US local government uses Twitter to combat 15% budget drop

A glimpse into how councils might soon have to be dealing with swinging budget cuts by creative use of the Web comes from the US, where one local government body had to deal with a $1bn (£660m) shortfall in revenue over two years – equivalent to a 15% cut.

The authority used extensive public outreach – including use of wide number of media, from local press and media, the Web, social networking sites like Twitter and YouTube – to get local residents to identify what they wanted ring-fenced in a budget that had to be revised sharply down following a $650m (£424m) gap in its $6bn (£4bn) budget, due to lower local property taxes thanks to the US property crash.

The exercise is to be repeated in this financial year, as income has dropped by a further $250m (£163m), equivalent to a sixth of the last pre-downturn year's money, due to the ongoing slump in real estate in the area, which accounts for over 60% of all the body's income.

“This was very difficult to do,” said David Moichany, deputy county executive for Fairfax County Government, the US equivalent of a unitary authority based in the state of Virginia, near Washington, D.C.

While stressing the positives of gaining significant local buy-in, Moichany and his organisation still had to cut services, preserving areas identified as inviolable by the public like education at the loss of other areas.

There was good news at least for the 'council' staff. While “hundreds” of posts had to be eliminated, extensive job role redefinition, keeping open vacancies and willingness of employees to be flexible in being re-assigned means only seven actual jobs were lost as a result out of a total headcount of 35,000.

“Residents told us they wanted to preserve the things about Fairfax in terms of the high quality of life that had brought them to the area,” said Moichany. “So we used as many means we could to get guidance on the hard decisions we had to make to preserve that.

The public buy-in process meant that the tough budget received popular support and that people were tolerant of some service changes and even shown willing to pay fees for things they hadn't before.

“By listening to the public this way, we didn't have an outcry, but a positive response to us as a body,” he added.

The Fairfax experience won a US 'Best of the Web' public sector award for use of social media as a citizen interaction platform.

Moichany was speaking at this week's Socitm conference in Birmingham, where his team's experience was highlighted as a possible useful example to ways UK authorities might want to work with the public post the 6 May election and the coming cuts.