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TheWeight of an Empty Purse
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
What Local Councils Can Learn About Leading When the Money Runs Out
There's a particular kind of quiet that falls over a council chamber when the finance report goes up on the screen. It's the quiet of people doing arithmetic in their heads that they already know the answer to.
All of the local governments I work with in Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Canada are carrying some version of the same weight. Costs pushed down from higher levels of government. Ageing infrastructure that won't wait its turn. Communities who reasonably expect the same services for less money, because nobody ever ran for council promising to do less. Currently in Australia, federal funding for disasters is being changed. In England, devolution has a component of cost shifting. Doing more with less or even maintaining what we have is a constant struggle for local governments around the world.
In reflecting on this problem, I think mayors, councillors and executive staff need to understand the type of leadership they are practicing for the situation their council is facing. Leading through growth and leading through scarcity are not the same skill. Growth forgives you. It papers over a bad decision with more revenue next quarter. Scarcity doesn't forgive anything. Every choice is visible, because every choice is now a trade-off somebody in the gallery will feel directly. I was working with a group of councillors from Australia recently.
They were lamenting the fact that the big handouts during and just after COVID were now gone. They would have to tighten their belts. They could only raise rates so far. The challenge, they said, is that they run their elections on promises they may not be able to keep.
Often local government leaders don't have control over funding decisions. Many times, commitments are inherited from previous councils, or federal and state governments cut funding and tell councils to "deal with it."
During tough financial times, local government leaders can learn something from the Stoic philosophers. They wrote about discipline. Specifically, the discipline of what we have control over and what we do not have control over. This is exactly the discipline a councillor needs at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night when someone asks why the pool is closing early this year.
You don't control all aspects of the funding envelope. However, you do control how you tell people the truth about it.
The councils that hold trust through a lean budget aren't the ones with the cleverest savings. They're the ones who explain the trade-off before it's forced on them, who say plainly what won't be funded and why, instead of letting it leak out sideways through a rumour or a closed meeting. People can live with less. What they can't live with is finding out about it last.
I am guessing that somewhere in your council area right now, there's a project everyone loved that's been quietly deferred. A playground. A library extension. A footpath that was promised three elections ago. How that announcement gets made says more about the leadership in that building than any strategic plan will.
So here are some things you can do to manage your financial decisions more effectively.
Under-promise and over-deliver – An old adage but it works.
Communicate clearly and often with your ratepayers and communities. Be honest about what you are doing and not doing, and why.
Develop a partnership strategy to take some of the weight of dwindling federal and state coffers.
Practice 80/20 thinking. Don't fund or cut something just because a vocal minority wants it. Whenever possible, focus on something that affects the "80%" of your ratepayers.
An empty purse doesn't have to mean an empty promise. It just means the promise has to be smaller, and honest, and yours to keep.
Peace, Steve
Steve Huff is an author, keynote speaker and leadership consultant who has worked with local government leaders around the world. He will be available for keynotes and consulting across the UK, Ireland and Canada from March 2027. His book, Life is Chaos and All is Well, is available at winningchaos.com.
The Real Agenda – Leading in Local Government. This is Edition 1 of a fortnightly series covering leadership, change and the real challenges facing local government leaders across Australia, the UK, Ireland and Canada. The next edition publishes in a fortnight. Follow Steve Huff on LinkedIn to receive each edition, or visit winningchaos.com.