The article is devoted to identifying the features of conflicts in the public sector as a basis for disputes, including with the participation of courts. The concept of «public interests» is introduced, on the basis of which the characteristic of disputes in the budgetary sphere is given as a dispute between the parties, relations between which are based on the method of legal inequality. It is concluded that by virtue of the law, the ruling party gives instructions to the subordinate party to do something in relation to the budget, but not always the public interests of the parties to the legal relationship are equally protected by law, which is not sufficiently manifested in the practice of legal support of budgetary activities. Since the efforts of the legislator to regulate budgetary relations are mainly aimed at ensuring procedural activities, they almost do not affect the goal-setting mechanism, so the subordinate party has no opportunity to challenge the management decision that infringes the implementation of the public interests of the subordinate party. By virtue of the above, the courts do not participate in the consideration of issues that go beyond the procedure for spending budget funds and the application of appropriate sanctions. Therefore, frequent cases of arbitrariness of the powerful party in budgetary legal relations remain without proper judicial protection. To solve the problem, it is required to introduce the institution of goal-setting in the budget legislation, so that it will be possible to talk about the proper provision of public interests in the budget sphere.