Today marks the reading of Bermuda’s budget.  While speculation has been high on whether taxes will increase and what specific announcements will be made in light of recent election promises, this writer’s greatest interest for today’s reading lies in its formatting.

Long time followers of this blog would recall this writer’s dismay at last year’s budget statement given the switch from a tabular summary breaking down revenues and expenditures to compare them against estimates and actual’s from years past to one almost solely written, lacking in substance having no tables and only presenting a shallow summary with pie charts which poorly presented the whole picture.

In the opinion of this writer, announcing a budget without a tabular breakdown of revenue and expenditures is like a company announcing an annual report without a balance sheet and income statement.  It is something unheard of in the realm of respectable business and yet somehow was seen as acceptable for Bermuda.

For this writer, in the very least, the formatting of the budget will demonstrate in a great many ways the manner of governance we can expect from this administration during its latest term in office.