Appalachian Transition movement should employ participatory budgeting...

City governments across the country (and world) are trying a new system of budgeting that seems to be working well for them and their citizens. Participatory budgeting is a process of decision-making in which non-elected community members decide how a portion of their local government budget will be used. The process typically involves at least four steps: 1)   Community members self-identify priorities on which they think city money should be spent. 2)   Community members select which projects they want to support, and then decide which members of these subgroups will be budget delegates. These delegates work with budget experts to create specific spending proposals. 3)   Community members vote on which projects to fund. 4)   The city government implements spending for the top projects. This system of budgeting has been around for at least 25 years, when in 1989 the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, implemented the first full participatory budgeting process. Since then, it has spread into the U.S., mostly to large or medium-sized cities (Chicago, New York City, Vallejo, Calif., to list a few). So, why shouldn’t/couldn’t it spread into eastern Kentucky or any other part of Central Appalachia? In Kentucky, each county has a fiscal court and a municipal city council that have annual budgets that elected officials are in charge of dispersing for various projects. Most of the time, this system works just fine, and projects that need attention, like extending city water lines into communities far from the county seat, get the money needed to...