NY Local Governments Not Filing Annual Financial Reports -- The Dogs That Don't Bark

Being the completist that I am, it didn’t take me long to see the gaps in my data. What’s up with that? Turns out that some local governments and school districts don’t get their financial information into the New York Office of the State Comptroller (OSC). Turns out that there are some completists at the OSC, too. They don’t just publish details about local governments and school districts in fiscal stress. They also do a great job of publicizing those entities, local governments and school districts, that don’t manage to get their paperwork in at all – the non-filers.

Why It Matters

My hope is that this project will highlight the practices of communities that are particularly well run, delivering world class government services at a reasonable price, but also draw attention to those governments that are particularly mismanaged. I’ve got faith that voters want good government and are willing to vote for politicians who manage and hire in such a way that delivers it. I also believe that voters often have a hard time knowing exactly what is going on in their governments. When governments and school districts fail to get their paperwork into the OSC, you have to wonder if they know themselves what is going on inside. For more on how we use OSC data and what we measure, see our methodology.

Chronic vs. Occasional Non-Filers

In any given year, there are governments and school districts with otherwise ok finances that miss a year. We can imagine a retirement or maternity leave leaving a community with the temporary loss of capacity to get that paperwork in. Those communities will recover and do fine. It’s the chronic non-filers that we’ve got to worry about.

What the Data Shows

The NY Benchmarking Project Database highlights the cities that haven’t gotten their OSC Annual Financial Report paperwork into the OSC and differentiates those that just miss a year here and there from those few that are chronic non-filers. Currently, just three cities are chronic non-filers: Mount Vernon, Ithaca, and Rensselaer.

What’s Next

As we add more data – the counties, towns, villages, districts, and authorities – we’ll highlight the well run as well as those in stress and not filing, too.