City on the Line

by Andrew Kleine

In City on the Line, former Baltimore budget director Andrew Kleine asks why the way government does its most important job – deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars – hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Parts memoir, manifesto, and manual, this book tells the story of Baltimore’s radical departure from traditional line item budgeting to a focus on outcomes like better schools, safer streets, and stronger neighborhoods—during one of the most tumultuous decades in the city’s history. Elected officials, executives, and citizens alike will be equipped to transform budgets in their city, state, or any other mission-driven organization.

Genres: Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2018

Reviews

[elissa]

Written by a friend who was the Budget Director for the city of Baltimore for 10 years, and has just started as the Chief Administrative Officer of the county that I live in. I don't know that I'd read the whole book, but it definitely looks interesting.

[Ally Brunette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great read for anyone who is in a management role in the public sector OR is someone who is looking to approach program development and public budgeting with a focus on effectiveness and performance measurement. Author Andrew Kleine shares his personal experience of working to transform the behemoth budget machine in Baltimore, as the city faced interconnected socioeconomic challenges and the fiscal realities of the Great Recession.

What I loved about this book:
1. How accessibly written it was. You don’t exactly think “light reading” when you think of municipal budgeting, but this was actually a very digestible read, accessible to folks at all levels of budgeting expertise. I wish THIS book had been a part of my MPA curriculum a decade ago because I would have gotten more out of this than I did the books assigned in my public budgeting classes.
2. Each chapter concludes with five questions to evaluate through the lens of your own organization.
3. The book is chockfull of resources! I think I have about twenty new books to read on my to-read list after finishing this one.
4. Kleine gives shout outs to folks who impacted his work professionally, as mentors and proteges. It’s nice to see public sector folks get recognition like that.
What I was sort of “meh” about in this book:
1. I work with a lot of smaller communities (pop. < 10,000) that don’t have a team of analysts at their disposal, nor the infrastructure of a CitiStat-like program that Baltimore boasts. It felt hard to apply some of these takeaways to smaller scale organizations.
2. I might be bitter and cynical, but as much as I’m impressed by the resident engagement in the City of Baltimore (and I continually hear from municipalities praying for better resident engagement), I see some of this high engagement as a direct result of resident frustration with issues like crime, cleanliness, underutilized space. I do wonder how successfully suburban communities that don’t have highly visible, highly engaging community-wide issues would do at engaging community members.

I really enjoyed this book and am thankful to Andrew Kleine for sending me a copy of this book to review!