This repository contains code snippets and information to help researchers understand and use NYS local government financial data, as discussed in the Rockefeller Institute's Local Government Lab panel on 2023-03-24.
The New York State Comptroller's transparency website, Open Book New York, is updated daily with the most current information about local government finances. Available information includes revenues and expenses, balance sheet, debt, and property tax cap and tax limit calculations. The reports on the site let you compare year-to-year trends for an individual municipality or across municipalities in a single year. More sophisticated reporting can be accomplished by downloading the bulk files and diving deeper into the data.
This presentation will review the timing and scope of the supplied financial data and reports, show how to retrieve data and data dictionaries from the site, and share some tips for data use and transformation. We will also briefly discuss other tools like the Fiscal Stress Monitoring System and the Accounting and Reporting Manuals.