The attachment program is working again, so I am attaching spreadsheets based on 2005 public finance data from the U.S. Census Bureau and personal income data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Since this is not a census of governments year, the Bureau’s data is based on a limited survey, and state and local finance estimates are provided at the state level only. Downloading individual unit data for the City of New York and the Port Authority of NY and NJ, the only units of local government in New York City, however, I have compiled data for both New York City and (by subtraction) the rest of New York State. Once again, for reasons I explained here http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/bureau_of_economic_analysis_data_pay_per_worker_and_its_public_policy_implications.html , in general revenues and expenditures are most comparable when expressed as a share of personal income. The spreadsheets contain the information as downloaded, and you can see what I did with it.
As described earlier, I forgot to allocate the air transportation revenues of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the spreadsheet as posted on Google; this has been corrected. The Census Bureau is researching an apparent error on their part for local government natural resources expenditures in New Jersey. The 2006 public employment and payroll data from the Bureau was attached to this post http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/new_public_employment_and_payroll_data_shows_spitzer_s_budget_the_best_of_the_three.html .
More recently, I have compiled more detailed information on public education finance data using a Census Bureau compilation I hadn’t used before. Yikes! I’ll write more about this as I can, and will post data for every school district in the state.
It is worth mentioning once again how the Census Bureau compiles this data. In Census of Governments years, those ending in 02 and 07, the Bureau solicits data from every state and local government in the country, and in addition to providing data for state and local government on a statewide basis, also provides for local government by county. In other years, the Bureau takes a sample of local governments, and only provides estimates statewide. For many states, however, including New York, the Bureau receives electronic records for every local government every year, in our case from the Office of the State Comptroller. For those states, it could provide “census of governments” type data each year, but to be “fair” and comparable the Bureau takes a sample, and only reports the same statewide data here as elsewhere.
Worse, to save money the Bureau didn’t provide a large enough sample size in 2001 and 2003 to provide even statewide estimates for local government finance, breaking a data series going back to the late 1950s. This is a third major cutback to the division’s work; until the Reagan Administration the Bureau used to produce books on data on local government in “major counties,” those with large populations, in every year. And the last data I was able to get placing federal, state and local data together in comparable categories in a single spreadsheet, so one could clearly see what level of government is responsible for what, is for 1995 (you can comment here if you want to see it, along with a long boring and out of date overview of how the government as a whole works). The Bureau’s federal program was cut back after that year.
Freed from paper, the Bureau is providing far more extensive access to greater detail than it did 20 years ago, but the actual data collected is diminishing. While demanding more and more detailed accounting from public companies, and as those companies gain more and more access to our personal information, therefore, the government taken as a whole is collecting less and less information about public agencies.
And were it not for the work done and battles fought by the Bureau’s governments division, things would be even worse. They’re trying to maintain and improve access to their database, when they ought to be getting the funding they need to expand the detail available on non-pension public employee benefits, judgments and claims, and other information that was not thought important in the 1950s. Is NYC particularly burdened by lawsuits, or is that a phony issue? How does the cost of NYC public employee health insurance compare with the national average, once a reasonable adjustment for the cost of living here is applied? I don’t know, and can’t find out. Who doesn’t want people to know?
There is nothing, however, stopping the Office of the State Comptroller from re-compiling its data into Census Bureau categories as they are today and reporting public employment, payroll, revenues, expenditures and debt for local governments in every part of the state – along with a comparable average for the U.S. and for other states – every year. And there is nothing stopping that office from identifying the other states that have sophisticated electronic reporting and working with them to provide more detailed information for those states alone, even if others don’t want to go along.
In the meantime, print out the tables, salute the Bureau’s bureaucrats, and hope the data shows up again next year. There are no guarantees.