Main Responsibilities of a Fiscal and Policy Analyst at City of Seattle
As a Fiscal and Policy Analyst for the City of Seattle, Sarah's main responsibility is guiding "my departments," including the Seattle Police Department, through the annual budget process. This involves analyzing budget requests, ensuring fiscal responsibility as a "good steward of the city's money," navigating the political aspects of budget approval, and maintaining consistent communication with various departments throughout the cyclical process.
Budget Analysis, Policy Analysis, Financial Management, Public Policy, Legislative Process
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Sarah Burtner
Fiscal and Policy Analyst
City of Seattle
UCLA, 2014
Masters in Special Education and Teaching at CUNY Hunter College, Masters of Public Policy at UCLA
Economics
Government & Public Sector
Data and Analytics
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. Analyzes departmental budget requests, evaluating costs, feasibility, and alignment with city revenue.
2. Works through the entire city budget legislative process, interacting with both the executive and legislative branches.
3. Acts as a steward of taxpayer dollars, employing skepticism and critical analysis in budget decision-making.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities in your current role?
I'm a fiscal and policy analyst and I work on the city's budget. The budget process is annual. My job is to see my department's budgets through this process.
My departments include the Seattle Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management. All departments have a budget, and all questions about the budget are policy-related. The budget is the most important policy document a city, state, or country has.
It lays out the priorities for what you want to see in the city. You want more housing, more policing, better education, better services for people, things like that. It's a huge lift.
There are probably around 40 analysts in my office, plus a few managers and upper management. At different times of the year, I gather requests from my departments. They state their needs for new positions, programs, or projects, and I analyze them.
A significant part of my role is determining costs, projecting them into future years, and ensuring they align with revenue updates. I assess if proposals fit, make sense, and if the requested positions or funding levels are necessary.
It involves working through all angles and being skeptical. The job description emphasizes skepticism because a large part of it is being a good steward of the city's money and taxpayer dollars.
Much of my work involves building a package that meets the city's requirements for moving forward and ensuring programs make sense. Then, I work it through the entire legislative process.
I work for the executive, which is the mayor, but there's also the legislative side – checks and balances. Everyone must sign off on this. There's a huge political component, especially with policing.
Having meetings, maintaining strong relationships, and proactively addressing potential issues also takes up part of my days at certain times of the year. Additionally, I spend time communicating with my departments, consolidating information in our various budget systems, and ensuring everything ties out. It's very cyclical.
I perform the same tasks at the same time each year, but I'm always working on different things even though the process remains the same.