ABSTRACT
Bureaucratic centralization can expedite information-processing capacity of budget decision makers and reduce institutional frictions. Budget processes have been highly centralized at various levels of the federal tier, especially in the national government and state governments. This chapter reviews state budget outcomes with state subfunctional budget data that are close to agency-level expenditures. Fiscal data to test whether bureaucratic centralization affects budget punctuations and stability were obtained from the Census Bureau. Budgetary incrementalism predicted that bounded rationality and political and institutional frictions will result in highly stabilized budget change patterns. The Idaho Division of Financial Management (DFM) circulates budget guidelines for preparing agency budget requests at the beginning of the state budget process. In 1949, the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) was created to "prepare" budget estimates for the state legislature. The item veto is likely introduced as a fiscal constraint from governors to curb legislative logrolling, where legislators support a bill that might include pork-barrel spending.
