State Websites Offer Fiscal Data on Local Governments

Most states require local governments to submit financial data—typically on an annual basis—and at least 38 now present that local fiscal data on easily accessible online platforms to give the public access to important information on their cities, towns, and counties.

The various state websites, which promote transparency by allowing a glimpse into local government finances, offer a range of features. Some enable users to compare localities, for example, while others let people create graphic visualizations of historical trends on local taxes and spending.

Among the states with such dashboards, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington provide assessments of local governments’ fiscal health using financial indicators or overall scores to bring additional insights. For example:

• The Office of the New York State Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System includes fiscal scores for local governments for at least the previous three years that shed light on each entity’s finances. The scores represent composite measures based on indicators in categories such as year-end fund balance, operating deficits, and cash position. Based on the scores, the comptroller’s office identifies the local governments susceptible to or already under fiscal stress. Users can view each indicator over time and make comparisons among localities within the state.
• The Michigan Department of Treasury’s Community Financial Dashboard calculates a set of fiscal indicators, including the strength of a local government’s savings and the size of its unfunded pension liability. To provide context, the dashboard ranks each municipality’s performance against other governments of the same type.

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In particularly challenging times, when revenue is volatile and priorities may need to be reassessed, it is important that lawmakers manage budgets effectively to mitigate fiscal stress.

In another approach, Louisiana maintains a list of “fiscally distressed municipalities” that its legislative auditor’s office reports may not be able to continue to provide basic services to residents in the near future because of financial issues.

Previous research by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that states that monitor the fiscal health of local governments may be better prepared to address financial problems before they become unmanageable. Having the information readily available to the public improves transparency and accountability.

Publishing local fiscal data online can help to elevate discourse on budgets and local priorities by making the information easily accessible. But that benefit often can be reduced by what can be considerable time lags in posting data.

For example, the steep and sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fiscal stability of cities and counties likely will not show up on these websites for at least a year. Still, the data do provide valuable information on the situation that local governments were in as they headed into the 2020 recession and can help states understand which localities might be particularly vulnerable to fiscal problems.

Table 1 provides links to the local fiscal data webpages for each of the states that now maintain such sites.