Ronnie Lowenstein thinks she would make an awful politician. She is not, after all, interested in toeing any line but a budget line.

But she is fiercely protective of what she sees as her office's defining feature: its independence. The Independent Budget Office (IBO) was created in 1996 as a way to reign in the expanding influence of the mayor in the city's budget negotiation process, and Lowenstein has been there from the beginning. She was appointed director in 2000, and has since been reappointed.

Her mandate, as she sees it, is to make the city budget as transparent and accountable as possible, by evaluating the mayor's preliminary budget and delivering her own revenue forecasts. Often these projections clash with those of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Lowenstein sometimes finds herself in the crosshairs.
Taking a break from examining the final city budget, she discussed her experiences as IBO director under both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, the role of IBO in the budget process and her potential future, or lack thereof, in elected life.

What follows is an edited transcript.




City Hall: How have your interactions with staffers and elected officials informed your thinking about the role that the IBO serves?

Ronnie Lowenstein: Well, the city budget is not at all transparent. The city ironically releases reams of data, but the data is nearly incomprehensible unless you know what you're looking for or how it works. And for that reason, that makes people like us particularly useful. Even in an administration such as this one-where they're relatively free with information, certainly relative to their predecessor-there is still something to be said. As long as we do the budget the way we do, focusing on control rather than transparency, there's a need for places like IBO.  




CH: The office was created during Rudy Giuliani's first term-how much have you found the role of the IBO depends on the mayoral administration?

RL: Initially, under the Giuliani administration, although IBO has a strong guarantee of access to information in the city charter, they weren't at all willing to provide that information. We took the administration to court, as did many others. We won, I think, a very strong decision, and following that our access became much better. So, I think once we received the access to information that we needed-the court guaranteed that we'd receive it-I think our function has been largely the same. I think the degree of cooperation with the current administration has been vastly better.  



CH: Do you ever find yourself caught between the various parties involved in negotiating the budget?

RL: People use our work day in and day out. We're, of course, not at the table. We don't take policy positions. We very deliberately made the decision to not take policy positions, because what we care about is the credibility of the numbers and the analysis.  So people use our revenue forecast and, other than [the Office of Management and Budget], we're the only place in the city that's charter-mandated to do a full-fledged revenue forecast.  And because it's credible, people will go to the administration and say, "IBO says that there will be far more revenue in 2010 than OMB was saying."      
I think, within the last few weeks, there was a fair amount of controversy over the cost of the pension re-openers. There were estimates ranging from no cost at all to $200 million and we came out and did an estimate on the fiscal impact with sufficient information that people could understand what our analysis entails and why it was different. And I think that's been useful.  




Q: What have you learned about managing the budget that, ideally, everybody involved in working on the budget would know about the process?  

RL: One thing I've learned is the need for greater transparency.  This is one place where we do weigh in on policy prescriptions. The city's budget has served us well for decades now as a good way to control spending and stay on top of tax revenues, make sure that we're balanced. But there are other important functions of budgeting as well, and there are many ways to make this information accessible to a broader range of people. To butcher a Barbara Jordan quote, "Budget's too important to be a spectator sport." And it's places like IBO that get the spectators out of the stands and into the playing field.




CH: Why do you think we did not find out about the City Council slush-fund scandal sooner? Is there something, in the future, we should all be looking out for?

RL: I think the Council has moved towards making the process more transparent.  Ironically, had they not a year ago started putting members' names up against the member items [...] at that point it became obvious that there was something amiss. So it was one of those moves towards greater transparency, I think, that revealed the extent of the problem. I think I should add that most of what they've instituted in this round I think will go a long way from it happening ever again.




CH: Like what?

RL: Vetting, along with the administration, to make sure that organizations are legitimate, that they're large enough that they file tax returns - things that, in retrospect, seem commonsense, but haven't been happening.




CH: You are now in your second full term. Are you interested in serving a third?

RL: I haven't crossed that bridge yet. I think I probably have the best job in city government. I'm working in fields I really care about. I work with people that are smart and really interested in public policy and I have the ability to one day look at tax issues and then later that afternoon talk about homeless prevention policies-and not have to worry where IBO's budget is coming from three weeks down the road is a very attractive position.




CH: So does that mean there are other public policy positions that you'd be interested in?

RL: No, what I think I'm saying is: I'm enjoying this one immensely. 




CH: Does that preclude a future in a mayoral administration or elected office? Because then you would have to be political. You would have to toe the line, so to speak.

RL: It suggests that I would make a very bad politician, or very bad political candidate.  I'm not attuned to telling people what they want to hear particularly. I'm much more concerned about finding information that's solid. Ultimately, it's my belief, and the belief of everyone working here, that by putting out better information, the quality of the public discourse will be raised. And ultimately, that's going to mean better public policy.  I'm not out there advocating for smaller class sizes or more homeless shelters or lower taxes; what I am doing is providing the information that will allow the elected officials to make those ultimately subjective trade-offs. I have a lot of respect for people who can do that. But that's not what I do.