Publication Search
Publication Homepage
Publication Search by Topic or Keywords
Dall Forsythe
11 publications found:
2009
Forsythe, Dall.
“"Bookable Savings" or Social Benefits?
When Analytical Frameworks Clash,” The Association for Budgeting and Financial Management Annual Conference
http://abfm.org 2008
2007
Forsythe, Dall.
“Fixing the Mess: Financial Management after the New York City Fiscal Crisis,” Annual Conference of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, Washington D.C., October 2007.
In the years since the 1975 fiscal crisis, New York City has improved its financial practices, and now carries a AA rating from the credit rating agencies. This paper outlines economic, institutional and political factors that contributed to that recovery, showing operating results and changes in reserves under each mayor from Koch to Bloomberg.
Download conference presentation
2006
Forsythe, Dall
“Cyclical Budget Management in New York City,”
This paper describes and analyzes the unusual approach to cyclical budget management used by the City of New York. State law enacted after the 1975 fiscal crisis requires the City to end each fiscal year in GAAP balance, and provides for significant penalties if the City incurs a GAAP deficit of more than $100 million. Since withdrawals draws from a rainy day fund are not revenue for GAAP budget-balancing purposes, New York City instead relies on a complex mechanism termed the "surplus roll" for managing cyclical budget pressures. This quasi-reserve fund was fashioned with the approval of the City's independent auditors. The paper reviews the mechanics of the surplus roll and shows how it was used, in conjunction with other funding sources, to respond to shortfalls in economically sensitive revenues coincident with and following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Download publication
Forsythe, Dall and Donald Boyd.
“Budgeting in New York State: The Growth, Waning and Resurgence of Executive Power,” Budgeting in the States: Institutions, Processes and Politics, edited by Edward J. Clynch and Thomas P. Lauth, Praeger Press, 2006.
New York is often criticized in the press and by watchdog groups, rating agencies, and elected officials for its contentious budgets. Over the last 20 years, the budget process has been characterized by frequent gridlock on important budget issues, disagreement over revenue estimates, secretive budget deliberations, and habitual and increasingly late budgets. This chapter examines how the budget process has evolved in New York, and the role that decades of divided government has played in institutionalizing this process.
View Book
2004
Forsythe, Dall.
Memos to the Governor: An Introduction to State Budgeting. Georgetown University Press, 2nd ed., Washington, DC, 2004.
With a new foreword by New York's former governor, Mario Cuomo, this revised and updated edition of Memos to the Governor is a concise guidebook that takes the reader behind governmental fiscal gobbledygook to explain in clear, understandable prose the technical, economic, and political dynamics of budget making. At all levels of government, the budget has become the battleground for policymaking and politics. This book helps current and future public administrators untangle the knotty processes of budget preparation and implementation. Dall W. Forsythe, who served as budget director under Governor Cuomo, outlines the budgeting process through a series of memos from a budget director to a newly elected governor—a format that helps readers with little or no background to understand complicated financial issues. He covers all of the steps of budget preparation, from strategy to execution, explaining technical vocabulary, and discussing key topics including baseline budgeting, revenue forecasting, and gap-closing options.
2001
Forsythe, Dall (editor).
Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Performance Management in American Government. Rockefeller Institute Press, Albany, NY, 2001.
This volume is a rich compendium of experience and diverse views about systems for introducing greater rationality in American governmental systems. With contributions from skeptics as well as proponents, it adds to the debate over the utility of performance management in American government. Focusing on the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), the authors also analyze performance budgeting and management in states and local governments. Exploring the performance management movement, the book sets out the point and counterpoint between critics and supporters and provides a common vocabulary for discussion. Steps to improve performance measures are outlined, as well as a discussion of states' progress in managing for results. New survey data reporting on states' performance budgeting is also included. The book reports on GPRA implementation at the Social Security Administration, advocates linking evaluation research with performance management systems, and discusses the limitations of performance incentives in the 1982 federal job training law.
Rockefeller Institute Press Forsythe, Dall.
“Pitfalls in Designing and Implementing Performance Management Systems,” Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Performance Management in American Government edited by Dall Forsythe. Rockefeller Institute Press, 2001.
During the second half of the 1990s, the federal government worked its way through a long, slow, and still incomplete implementation of a governmentwide performance management system, as mandated by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). As Richard Nathans's introduction to this volume makes clear, reasonable people can still disagree about whether performance management in the federal government is a glass half full or half empty. Optimists believe that will help improve management in Washington, make the federal government more accountable, and improve resource allocation decisions. Pessimists worry that incoming officials will succumb to the temptation to pick another three or four letters of the alphabet and start all over again, or that GPRA will end up another in a long list of costly and failed reform initiatives, adding to the federal paperwork burden as did earlier reforms like Performance Planning Budgeting Systems (PPBS), Management by Objective (MBO), and Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB).
View Book
2000
Forsythe, Dall.
“Budgeting in New York State, 1980-2000: The Waning of Executive Power,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, October 2000.
1996
Forsythe, Dall.
“Managing Interest Rate Exposure: Some Simple Tools for Financial Managers,” Government Finance Review, 1996, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 17-21.
Reports that effects of shifts in interest rates on government financial performance can be analyzed by understanding how the combined impact of both the asset and liability portfolios produce interest rate exposure in the United States. Correction of basis differential; Lesson from savings and loan crisis in 1980; Implementation of asset-liability programs.
1995
Forsythe, Dall, Peter Fishman, and Theodore Paris.
“Calculating the Benefits of a Credit Upgrade: The Massachusetts Case,” Municipal Finance Journal, 1995, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 11-24.
