Chicago leading a movement of increasingly popular participatory budgeting practice.
Under Roxanne Qualls’ (D) guidance, Cincinnati dove into priority-driven budgeting in 2012. The proposal had mixed reviews and ultimately City Council ended up ignoring much of what the public had to say in order to prevent any cuts to public safety. The concept of participatory budgeting, however, is gaining popularity nationwide, and Chicago is looking to implement it city-wide in the near future. More from NextCity:
Five years after Moore’s district first tried participatory budgeting, three other wards have followed its lead, picking up a practice pioneered 25 years ago in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Since 2011, nine city council districts in New York adopted it. The city of Vallejo, Calif. did the samelast year, as did one council district in San Francisco. The results are promising, with participation levels relatively strong and zero scandals to date.
