Tradeoffs

Saying "schools matter most to me" is not the same as saying "give schools more money." And neither one tells you whether a particular school program actually works.

Public bodies face limits. Much of their money is already promised by law. Budgets often have to balance. Every dollar spent in one place is a dollar not spent somewhere else. And caring about a problem does not make any one solution effective.

My Vote Forward keeps three questions apart. What matters most? How would you divide a fixed amount? Does this program work? Each one gets its own answer.

Defined terms

Priority. A judgment of relative importance across subjects. See Priorities.

Allocation. A division of a defined, limited resource across uses. In the demo, allocation applies to a defined fictional pool of new funding.

Constrained resource. Any resource with a fixed total: money, staff time, land, or attention.

Opportunity cost. What is given up by choosing one use of a resource over another.

Legal commitment. Spending or action required by existing law, contract, constitution, or court order, which cannot be changed by a budget decision alone.

Mandatory spending. In U.S. federal budgeting, spending required by existing law rather than approved annually.

Discretionary spending. Spending approved through the regular appropriations process.

Effectiveness. Whether a program or policy achieves its stated goal, judged by evidence.

Priority is not allocation

A priority says what deserves attention. An allocation says how a fixed amount should be divided. They often diverge for good reasons.

Hypothetical example. A resident ranks public safety as her top priority. Asked to divide a fictional pool of new funding, she gives most of it to mental health services and youth programs. She believes those reduce crime more than additional spending on the subject she ranked first. Her ranking and her allocation are both sincere and they point in different directions. Treating the ranking as a budget request would misrepresent her.

Methods that ignore constraints also ask a different question from methods that impose them. In participatory budgeting research, Goel and colleagues contrast the commonly used approach, in which voters approve up to a fixed number of projects, with "Knapsack Voting," in which each voter "has to adhere to the budget constraint, thus keeping costs in mind while giving her vote" ¹. When people must stay within a budget, they reveal tradeoffs that an unconstrained list hides.

Real programs use defined pools. Reykjavík's "My Neighbourhood" process divides 850 million krónur between districts every other year for resident-proposed projects ². The pool is defined in advance; residents are not asked to reallocate the city's whole budget.

The framework therefore:

• Asks ranking and allocation as separate questions.
• Applies allocation only to a defined pool, stated in advance, with its source.
• Treats a zero in a confirmed allocation as a choice, not missing data. See Measurement.
• Never converts a priority ranking into a budget recommendation.

Most money is already committed

Public budgets are not blank pages. A large share is fixed by law before any annual decision.

At the U.S. federal level, the Treasury explains that "Mandatory spending, also known as direct spending, is mandated by existing laws," while "Discretionary spending is money formally approved by Congress and the President during the appropriations process each year." It reports that mandatory spending "represents nearly two-thirds of annual federal spending" ³. Changing mandatory spending requires changing the underlying law, not simply adjusting a budget line.

States face their own constraints. It is generally held that every state except Vermont has some form of balanced budget requirement, though the Tax Foundation notes that "there is not a consensus answer to the question of how many states have a balanced budget requirement," that some requirements are only statutory, and that some constitutional ones function mainly as debt limits ⁴. The details vary, but the effect is common: new spending in one area generally requires cuts elsewhere or new revenue.

Voters themselves create commitments. California's Proposition 98, approved by 51 percent of voters in November 1988, added constitutional rules for a minimum annual funding level for K-14 education ⁵. The Legislature "can suspend the minimum guarantee for one year at a time with a two-thirds vote of each house" ⁵; otherwise the guarantee applies to each budget. Whether such guarantees are wise is debated; that they constrain later choices is not.

For the framework this means:

• An allocation exercise must say what part of a budget is actually open to choice.
• A priority that would require changing a legal commitment must be labeled as requiring a change in law, with the authority who could make it. See Proposals.
• No result is presented as if it could redirect committed funds by itself.

Every choice has an opportunity cost

Even within the open part of a budget, resources are limited. Money, staff, land, and the attention of officials are all finite. Choosing to fund one program means not funding another, or raising revenue, or borrowing against the future.

Formal fiscal estimates exist to make these costs visible. In California, for instance, the official summary of a proposed statewide initiative must include an estimate of its effect on state and local revenues or costs, or an opinion on whether a substantial net change in finances would result ⁶. Estimates are not perfect, but they force the question "at what cost?" into the open.

The framework asks every proposal to state its cost, funding source, and whether costs are one-time or ongoing. Where no estimate exists, the proposal says so.

Why effectiveness is independent

How much people care about a subject says nothing about whether a specific program in that subject works. A subject can be urgent while a popular program in it fails, and an unpopular program can work well.

Effectiveness is assessed by evidence. In U.S. education, for example, the What Works Clearinghouse, published on the Institute of Education Sciences website, reviews research on education programs and publishes intervention reports described as "summaries of findings of the highest-quality research on a given intervention or practice in education" ⁷. Whatever one thinks of any particular review, the structure shows that effectiveness is a research question with its own standards, separate from public preference.

Keeping effectiveness independent protects against two errors:

1. Popularity as proof. Treating high support as evidence that a program works.
2. Importance as license. Treating a high priority as a reason to fund anything labeled with that subject.

Hypothetical example. A city's residents rank youth employment highly. Two programs are proposed. One is well known and popular but has no evaluation. The other is less familiar and has been evaluated in other cities with mixed results. The framework shows the priority, the opinions on each program, and the state of evidence for each, separately. It does not merge them into one score.

Evidence

• Research result: budget-constrained voting methods elicit different information from unconstrained ones ¹.
• Existing practice: a defined participatory budgeting pool in Reykjavík ².
• Official fiscal information: the share of U.S. federal spending that is mandatory ³.
• Policy analysis: the variety and uncertain count of state balanced budget requirements ⁴.
• Legislative analysis: Proposition 98 as a voter-created spending commitment ⁵.
• Primary election guidance: California's fiscal estimate requirement for initiatives ⁶.
• Existing practice: an evidence review program for education interventions ⁷.
• Design proposal: separate questions for priority, allocation, and effectiveness. Untested in this framework.

Competing interpretations

"Constraints are political choices, not facts." One view holds that presenting legal commitments as fixed hides the fact that laws can be changed, and that framing budgets as constrained discourages ambitious demands. The framework's answer is to show constraints as current law with the authority that could change them, not as permanent facts.

"Effectiveness evidence is often thin or contested." Many public programs have never been rigorously evaluated, and evidence from one place may not transfer to another. On this view, separating effectiveness could give false authority to sparse research. The framework responds by showing the state of evidence, including "no evaluation found," rather than a verdict.

"People should be able to express priorities without doing budget math." Some argue that requiring allocations excludes people who lack time or confidence. The framework keeps ranking simple and makes allocation optional and separate.

Application to this framework

• Priority, allocation, and effectiveness are three separate questions, never merged into one score.
• Allocation applies only to a defined pool, stated with its size and source.
• Proposals state cost, funding source, one-time versus ongoing costs, and whether they require changing a legal commitment.
• Effectiveness is shown as the state of evidence, with sources and dates, or as "no evaluation found."
• No result is presented as a budget instruction.

Unresolved questions

• How should allocation pools be defined in a way that is realistic but not misleading about the rest of the budget?
• Who determines the state of evidence for a program, and how are disputes handled? See Governance.
• How should evidence from other jurisdictions be weighed? See Cases.
• Does separating these questions improve understanding, or does it confuse participants? See Evaluation.
• How should long-term costs and benefits be shown alongside short-term ones?