B&G Report

Increasingly, the old days of town hall meetings is giving way to electronic means for getting input from residents. Though this means of bridging the gap between decision makers and the people they represent first became common during the pandemic it’s here to stay. With that in mind, we found a new report from PublicInput, a leader in community engagement software for government, to be of particular interest. It showed the findings of a survey conducted in May and June 2022

Several years ago, we worked with the Volcker Alliance to created a guide to resources about state budgeting intended for use by public officials, policy advocates, journalists, academics, and concerned citizens. ​ In late September 2022, the Alliance updated the guide, which will once again provide up-to-date sources of information to provide a clear-eyed state-by-state financial outlook. You can find it by clicking here: ​The guide provides a clickable map, which will lead

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been doing research into the challenges municipalities face when they want to hire a diverse workforce. One important step, it's clear, is to gather the data necessary to see how closely the demographics of the personnel in a city’s agencies – and the entity as a whole – mirror those for the city itself, and to use that information as a performance measure to guide the improvements the city is making in creating workforce diversity. Some places

Yesterday afternoon, at the #ICMA’s annual conference in Columbus Ohio, an announcement was made about an exciting collaboration to advance the use of data in local governments through a new partnership and data network called Government Performance Action and Learning. (GPAL). Its principal founders are #Polco, an on-line community and employee survey company and the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s think-tank, COWS. Additional partners joining GPAL will include: the Inte

By Chris Adams, CEO of Balancing Act, a creator of simulation-based online engagement tools. ​ ​ ​ With the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (which is really more about climate than inflation) this is an important moment for local governments to take advantage of the opportunities of the day to preserve clean air and water for generations to come. In order to do this, they will be best served by getting citizen input in a variety of ways. ​ The last few years hav

In a day when one of the only sure things about the future of state and local finances is that they are unpredictable, a proposal issued by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) earlier this summer is of particular interest. Earlier this summer, the GASB issued an Exposure Draft, titled Certain Risk Disclosures. The project focuses on two categories of risk that could affect the level of services a government is providing or its ability to meet obligations when t