My go-to sites for state and local government data
Deciphering financial reports is time consuming. Here's how I save time on data gathering.
Happy Finance Friday! The last two weeks I’ve written about understanding government annual financial reports. Part I looked at what’s wrong about the process and Part II laid out some suggestions for making it better. In the final issue of this three-parter, I’m going to highlight some of the organizations and data sites that I’ve come to rely on over the years. None of these organizations have asked me to promote them and this is by no means a comprehensive list of what’s available. This newsletter simply highlights the sites I use most.
Public pensions
My go-to source for public pension data is the Public Pension Plans database, produced and updated by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research. The database has expanded over the years to include information on what types of assets plans invest in (hedge funds, bonds, etc.) and allows users to peruse national, state and local data. Charts and graphs that compare each pension plan to the national average round out the user experience and provide essential context.
See also: If you’re looking for information about pension policy, the National Association of Retirement Administrators has a great website that is regularly updated with research on retirement plan changes and trends. Truth in Accounting’s State Data Lab also has charts, graphs and fact sheets on state and large city debt (including retirement debt) per capita.
A few stories I’ve produced using this data
Pensions Have Tripled Their Investment in High-Risk Assets. Is It Paying Off? (Governing)
Little-Noticed Home Buying Risk: Your City’s Financial Problems (wire story)
State spending and revenue
There are a few sources I use, depending on the information I’m seeking.
The Urban Institute: The institute’s State and Local Finance Initiative regularly produces research and data reports on state revenue, expenditures and trends. Their State Tax Data (subscription required) has the most current summary data available on monthly and annual changes in state revenue and spending. It’s a good canary-in-the-coalmine source for where things are heading. The initiative also maintains state fiscal briefs with topline numbers like total budget and largest spending areas per capita.
Pew’s Fiscal 50: This project by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ State Fiscal Health project has data and visualizations on several metrics. But the ones I use most often track revenue volatility, which has increased over the last decade and budget reserves.
National Association of State Budget Officers: NASBO’s Fiscal Survey of the States provides an bi-annual analysis of state fiscal condition and data summaries of state general fund revenues, expenditures, and balances. This report is where you can find things like: total annual changes in general fund revenue, how many states collected more (or less) money than projected, total value of tax cuts or hikes, and revenue growth projections.
NASBO’s State Expenditure Report is published annually and tells us about total state spending (including general funds, other state funds, bonds, and federal funds), spending by category and includes a revenue update.
Stories
States Try to Prepare for the Economy’s Wild Ride (Governing)
States Are Seeing Steep Income Tax Revenue Growth. Will It Last? (Forbes)
As States Plan for Next Year’s Budget, the Economy Flashes Mixed Signals (Route Fifty)
Pandemic relief spending
The federal government doled out a LOT of relief money to states and localities via pandemic relief in 2020 and 2021. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee was established to track that money in the name of accountability and transparency. The committee produces comprehensive reports on many topics, such as demographic data on Homeowner Assistance Fund approved applicants and how much unemployment insurance went to each state.
It also maintains a few databases, including how governments spent their $350 billion in recovery funding. Users can filter by state, locality, search by topic or category, or do keyword searches. Because the data is taken straight from government reports, the categorization isn’t always consistent, nor is the information about the programs. So, it’s definitely worth eyeballing entries to make sure they include the right data.
Stories
The billions spent on government remote work (LSS)
The Billion Dollar Jobs Push Using ARPA Funds (Route Fifty)
Data on localities
Comprehensive data on local governments is notoriously hard to standardize AND keep current. Even so, there are a few sites I find helpful.
Property taxes: If you want to know about property tax fairness, the University of Chicago’s Center for Municipal Finance (which produces the Public Money Pod) has data and reports on property tax inequity. Another go-to source and authority on all things property tax is the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where I used to be a contributing writer. The institute maintains a state-by-state property tax database.
Shoutout: The institute’s Fiscally Standardized Cities database accounts for differences in government structure and makes it possible to compare local government finances for 212 of the largest U.S. cities. FiSC has 115 categories, including revenues, expenditures, debt and assets.
The U.S. Census of Governments: Several of the resources I’ve listed incorporate data from this project by the Census Bureau. But if you want to go straight to the source, the Annual Survey of State and Local Finances has local government data by state and nationally including on: tax revenue, other types of revenue, and spending. (Last updated 2020.)
Counties: The National Association of Counties has the NACo County Explorer tool, which shows national map data at a county-by-county level on things like revenues, expenditures and housing affordability. However, the finance data hasn’t been updated since 2017 so it’s more of a pre-pandemic historical reference.
Cities: The National League of Cities produces an annual City Fiscal Conditions report based on survey responses from hundreds of cities across the country. The report gives you a sense of how finance officials view their government’s fiscal situation.
Stories
COVID-19 and Working From Home Give Cities a Chance to Redefine Who Uses Downtowns (Rockefeller Institute)
Unfair Property Taxes and What to Do About Them (Route Fifty)
Workforce data
The MissionSquare Research Institute (formerly the Center for State and Local Government Excellence) has become a vital resource for me in recent years thanks to its regular surveys of state and local employee sentiment during the pandemic. If you want to know about state/local employment trends, employee morale and retention issues, or about the impact of Covid-19 on the public safety workforce, this place has you covered.
Stories
This is helpful -- I've used some of these sources myself, of course, but some are new to me.
Glad I could share some new sources!