Preston Trigg: Government Budgets

On Thursday, Preston Trigg, Director of Administration & Special Projects for the Hillsborough County Tax Collector's office, returned to our Public Affairs Reporting class to explain how to understand government budgets.

Trigg explained that in journalism, you have to work through or around budgets, saying that it is unavoidable. He also explained that every government agency has their budgets available and that the government budgets in Florida are open to the public.

Before Trigg came into class, I didn’t know what was on a government budget. From his lecture, I learned that most government budgets are balanced, except federal budgets and in the state of California where budgets aren’t balanced.

Trigg noted to us that government budgets consisted of two components; revenue and expenses, revenues bringing money in and expenses meaning money going out.

When reporting on revenue, look for major increases and decreases as it can tell you a lot about government revenue.

Trigg explained that there were also three different types of expenses: Personnel, Capital, and Operating. Personnel expenses dealt with money associating with people. Capital expenses are usually one time purchases of anything over $1000 dollars. Operating expenses are usually recurring.

Trigg even showed us what a government budget spreadsheet looked like with all the different color coding meaning different things.

The most important thing I took out of Trigg’s visit was that when reporting, don’t report falsely. If you don’t know, you must ask.