This is the Cater Daily Podcast for Monday, October 17th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When the entire roster of decision-makers for a city turns over on a fairly regular

basis, it can be hard to stick with a budget plan and

like all politicians, electoral success can depend on engaging in some particularly bad budgeting.

Mark Moses is author of the municipal financial crisis. He argues

that if cities want to maintain long-term and credible plans for fiscal

management, it's important to first draw the lines between what governments should and should

not be doing.

Before we get down into some specific issues related to municipal finance.

In general, are there categories of problems

that cities have, or are all problems

just basically problems of funding.

Well, I think it goes deeper than funding.

I think it goes to what drives the need for funding

and how do municipalities view their funding sources.

And so the, I mean, when I think about the problem of raining in budgets,

or the problem of spending, I think you've got to go of

raining in budgets or the problem of spending. I think you've got to go deeper than

simply spending. You have to look at it's the organization's activities that drive their

costs and their scope and decisions they make

about their scope and mission determine their activities.

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