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Confessions of a Dinosaur
Author(s) -
Kliman Albert J.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/1540-5850.01063
Subject(s) - officer , bureaucracy , budget process , feudalism , magic (telescope) , perspective (graphical) , political science , business , law , art , physics , quantum mechanics , politics , visual arts
The old time budget officer has been all but wiped out—the species having been deprived of its natural habitat by the great smoke cloud that began to spread after the great cataclysm of 1974 when the Budget Act began to change all the rules. This, of course, is an overstatement. But it is clear—at least from the perspective of this old dinosaur—that the job of the budget officer has changed over the years, from what many perceived of as a master of financial magic to just another serf (or supervisor) in the bureaucratic feudal system. This is not a polemic against the Budget Act or the changes that have taken place. The only thing constant about the budget process is change. Rather, it is a discussion of how these changes have affected budget officers over the decades that I have been involved in the budget business.