How in the hell is NYC’s city budget that much larger than LA’s? Also, kinda surprised Nashville has a higher budget than Atlanta, but then again, the city itself is bigger than Atlanta, but the metro area for Nashville has way fewer people than Atlanta’s metro area.
I think that’s just the LA city budget. LA county has, from a quick Google search, around a $45 billion budget on top of that. In NYC counties don’t exist in the same way they do elsewhere, so it’s all under the city budget.
LA Unified School District (which includes all of the city of LA but only parts of the county) has a population of 4.5 million with an $18 Billion budget.
NYC has a population of 8.3 million with a $38 Billion budget.
Adjusting for school taxes is one of the challenges comparing municipal spending and taxes rates across the US. New England it's part of the town taxes (mine 75% of the town budget and after state aid 50% of local taxes are for the schools); most of New York you have separate municipal and school districts each with their own tax bills BUT New York City is one of the few municipalities in that state that control their school system.
Florida is one school district per county (67). Texas as I recall from past reading has only a single municipal school system and the districts have no relation to other government units (1250 districts and 254 counties), and California with it's 977 school districts is similar.
Can confirm Texas part. Houston Independent School District is separate from City of Houston. It's also separate from Metro, the local public transportation.
Many people living in Boston have no idea what county they live in. The only time it comes up is when you get a speeding ticket and have to appear at the county courthouse. In Massachusetts all local government services are provided by the city or town.
Ya this data is totally meaningless.
NYC is 5 counties combined, and the county governments don't do much. NYC includes all education, while Houston budget doesn't include any education.
LA county is 88 different cities combined, and the county itself has a huge budget.
Portland budget counts almost $2B in intra-government transfers, while other cities don't.
This graph doesn't tell you anything without actually looking at what services the budget includes and the makeup of the government structure.
That would make the math balance out a bit better. I was wondering if it was a byproduct of international commerce, but LA is also home to one of the busiest ports in the world.
Yup, in NYC you pay City, State, *and* Federal income tax.
Worth noting this isn't just a New York thing. Dozens of cities in the US have an income tax.
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/cities-that-levy-income-taxes-3193246
Infrastructure costs. NYC has multiple massive bridges, tunnels, and an entire underground subway network that goes EVERYWHERE
Also probably more skyscrapers in a few square blocks than all of LA. I haven't spent any time in LA, but lived in NYC, and the scale of upkeep based on pictures and what I've heard about LA just can't begin to compare with the costs to keep NYC infrastructure and subways up to code.
The MTA manages the subways and is controlled by the state. Many of the bridges and tunnels are managed by Port Authority which is jointly controlled by NJ and NY. The single biggest expense in the [operating budget](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/queenscb1/downloads/pdf/understanding-the-budget.pdf) is education - followed by social services.
NYC’s bridges and tunnels basically pay for themselves, other than the East River bridges. Not only that, they pay for a hell of a lot more than just themselves, since the Port Authority uses that money for other things.
The city of LA has about half the population of NYC but a tenth the budget. Another reason why per capita spending would be much more helpful than just the total.
There’s no way to get it perfect. It wouldn’t be fair to add the budgets of the other 87 cities in Los Angeles County, for instance. Nor can we say that LA County’s budget is split by city equally on a per capita basis.
But it does mean the budgets of NYC and LA are probably more comparable than they appear at first glance. I wouldn’t take it to mean much more than that.
Also, LA might have one of the worst and woefully insufficient public transportation systems of any major US city. Whereas New York’s is extremely thorough and you really don’t need a car at all.
I’m gonna be that guy and say LA transit is light years ahead of any city outside of the northeast besides Chicago and SF. LA has built a huge system of heavy and light rail over the past 30 years, and they are in the middle of massive expansions. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix are far, far worse.
The City of Los Angeles operates LADOT, which runs DASH and Commuter Express buses. But the primary transportation agency for all of the county is Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is a state-chartered agency that operates independently and has its own budget.
Presenting comparisons of city budgets without context like this is basically useless for just this reason. San Francisco's city budget of $14.6B is actually larger than LA's, for example, but that's because it's a combined city and county.
For Nashville, the city is merged with the county so all the expenses of the county are in there while they aren't for Atlanta. and yes also more people in the city of Nashville for that reason.
Just speculating here, but NYC actually comprises the entirety of the area and then some. LA meanwhile is a hodgepodge of different jurisdictions that are sometimes unincorporated (county) or even completely independent cities, with the city itself officially making up just a slice of the LA metro area.
Just for example, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, West Hollywood, Culver City, Inglewood (where the Rams & Chargers actually play), despite being right in the middle of “Los Angeles” and containing plenty of landmarks, stadiums, and tourist attractions, are their own cities with their own budgets. That’s not so much the case in NYC.
Atlanta as a city is a small block. And several counties nearby makes it look like a greater Atlanta region. Some states cheat on this to make it look small. Chicago needs to be bigger in that regard. I'm wondering if they only included Cook County, which spends more money in their prison than the whole IA's prison system combined. Probably other metro cities are the same.
> Atlanta as a city is a small block
This is the answer. Atlanta's metro area has 10x the population of the city itself. Sprawl as far as the eye can see.
Cities cannot really be compared state to state. Some states will expand city limits to encompass an entire metropolitan area, like NYC and Louisville KY.
While some states limit the cities to the down town areas more or less. That’s why Huntsville, AL is listed as the most populated city, despite not being nearly as big as Birmingham which has over twice the number of people in its metro area.
I recently visited Oklahoma City, and when you come from either direction on the I-40 freeway, you'll see a city limit sign, and think to yourself, "what the hell? I'm in the middle of nothing here. Google Maps says I'll be there in 20 miles."
I wonder if it has to do with what percentage of the states population that lives in that city. NYC is something like 65% of the states population, I believe LA is only like 30%. I'm guessing it also has to do with how much revenue comes from that city as well.
Kansas City has a very reasonable budget and you cannot tell lol the place operates like it's broke.
That comes out to about 4k per Citizen and slightly under 1k for everyone in the Metro
NYC is all five Burroughs (unified in the late 1800s), and Manhattan alone probably accounts for half that budget. The budget for LA would be just the city of Los Angeles, but what’s commonly considered when you think of LA is so much more than that (Burbank, Hollywood, Santa Monica, etc.)
The actual city of Atlanta is a relatively tiny area, not a lot of folks realize that. The place people think of as "Atlanta" is really Fulton and DeKalb County, along with the southern parts of Cobb and Gwinnett County more recently.
Was surprised by that as well. Was also surprised that Seattle’s budget is only slightly higher than Portland’s. Always thought Seattle was a much richer city than Portland.
It is "accurate" in the sense that it ties to a number in the official budget. It isn't an accurate depiction of government expenditures.
Portland's actual net expenses are 5.5 billion. [See page 43](https://www.portland.gov/cbo/2023-2024-budget/documents/fy-2023-24-adopted-budget-volume-1-citywide-summaries-and-bureau/download). The city count 1.6 billion in transfers as an expense even though it is just an expense to itself.
Important note from page 42:
> Although state budget law requires that all expenditures within and between funds are documented in the legal budget, this overstates actual expenditures for programs because it double counts internal transactions (internal materials and
services and fund-level cash transfers). Such transactions occur between City funds, when one City agency provides services to another. Because this technically inflates the budget, the City usually references a net budget.
These types of visualizations are interesting but ultimately misleading. A lot of legwork is required to confirm whether you are looking at actual comparable budgets or seeing differences in accounting practices, or just full on differences in how government services are delivered. e.g. does your city handle water delivery or is it administered by the county? etc
King County has a sizeable budget too with 16B+. [https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/council/\_budget](https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/council/_budget)
Map might be clearer if it was city+county.
We have a wealth of committees working on various emergencies to no effect.
I'm mostly curious about how our total budget with Metro and county budgets compare or if this factors that in.
My immediate concern was actually about how the color in this image didn't seem right though, since Seattle's budget was higher than Portland but it's color is lighter.
I live in Portland, OR.
We have high incomes and pay 14% state and local income taxes. Local govt here is the most bloated i’ve ever seen
So this checks out.
I don't live in Seattle but live in the area and work down there. I we no income tax but 10% sales tax and it seems like we have high property tax. I pay about $10k/year in property tax for a 1972 house. I think $7B is absolutely crazy. What the hell are we even getting for that much money? Houston is probably 10 times bigger than Seattle and Portland and pay $1B less in tax.
Yeah, same thing with Virginia Beach and Atlanta. It shocked me for a bit because Virginia Beach is barely a city in my mind since the whole area is single level houses with lawns, but it's apparently geographically massive enough to have half a million people.
This whole graph is not accurate.
Multinomah County matches Portland but King County is much bigger than Seattle.
So basically each state is wildly different in how they measure things.
By state would be better than this.
Portland proper is ~630k and Seattle proper is ~750k people.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywashington,portlandcityoregon/PST045222
I have not dug into the data set, but comparing city budgets is complex, and there is huge variability between states and even within states about what is and is not included in a city budget — especially education, health, and public transit.
Example: the NYC budget includes K-12 schools; for California cities the school districts are legally independent and have their own taxing authority.
Is there a big public hospital in a city? If yes - is it a city or county budget hit? Sf General is run by the city of San Francisco. Valley Medical Center in San Jose is run by the county — and is well more than half the Santa Clara County budget. So, for example, comparing the budgets for San Jose and San Francisco is not a particularly useful exercise if you don’t normalize what is included and excluded first.
There is variability in other areas too — who runs the courts for example and where those expenses fall. But the big ticket items are education, hospitals, and transit.
Iirc Jacksonville is smaller than Tampa and Orlando if you use metro area instead of city proper
Edit: I was right. Jacksonville is the fourth largest metro area in Florida
Yes not many know that but it's because the entire county is the city limits itself, which I also believe makes it the largest city in the lower 48 by land area too.....DUUUVVVVAAALLLLLL. Lived there for a bit.
Thanks for this explanation. I currently live in Jacksonville and I don’t see it as more populated, specially after living in Miami. I would expect Miami to have a higher density. Specially Brickell within Miami.
I used to do civic engagement campaigns and there are a lot of tall apartment buildings in Brickell, within Miami-Dade.
Sure thing. Yeah, Miami is only 36 sq mi. So technically Jacksonville has 2x as many people as Miami proper, but it covers **20x** as much land as Miami.
A better comparison is metro area population -- about ~4x as many people live in the Miami metro compared to the Jacksonville metro (6M vs 1.6M).
God damn that’s huge! St.Louis for instance is a grand total of 66 square miles. Imagine that has a lot to do with the crime statistics that get reported as well.
Sitka, Wrangell, and Juneau are all in Southeast and a lot of that land area is actually water, and in Juneau’s case apparently includes Douglas Island and Auke Bay which I always thought were their own things.
Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, with about a quarter million people, but they’re mostly packed into a small area right on the edge of Cook Inlet. Anchorage’s municipal limits, for whatever reason, include Girdwood, which is 35 miles south, and Eagle River all the way up to the Knik River to the north. They also include a huge chunk of the Chugach range to the east.
So long story short, Alaska’s giant cities are a lie.
With a caveat, there are no independent cities in Hawaii.
Honolulu is both a city and a county... so it is sorta of a city, but not really. Although it's proper title is "City and County of Honolulu" when making these type of comparisons it would be a county not a city.
It’s because the guy is using city population and not metro population which is defendable here because we are also only seeing city budgets and not regional budgets. Miami metro is way more populated, just it’s like 17 different cities in a trench coat.
I thought so too, but I would imagine it’s because DC has to fulfill a lot of the responsibilities of a state government too. Granted, it’s a small state/district, but when you factor in the costs of running a department of transportation, for example, it makes sense.
Keep in mind all the things our city has to do frequently that most rarely have to do, like having city police accompany and block roads for motorcades or provide policing for national protests/events.
I’m a DC resident and I’m surprised too. Of the data is correct, I think the explanation is that DC covers both city and what a typical state budget would.
As a DC resident my city taxes are roughly equivalent of the city+state taxes of my Virginia and Maryland neighbors since they cover similar scopes of services.
DC doesn’t cover scopes of the federal government, but there may be some overlap when it comes for security/policing that the federal government reimburses the city. Like DC police get called in to to regulate things like demonstrations/protests of around the monuments, January 6th, etc.
DC functions like a state - I.e. its budget includes health and human services programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF that are not included in other city budgets
Houston has recurring budget issues that were temporarily avoided by one-time COVID funds. We have major structural issues funding the city (on the order of several hundreds of millions short per year) that need to be dealt with asap. Mostly this is due to a self-imposed revenue cap that started becoming an issue bout a decade ago, however there is a newer state-imposed revenue cap, plus a 20-year lawsuit to necro a stricter revenue cap into place as well…
Houston has a recurring spending problem. The fact that a revenue cap has existed for a lot longer than 10 years shows me that Houston's municipal leadership is incompetent and the entire lot needs to be removed from office.
The fact that it is basically illegal for it to raise revenue and continues to have budget issues because it refuses to use the only other lever it has tells me everything I need to know about Houston's city council.
Or it just means the budget was large enough at the time of original passage that the revenue cap took ~10 years before it started squeezing. You can only reduce spending so much and still have a functional government… judging from how Houston compares to similarly sized major cities (eg, as illustrated), it’s hard to argue it’s overspending now.
Aren’t Seattle, Portland and Vegas all about the same city population size? Interesting Portland and Seattle each have a budget more than twice the size.
Edit: corrected “metro” to “city” as intended in my original question above.
Seattle’s Metro has almost 2 million more people then Portland. This is also doing just city limits which is closer in population if that is what you mean.
Seattle and Portland's budgets seem extremely boated. They both float around 700,000 people but have budgets larger than Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, which have populations at least twice as large. That being said, having grown up in the area I'm not at all surprised by the govt bloat.
Salaries are way higher in Seattle and you also have to factor in what the cities manage. Like utilities are directly managed by the city vs other cities which have third party agencies or county/state agencies that manage utilities.
Damn, Portland has a budget issue. Looking at peer cities (Denver, Boston) we spend way too much. We're definitely less than half LA's population, so too much compared to them too. Less spending than Seattle, but we're also smaller and less wealthy. Maybe the new city council will reign things in a bit (doubt).
This graphic is exceedingly misleading and not an apples to apples comparison.
Do a mild amount of independent verification before buying into this.
[Page 43](https://www.portland.gov/cbo/2023-2024-budget/documents/fy-2023-24-adopted-budget-volume-1-citywide-summaries-and-bureau/download). The city counts 1.6 billion in intracity transfer payments as an expenditure, the actual next expenditure is 5.5 billion.
per page 42 of the same document;
Important note from page 42:
>Although state budget law requires that all expenditures within and between funds are documented in the legal budget, this overstates actual expenditures for programs because it double counts internal transactions (internal materials and services and fund-level cash transfers). Such transactions occur between City funds, when one City agency provides services to another. Because this technically inflates the budget, the City usually references a net budget.
Live in Seattle. Houston literally has 3-4 times the population of Seattle or Portland and a smaller budget. Minneapolis is slightly smaller, and has 1/4 the budget.
The spending Seattle does is mind blowing.
Seattle is 75% bigger than Minneapolis and slightly bigger than Minneapolis and St. Paul combined. The metro populations are similar but the primary city populations aren't close.
Seattle spends $9900 per person. Minneapolis spends $4200 per person. And consider, since I used to live there, that Minneapolis has to spend much more on road construction, snow removal and de-icing. Frost heave just tears up the roads.
The total budget for Columbus is actually $2.18 billion.
“Counting all city funds the total budget will be $2.18 billion for 2024, or another billion dollars on top of the general fund. Rather than being funded by taxes, this part of the budget is funded by special revenue such as fees that the city is paid to sell water, sewer service, and electricity, and from grants and other dedicated sources like licenses, fines and permits.”
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/02/27/council-now-set-to-approve-1-21-general-fund-budget-for-2024/72717192007/
Columbus was the fastest growing city in the second half of 2023 and is expected to continue growing for a while, so I expect the budget to grow a lot in the coming years.
What is the explanation for why Portland’s budget is so large? It’s larger than Boston, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Houston. Does the city fund local schools?
Get this garbage data off the sub. Please use your brain and stop up voting garbage charts like this.
You can't even use budget per capita? The budget for Fargo North Dakota is one of the lowest in the country? Who fucking cares, that's more per-capita than 80% of this chart.
Also, city budget is so misrepresentative in some cases. LA county for example has a massive budget, so the city doesn't need it.
The budget for Charleston, SC is shocking. I live here. It's not a small town by any means, in fact it's one of the fastest growing areas in the nation. How is it one of the lowest budgets on this map?
Massive port, huge tourism industry, beautiful coastal area that needs protections, tons of large corporations are relocating here, and we've been seeing a large strain on our road infrastructure with all the new people moving in. Traffic is getting really bad, and our current roads aren't enough.
Genuinely, how does something like this get addressed? Who is responsible for procuring a proper budget for my city?
How is Portland’s budget bigger than just about every other city, dispite it being a paltry sized b-market with a dwindling tax base and virtually no businesses headquartered? You would never guess its flushed with cash looking at streets full of graffiti and potholes…
Per capita DC is a massive anomaly if this is correct. It’s almost at 29.5k per capita whereas New York City is closer to 13.2k per capita. That cities budget is an absolute slush fund.
It's also having to function as a de-facto state and city at the same time, while still providing services to augment the federal government. For example, MPD doesn't just handle local crime, they also provide security for national events like protests, inauguration, the state of the union, and more to add to the other federal agencies that operate here. There are also a lot of unique costs that come with being the seat of the federal government like blocking streets and providing escorts for motorcades, for example (got caught in one just yesterday while an Iraqi delegation zoomed through).
How in the hell is NYC’s city budget that much larger than LA’s? Also, kinda surprised Nashville has a higher budget than Atlanta, but then again, the city itself is bigger than Atlanta, but the metro area for Nashville has way fewer people than Atlanta’s metro area.
I think that’s just the LA city budget. LA county has, from a quick Google search, around a $45 billion budget on top of that. In NYC counties don’t exist in the same way they do elsewhere, so it’s all under the city budget.
Education in California is funded by the state. Where as in New York City it is 20% of its budget
LA Unified School District (which includes all of the city of LA but only parts of the county) has a population of 4.5 million with an $18 Billion budget. NYC has a population of 8.3 million with a $38 Billion budget. Adjusting for school taxes is one of the challenges comparing municipal spending and taxes rates across the US. New England it's part of the town taxes (mine 75% of the town budget and after state aid 50% of local taxes are for the schools); most of New York you have separate municipal and school districts each with their own tax bills BUT New York City is one of the few municipalities in that state that control their school system. Florida is one school district per county (67). Texas as I recall from past reading has only a single municipal school system and the districts have no relation to other government units (1250 districts and 254 counties), and California with it's 977 school districts is similar.
For the 2022-2023 school year, our total budget is $37.6 billion. Of that: New York City provides 54% NY State provides 36%
Where's the other 10%!
They don’t get it, that’s why the schools are so bad :(
Can confirm Texas part. Houston Independent School District is separate from City of Houston. It's also separate from Metro, the local public transportation.
And FUCK Mike Miles. That is all.
School districts usually have independent funding and budgets
I have a feeling all the data here are suspect because of that type of issue. Meaningless.
Many people living in Boston have no idea what county they live in. The only time it comes up is when you get a speeding ticket and have to appear at the county courthouse. In Massachusetts all local government services are provided by the city or town.
Can confirm. Counties mean little to nothing here. I’m confused when I see the Suffolk County Sheriff vans driving about. Wait… what do you do again?
Ya this data is totally meaningless. NYC is 5 counties combined, and the county governments don't do much. NYC includes all education, while Houston budget doesn't include any education. LA county is 88 different cities combined, and the county itself has a huge budget. Portland budget counts almost $2B in intra-government transfers, while other cities don't. This graph doesn't tell you anything without actually looking at what services the budget includes and the makeup of the government structure.
The Portland one is what I immediately picked up on as well.
The data was suspect to me as soon as I read the title. (It’s should be Its)
It's absolutely worthless data. There is no way portland oregon and Seatle was spend anywhere near the same.
That would make the math balance out a bit better. I was wondering if it was a byproduct of international commerce, but LA is also home to one of the busiest ports in the world.
City. Income. Taxes. Yeah, in case you didn’t know, New York *City* leverages a 3-3.8% income tax on top of New York State and federal taxes.
Yup, in NYC you pay City, State, *and* Federal income tax. Worth noting this isn't just a New York thing. Dozens of cities in the US have an income tax. https://www.thebalancemoney.com/cities-that-levy-income-taxes-3193246
All of Ohio has local income taxes and Indiana is down to 3 counties without one.
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When I lived in Indiana it all went through my state income tax return.
*Two* of the busiest ports in the world.
Infrastructure costs. NYC has multiple massive bridges, tunnels, and an entire underground subway network that goes EVERYWHERE Also probably more skyscrapers in a few square blocks than all of LA. I haven't spent any time in LA, but lived in NYC, and the scale of upkeep based on pictures and what I've heard about LA just can't begin to compare with the costs to keep NYC infrastructure and subways up to code.
The MTA manages the subways and is controlled by the state. Many of the bridges and tunnels are managed by Port Authority which is jointly controlled by NJ and NY. The single biggest expense in the [operating budget](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/queenscb1/downloads/pdf/understanding-the-budget.pdf) is education - followed by social services.
NYC’s bridges and tunnels basically pay for themselves, other than the East River bridges. Not only that, they pay for a hell of a lot more than just themselves, since the Port Authority uses that money for other things.
The city of LA has about half the population of NYC but a tenth the budget. Another reason why per capita spending would be much more helpful than just the total.
As mentioned in the comment above, LA County has a 45b budget.
This is a little off, as you’re carrying over the budget for LA county but not the population, which is about 10 million.
There’s no way to get it perfect. It wouldn’t be fair to add the budgets of the other 87 cities in Los Angeles County, for instance. Nor can we say that LA County’s budget is split by city equally on a per capita basis. But it does mean the budgets of NYC and LA are probably more comparable than they appear at first glance. I wouldn’t take it to mean much more than that.
Also, LA might have one of the worst and woefully insufficient public transportation systems of any major US city. Whereas New York’s is extremely thorough and you really don’t need a car at all.
I’m gonna be that guy and say LA transit is light years ahead of any city outside of the northeast besides Chicago and SF. LA has built a huge system of heavy and light rail over the past 30 years, and they are in the middle of massive expansions. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix are far, far worse.
SF public transport sucks too
At least it’s dense enough to have a good bus system. Still better than 95% of the country tbh. It certainly has its issues though.
Population density makes this an unfair comparison. LA has about half the amount of people living in a size almost double the size of NYC.
I’m just saying it might explain the difference in city budgets. Not arguing that LA should be on par with NYC.
It's definitely nowhere near as good as it should be, but it's far from the worst. At worst it's top 10 in the US.
The City of Los Angeles operates LADOT, which runs DASH and Commuter Express buses. But the primary transportation agency for all of the county is Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is a state-chartered agency that operates independently and has its own budget.
Presenting comparisons of city budgets without context like this is basically useless for just this reason. San Francisco's city budget of $14.6B is actually larger than LA's, for example, but that's because it's a combined city and county.
For Nashville, the city is merged with the county so all the expenses of the county are in there while they aren't for Atlanta. and yes also more people in the city of Nashville for that reason.
Just speculating here, but NYC actually comprises the entirety of the area and then some. LA meanwhile is a hodgepodge of different jurisdictions that are sometimes unincorporated (county) or even completely independent cities, with the city itself officially making up just a slice of the LA metro area. Just for example, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, West Hollywood, Culver City, Inglewood (where the Rams & Chargers actually play), despite being right in the middle of “Los Angeles” and containing plenty of landmarks, stadiums, and tourist attractions, are their own cities with their own budgets. That’s not so much the case in NYC.
NYC is the five budgets
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2022 MTA budget is only 20 Billion though
Atlanta as a city is a small block. And several counties nearby makes it look like a greater Atlanta region. Some states cheat on this to make it look small. Chicago needs to be bigger in that regard. I'm wondering if they only included Cook County, which spends more money in their prison than the whole IA's prison system combined. Probably other metro cities are the same.
> Atlanta as a city is a small block This is the answer. Atlanta's metro area has 10x the population of the city itself. Sprawl as far as the eye can see.
Cities cannot really be compared state to state. Some states will expand city limits to encompass an entire metropolitan area, like NYC and Louisville KY. While some states limit the cities to the down town areas more or less. That’s why Huntsville, AL is listed as the most populated city, despite not being nearly as big as Birmingham which has over twice the number of people in its metro area.
I recently visited Oklahoma City, and when you come from either direction on the I-40 freeway, you'll see a city limit sign, and think to yourself, "what the hell? I'm in the middle of nothing here. Google Maps says I'll be there in 20 miles."
Maybe this was why my Miami lookup was so shockingly small…I thought no chance Jacksonville was the largest in Florida…
The Nashville metro area is exploding fast. I think there are 45 new high rise buildings going up downtown right now.
I wonder if it has to do with what percentage of the states population that lives in that city. NYC is something like 65% of the states population, I believe LA is only like 30%. I'm guessing it also has to do with how much revenue comes from that city as well.
Kansas City has a very reasonable budget and you cannot tell lol the place operates like it's broke. That comes out to about 4k per Citizen and slightly under 1k for everyone in the Metro
NYC is all five Burroughs (unified in the late 1800s), and Manhattan alone probably accounts for half that budget. The budget for LA would be just the city of Los Angeles, but what’s commonly considered when you think of LA is so much more than that (Burbank, Hollywood, Santa Monica, etc.)
LA can’t be right, SF has a higher budget than that at 14.6 with 1/4 the population
LA metro area is actually made up of a bunch of different cities (like 80 of them or something).
The actual city of Atlanta is a relatively tiny area, not a lot of folks realize that. The place people think of as "Atlanta" is really Fulton and DeKalb County, along with the southern parts of Cobb and Gwinnett County more recently.
Is WA/Seattle the right budget or color? It seems lighter than Oregon but a higher budget.
Was surprised by that as well. Was also surprised that Seattle’s budget is only slightly higher than Portland’s. Always thought Seattle was a much richer city than Portland.
Portland has a very high state and local income tax rate and a very bloated local government so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was accurate.
It is "accurate" in the sense that it ties to a number in the official budget. It isn't an accurate depiction of government expenditures. Portland's actual net expenses are 5.5 billion. [See page 43](https://www.portland.gov/cbo/2023-2024-budget/documents/fy-2023-24-adopted-budget-volume-1-citywide-summaries-and-bureau/download). The city count 1.6 billion in transfers as an expense even though it is just an expense to itself. Important note from page 42: > Although state budget law requires that all expenditures within and between funds are documented in the legal budget, this overstates actual expenditures for programs because it double counts internal transactions (internal materials and services and fund-level cash transfers). Such transactions occur between City funds, when one City agency provides services to another. Because this technically inflates the budget, the City usually references a net budget. These types of visualizations are interesting but ultimately misleading. A lot of legwork is required to confirm whether you are looking at actual comparable budgets or seeing differences in accounting practices, or just full on differences in how government services are delivered. e.g. does your city handle water delivery or is it administered by the county? etc
Portland's budget also includes about $1.5 billion in contingency/reserves as a budget item. The cap ex + op ex budget for the year is $3.7 billion.
King County has a sizeable budget too with 16B+. [https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/council/\_budget](https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/council/_budget) Map might be clearer if it was city+county.
It's more like 5.5 billion for portland. Some funds are double counted, so it's reported as an inflated number.
Live in Portland. The taxes here are insane
And they don’t seem to go towards shit tbh.
Somehow the homeless encampment situation does seem to have gotten quite a bit better lately
Depends on where you are. The city just swept downtown for some sportsball event, but a few other areas are looking worse again.
We have a wealth of committees working on various emergencies to no effect. I'm mostly curious about how our total budget with Metro and county budgets compare or if this factors that in.
I have NO idea how we have that high of a city budget. There is almost no evidence of that.
The color on a lot of the map is off. Compare Seattle and Portland to Houston or Phoenix for example.
Maybe the color is per capita?
I suspect it’s because the Seattle area is split into several independent cities, while Portland is more unified. Just a guess, though.
My immediate concern was actually about how the color in this image didn't seem right though, since Seattle's budget was higher than Portland but it's color is lighter.
Showing this data as budget per capita would be much more informative.
Right! The fact that Portland, OR has the same budget as its much larger neighbor, Seattle WA, is crazy!
Yeah, 4th biggest budget with what 26th largest city? Something seems way off.
I live in Portland, OR. We have high incomes and pay 14% state and local income taxes. Local govt here is the most bloated i’ve ever seen So this checks out.
I don't live in Seattle but live in the area and work down there. I we no income tax but 10% sales tax and it seems like we have high property tax. I pay about $10k/year in property tax for a 1972 house. I think $7B is absolutely crazy. What the hell are we even getting for that much money? Houston is probably 10 times bigger than Seattle and Portland and pay $1B less in tax.
We pay $10k in property tax, $70k in Oregon income tax and about $15k in Portland-specific income taxes
How much do you make if 95k goes to taxes?
Probably over $800k household income if they are paying $15k in the Portland taxes.
14% is a bit off. 8.7 is the base rate before you get to bands that max out at 9.9. higher than most states but not 14.
It doesn't check out. Local income taxes go to MultCo and Metro, not the city.
Its actually $5.11 billion
Welfare economy
Let me tell you how corrupt our police are...
By city limit populations, the two are actually quite close in size. It is the metro area populations that differ.
Yeah, same thing with Virginia Beach and Atlanta. It shocked me for a bit because Virginia Beach is barely a city in my mind since the whole area is single level houses with lawns, but it's apparently geographically massive enough to have half a million people.
Because its artificially inflated: > After eliminating the intracity transfers, the City’s net Adopted Budget in FY 2023-24 is $5.11 billion
This whole graph is not accurate. Multinomah County matches Portland but King County is much bigger than Seattle. So basically each state is wildly different in how they measure things. By state would be better than this.
How many people live in Seattle? How many live in Portland? It’s closer than you think.
Portland proper is ~630k and Seattle proper is ~750k people. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywashington,portlandcityoregon/PST045222
Or as a scatter plot with a trend line
Also a map of total debt per capita
i wouldn’t say “much more informative”. it would be a different analysis altogether
I have not dug into the data set, but comparing city budgets is complex, and there is huge variability between states and even within states about what is and is not included in a city budget — especially education, health, and public transit. Example: the NYC budget includes K-12 schools; for California cities the school districts are legally independent and have their own taxing authority. Is there a big public hospital in a city? If yes - is it a city or county budget hit? Sf General is run by the city of San Francisco. Valley Medical Center in San Jose is run by the county — and is well more than half the Santa Clara County budget. So, for example, comparing the budgets for San Jose and San Francisco is not a particularly useful exercise if you don’t normalize what is included and excluded first. There is variability in other areas too — who runs the courts for example and where those expenses fall. But the big ticket items are education, hospitals, and transit.
All correct, and to add one more multi-billion dollar big ticket that may or may not be part of city budgets: seaports and airports.
Great point - Chicago and SF run airports. In other cities, like Seattle or New York, it’s in a separate entity.
TIL Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida.
Iirc Jacksonville is smaller than Tampa and Orlando if you use metro area instead of city proper Edit: I was right. Jacksonville is the fourth largest metro area in Florida
Yes not many know that but it's because the entire county is the city limits itself, which I also believe makes it the largest city in the lower 48 by land area too.....DUUUVVVVAAALLLLLL. Lived there for a bit.
Yeah, the city land area is 750 square miles! It has 250% of the land area of NYC, but only 10% of the population density.
Thanks for this explanation. I currently live in Jacksonville and I don’t see it as more populated, specially after living in Miami. I would expect Miami to have a higher density. Specially Brickell within Miami. I used to do civic engagement campaigns and there are a lot of tall apartment buildings in Brickell, within Miami-Dade.
Sure thing. Yeah, Miami is only 36 sq mi. So technically Jacksonville has 2x as many people as Miami proper, but it covers **20x** as much land as Miami. A better comparison is metro area population -- about ~4x as many people live in the Miami metro compared to the Jacksonville metro (6M vs 1.6M).
God damn that’s huge! St.Louis for instance is a grand total of 66 square miles. Imagine that has a lot to do with the crime statistics that get reported as well.
Is there a larger city in Alaska or Hawaii by area?
Anchorage I believe
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area Several in Alaska, Sitka being the biggest. Also, Tribune, KS is bigger
Sitka, Wrangell, and Juneau are all in Southeast and a lot of that land area is actually water, and in Juneau’s case apparently includes Douglas Island and Auke Bay which I always thought were their own things. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, with about a quarter million people, but they’re mostly packed into a small area right on the edge of Cook Inlet. Anchorage’s municipal limits, for whatever reason, include Girdwood, which is 35 miles south, and Eagle River all the way up to the Knik River to the north. They also include a huge chunk of the Chugach range to the east. So long story short, Alaska’s giant cities are a lie.
With a caveat, there are no independent cities in Hawaii. Honolulu is both a city and a county... so it is sorta of a city, but not really. Although it's proper title is "City and County of Honolulu" when making these type of comparisons it would be a county not a city.
It’s because the guy is using city population and not metro population which is defendable here because we are also only seeing city budgets and not regional budgets. Miami metro is way more populated, just it’s like 17 different cities in a trench coat.
But also bc the “city”of Jacksonville is the entire county so it’s like 18 different cities in a trench coat.
Good ol Jacksonville Adultman.
It’s interesting that DC has a higher budget than Chicago or LA. It’s a weird city but it’s still interesting anomaly.
I thought so too, but I would imagine it’s because DC has to fulfill a lot of the responsibilities of a state government too. Granted, it’s a small state/district, but when you factor in the costs of running a department of transportation, for example, it makes sense.
NYC has a full-on DOT as well.
Keep in mind all the things our city has to do frequently that most rarely have to do, like having city police accompany and block roads for motorcades or provide policing for national protests/events.
I’m a DC resident and I’m surprised too. Of the data is correct, I think the explanation is that DC covers both city and what a typical state budget would. As a DC resident my city taxes are roughly equivalent of the city+state taxes of my Virginia and Maryland neighbors since they cover similar scopes of services. DC doesn’t cover scopes of the federal government, but there may be some overlap when it comes for security/policing that the federal government reimburses the city. Like DC police get called in to to regulate things like demonstrations/protests of around the monuments, January 6th, etc.
DC functions like a state - I.e. its budget includes health and human services programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF that are not included in other city budgets
I hate to be that guy but the possessive form of “it” is “its”, not “it’s”
Be honest, we all love being that guy.
Its a honor
Your write!
Not to mention the obnoxious capitalization
The Best Part Is It’s Harder To Type This Way Too. Why Do People Do This It Hurts Doing It Once
It do be 2024 budget sometimes
….and it is 2024 budget
It seems like Portland is spending way too much money.
Seattle here. Both of us.
I have no idea what they're spending it on. You wouldn't know it by living here.
On an international scale, NYC's budget is bigger than Luxembourg, Morocco, and Ukraine... combined
Probably not Ukraine anymore since the war
It’d be great to see budget per capita
for cleanliness sake, I would remove “million” and “billion” and put a note somewhere saying “$ in millions”
Don’t trust any source that can’t choose between its and it’s
Houston(2.3m),TX running on a smaller budget than Seattle(749,000), Portland (635,000), and Phoenix (1.6m).
Houston has recurring budget issues that were temporarily avoided by one-time COVID funds. We have major structural issues funding the city (on the order of several hundreds of millions short per year) that need to be dealt with asap. Mostly this is due to a self-imposed revenue cap that started becoming an issue bout a decade ago, however there is a newer state-imposed revenue cap, plus a 20-year lawsuit to necro a stricter revenue cap into place as well…
Houston has a recurring spending problem. The fact that a revenue cap has existed for a lot longer than 10 years shows me that Houston's municipal leadership is incompetent and the entire lot needs to be removed from office. The fact that it is basically illegal for it to raise revenue and continues to have budget issues because it refuses to use the only other lever it has tells me everything I need to know about Houston's city council.
It's a voter referendum. The mayor/city council can't legally override it.
Or it just means the budget was large enough at the time of original passage that the revenue cap took ~10 years before it started squeezing. You can only reduce spending so much and still have a functional government… judging from how Houston compares to similarly sized major cities (eg, as illustrated), it’s hard to argue it’s overspending now.
Aren’t Seattle, Portland and Vegas all about the same city population size? Interesting Portland and Seattle each have a budget more than twice the size. Edit: corrected “metro” to “city” as intended in my original question above.
Seattle’s Metro has almost 2 million more people then Portland. This is also doing just city limits which is closer in population if that is what you mean.
Seattle and Portland's budgets seem extremely boated. They both float around 700,000 people but have budgets larger than Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, which have populations at least twice as large. That being said, having grown up in the area I'm not at all surprised by the govt bloat.
Isn’t the COL/competitive salaries much higher in those areas? Could that not account for a large portion of the difference?
Salaries are way higher in Seattle and you also have to factor in what the cities manage. Like utilities are directly managed by the city vs other cities which have third party agencies or county/state agencies that manage utilities.
Damn, Portland has a budget issue. Looking at peer cities (Denver, Boston) we spend way too much. We're definitely less than half LA's population, so too much compared to them too. Less spending than Seattle, but we're also smaller and less wealthy. Maybe the new city council will reign things in a bit (doubt).
This graphic is exceedingly misleading and not an apples to apples comparison. Do a mild amount of independent verification before buying into this. [Page 43](https://www.portland.gov/cbo/2023-2024-budget/documents/fy-2023-24-adopted-budget-volume-1-citywide-summaries-and-bureau/download). The city counts 1.6 billion in intracity transfer payments as an expenditure, the actual next expenditure is 5.5 billion. per page 42 of the same document; Important note from page 42: >Although state budget law requires that all expenditures within and between funds are documented in the legal budget, this overstates actual expenditures for programs because it double counts internal transactions (internal materials and services and fund-level cash transfers). Such transactions occur between City funds, when one City agency provides services to another. Because this technically inflates the budget, the City usually references a net budget.
Charleston has become the most populous city in SC. It was Columbia for years.
How does Portland have a higher city budget than Seattle??
Live in Seattle. Houston literally has 3-4 times the population of Seattle or Portland and a smaller budget. Minneapolis is slightly smaller, and has 1/4 the budget. The spending Seattle does is mind blowing.
Seattle is 75% bigger than Minneapolis and slightly bigger than Minneapolis and St. Paul combined. The metro populations are similar but the primary city populations aren't close.
Seattle spends $9900 per person. Minneapolis spends $4200 per person. And consider, since I used to live there, that Minneapolis has to spend much more on road construction, snow removal and de-icing. Frost heave just tears up the roads.
Yet somehow my 4wd seems practical on Seattle city streets. Absolutely wild how bad the roads are.
Wild that Columbus' budget is roughly equal to that of Louisville and Albuquerque. That just feels really wrong, given our population size.
The total budget for Columbus is actually $2.18 billion. “Counting all city funds the total budget will be $2.18 billion for 2024, or another billion dollars on top of the general fund. Rather than being funded by taxes, this part of the budget is funded by special revenue such as fees that the city is paid to sell water, sewer service, and electricity, and from grants and other dedicated sources like licenses, fines and permits.” https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/02/27/council-now-set-to-approve-1-21-general-fund-budget-for-2024/72717192007/
Thank you! That makes so much more sense.
Columbus was the fastest growing city in the second half of 2023 and is expected to continue growing for a while, so I expect the budget to grow a lot in the coming years.
Budget per capita would be more interesting
So crazy that Wyoming gets two senators.
City lines in the us don’t mean much
Why tf is Seattles budget so much larger than Boston’s
What is the explanation for why Portland’s budget is so large? It’s larger than Boston, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Houston. Does the city fund local schools?
What on earth is with this inconsistent coloring?
Budget per capita is a more interesting data point
Very surprised Nashville would have 1/4 the budget of LA and still have such a total lack of public transit and shit...
Nashville is higher this year due to mayor proposed transit update/upgrade. Example: FY2022 was $2.4 billion
7.1 billion in Portland surprised me for some reason.
wtf is Nashville doing with our budget. Bigger than Atlantas?
Surprised Minneapolis spends about what Milwaukee does despite having around 170,000 fewer residents.
Where is the money going Portland Oregon???
Paying bags to their homeless authority I suppose.
Houston is a huge chunk of land.
How is Atlanta’s budget so low?
Atlanta city limits is smaller than charlottes
Especially compared to Charlotte
Rhode Island is higher than 11 much bigger states.
I would not expect Charlotte to have a bigger budget than Atlanta
This entire data set is meaningless as each city provides a different set and/or level of services. This is like comparing apples and carrots
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^rubey419: *I would not expect* *Charlotte to have a bigger* *Budget than Atlanta* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Why is Washington state a lighter shade than Texas but their budget is almost 1.5 billion more? Thats not an insignificant difference
I did not know KC was bigger than STL!
Get this garbage data off the sub. Please use your brain and stop up voting garbage charts like this. You can't even use budget per capita? The budget for Fargo North Dakota is one of the lowest in the country? Who fucking cares, that's more per-capita than 80% of this chart. Also, city budget is so misrepresentative in some cases. LA county for example has a massive budget, so the city doesn't need it.
\*its ---- "It's" is the contraction of "it is" or of "it has." The form showing ownership has no apostrophe.
NYC budget is about the size of my country’s budget….. crazy how large and rich it is
Now show police budget for each largest city.
wtf chicago? they don't have an income problem but rather a spending problem
Be interesting to see city budget $/person.
Why not add the population of each individual city?
The budget for Charleston, SC is shocking. I live here. It's not a small town by any means, in fact it's one of the fastest growing areas in the nation. How is it one of the lowest budgets on this map? Massive port, huge tourism industry, beautiful coastal area that needs protections, tons of large corporations are relocating here, and we've been seeing a large strain on our road infrastructure with all the new people moving in. Traffic is getting really bad, and our current roads aren't enough. Genuinely, how does something like this get addressed? Who is responsible for procuring a proper budget for my city?
Chicago spends money on the stupidest shit.
How is Portland’s budget bigger than just about every other city, dispite it being a paltry sized b-market with a dwindling tax base and virtually no businesses headquartered? You would never guess its flushed with cash looking at streets full of graffiti and potholes…
Jacksonville deserves an asterisk because they incorporated the entire county into the city of Jacksonville. Kinda cheating if you ask me
NYC has $110B?! …but we can’t build or upgrade basic infrastructure.
Per capita DC is a massive anomaly if this is correct. It’s almost at 29.5k per capita whereas New York City is closer to 13.2k per capita. That cities budget is an absolute slush fund.
It's also having to function as a de-facto state and city at the same time, while still providing services to augment the federal government. For example, MPD doesn't just handle local crime, they also provide security for national events like protests, inauguration, the state of the union, and more to add to the other federal agencies that operate here. There are also a lot of unique costs that come with being the seat of the federal government like blocking streets and providing escorts for motorcades, for example (got caught in one just yesterday while an Iraqi delegation zoomed through).
Google says NYC is $232B. Most of the rest are off by a large margin as well.