When Budget Pressure Forces Leaders to Change Tactics

February 16, 2026 by Chris Fabian

Periods of fiscal pressure tend to reveal more than holes in the balance sheets. They surface long-standing assumptions about what government funds, how decisions get made, and which choices have been made over time. For many public-sector leaders, the challenge isn’t a lack of effort or intent. It’s navigating real fiscal, political, legal, and community constraints while trying to make progress in an environment with seemingly limited room to maneuver.

Collier County, Florida offers a useful example of what can happen when leaders intentionally create more room. Their approach is inspirational, for the kind of resource abundance that can be achieved, even when conventional opinion is that resources are scarce.

In my experience working with governments, this is where priority-based budgeting proves most valuable. Not as a technical exercise, and not as a silver bullet, but as a way to make choices more visible and deliberate when conditions demand it.

Choosing a Different Budget Process Starting Point

Budgeting often begins with what already exists. Last year’s allocations become the baseline, adjustments happen at the margins, and deeper questions get postponed for another cycle. That approach is understandable. It reflects the complexity of public services, the durability of mandates, and the reality that many programs exist for good reasons tied to community expectations.

In Collier County, leadership chose to start from a different place. By setting a firm boundary around available resources, they created a shared understanding that meaningful decisions would need to come from examining how dollars were already being allocated and invested. That choice clarified the constraints. And it signaled that the next phase of budgeting would focus less on incremental adjustment and more on alignment and potential realignment.

Once that boundary was in place, the question shifted from “How do we grow what we have?” to “What are we actually funding, how does it connect to what we’re trying to achieve?” and “how could we approach this differently to optimize resources, leverage partnerships, pursue efficiencies, consider alternative funding and service delivery models? Priority-based budgeting provided a structured way to explore those questions without defaulting to across-the-board reductions.

Making New Options Visible

The work that followed wasn’t about identifying cuts in isolation. It was about building a shared, organization-wide view of programs and services. For Collier County, that meant inventorying and evaluating more than 600 programs and services.

Looking at programs through lenses such as cost, impact, and mandate made tradeoffs more concrete. Some services were essential and non-negotiable. Others offered flexibility in how they were delivered or funded. Still others reflected legacy approaches that warranted a closer look. These distinctions are rarely comfortable, but they are often necessary if leaders want to move beyond abstract discussions of efficiency.

With clearer information in hand, leaders could have more grounded conversations about redundancy, duplication, and alternative ways to achieve the same outcomes. That included exploring cost recovery, partnerships, and other adjustments that could preserve service levels while using resources differently. Over time, this discipline helped the county identify significant savings and new revenue opportunities — results that emerged from cumulative decisions rather than a single breakthrough moment.

The Role of People and Trust

Processes and frameworks only go so far. In practice, the durability of any budgeting approach depends on people. In Collier County, many department leaders and staff had long tenures and deep institutional knowledge. Expecting immediate change would have overlooked both the value of that experience and the fatigue that often accompanies repeated reform efforts.

Leadership placed early emphasis on transparency and trust. Establishing clearer cost centers helped make spending more tangible and understandable. Empowering staff to operate with greater flexibility — within defined guidelines — signaled that this work wasn’t about arbitrary cuts or top-down directives. It was about equipping teams with better information and clearer expectations.

Equally important was a shift away from blunt budget instructions toward a programmatic conversation tied to strategic priorities and public input. Instead of asking departments to absorb uniform reductions, leaders focused on how individual programs advanced the county’s mission and where adjustments made sense. That change in posture helped move discussions from defending budgets to examining outcomes.

Thoughts for Other Leaders

Collier County’s experience doesn’t suggest that priority-based budgeting is the right answer in every context, or that change should happen at the same pace everywhere. Public-sector environments vary widely, and so do the constraints leaders face.

What it does suggest is that when leaders are able to create clarity about priorities, tradeoffs, and expectations, budgeting conversations tend to become more productive. Priority-based budgeting can support that clarity by making options visible and by providing a common language for difficult decisions.

For leaders exploring similar approaches, the work begins with committing to a way of thinking, then adopting the structures and tools needed to sustain it. Start with leadership alignment. Be transparent about constraints. Expect to learn and adjust along the way. Over time, that consistency can help organizations move from managing scarcity to making more intentional choices about how resources are used.

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