That time of year

The months of May and June typically mean a lot of stories on government spending like the one we published Sunday from our Sacramento bureau. State and local governments predictably will be scurrying about, trying to figure out how much tax money they have to spend and what they will spend it on. And typically we'll write about programs being eliminated, and the acrimony between elected officials and the public they serve and the acrimony between elected officials and other elected officials. It can get maddening, if not confusing, reading the various stories on government budget plans, and our job as editors is to challenge how the stories are being written and presented so that they are comprehensible and relevant to people's every day lives. Having covered government at all levels and having written hundreds of stories on how government spend its money, my instincts are that these stories are important. The key is not to make them dull, but real enough that people can comprehend what's going on.