Analysts and policymakers are losing their most consistent, thorough source of state and local finance data for 2001 and 2003. The US Census Bureau did not publish state-by-state data on local government finance for fiscal year 2001 and will not be publishing it for 2003, a practice begun in 1970. In lieu of this data, the Census Bureau is publishing local finance estimates for the country as a whole. However, the Census Bureau will report the state level data for 2002 through the Census of Governments Report, and this data will be functionally similar to what was available before the Bureau stopped publishing such information, according to the government agency.

These data enable analysts and policymakers to evaluate state and local fiscal policy, examine multi-year trends, and compare spending and revenues across states. Local finance data includes local and state general revenues (taxes, charges, fees, utilities, unemployment) and expenditures (education, social services, transportation, public safety, interest on debt).

This information provides a comprehensive, standard data set for local and state finances. Many states and local governments do not have a centralized data collection process. States also differ greatly in how and what they collect, therefore, without the US Census Bureau state and local finance data comparisons across states will be impossible.

Budget constraints forced the Census Bureau to collect data from fewer local governments in each state. In previous years, the sample comprised approximately 15,000 local governments. In 2001, they collected information from only about 7,000 local governments. Without data from a sufficient sample of each state’s cities and counties, estimating local expenditures for an entire state becomes statistically unreliable.

Given the current fiscal crisis in many states, it is a particularly inopportune time for this change in data collection because it could severely limit analysis of state and local finances.