Whose Priorities? Social Equity in the Priority‐Based Budgeting Process

ABSTRACT Priority‐based budgeting (PBB) identifies community priorities and systematically reallocates budgetary resources from programs that are less aligned with those priorities to those that are more aligned. Proponents claim that PBB provides fresh opportunities to inject equity considerations into goal‐setting, prioritizing, and allocating activities via public engagement and direct minority representation among elected and appointed officials. This study examines these claims by exploring the budgetary reallocation of 32 early‐adopting PBB municipalities through multiple regression analysis, finding that differing levels of minority population do not dramatically affect the average departmental budgetary reallocation during PBB implementation. However, those with one or more racial minority council members experience a substantially lower level of reallocation than those that do not; the same holds true for organizations with 10% or more minority senior managers. The findings invite public budgeting scholars to revisit theories regarding community diversity, minority representation, budgetary conflict, urban power dynamics, majority–minority politics, and budgetary allocation.