The Human Cost of Public Budgeting

Rich Meagher:

This is RVA’s Got Issues from VPM. I’m Rich Meagher. It’s budget season in Richmond, but as usual, times are tight for both the city and Richmond Public Schools. And so, there’s talk about budget cuts.

Adam Rose:

And to my shock, I saw cost cutting priority: close Richmond Virtual Academy, set up as a pandemic era experiment, no federal funding.

Rich Meagher:

Budgets are about numbers. They’re about programs like that Richmond Virtual Academy or RVA. This is an online school created by RPS during the pandemic, which RPS proposed might be cut from this year’s budget. But budgets and budget cuts are also about people. People like Adam Rose.

Adam Rose:

And I thought, that doesn’t seem right. That’s not really my experience and that’s not my understanding of the story.

Rich Meagher:

To Adam, the Richmond Virtual Academy is more than a line item, a throwaway leftover from the pandemic. His son enrolled when his wife was battling cancer. His daughter attends now after tough times at other schools. In both cases, Adam says it made a huge difference for his family and not just his.

Adam Rose:

When we went to the graduation, those families were beaming with pride, I mean, hooting, hollering, crying, hugging. It was the warmest thing I had seen and I saw from these kids how important RVA was the best, if not only, option for these kids, uh, to graduate and to give them purpose to give them a future.

Rich Meagher:

And there are some kids who really don’t have a lot of other options, where the virtual academy is maybe their best shot.

Jacqueline Wilson:

For him, what we have set up is a big screen TV, a 55-inch big screen TV.

Rich Meagher:

Take Jacqueline Wilson and her 13-year-old son.

Jacqueline Wilson:

He uses a pointer to answer questions on screen because if we were to put a laptop in front of him, he’d swipe it away.

Rich Meagher:

Jacqueline’s son has special needs, and he’s been enrolled in the Richmond Virtual Academy since the very beginning.

Jacqueline Wilson:

He loved to learn, and he wanted to show his classmates and his teachers what he knew. So I just watched him blossom academically and want to be engaged academically.

Rich Meagher:

When RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed this year’s budget, it wasn’t just the virtual academy that would be impacted. He proposed cuts to summer school, asking teachers to cover more of their health benefits, eliminating administrative staff. Kamras said he supports the virtual academy. He just doesn’t know if there will be enough money for it, among all these other cuts. But Adam and Jacqueline wanted to make sure.

Adam Rose:

We started asking questions. We started looking at research. We started looking at Virginia Department of Education data.

Jacqueline Wilson:

You have a program that has reduced truancy. You have a program with 100% graduation rate. Why would you shut down something successful?

Rich Meagher:

So they and other parents, students, and staff, went to a March school board meeting to let everyone know what the virtual academy meant to them. Like this student, Reniya.

RVA Student:

Before RVA, school was overwhelming for me. I didn’t feel safe, confident, or capable. When I switched to RVA, I finally felt seen. Learning from home gave me peace. It gave me focus. It gave me room to breathe without fear of bullying. My confidence grew, my anxiety faded, and my academic performance soared.

Rich Meagher:

The message? Find a way to keep funding.

Adam Rose:

And we had some incredible RPS board members who started to champion and understood what this meant.

Rich Meagher:

So far, it seems like their work has been helping, but we just don’t know if funding for Richmond Virtual Academy will be restored. So they’re still unsteady.

When you talk to Adam and Jacqueline, you really get the sense that they’re on an emotional rollercoaster, that this budgeting process is dark and mysterious. And that’s the thing about budgets. We talk about them every year. We know they’re important, but they’re not just numbers. Budgeting, it’s confusion. It’s heartbreak. It’s a fight. It’s maybe… everything? Today, on our show, what do budgets really mean? What do they tell us about our government’s priorities, about politics, about ourselves?

Jacqueline Wilson:

That has to be just as important as the dollars, the wellbeing of your most vulnerable students.

Rich Meagher:

That’s coming up on RVA’s Got Issues.

This is RVA’s Got Issues. I’m Rich Meagher. If we wanna know what budgets mean to try to solve this budget mystery, we thought we’d talk to someone who teaches others about budgets. Elliott Fullmer is my colleague and friend at Randolph Macon College, a fellow professor of political science there, although our students like him better.

Elliott Fullmer:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Welcome Elliott.

Elliott Fullmer:

Thank you. Great to be here.

Rich Meagher:

So Elliott, you, you teach a class at, at Macon about the federal budget. Now, you and I are politics nerds. I don’t think I’m insulting you by saying that, but, but what brought about this, this particular kind of, of nerddom?

Elliott Fullmer:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Like how did you get into federal budgets?

Elliott Fullmer:

Sure. I, um, back in 2018, you know, I looked at kind of our students and our curriculum and I realized that I was spending a lot of time on parties and campaigns and elections and democracy reform. All things that I think are super important and that I enjoy, but I thought we needed a little bit more focus on what does the federal government actually do. And I got to thinking about this sports analogy that, um, elections, campaigns, they’re really like the draft where we pick players. The game, that’s governing. That’s what happens after the election. And so I wanted a course that could just really zero in on the programs that the federal government supports, social security, Medicare, Medicaid. We talk about how the federal government funds education and housing and infrastructure and how it manages federal lands, uh, what we tax, what we don’t tax-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

… how that’s changed and, and what some of the debates about that are.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. I mean, so that’s kind of what I, you know, wonder about here, right? The budgets, w- when people’s eyes glaze over when they think about budgets, right, they think about them as a, as a bunch of numbers, but they, it means more than that.

Elliott Fullmer:

It means everything. You know, I just think about my day today. Uh, this morning I woke up and, uh, I took the trash and recycling out. Um, whether or not that gets picked up on time, how often it gets picked up, that’s a reflection of the city of Richmond’s budget decisions.

Rich Meagher:

Mmm.

Elliott Fullmer:

Uh, I got in my car, I drove on federal, state, and municipal roads this morning. The quality of those roads, their safety, uh, how much traffic they can sustain, that all has to do with, uh, some government’s budget choices. Um, budgets determine whether or not our elderly parents have the healthcare they need. If our children go to good schools, pretty much budgets touch every area of our life, whether we like it or not.

Rich Meagher:

Sometimes it seems like, you know, when you look at an actual budget document, right, the federal budget is like, what, a thousand pages or something and the local budgets are, are big like that too. It seems like you need a PhD or maybe at least an accounting degree to, to figure it out. For example, earlier in our show, we talked to Sarah Abubaker, she’s a city council member.

Elliott Fullmer:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

And she talks about how she’s a spreadsheet nerd, like she sleeps with the budget binders, like clutched to her chest.

Elliott Fullmer:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Um, but when you teach this, like you told me you don’t actually teach it like you’re teaching accounting, right? You don’t teach just the numbers, right?

Elliott Fullmer:

Right. Uh, this is very much a political science class, not an accounting class-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

… not a business class. And so I pull out Excel once in a while, but for the most part, I am, uh, trying to distill for them what these programs actually do in a policy sense and how we fund them. I ask them to, whatever semester we’re doing the class to pretend it’s the next fiscal year and offer a series of budget reforms. And I ask them to suggest budget reforms when it comes to our, uh, mandatory programs, big programs like social security, Medicare, uh, and then some of our discretionary ones like transportation, defense, uh, education. So I’m asking them to take a look at our, um, Medicare program and, you know, are we doing it most efficiently? Should, should it cover more people? Should it cover more drugs? Um, when it comes to defense, are there things we should change with how we procure weapons from defense contractors?

Uh, students have come up with some really innovative ideas to cover things like paid leave or universal childcare. Uh, I’ve seen proposals to dramatically increase our infrastructure spending, some interesting ideas about taxing, trying to show them that budgets aren’t just numbers, they’re not just line items, they’re not just that part of the news you ignore. Uh, they actually are the things that will often impact you more than anything else.

Rich Meagher:

So you heard from Adam and Jacqueline at the top of the show, they’re, they’re grappling with this very real threat, right? Whereas it seems like the city, school leaders sometimes, it’s a little more abstract to them, right? Because you’re talking about one program among many, one cut or type of cut among many. It’s almost like there’s something about budgeting, particularly public budgets where, you know, even the city of Richmond, we’re talking billions of dollars. The federal budget, we’re talking about trillions of dollars, right? It, it seems like it’s dehumanizing or it’s too abstract for us to get a, get a handle on. Does that seem to resonate with you?

Elliott Fullmer:

Yeah. And I think it’s hard, uh, sometimes to, to wrap your head around it all because it is very complex and it needs to be, um, and it’s, uh, it has so many layers that I think it’s hard to, for people to access, right? Even professionals to access. And so I think it’s very useful to look at it from the perspective of specific programs, real people, how they’re affected. The hard thing is always that at least at the state and local level, budgets can be somewhat of a zero sum game, right? Where, you know, you, if you fund one thing, you often can’t fund another unless you’re willing to raise more revenue, which doesn’t always bring the most enthusiasm out of people.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Let’s raise taxes. It’ll be easy. Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

Right.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. It’s not exactly something people wanna say. Um, yeah, and it’s not like that at the federal level, right? ‘Cause the federal level, there’s always, you can always print more money or do whatever the magic that they do to borrow money at the federal level.

Elliott Fullmer:

Yes. Uh, the burden of balanced budgets that states and localities face is not one the federal government, um, seems to worry about. Deficits are common, and not just in the United States, but around the world, and so at the federal level, you often have the luxury of, of doing more now than you can pay for it today.

Rich Meagher:

But even with the federal level, you know, where, you know, you, you, you can do a bit of deficit spending, there’s some people who, who say like, “We can’t afford this. We can’t afford to do this. ” Um, and of course, as you said, like the zero sum game at the state and local level where you really do have to balance the budgets. At the same time, right? Sometimes people push back and then suddenly the money can be found, right? It’s like, “Well, we can’t afford…” Well, now we can. Like, we’ll find some way to do it. I, I mean, sometimes it seems like when a public official is saying, “We can’t afford this, ” what they’re actually saying is, “We can’t afford this. “

Elliott Fullmer:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Like, “I don’t like this thing, and I’m gonna use deficit talk and expenses talk and money talk to try to sync something that I’m really opposed to for other reasons.”

Elliott Fullmer:

Yes, uh, absolutely. I have these slides I show in my class where I show political officials from all across the spectrum. Um, everybody from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders to Paul Ryan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, pretty much anyone that you can recall in American politics at some point has talked about how we can’t do certain things because of the deficit. And you’re absolutely right. The deficit often serves as a useful tool to build opposition to things that you don’t like for other reasons, right? If you don’t like a policy on ideological grounds, but it’s popular, well, just say we can’t afford it, right? So while it might be true that actually there are tough decisions we have to make and without raising more revenue, we, we can’t afford certain things, it’s also true that we shouldn’t just take that argument at face value.

Rich Meagher:

So like right now we’re, we’re looking at Adam and Jacqueline and the, the RVA, the virtual academy, and they feel that the school administration, maybe the city, is just not making this thing a priority that to them is one of the most important things to them, you know, where their kids are getting their education. So there’s this kind of distrust that comes out of that. Um, and, and maybe it’s not the administration’s fault, but, but it is there, like, how can you not care about this thing that we care so much about that disconnect, right, can lead to a kind of distrust of government.

Elliott Fullmer:

I, I can certainly understand that. And, you know, I think the problem for elected officials is that there’s probably gonna be more folks feeling that way about the things they really care about than there are resources at their disposal.

Rich Meagher:

Mm.

Elliott Fullmer:

And so I do think it is probably impossible for people in power to prioritize every issue as much as all of their constituents would like them to, and sincerely believe that they should. One of the things we confront at the federal level is that everybody wants to cut the federal budget and cut the deficit, but the things that cost the most money, social security, Medicare, defense, that’s 60% of the federal budget right there, and if you ask people if they wanna cut those things, most people don’t.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

And so this is a constant, you know, issue that we have at all levels of government.

Rich Meagher:

You know, some of the things you were talking about, right, about transparency and having a good process and making sure people can follow along with what you’re doing, I mean, that’s all about communication, that’s all about transparency, that’s about making the case to people like, “Look, I know you don’t agree with all of our decisions, but at least this was a fair process.” And that can be really hard for politicians to do. You know, everyone hates Congress, uh, but even, you know, at the local level with mayors and, and at the state level with, with state legislators, there’s, there’s still some distrust there, I think.

Elliott Fullmer:

Certainly. And it’s harder and harder for all citizens to, uh, understand what’s happening and-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

… and to follow the facts, um, because our information environment, such as it is, right, with social media and polarization, uh, it’s, it’s more and more difficult to see what’s actually real and it’s very, very easy to attach whatever frustrations you have to whatever public official seems to be annoying you at, at the moment.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. How, how democratic is budgeting?

Elliott Fullmer:

…Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Elliott Fullmer:

It’s a, <laugh> it’s like- It is a big question. I, I have a few thoughts on it.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

Um, on the one hand, it, it’s very democratic in the sense that the legislatures that approve budgets are elected by the voters-

Rich Meagher:

mm-hmm.

Elliott Fullmer:

… and the executives that sign them into law are also elected. So in the, uh, broad sense, right, they’re democratic. I think sometimes it’s so complex that, yes, technically it’s representatives who are representing the public and approving budgets, but if the voters don’t have a great sense of what that process looks like and can’t follow it, is it truly democratic?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Elliott Fullmer:

And then we know that certain organized interests that have more resources have disproportionate influence. You know, if you have the ability to lobby and spend a lot of money come campaign season, you’re probably at least gonna have your issues heard more when it comes to shaping a budget.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And we don’t always see that kind of, like, naked, um, interest influence at the, at the local level. Sometimes what we get is a, a kind of battle between the experts and the people, right? So, um, you know, when we talked to Sarah Abubaker earlier, um, she wanted more of a role in the process of budgeting. Kenya Gibson is another city council member who’s pushed for more details, more options sometimes, and they get pushback sometimes from city administration. And I get the sense it’s not just, like, leave us alone to do our sinister stuff, right? Instead of, just leave us alone to do our job, right? We, we’re the experts here, we’re the ones who know how budgets work, and you’re asking for all this stuff, and yeah, we can talk about it, but you just don’t understand, like, we just gotta put the numbers together and make it all add up.

So it’s just this kind of broader argument about, do we want more democracy in our, our budgeting, or do we need the expertise of the, the technocrats who are putting together the numbers?

Elliott Fullmer:

Yeah. It’s an interesting question. I, I think the reality is that, you know, if you have too much public input constantly, uh, there’s no doubt that eventually you can’t get the work done, right? Eventually you have to entrust people to make final decisions, and you have to give them the ability to do that. I think as long as your elections are democratic and your, um, hearings are open and your documents and whatnot are transparent, I, I think for the most part, the process is, is democratic, but, but I see the, you know, I see the argument on both sides of that.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And there’s another aspect to this, like, democracy versus expertise issue, right? And so if we go back to Adam and Jacqueline, from one perspective, right, they’re the democratic heroes. You know, they’re sort of fighting against the powers that be, even if the powers and be there aren’t, aren’t as uncaring as they might think they are, they’re, they’re still fighting for something that’s important for their family. But I just wonder if there’s also a kind of squeaky wheel problem related to, to these technical manners and budgeting because the budgets are so complicated, you either have to be the, the quiet spreadsheet nerd, or you have to go in guns blazing like Adam and Jacqueline, right?

Elliott Fullmer:

Well, society is so complex that budgets almost have to reflect that, right? And in some ways, they become complex because of things we really care about. And, uh, I think in a budget that has limitations in, in a world where we can’t fund everything, uh, our system creates opportunities for people to speak out and convince others that their needs are important. And I, I think that’s always gonna be part of the process. And I think if we go back in history and look at the movements, uh, that have been most effective, it’s usually because people stood up and took advantage of the opportunities they had to spread the word about what they thought was important and, and build public pressure. That’s just the, the reality, the inevitability of a, of a democratic process.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So even beyond the budgeting thing, this is just sort of how it works in general.

Elliott Fullmer:

I think so.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So speaking of democracy, you’re, you’re a democracy reform guy.

Elliott Fullmer:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

You’ve written a, a book about this. Uh, you like civic engagement.

Elliott Fullmer:

I do.

Rich Meagher:

Can we do this better? Are there things we can actually do in the budgeting process, right? Like Richmond has played around with this participatory budgeting. You know, we had some folks on from the people’s budget.

Elliott Fullmer:

Tell me more about the people’s budget.

Rich Meagher:

So, I mean, the people’s budget does take a chunk of money, like three million dollars- mm-hmm. … and it puts it aside in a three-year process so that, you know, neighborhood representatives and district groups like kind of come together and they say like, “Here’s a couple of projects that we might want. ” And they, there are things that we can afford, there are things that are sort of permanent, they don’t need ongoing money to, to … So a parklet or-

Elliott Fullmer:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

… bat houses, we want bat houses.

Elliott Fullmer:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

So that kind of thing, like, what do we want to put a little bit of money towards?

Elliott Fullmer:

Okay.

Rich Meagher:

It doesn’t change the giant scope of what city government does, but it gets people into the process a little bit.

Elliott Fullmer:

Yeah. One thing I do in my, um, not only in my federal budget class, but in a lot of my courses is I do this budget exercise where basically I assign every student in the class a different hypothetical representative in Congress and I give them a sheet of 30 or 40 different big things the federal government, uh, funds or could fund. And I say, “Hey, look, this is gonna cost this much money.” And then I give them some options for taxes and I say, “If you tax like this, you’re gonna raise this much money.” And I say, “This is how much you have to spend and this is what your projected deficit can be. Make some decisions. Uh, make some decisions about what you would prioritize. Get a sense of the trade offs. If I do this, well, then maybe I can’t do as much of this.”

And it really forces students to, uh, put themselves at least a little bit in the position of the kind of folks who have to make these difficult choices, and then it gets even more complicated when they have to work together-

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Elliott Fullmer:

… To try to build majorities and then reconcile these, uh, these budget agreements.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So they’re not … And, and so that’s not so much about the math. They do a little bit of math there, but it’s really more about how do we all come together and make these decisions about what’s important to us?

Elliott Fullmer:

Sure. Math is part of it, but I think the math is probably secondary to consensus building compromise, but they almost always come out of it with a little bit more, uh, respect for the folks who have to make these choices, uh, because I, I think they start to realize that you really can’t please everybody and, um, budgets are about choices.

Rich Meagher:

So I wonder if it’s like budgeting is, you know, the numbers and the spending, these are important, right? But they’re kind of like reflecting this, all this other stuff about our system, about our democracy. Does that sound right?

Elliott Fullmer:

It does. Budgets are one of the most important things that, that governments do, and therefore the way that those governments get put into place and the incentive structures that elected officials have, um, is gonna weigh pretty heavily on, on how those budget processes work. So I don’t think you can disconnect them. And for me, the big structures of our democracy, how we conduct elections, voting rights, the influence of outside, uh, groups, uh, cannot be disconnected from the choices that officials are making on a daily basis when it comes to what we spend and, and what we raise, uh, through tax revenue.

Rich Meagher:

Elliott Fullmer is professor of political science at Randolph Macon College. He’s the author of the book, Everyone’s Democracy, among many other works, and is totally okay that he has more advisees than I do.

Elliott Fullmer:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Thanks, Elliott.

Elliott Fullmer:

My pleasure. Thank you, Rich.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guest, Elliott Fullmer. Special thanks to Adam Rose and Jacqueline Wilson. Tell us about your issues. Visit our website, rvasgotissues.vpm.org. Follow us on Instagram @richgotissues, or send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing on this episode by Nicki Stein, audio mixed by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Shawn Freude is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. Rebekah Sausmikat is our event anxiety anticipator. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.