How One Small County Got Its Budget Audited by Citizens

When officials in rural Douglas County, Oregon, faced a $2 million shortfall in 2023, they did something unusual: they opened the books to a citizen audit committee. This episode follows how a group of retired accountants, a school teacher, and a small-business owner spent six months digging into property tax assessments, software contracts, and a mysterious line item labeled "miscellaneous professional services." They found $340,000 in annual savings on software nobody used, $78,000 in double-paid vendor invoices, and a property tax error that had been costing homeowners an extra $120,000 a year. Lucas and Luna walk through what the committee did, how the county fixed the problems, and why this model of participatory budgeting hasn't spread further. The episode uses this one concrete case to ask a bigger question: should more local governments let citizens audit the line items? #CitizenAudit #DouglasCounty #Oregon #ParticipatoryBudgeting #LocalGovernment #PropertyTax #GovernmentWaste #BudgetTransparency #PublicFinance #FiscalPolicy #GovernmentSpending #Audit #CivicEngagement #TaxDollars #GovernmentEfficiency #Economics #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo