Kurt Thurmaier has seen a lot of municipal budgets in his time. The Kansas University assistant professor even serves on a national panel that honors cities for budget documents that are easy for the public and officials to understand.

And for the first time in recent memory, Thurmaier said this week, Lawrence’s budget statement is worthy of such an award.

	www.lawrenceks.org/budget

“I was very impressed with the latest version of the budget,” he said. “It’s the best Lawrence budget I’ve seen in 12 years.”

As part of initiatives to create a more “user-friendly” city government, officials this year decided to whip the 2002 budget into shape for submission to the Government Finance Officers Assn. awards. Thurmaier won’t be judging Lawrence’s entry, but he did review it.

He said it did a better job of listing city goals and included a narrative that explained how and why the city spends its $101 million budget.

“You know what the money’s being spent on,” Thurmaier said.

And if that seems like an essential function of a budget statement, Thurmaier said, “go pull out a budget from 1992. I think you’d be shocked.”

Assistant City Manager Debbie Van Saun said further improvements would be made to the 2003 budget statement.

“It’s a work in progress,” she said.

There was no word when the city will have the results of the formal GFOA review.