Compliance With Requirements To Hold Public Hearings on Use of Revenue Sharing Funds

To encourage citizen participation and to ensure that reasonable opportunity exists for citizens and groups to be informed and make their views known during both the budget planning process and the final budget enactment process, state and local governments receiving revenue sharing funds are required by federal law to hold two public hearings. GAO reviewed 181 state and local governments to determine whether the state and local governments had complied with the federal requirements. The first public hearing was to cover proposed uses of only revenue sharing funds; the second hearing was to cover the use of the revenue sharing funds in relation to the entire budget.