I’m not sure how you can establish a “clear chain of decision-making” for public spending that doesn’t involve the public. At the very least, when the Grand Administrator for Public Transporation Spending in the Greater Tri-State Area is standing for re-election, or when the elected officials who appointed the Grand Administrator are up for re-election, this becomes a political issue and hence there is an incentive for one side or the other to get their point of view published in the media, so why not get out there ahead of time?

Anecdotally, it sure seems to me like one of the biggest political issues in, say, the UK is whether the NHS is over or underpaying staff, whether they will have more or less money under Conservative policies or Labour policies, and so forth.

The US has multiple levels of mutually distrustful and uncooperative governments, and at many of those levels, high levels of direct democracy especially when it comes to budgetary issues. So there is some waste there.