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Canyon College

COURSE SYLLABUS: Public Budgeting & Finance

Course Title: Department: Instructor:

PA518 - Public Budgeting & Finance Political Science and Public Administration George E. Thibodeaux, MBA, ARM E-Mail -- Vita

I. Course Description:

Budgeting for home, office, or the government is a challenging job at best. The balancing of seemingly endless demands on short, and often dwindling, resources is particularly acute in the public sector. The combined demands of political, social, and economic pressure require the wisdom of Solomon to properly allocate sparse resources.

This course will emphasize budgets and their process from the political side and the functional policy side. We will explore budgets from the nut-and-bolt theory, development, and implementation. Public finance is the subject of another course later in this curriculum, and as such will not be emphasized here. The two subjects are of course intertwined and we can't help but bump into taxation and redistribution along the way.

If this course gives you nothing else, you will at least be more informed than the average citizen of how your money is collected and spent.

II. Course Objective

At the conclusion of this course the student should be comfortable with the following concepts:

1. What budgets are, and what they are expected to do
2. Government revenue, spending, and borrowing
3. The budget cycle: preparation, enactment, execution, review, and audit
4. Formulation and proposal of the budget
5. Techniques of budgetary analysis
6. Ushering the budget through the process
7. Modifying the budget after adoption
8. Capital budgeting and debt management
9. The economy and its influence on the budget
10. Intergovernmental aspects of public budgeting

III. Textbook: Online Bookstore

Public Budgeting, Nice, David. C. ISBN #: 0830415157

IV. Grading

Weekly assignments Mid Term Exam (Chapters 1-5) Final Exam - Non cumulative (Chapters 6-11)

= = =

33 1/3% 33 1/3% 33 1/3%

A B C D F

= = = = =

100 - 90% 90 - 80% 80 - 70% 70 - 60% 60% - below

Assignments must be completed on a weekly basis. Please submit weekly assignments via e-mail by Sunday evening of each week. Late assignments will affect your grade.

The course study should take 8 weeks to complete, but must be completed within 11 weeks of an agreed starting date.

The instructor may be contacted by e-mail with any questions or concerns. If person to person conversation is necessary, the student should e-mail the instructor with a time and phone number where the student can be reached.

Academic honesty is highly valued at Canyon College. A student must present the product of his or her own original work.

V. Weekly Course Outline and Assignments

Weekly assignments will be given to the student prior to starting the course. Most assignments will consist of short answer questions which will relate to the text, personal experience, and timely issues. The chapter coverage timing is listed below. This is the optimal course time frame that works well to keep the student motivated toward completion. However, I do realize that you have chosen Canyon College because you have active professional and social lives outside of college. Exception to the optimal time frame must be discussed with the instructor and will be considered on a case by case basis.

The answers to the assignments should of sufficient length and content to clearly demonstrate your understanding of the subject.

Week 1
Chapters 1, and 2: The Nature of Public Budgeting; Government Revenues, Spending, and Borrowing

Week 2
Chapters 3, and 4: The Budget Cycle; Budget Preparation

Week 3
Chapters 5: Techniques of Budgetary Analysis

Week 4
Review Questions and MID TERM EXAM

Week 5
Chapters 6, and 7: Budget Adoption; Budget Execution

Week 6
Chapters 8, and 9: Financial Management; The Economy and the Budget

Week 7
Chapters 10, and 11: Intergovernmental Aspects of Public Budgeting; The Frustration of Budget Reform

Week 8
Review Questions and FINAL EXAM