Public Financial Analysis ― A Guide to Strategic Public Management

Public Financial Analysis is both a textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and a guidebook for practitioners, on the methods, tools, and metrics utilized in public sector financial analysis. The book instructs readers on how to use local government financial records to produce financial and economic benchmarks to track the financial condition of cities, to follow the economic base, revenue, expenditure, operating position, and debt trends to help define the financial condition of local governments.

The book will provide readers with the framework, methods, and tools to analyze the finances of a city and define its financial condition. The analysis of the city’s operating and capital finances will allow elected and appointed officials understand to a city’s current financial position and to analyze how budget and program considerations will affect the city’s future financial condition.

To support the financial analysis concept, each chapter of the book will utilize case studies driven by a database of local government finances of 2,000+ local jurisdictions. The database charts the financial position of each jurisdiction through the use of financial and economic benchmarks to project the financial condition and allow comparison across similar types of jurisdictions: by type of government (city, village, and township), or population cohorts.

Public Financial Analysis is designed to serve as a primary text in a public financial analysis class or a supplementary text for Municipal Budgeting, Budgeting and Policy Analysis, Public Management, and Public Finance and Economics.

Kevin E. O’Brien is the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Environmental Finance Center in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. He has taught Public Finance and Municipal Budgeting courses at CSU. He is a former public finance aide in the Mayor’s Office in New York City, and a financial analyst with Moody’s Investors Service on Wall Street. He holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning and Development Finance from Columbia University.

Philip M. Brett is a public finance professional serving as Finance Director for four greater Cleveland cities and a Budget Analyst with the City of Cleveland. He teaches Accounting and Municipal Budgeting at CSU. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago. He is a Certified Public Accountant.

Kyle Julien, Ph.D. is a Research Associate with the Great Lakes Environmental Finance Center. Dr. Julien is coordinating the GLEFC Financial Condition of Ohio’s Local Jurisdictions project. He holds a Doctorate in U.S. History from the University of California, Irvine.