Local budgets are really complex. Do they have to be?

“What a relief!” exclaimed Boulder City Clerk Megan McCauley. The City Council had, after a second special meeting, just voted to approve Boulder’s budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. McCauley added: “I need a mental health day.”

She’s probably not the only one. Local budgeting is a torturous, four-month-long slog that consumes many hundreds of hours of city and county employees. And that doesn’t count the time it takes to explain the result to bewildered journalists. (“NO! No more budget questions!” County Clerk and Recorder Ginger Kunz jokingly replied when I asked to talk about this piece.)

The effort required to get to a budget has grown increasingly daunting over the years — and so has the result. Jefferson County’s entire 1983 budget document, much of it hand-written, comprised just 33 pages. By 1998, 25 years ago, the expenditure budget alone, the portion that describes how money will be spent, had ballooned to 65 pages.