. They advised me that communism, at least that practiced in the former
