Chicago's budget

Effects of Public policy and the political process affecting Chicago's budget for 2011

Introduction

The purpose behind this paper is to analyze the final budget for Chicago in 2010 and how it was directly affected by the public policy and political process, later on we will make proposals for the 2011 budget for Chicago. In order to overcome any shortcomings identified in the 2010 budget.

Discussion

As witnessed throughout the whole nation the city of Chicago had to experience multiple adverse economic and fiscal issues as a result of the great Recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research the recession had begun in 2007 and ended in 2009 (Izzo, 2009). The 2010 budget for the city of Chicago was $ 6 Billion which had a huge shortfall of $520 million in order to make things run smoothly the government has been focusing on balancing the city's budget. The city's condition was so bleak that the mayor had to utilize $370 million from the city's reserve in order to balance the budget. In order to even out the budget there is a need to increases taxes and stop various public spending that can be held back. Many of the public services are being affected like for instance the library had reduced its hours of operations; park and recreational services have also been significantly affected. In various cities the condition is far worse and the government has been forced to take severe measures (Scharper, 2009).

Public Policy

Public policy can be defined as an attempt made by the government to address a certain issue, for this purpose they can issue any laws, directives or regulations. The issues that can e resolved by public policies are crime, health, education and social welfare. Some of the existing public policies in Chicago include measures to increase easy accessibility ...