Volume 1: Creating A Financial Framework Financial policies, planning and citizen participation are cross-cutting topics that imingpact all aspects of local government decision-making. This volume provides decision makers with a basic financial foundation and will be especially useful for policy makers and chief executive officers. Sections: Financial Policy Making; Financial Planning; Citizen Participation; Evaluating Financial Condition Volume 2: Managing the Operating Budget The short-term operating budget and long-term capital investment plans are the engines that drive local government. The operating budget is the primary mechanism for providing public services and demonstrating accountability for decisions made during the budget process. More technical in nature than volume 1, many of the more basic ideas will be of use to policy makers, while the advanced concepts are written principally for chief executive officers, finance managers and department heads. Sections: Operating Budget; Financing the Operating Budget Volume 3: Managing the Capital Investment Plan Highlighting citizen participation, transparency and accountability, this volume describes how to design and implement a capital investment planning and budgeting system, with a more advanced section dealing with value management and real estate analysis. It also examines how the financing for the investment plan is developed and implemented, reviews the benefits of instituting a debt management program, looks at types of financing, methods for selecting credit instruments and the mechanics for obtaining financing, as well as reviewing credit analysis, disclosure requirements and administration of the debt. Sections: Capital Investment Plan; Financing the Capital Investment Plan Volume 4: Managing Performance This final volume reviews four of the cornerstones of good governance: accounting, performance measures, asset management and procurement. Basic sections cover fundamental, need-to-know information for policy makers, accompanied by more advanced technical treatment for financial managers and CEOs. Sections: Accounting; Performance Measures; Asset Management; Procurement.

After working for nearly three years to improve the performance of the government of Flint, Michigan—and discovering that there was no comprehensive work on the subject of local-government management to refer to—Brian Rapp and Frank M. Patitucci felt a personal as well as a professional need to write a book that would help them understand their successes and failures, and that would help others do a better job in similar situations. The result, this book, is unique both in its approach and in its presentation. The authors, establishing a conceptual framework within which to understand their subject, use Flint as a case city to examine the practical impact of factors affecting city government, and they indicate the major standards and criteria that should be applied in evaluating that impact. Although they recognize that within each city there are unique conditions that make a blanket prescription impossible, the authors are nevertheless convinced that many individuals both in and out of government can do something to improve the performance of their city government, and they have set out to help these individuals understand, in the most concrete terms possible, how they might go about it.

Local Government faces major challenges today. These include the management of increasingly scarce resources; the provision of modern services in reponse to public needs; competition for services from outside local government; increasingly complex issues of political control and direction; and the challenge to local government autonomy by central government.

Scholars and practitioners explore American government performance management offering diverse views.