ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the foundations of performance budgeting as established in law by American state governments. In-depth analysis of state laws for performance budgeting provides for unique comparative richness, with periodic accountings of these laws described and compared. The chapter offers the most comprehensive rendering of performance budgeting legal foundations in the US states to date. Some states have rather robust legal frameworks for the engagement of performance budgeting; others have somewhat skeletal ones. While legislating performance budgeting has been found to enhance system application, code may be thin or not even exist and states may engage performance data for budgetary decision making, be it weakly or well. The practice of performance budgeting ebbs and flows in states, and many punctuated periods of interest rest on the work of a champion or champions—either executive, legislative or both—to press its relevancy to others.
