Over the next five months, our Documenters Network is investigating how federal budget shifts are affecting communities in cities across the United States. Share what you’re seeing with us.

By Ariel Cheung

Attendees from multiple Documenters Network sites gather on the first day of City Bureau’s Docs Summit in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Michael Izquierdo/City Bureau)

When Documenters in one of our 20+ sites across the country attend their local government meetings, they’re contributing to a powerful tool: an accessible and searchable public database of civic decision making at documenters.org. 

As a journalist and editor, I’ve watched this resource grow and sometimes wondered: what could communities learn from one another’s experiences? And what patterns might we see if we looked at all these notes together? 

Thousands of Documenters have created a record of more than 10,000 meetings and special assignments since the program’s start. Our Documenters Network site partners have used these assignments to inform reporting, such as Signal Cleveland’s spotlight on how casino revenue funding is used, and in Outlier Media’s outreach to Detroit homeowners who were owed millions in tax foreclosure profits.

It’s a resource we’re still learning to fully leverage for collaborative reporting. To that end, we’re launching a new initiative that will explore how this mass of data might reveal larger patterns that are helpful to more people.  

This year, we’re coming together to report on how federal budget cuts — whether through the Department of Government Efficiency, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sunsetting of money from the COVID-spawned American Rescue Plan Act, or executive actions — are affecting local education, social services and health care funding on the local level.

Across a handful of Documenters sites — including Chicago; Detroit; Indianapolis; Newark, New Jersey; and rural communities in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia Gorge — we’ll be examining municipal and county budgets in 2026 to understand how federal decisions are affecting each of our communities, and whether there are commonalities in those outcomes.

City Bureau launched the project at the end of January, and we hope to start publishing coverage in June. As we begin our reporting, we would also like to hear from you: What changes have you seen in your community tied to federal funding? We’ve created this form and are hoping as many people as possible can fill it out and aid our reporting. 

If you have any questions, or if you’re interested in learning more about how Documenters work can inform journalism in your community, please reach out to me at ariel@citybureau.org.