Participatory Budgeting
Contributors
Audrea Chen is a student at Columbia University studying Political Science and Statistics. As a native New Yorker, she is interested in exploring income inequality and sustainability infrastructure. She has previously interned at the Queens County Supreme Court under Justice Phillip Hom and corporate law firms in NYC.
Key things to know
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a process through which community members decide directly how a portion of a public budget is spent. Over 3,000 participatory budgeting processes exist around the world, with most of these taking place at the municipal level.
PB gives communities the opportunity to directly influence the capital budgeting process. As an institutional initiative, it is highly adaptable to local needs, starting with a baseline sum of money divided among various projects.
PB initiatives allow residents to identify and express their preferences for local projects, providing a new channel of public participation in municipal or citywide planning and increasing engagement in civic processes.
Participatory budgeting started in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989 as an effort to reduce child mortality. Porto Alegre has since served as a template for other cities worldwide and has one of the largest budget allocations of any city using PB.
Case study
The People’s Money, New York City:
In New York City, participatory budgeting was introduced by four City Council members in 2011. This process allowed residents in their districts to allocate part of their district’s capital discretionary funds into various community projects, each costing around $50,000 with projected timelines of about 5 years. Residents 11 years and older, regardless of immigration status, could vote either online or in person at different sites across the city.
The PB initiative was extended in November 2018 when one million New Yorkers voted in a citywide referendum to create a ballot initiative through the 2018 Charter Revision Commission. The ballot initiative mandated a yearly citywide PB program using mayoral expense funding. The mandate is outlined under Section 3202, Chapter 76 of the New York City Charter, which created the Civil Engagement Commission (CEC). The CEC facilitates idea generation and operationalizes PB in NYC, establishing the People’s Money initiative, advisory committees, and community-based committees.
The People’s Money is the citywide PB initiative in NYC which draws funds from the Mayoral expense funding. City Council members opt in to participate in the initiative and residents in their districts are allowed to participate in the referendum.
As larger financial commitments have been made by the city, the People’s Money initiative has expanded its reach across the five boroughs. The city has also funded specific "equity" neighborhoods, which were identified by NYC’s Taskforce on Racial Inclusion and Equity as being most impacted by COVID-19 and having the highest levels of socioeconomic disparities. These neighborhoods received $50,000 to fund the top-voted initiative in those areas.
In New York, significant efforts have been made to ensure the accessibility of the initiative at all phases—from idea generation to voting itself.
This includes: allowing New York residents ages 11 and up vote regardless of immigration status, hosting in-person and virtual workshops for residents to generate ideas together with help from CEC officials, allowing over 19 forms of ID to prove one’s residence in a district, having ballots be translated into 12 languages, having both online and in person voting, and having a wide array of voting sites across all 5 boroughs.
The People’s Money initiative has transformed the budgeting process by increasing accessibility and fostering a deeper connection between citizens and government projects, thereby forcing a greater level of accountability on the side of the government as residents follow along with the execution of their initiatives.
In 2024, 29 out of 51 New York City Council members led PB initiatives in their districts. While the city continues to work on expanding the reach and impact of PB, the initiative has grown significantly over the past decade.
How to Implement
Implementing participatory budgeting at any level requires building a framework to regulate relationships between government officials and constituents, clearly defining the scope of the projects both financially and strategically, and establishing a monitoring structure.
Using the Framework Provided by Participate NYC:
Phase 1: Idea Generation
The PB process centers constituents, placing their ideas and priorities at the heart of decision-making. To engage residents, various measures can be taken to ensure their comfort with sharing ideas and fostering open, honest discussions about ongoing community issues.
Workshops can be held to inform residents about the city’s budgeting cycle and its impact on PB, as well as provide a space for residents to identify community needs and brainstorm solutions.
This process can also be conducted online. The NYC website allows residents to submit ideas, prompting them to answer questions about which specific neighborhoods should be targeted, which racial, social, and cultural groups the ideas focus on (from a provided list), an overview of the challenge being addressed, and a proposed solution. When posted online, other residents can endorse or track the progress of ideas, seeing reactions and contributions from the community.
Phase 2: Idea Evaluation
Clear guidelines must be established for which project ideas will be accepted, ensuring that the participatory nature of PB is upheld. This must be balanced with considerations of feasibility and costs, which help turn ideas into actionable projects with clear direction.
Resident and subject-matter expert committees can work together to narrow down the ideas that will be presented on the ballot for voting. Budget experts may also be brought in to refine proposals and ensure that the projects reflect a variety of community needs.
Phase 3: Constituent Voting
To ensure that all voices are heard, accessibility measures must be implemented. The largest challenge of PB initiatives is ensuring constituent accessibility at both the idea generation and voting stages.
Accessibility concerns include: language barriers, voting methods (online or in person), physical accessibility at polling locations, timing and scheduling, and the level of constituent civic awareness before and during the voting process.
Proposed solutions include: expanding the languages that the ballots are provided in, moving voting online so more residents can vote on their own time and without physical challenges, introducing workshops and classes about participatory budgeting in schools and in communities to increase voter awareness of what can be achieved through participatory budgeting.
Phase 4: Evaluation and Project Implementation
Winning projects are incorporated into the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, and stakeholders and community groups oversee the implementation of these projects by city agencies.
Potential pitfalls
While community members fuel the project ideas, filtering their proposals through government budget analysts can alter the ideas in a way that undermines the ethos of PB and may "sideline local knowledge." Critics have referred to this as “managed participation” disguised as “collaborative co-production.”
Challenges in reaching and representing underrepresented communities persist, as generating interest from residents can be difficult. Increasing project funding has been suggested as a way to "generate excitement," but resources for doing so are limited in many cities.
Annual PB cycles may limit interest in voting for projects that take longer to complete. As PB gives constituents a greater stake in decision-making, modest outcomes may increase their sense of “disillusionment” with PB initiatives, especially when projects are constrained by short timelines.
