The Power of Words. Part 2: Writing better budget stories

4/15/98
Part 2: Writing better budget stories

Part 1: Twenty tips for covering and writing about budgets

      Spring is budget season in New England and this is the second of two offerings about how to write better budget stories. Recently Dave Herzog and other writers at the Providence Journal discussed way to improve stories about municipal finances. Here is what they came up with. Last week's installment offered a list of 20 tips on how to write better budget stories.
       Dave said that reporters do not enjoy writing about municipal budgets. We equate it with going to the dentist. It's something we know we have to do, we don't like doing it and it's pretty painful while we are doing it. Dave said he wanted to talk about different approaches in doing budget stories, ones that are more creative and serve your readers better.
       It pays to become an expert in what you are doing. If you do not understand it, you can't explain it to readers. That's the problem with budget stories, there is too much of a surface treatment. You should look at budget reporting as a process. It is something you can do year round and they should not necessarily be number stories.
       What is a budget? We think of a budget as a piece of paper with numbers on it. It's an operating plan. It sets out the vision of the school or town. You learn what your political leaders value. What do they spend money on. A budget is a very political document.
       Dave recalled writing a story about Allentown, Pa. (where he used to work) and the amount of money it had spent on the arts. He saw a page on arts grants and looked back at 10 years of budgets. Remember, a budget document is really political. You need to look for the things that are not in the budget. Why do people keep raising a particular issue that's not in the budget.
       One simple rule of thumb is that spending can not exceed the amount of money you are taking in. Keep an eye on spending. Do not refer to things as revenue and expenditures. Keep those words in town hall. Say spending and income.
       Keep your budget right on your desktop, next to your style book and dictionary. You should be referring to it throughout the year. When a town takes an action, does it conform with the budget plan? Look for budget requests by department heads. Writer Ellen Lieberman wondered if it is possible to obtain these requests. Dave said that budget requests probably are not considered a public record, but a budget request can be a good way into a story. Ellen said one department chief volunteered information about her budget request and wound up getting fired over it because the mayor was so upset about what she did.
       Dave said that the biggest budget story is the presentation of the budget. This is difficult to do because there is just so much information. Don't write the end-all story on this day. Just get the basics. There will be opportunities for followups. Concentrate on tax impact.
       Reporter Elliot Krieger said he still see's stories that only mentions the amount that the tax rate is going up. I think it is really key to translate it into the impact on a home assessed at $150,000, the percentage change, the amount of the tax rate before and after.
       Dave advised to look at fees and enterprise funds, which are clearly definable services such as trash hauling, water and sewer services. A lot of times there are a lot of increases there when there are not increases in other parts of the budget. Enterprise funds are supposed to be self contained, with no transfers.
       Rich Salit, another writer, volunteered that a lot of mayors and town managers are happy to sit down in advance and discuss the budget. He did this in Cranston, and clearly the mayor had his point of view that he wanted to get across, but it was still very helpful in understanding the budget.
       Dave said that for a day-after story, if you do have a wish list from department directors, you can compare it with the budget. You can tell who the winners and losers are.
       Reporter Ged Carbone said that one year the town he was covering decided not to spend money on a new police cruiser. So he went and did a story about the condition of the police cruisers. It was a good story, but police still did not get their new cruiser.
       Ellen Lieberman said she always hears from gadflys warning about slush funds. But how do you find such funds?
       Dave replied that one place to look would be in the mayor's office, such as a position that he does not plan to fill. Or look for spending items that were not actually spent in previous years. However, reporters agreed this is difficult.
       You can look at check registers, which is the recording of every check. But you need to really know what you are looking for. The same with fund transfers.
       Pete Lord, a writer, said that in Cranston reporters looked at the expense account of school committee members and they went in and looked at all of their vouchers. School committee members were charging babysitting fees, and donations made at funerals, to this account. It made quite a story. The reporters started looking at this because they wondered why each committee member needed $2,000 a year for expenses.
       Lynn Arditi, a writer who helped Dave lead the discussion, said in Pawtucket she began looking at the snow plowing budget. She looked at the spending for each year and compared it with the actual snow amounts each year. There was no correlation. You know they are just tucking extra money there so that they can have some cash.
       Dave said that during the rest of the year, go out and see what impact the budget is having on the city. Is the grass being cut at the parks, are the roads being repaired.
       Peter Lord recalled that another writer, Tony DePaul, went through a high school and described the conditions. He found that students had to do their dissection on rotten frogs, because the school did not have money for new ones. That image was very effective in conveying the problems at the school.
       Dave said that there are several documents reporters should be aware of, including:
       -- Annual Reports. The official feel-good document put out by the town, describing the good things that are happening.
       -- Audited Financial Statements. This will tell you what is really happening in the town in regards to its finances. It will say if there are any deficits, pending litigation, retirement account problems and it will include the management letter. The latter describes problems the auditors have found, and often these recommendations are repeated year after year. Look also for adjustments, when they go back in time and switch spending or income. This may be a tip for how they messed up.
       -- Bond Official Statements. Whenever a town needs to borrow money for a big capital project, they float a bond and they need to prepare this document. It includes demographics and the financial condition of the town, to help investors in deciding whether to invest in the bonds.
       -- Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council Reports. This group analyzes property tax rates in all municipalities in Rhode Island, equalizes them, and then makes comparisons.
       -- Credit Reports. Moody's and Standard & Poor both prepare reports on the financial condition of a town. They can be extremely helpful. A good textbook on municipal finance might also be helpful.
       And don't be afraid to use computer assisted reporting techniques in analzying data from budgets. Even if you have to punch the information into the computer. Dave said his first computer assisted reporting project involved typing in data so that he could make some comparisons. It took four hours, but it was worth it.

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