[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited today because we have Selena Sue, who is a professor, who wrote a book that I really enjoyed called Budget Justice.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had the pleasure of interviewing her in front of a big group of students earlier this year to talk about her book.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought everything we were talking about was so amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: We got to have it on the podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: We know a little bit about our city's budgets.

[SPEAKER_02]: We know that police get a big share of the pie.

[SPEAKER_02]: We know when [SPEAKER_02]: Not enough money is going to fixing the streets of pot holes and creating bike lanes and visible crosswalks.

[SPEAKER_02]: We can recognize more so when things are not being funded than when things are being funded.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the thing is, a budget isn't just, okay, here's the things that we got a map out for the city this year.

[SPEAKER_02]: It should reflect the public's priorities.

[SPEAKER_02]: We should be actively involved in what our tax money and what our city funds.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's something I'd never heard of called participatory budgeting, which is when communities are allowed to influence funding decisions, and that creates a lot of transparency in budgeting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, seven months ago did not really know how to read a city budget.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've since become more able to, but even I am confused and it takes a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: To dig into what does this mean and is this an authority that has to do with this and what is this connected to and as Selena and I talk about, it's made purposefully confusing because they don't really want people like me and you to hear what's going on and be able to complain about it or not really complain, do activism around it, allow for significant changes in budget allocation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I really love the idea that you can just create a budget proposal for something that you want.

[SPEAKER_02]: and propose it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's your money.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's your city.

[SPEAKER_02]: So without further ado, here's our incredible interview with Selena Sue.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and just a little thing, after we had already booked her.

[SPEAKER_02]: So don't think that this is kissing up, but she was asked to join Zoran Mamdoni's New York City Mayor transition team.

[SPEAKER_02]: No big deal.

[SPEAKER_03]: I told a lot of lights about a cheap man Is it because you when they got you to believe in I'm a finger held to the forehead and an hell show Trapped in a cover on the salesgate Let's fight back in, have you talked about class in the past?

[SPEAKER_03]: Cause of the disaster's brought to ashes Not spank at your box It's a thousand natural shocks I'm bad with money podcast [SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks to bad with money podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn and with me today we have Selena suit.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to tell my audience who you are and what you do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, my name is Sylena Sue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I live in New York City.

[SPEAKER_00]: Officially, I'm a professor and a chair in urban studies at the City University of New York, which is our local public university.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I also just pay attention to how everyday folks try to participate in politics.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, congratulations on your new gig.

[SPEAKER_02]: Working with Zora and Mom Donnie.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing there [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I can tell you how it happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will say that I think it was a week and a half ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: The transition team got announced and it was been really exciting with the subcommittees that I'm a part of the week before I was getting a bunch of text messages.

[SPEAKER_00]: and assuming they were spam and thus ignoring them for days until Friday they started leaving me voicemails that and I was like oh this transition team is real okay these are real calls to to actually address and then over the weekend I signed [SPEAKER_00]: some documents etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we have some pretty specific directors on what to do in the next few weeks to try to set some key policy recommendations so hopefully a little bit of a policy agenda and to help to nominate folks with a high [SPEAKER_00]: up positions, like commissioner, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm part of a subcommittee.

[SPEAKER_00]: One exciting little bit is that I'm part of a new subcommittee on community organizing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll see if the new administration really engages communities differently than the current outgoing one does what would be the ideal change with community organizing being part of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that one potential model lies in what mom Donnie's going to do with school governance.

[SPEAKER_00]: So right now, there's mayoral control of schools.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's really little opportunity for educators, even.

[SPEAKER_00]: The teachers who work in schools and for parents and families and students to help to [SPEAKER_00]: articulate the policies that they're governed by, and Mombani has said that he wants to replace mayoral control with a new system of school governance that they're going to construct.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I'm curious about whether there's opportunities for that sort of engagement and that sort of [SPEAKER_00]: food and transit and the budget.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, your a book is about budgets.

[SPEAKER_02]: And can you talk a bit about how that became something you were interested in?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm going to go vana white for a second, even though I don't know if that's like reference people even know and here's the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, um, and it might be blurry, sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, I wasn't into budgets myself as a research topic or something I thought I would ever write a book about until [SPEAKER_00]: the 2020 uprisings after the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic where we saw in the face of state failure where people weren't getting protective equipment.

[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't know if our hospitals would have enough ventilators.

[SPEAKER_00]: We saw frontline workers really dying at higher rates [SPEAKER_00]: People were really talking about how budgets made a difference, and then, explicitly, during the uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, I saw the phrase budget justice on so many placards in the streets, and I was like, huh?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's usually a pretty wonky term and I had been studying a process called participatory budgeting in which everyday folks like you and me not elected officials help to allocate public funds from city budgets for a while for a few years by then by 2020.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I had always [SPEAKER_00]: pay attention to the participatory part of participatory budgeting or PB, I hadn't been paying attention to the B part of budgets.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I started to look into it a little bit and I realized they're so incredibly intimidating and hard to read.

[SPEAKER_00]: I recently met an organizer from Birmingham [SPEAKER_00]: Gabriela Gaban Gubero and we were talking about how so many of these public documents come in PDF forms so that you can't even download them for basic number crunching or just even figuring out what's going on and they say that PDF stands for pretty damn fucked and I have to say that I agree and the more research I did the more I realized that like [SPEAKER_00]: These budgets are not, they don't, yes, they're technical, they're complicated, but they don't have to be that hard to read.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the way that they're hidden, [SPEAKER_00]: put away and made so intimidating is actually an anti-democratic move that makes it harder for us to hold elected officials accountable.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I had to actually restrain myself from getting into the public finance literature.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had to remind myself to be like, you know, it's not a job to become experts.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's their job to tell us how they're reflecting our needs and how they're [SPEAKER_00]: political choices, politicians keep saying that their hands are tied, but once I dug into it a little bit more, I could see just enough to see that there's so many political choices being made.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like last year, New York City paid 240 million to settle police malpractice lawsuits.

[SPEAKER_02]: I knew you were going to say that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even know that number and I knew that's what was coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, just because to me, that's just so gross and heartbreaking that police brutality that should not be happening in the first place is being settled with our public dollars.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I looked up how much preschool costs, that money could be used to get free preschool for 15,000 kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like mom Donnie's promise for universal child care, we could get things like that if we weren't automatically paying for other things.

[SPEAKER_02]: when L.A.

became occupied like I knew numbers like I knew a little bit to to know that oh the police budget is really big again similarly to you that came after 2020 the summer of 2020 but I learned how to read all of this stuff like the frustration that I have is similar to what you're saying which is like okay why did I have to take time out of my life to learn how to read a [SPEAKER_02]: How many people are going to do that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Probably not that many.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I agree with you that I realized a lot of stuff was hidden in there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And a group of us have started looking at the ways that city council votes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's all public.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of the strange thing that so much is public.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can just find it.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're banking on you not.

[SPEAKER_02]: And with, [SPEAKER_02]: lawsuits, you know, we held this town hall with Mayor Bass that we had to like push so hard to get and one of the things that our city controller had come out and said is that in his audit that, you know, they paid $400 million in L.A.

[SPEAKER_02]: you know, LAPD lawsuits.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then her response was, well, it's a lot of LAPD suing itself, or like people suing a officer suing LAPD, which is not true.

[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I was like, that's not a flex.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's also bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would, we want to spend our money on this when people are starving [SPEAKER_02]: What is that about?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I mean, we'll get to other stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: But why do the police have such a hold?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's like rumors that they go and intimidate politicians.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's probably true.

[SPEAKER_02]: But why is this the the strangle hold?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that probably the reasons vary according to the city and the context, but one potential reason is that some cities, not necessarily the coastal ones like LA and New York, but a lot of cities especially between the coast and the US actually have been so starved of federal and state funds.

[SPEAKER_00]: that they rely on police fines for public services.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Ferguson, I will need a minute to look up the number, but police, ticket, fines, et cetera, are the second largest source of revenue for the town where Michael Brown died.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the police are getting fined, the police paying fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, police are finding, oh god.

[SPEAKER_00]: To pay for services.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like extract of what Jackie Weng and carceral capitalism calls extraction and looting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the town of, I think it was like 16,000 people or something like that, there were [SPEAKER_00]: more than one moving violations per capita.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were like something like 30,000 moving violations, the year that Michael Brown died.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they find some top of fines.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't shop to court, you get fined, and then you end up in jail, and then you have, so one aspect of policing is that, [SPEAKER_00]: everything else gets cut away but police stay and they're used to make life worse in the surveillance state almost that we have at the expense of the welfare state so it's also like almost a different side of government so then what usually suffers from budget cuts [SPEAKER_00]: and then another aspect of it is who lives in cities, which we unfortunately see right now with Trump calling cities how holes, et cetera, as if cities are the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: But cities are where different people [SPEAKER_00]: live in dense places with and there's like scale and um and there's just more folks around and it's also where Americans who are people of color disproportionately live, I think that there's a lot of non-white folks in rural and suburban areas also, but they're largely represented [SPEAKER_00]: So it ends up being tied up with cultural politics, also, of who's deserving of decent benefits and some help from the state.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then there's talk of not letting these people go to school, not letting these people get healthcare, but these people should be policed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, and we see that also in how there are a lot of state level preemption laws, preemption is when the state doesn't allow the city to set its own policies so overriding home rule.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of states in the U.S.

right now are passing preemption laws that banned cities within those states from passing sanctuary city laws.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like all these things are tied up together of who deserves welfare benefits or basic social safety net versus who should be policed and we need money and where should we get that money?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because your book is called budget justice and I feel people don't understand the word [SPEAKER_02]: like budget violence I think in a lot of ways like the the ways in which you know budget justice isn't opposition to this is violence like the way that money is used against people in cities or the way things are voted on.

[SPEAKER_02]: People are like oh violence is just somebody punching someone else but it's not because budget justice has to operate in opposition to [SPEAKER_02]: literal, like violence, you're talking about people being, you know, find on top of fines, then to jail.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is violence that then perpetuates more and more of the carceral state in that area, uh, generational trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can see why things are hidden in budgets or hidden in almost one line of a budget, by lines of a budget.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's also things that are connected, at least in my experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: things that are connected to each other that are separate in a budget.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that makes you have to really think about oh, this goes with this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And is it is I mean, do you think that it's a way for people to hide hide things or are we misunderstanding what sort of compromises need to be made when the cities are putting together a budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think both, and I love this framing of budget violence because even really simply putting aside the police for a moment, the budget is where we find out which public hospitals remain open and which ones close, which fire [SPEAKER_00]: departments remain open which get closed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think about L.A.

and the wildfires during the fiscal crisis in New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1970s, some of the biggest contestations had to do with people really wanting their local fire engines to stay in their neighborhoods because they knew that if they didn't, people were more likely to die if there was a fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: politicians talk about how their hands are tied and how budgets are neutral, but they really show where our public priorities are and what social problems and who social problems are tolerated and which ones should be addressed right away.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of hiding what's going on, I think that budgets also do that because [SPEAKER_00]: With this talk of their not being enough money, it becomes harder to trace where the money goes in some ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with the police examples that you just raised, we see that austerity doesn't exactly mean smaller government.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just means a different sort of government.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a little bit more carceral and surveilling.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the school policies that deny school funding for [SPEAKER_00]: students, books and teachers, still give schools a lot of money that they then have to pay to third-party contractors for new high-stakes testing software for metal detectors for this or that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in a lot of ways, we don't have smaller government with these budget cuts.

[SPEAKER_00]: We actually have just different sorts of government that are measuring us, surveilling us, or giving public subsidies to stadiums and developers in different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like where I live in Brooklyn, we had [SPEAKER_00]: the city use eminent domain to displace a number of families a while ago to build Barclay Center at Atlantic Pacific and they promised over a thousand affordable housing units they have yet to build 800 of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: After more than a decade, and they got millions of dollars of subsidies, they were paying fines a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were supposed to pay fines along the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't collected a cent.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not part of the annual budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's just somehow written off as a special thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's lots of ways in which both the trade-offs that are there aren't clear, as you said, and also they're actively hiding where they are giving people money.

[SPEAKER_02]: I always am like, [SPEAKER_02]: Just tell us what the compromise was.

[SPEAKER_02]: They don't, but I try to be like, what happened?

[SPEAKER_02]: Was it like behind the scenes?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because is this something you actually believe?

[SPEAKER_02]: You believe that we should cut money from homeless services?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or was there some sort of trade-off where you were like, as you say, hands tied, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Where not that your hands are tied for inaction?

[SPEAKER_02]: but that you were like, okay, well, if we don't do that, then a bunch of preschoolers aren't gonna go to school.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like tell us, what did you give up to get, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because we're not privy to the compromises and the, [SPEAKER_02]: reasons for things, a lot of times, most of the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it looks like, hey, you guys took, this is a real example.

[SPEAKER_02]: You guys took $150,000 out of homeless services to give to the police.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what was the, [SPEAKER_02]: what was the thinking beyond like we voted I just I just if and I even I'm like I wouldn't even be mad if I could just understand why like what is going on behind the scenes and I've talked to like friends well they're not friends I've talked to people that I know that that are working in different city council members offices and I'm like listen [SPEAKER_02]: just tell me what the truth is, what is going on?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm mad at them for this, but if you tell me, oh, we, what we had to do this because otherwise, then I'll, I'll understand, but you keep it so opaque that I'm like, only left to, to think well, is this what you really believe?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no opportunity to get real answers like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're allowed to just get away with keeping everything hidden.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have my guesses that at least in a lot of places, the police unions act with the other unions and their progressive unions and their conservative unions, [SPEAKER_00]: political, cloud, and power, but I feel like a good politician should have the, I'm trying to say, think of something gender neutral because I just thought of balls, but like, I'm going to say, have the balls, yeah, or ovaries, or whatever, to stand up for that, to say, to say, sorry, [SPEAKER_00]: Until we figure out a better system, I can't have police revolting in potentially harmful ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just say that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I promise, and maybe then, like, I promise that it will go towards [SPEAKER_00]: this specific part of police programming, like why unleash counterterrorism units that are so violent against peaceful student encampments, even the police, every day New Yorkers have a range of opinions to different parts of the police, and they're able to try to inform priorities a little bit, [SPEAKER_02]: has there ever been like a massive shift like in a budget, you know, has there ever been because I feel like it's always these little like trickles or whatever has there ever been like a hey, you know what, we're taking a billion dollars from you and we're giving it to this thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it always kind of small?

[SPEAKER_00]: So during 2020 in New York, the Blasio claimed to have shifted a billion dollars from the police to other services.

[SPEAKER_00]: He did that partly with a sort of cheat in that he shifted school safety officers who are the facto police from the police department line.

[SPEAKER_00]: to the school's line, alongside more real substantive shifts that really change services.

[SPEAKER_00]: That won't just like on paper, but that shows that power matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: That as you sort of suggested, it's not actually necessarily about changing their minds on whether this is better or that's better.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's gotta be political cloud attached because I don't think that the Blasio certainly thought that homelessness services were so much more important, especially someone who's a progressive mayor like him.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's about pushing the mayor or giving them the cloud so that they fear the backlash from people who [SPEAKER_00]: want and need in our fighting for these services in a city we can afford, et cetera, more than they fear the backlash from the real estate lobby and the police.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's one example that's more recent in Brazil where they introduced that process of P.B.

[SPEAKER_00]: participatory budgeting, [SPEAKER_00]: They shut down all the other channels, including the back for negotiation, including the backroom dealings, so they made the powerful groups like the police union, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: have to all present their cases.

[SPEAKER_00]: alongside everyday residents and they shifted huge parts of the budget that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why that process became famous around the world and is in 11,000 or more cities around the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they are they actually lowered infant mortality, helped the public to say no to [SPEAKER_00]: to proposals that they didn't feel were ultimately in the community interest like luxury developments that you know like here I feel like there will be community groups that say like this is not really good for our neighborhood but most of the time it goes through and at best [SPEAKER_00]: of jobs or affordable housing units that hopefully, unlike here in Brooklyn, actually get built.

[SPEAKER_00]: There, they actually managed to shift big parts of the budget, but that might also partly be because they first, the government took the process seriously and it wasn't just a [SPEAKER_00]: So here, we need to build enough power so that when we do have some channels to make demands or to make city council or the mayor listen to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have enough numbers and and are lined on an analysis or some sort of ask so that they're like, oh, okay, we better pay attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fourth of a leg day in Brazil in 1989 was the first place that did the city level participatory budgeting.

[SPEAKER_00]: In New York, it's been around since 2011, which is the same time as Occupy Wall Street, which is not a coincidence when so many folks were gathering in public spaces.

[SPEAKER_00]: First, at Zucati Park near Wall Street, but then around the country to talk about [SPEAKER_00]: economic class and inequalities as a huge issue and so it's not a coincidence that P.B.

[SPEAKER_00]: New York started at the same time as Occupy Wall Street and it's a process in which there are assemblies usually by neighborhood where people come together and just talk about what they think their communities need and you think that's so simple but [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually really interesting because there were a lot of conversations.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you how many where I saw someone come in with an agenda and they changed their minds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there was someone from the upper west side, white presenting, I'm guessing middle or upper class.

[SPEAKER_00]: income who came to an assembly to advocate for something for his kid's school.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he's like wait a second.

[SPEAKER_00]: You senior citizens in East Harlem, public housing, lack physical mobility and don't have washer dryers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually going to rescind my proposal and help you develop yours.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: dozens if not hundreds of conversations like that, which made me think, oh, when else do we talk to each other rather than having pre-made two-minute statements that hopefully don't [SPEAKER_00]: the New York process, the part of money isn't big.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a million dollars per district, per city council district, but it got people started in a concrete way so that it's not about abstract human rights.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was about stuff that they could see and then they would talk and work [SPEAKER_00]: choosing from a menu of pre-made options and so often in the voting booth it's like choosing from the lesser evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they got to actually think creatively, a tiny bit, and then so that's the first most interesting phase.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then some volunteer folks helped to develop some of those ideas [SPEAKER_00]: participatory budgeting is interesting because it gets people to relate to one another as neighbors and maybe build on mutual aid networks or the sorts of passions and interests and demands that they articulate it partly through protests and try to do something more with it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not even protests like what you're talking about with the I think senior center you said in [SPEAKER_02]: thing like we need washer dryers and we need accessibility and people can see that that is something that they can see change that they know exactly what they need to do.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not some nebulous policy like it is something that even if you don't get it into the budget someone hears that and they go I could pay for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like this thing where you wouldn't even [SPEAKER_02]: because you would never talk about it, or you would never hear about it, or you would never think, you would never walk by a building and go, oh, I wonder if they have washer dry hairs.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, it's magical.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then I saw people be like, oh, I didn't thought about kids with special needs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't we change the playground design to have more fun play structures that accommodate kids with disabilities and adults with different sorts of physical needs and [SPEAKER_00]: people ended up just making connections.

[SPEAKER_00]: They hadn't anticipated.

[SPEAKER_00]: And actually in Brazil, the cities that had [SPEAKER_00]: PB ended up collecting a lot more in taxes because of exactly what you said, just said.

[SPEAKER_00]: When people know that their public funds are being put to good use, the notion of higher taxes is no longer political kryptonite, people are like, okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they might not give as much to charity for that one awful yeah go fund me case because it's less likely to happen right yes I know that's how I feel too because oftentimes I'll go to the park in my city because I'm like I paid for this [SPEAKER_02]: This is mine, and I got to use it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's so hard to break out of the current vicious cycle where we rightfully wonder where the fuck is our money going to, and then we don't trust government, and then we don't have a say, and then we trust government less.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how to break out of that vicious cycle and build a different virtuous one is [SPEAKER_00]: is I think a question of democracy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about finding the exact right answer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do we really need that much more research to show that small class sizes help?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's about changing power dynamics.

[SPEAKER_02]: How do these people figure out what things cost?

[SPEAKER_02]: If you have a million dollars, how do you know what it will cost to fix pot holes?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like how do you come up with that as a [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in these processes, they always have city agency folks or city government workers on call to help people develop their proposals.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that can be a double-edged sword because a lot of these people, [SPEAKER_00]: who in political science are called street-level policy makers, because like social workers, police officers, the bureaucrat behind the desk who decides whether you're eligible for these benefits or not, they make decisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't make the grand policy, but they sort of.

[SPEAKER_00]: make policy and they're both facilitators like let me help you develop your proposal and gatekeepers like I'm not sure this is eligible for often a technical reason so that's the other part of this I ended up having to spend so much more time on than I anticipated because I didn't think [SPEAKER_00]: I was going to research bureaucracy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That does not sound exciting to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the everyday folks were that who I was working with were talking about some of the bureaucrats the way we were just talking about the politicians and city council members.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in Brazil, or other places, they've actually worked with government workers to be like, we gotta be on the same page.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have this technical expertise, but other folks have knowledge too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, at the assemblies I attended, some of the grown ups in the room were really wary of youth participation, they're like, whatever, nine year olds, are just gonna ask for skate parks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, they asked for skate parks, but they quickly moved on in less than one minute to talk about a bunch of stuff that even while meaning experts might not have anticipated, like 130th Street between this, [SPEAKER_00]: lighting and on this street feels like it would be more helpful than lighting on that street.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they can articulate what sacrifice is.

[SPEAKER_00]: more willing to make than others and what they really need.

[SPEAKER_00]: So changing how government helps people develop proposals and how much things cost is also a huge issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the city workers I interviewed said the problem with everyday folks is they have, this is the part I'm gonna quote, [SPEAKER_00]: a champagne taste with a beer pocketbook.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were just dripping with the stain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not what we want from government workers who are there to serve the people.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a lot of disrespect for people coming in and asking for things and having questions, I think, because there's this air of, well, we know this and you don't.

[SPEAKER_02]: What are some things in budgets that people might not even know is in a budget?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the staffing it takes to process our benefits, whether it's a folks who want to apply [SPEAKER_00]: or for name changes or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, because I had to change part of my kids' birth certificate at one point and I was just watching people in the waiting room saying, I need this now in order to get onto my partner's health insurance in order to do this in order to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So people are aware of big things in public like, like, [SPEAKER_00]: library hours, et cetera, which are so essential, but there's a lot of hidden stuff also where that really just help our city to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will also say that [SPEAKER_00]: Our cities also pay a lot in loan interest that emails sort of predatory like there's a lot of municipal debt and that there's a lot of folks who talk about how cities should have the right to renegotiate their debt terms so that they're spending money on services and infrastructure where they're [SPEAKER_02]: I have it banks.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no.

[SPEAKER_02]: And how much influence does that give the private bank?

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they collect interest, and then.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot because of the bond rating situation because cities issue bonds in order to pay for new schools, say, and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, just as credit ratings and SAT scores are both sort of based on real, test, and real, [SPEAKER_00]: measures but sort of distorted and not at all helpful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, SAT scores measure something.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what?

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, once they hold education, household income constant, most studies show that differences in SAT scores by racial background go away.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's [SPEAKER_00]: then class class class, then school, so bond ratings also, they're both like sort of a measure of a city's financial health and also have been controversial and debated in the past because it's not a science.

[SPEAKER_02]: What are bond ratings?

[SPEAKER_00]: Bond ratings are grades that underwriter or other companies give to different cities bonds, like A plus plus plus.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't a city bond, like who will buy that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think individuals but also funds, other funds will buy that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the other issue that ends up being, that's another example of an issue that is partly technical, so not that many folks know about it, but it's also very political and more people should know about the basics.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to educate myself on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, who has that and what kind of that is allowed to be renegotiated?

[SPEAKER_00]: That part is political.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the fact that universities in the US don't give enough grants for students to attend and that so many students end up with so much debt and that [SPEAKER_00]: until recently when you declared personal bankruptcy other sorts of debt could be renegotiated but not student debt?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's political.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, definitely.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have been surprised by the amount of debt cities are in.

[SPEAKER_02]: The job of the controller is to audit these things, one of the jobs.

[SPEAKER_02]: are in the LA, it seems that our controller is in deep opposition with our mayor.

[SPEAKER_02]: They seem to be really at odds.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if that's normal, but it seems as though he will, no, I know.

[SPEAKER_02]: He will say a number and she will go, no, like he'll be like, where this match in debt and she'll be like, we're not and I have seen that in other, you know, um, we've been traveling a lot to California City.

[SPEAKER_02]: uh...

because they opened in ice detention center there illegally and so but you know a bunch of us have been going there and they're also like super shady like they'll be like no no we're not in debt or you know sometimes then at the city the city council's wild there or they'll be like oh yeah we're 600 million dollars in debt so that's why we need to uh...

be okay with course of it opening a prison here like it's very [SPEAKER_02]: It's not transparent.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did think it was wild when my kid was entering.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think pre-k or one of the earlier grades in public school.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw the news that [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember the exact numbers, but that there was going to be $270 million in cuts to New York City schools.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the controller said, no, it's actually $370 million.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what's up with these numbers?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I think that, I think that [SPEAKER_00]: even without going into the spreadsheets and suddenly becoming experts on financing, it's clear that they're using revenue projections or different sorts of numbers that for which they have to guess in very specific political ways to forward a specific narrative.

[SPEAKER_00]: The current mayor has under-projected revenues, which justify cuts that are just unrealistic.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like an unrealistically tight budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then the departments of sanitation collecting garbage, whatever, spend more than their budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's actually what's expected in what's normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: because they outspent their artificially low budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know exactly how the different numbers are calculated, but I have read about enough patterns to see that like, oh, most mayors try to be conservative and have low projections for their revenues, but the recent one that we have now, [SPEAKER_00]: is a little bit wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he keeps saying that the agencies are being greedy and irresponsible when it's partly because he's just he keeps issuing artificially low numbers.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh my god, and that's crazy that he would say that about sanitation when he hates the rats so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he said it about sanitation specifically.

[SPEAKER_02]: That meditation is probably his most favorite budget.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would think so, yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please, I hate the rats, we're at war threats.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's more like education, libraries, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you're not an American, if you're not familiar with the mayor of New York that Mamdania is taking over from his name is Eric Adams, and he's crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to you should watch Z-way interview him if you want to taste of the current mayor of New York, but he does wage war against the rats.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's his big thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And partying at night.

[SPEAKER_02]: in love with that party.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's true.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you think the best way moving forward for to get your item on the budget or to get attention is to have an organization behind you like a big organization that you maybe went to with the proposal or that you or should you bring up proposal like when you go to city council and we're upset about something we want to tell them [SPEAKER_02]: a board like a science fair board with like, here's my idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that giving people starting points to then tweak and talk back to is really helpful because one expected common refrain from a lot of politicians and policymakers is, oh, it's so easy to critique, you do the work or it's much harder to have a vision.

[SPEAKER_00]: folks don't receive as many opportunities to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even having a little bit and working with others, it doesn't have to be a big official group.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does something.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I do think that we need more spaces to dream bigger and imagine differently to not accept this as normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the greatest dream, like no monarchy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want something a lot better than just a lack of monarchy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we've been trained to choose the lesser of two evils, to deal with budget cuts, to fight for crumbs of the budget pie.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need more spaces to connect with others.

[SPEAKER_00]: keep dreaming bigger and presents some of those visions to tell folks that we won't accept the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time in the meantime, because that's like a lot of a long-term dream, I think that just [SPEAKER_00]: So many of the participatory budgeting funds were spent on elementary school bathrooms, so that seven year olds didn't have to hold in their pee all day, so for basic repairs that people got really upset by the PB process rather than [SPEAKER_00]: energized.

[SPEAKER_00]: At first they were energized and they were like, why are we spending the discretionary funds and developing projects to do something the city should just be doing on its own?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And enough people complained so that in the fourth year or so of PB New York, [SPEAKER_00]: The government quietly doubled the school's bathroom budget from 70 to 140 million, which was bigger than the entire P.B.

[SPEAKER_00]: process.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they weren't out in the streets, but that's the kind of thing that they didn't think of, especially if they weren't parents of school kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: and that they complained about, and then the city said, oh, there's popular pressure around this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there were, there were, have been other interesting projects where people said, you know, we want, [SPEAKER_00]: a down payment to make these subway stations accessible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we get the down payment through, that you put pressure on you to kick in the rest of the money, we want diaper networks around the city based on our mutual aid networks.

[SPEAKER_00]: So ways of people, [SPEAKER_00]: Thinking of things that the city is not already doing, that they should do, and then demanding resources for them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for joining us, where can people find you and your book?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess the, maybe keep track of the work with mom Donnie, it's very exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm at salinasu.net, C-E-L-I-N-A, S-U.net, and then link trees where I post things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Budget justice is the book, and I'll share a URL and the discount code.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that's at all helpful, and I'm also just excited to hear about, [SPEAKER_00]: People's own experiences and notes trying to fight for better town cities wherever you live.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that's where we can start to do work, to make our lives better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And especially when stuff is sucks at the federal level, what does it mean to scale sideways instead of up?

[SPEAKER_02]: A thousand natural shocks a bad with money podcast is a production of noted bisexual, produced by Melissa D.

Montz and Diamond M.

print productions.

[SPEAKER_02]: And music by Zach Sherwin as sung by Sam Barbarra.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, love you, bye.