Making government budgets more understandable and even fun – Cache Valley Daily

From gopb.utah.gov

SALT LAKE CITY — Government budgeting and explaining where your tax dollars go can be a complex thing at times.

To make it a bit more simple and interesting, the Utah Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget recently tweeted out what they referred to as a budget season ‘Word of the Day’.

On KVNU’s For the People program on Monday, executive director Sophia DiCaro talked about why they decided to do this.

“We thought this would be a fun way to introduce just a little bit more about what we do to the public and hopefully help people learn about things along the way.  I know that sometimes budgeting terms can be esoteric and very technical in nature, and so, we thought – let’s have a little bit of fun during this budget season and kick out a word of the week and maybe get people excited about the process and learn something along the way”, DiCaro explained.

Many people don’t get exposed to how the state goes about its business with the budget, except maybe a headline or two at the end of the legislative session as the budget is finalized.

But DiCaro would like to bring people into the process more.

“We would very much love more engagement in the process, I think a lot of people…we’re all busy and that’s understandable, but it is very easy for the public to follow along as the legislature has all of their hearings posted online. It’s very much an open, public process where you can follow along every month. The legislature meets during what’s called ‘interim period’, which is in between legislative sessions.”

DiCaro said they are hoping to make it easier for the public to follow along on what her office does as well.  She said they have changed their website to be much more interactive, their website is G-O-P-B.utah.gov, and their twitter handle is Utah GOPB.