Policy, Finance and Budgeting for Public Administration Tacoma

Building on our work from Winter quarter, we will examine the public policy, budget, and fiscal foundations of serving the public. These topics and related skills are fundamental to public and nonprofit administration. We engage in policy analysis to rigorously examine public problems and critique possible solutions; try to craft our preferred solutions into effective laws and programs through a mastery of the policymaking process; generate (through taxes) then allocate public funds to these programs and track how these funds are spent. Ultimately, budgets reflect a society’s policy choices - or at least the choices made by legislators on behalf of society. As administrators, we may be pulled in at any point in this process, so it is necessary to have reasonably strong skills in each of these areas.