@sidereal When I worked at for a city owned theatre this logic existed when working with the city for our yearly budget. One year the executive producer took it further. Not just max out the budget but exceed the budget so that in the following year, it would be clear to the budgeters we would need more money.

We produced some incredible work that season but IIRC we were like ~1 million dollars over budget. The EP resigned rather than go through an investigation and our budget was cut the following season.

The interim between leaders was really excellent though because it was basically the people who ran the theatre making all the decisions. Closest few months I've ever been to a worker ran environment.