ABSTRACT
Local practitioners need to understand the financial context at the national, state, and local levels in order to prepare capital budgets, to develop project budgets, and to prepare local infrastructure plans. This includes understanding the relationship of the amount spent at the national level to the Gross National Product (GNP), as well as the amounts spent over time by individual infrastructure systems at various levels of government and the private sector. In addition, local practitioners should have some background information on the terminology and sources of revenues for governments so that they can make informed decisions about where to go to finance an infrastructure program or project. Although previous chapters have discussed the preparation of the capital improvement budget, and subsequent chapters in this section of the book go into detail about individual revenue sources, this chapter provides the context for various financing mechanisms for infrastructure.
