Conventional wisdom states that the greatest cost incurred by an institution will typically be its payroll. Fire departments, despite their high expenditures on equipment and insurances, appear to be no exception.

The top chart shows total fire department spending across 10 cities. The bottom shows those same cities’ payroll total. Both charts are expressed in per capita figures.

Flint MI, and Modesto CA spent half of fire budget on payroll, the lowest ratio of this set. Providence RI and Syracuse NY on the other hand expended over 90% of their fire budget paying their employees.

“MIAMI (May 31, 2012) – The Knight News Challenge: Data opens today, seeking to fund innovative ideas that make the large amounts of information produced each day available, understandable and actionable.

The Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information. With the volume of data produced each day exploding, this round of the challenge will seek ideas to collect, process, visualize or otherwise make data useful…

Winners receive a share of $5 million in funding – and support from Knight’s network of influential peers and advisers to help advance their ideas.  Innovators from all industries and countries are invited to participate.”

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina forever altered the face of New Orleans – physically, culturally and demographically.

The data strikingly demonstrates changes the Big Easy has undergone since the disaster.  Using Govistics’ “Trend” tool, we can clearly see the population of New Orleans being cut nearly in half in Katrina’s wake.

The city’s population is rebounding…but at a crawling pace.

At a quick glance, it looks like the City of Cambridge’s (MA) TOTAL SPENDING (1) has grown rapidly over the past decade.  But if we break this spending into its individual components, we see a much more nuanced story.

For example, using Govistics’ “Trend” tools we find the city’s spending on highway services (2) has grown dramatically; fire expenditures (3) have merely kept pace with inflation; and public welfare (4) has significantly fallen.  Another great example of how Govistics allows users to dig below the top-line numbers and track what’s really happening!

Starting in 2013, residents of New Jersey will start paying sales tax on their Amazon purchases.

NJ projects this will spell out an additional $30 to $40 million in revenues for the state.  Using Govistics, we can easily give that figure context.

More than half of the state’s revenue is generated from taxes (top graph).  And of those tax revenues, 43% is generated by sales tax (bottom graph).

But with New Jersey’s total revenues reaching $43 billion -  $27 billion of that from taxes – and extra $40 million is just a drop in the bucket.

“More than 3.4 million New Yorkers – with combined annual earnings of $119 billion – pulled up stakes and left for other states from 2000 through 2009, according to the Tax Foundation.

2.1 million people moved to New York from 2000 to 2009, leaving the Empire State with a total net loss of 1.264 million.

But they weren’t coming for the taxes. The Tax Foundation has ranked New York first in overall tax burden every year but one from 1977 through 2006.”

Live in New York?  Explore the realities of your tax bill!  Follow the link below, then the click “Revenue” on the LEFT side of your screen.

http://www.govistics.com/NY

As the real estate property tax goes under the microscope in Pennsylvania, Govistics looks at the Commonwealth’s largest city.

Did you know 15% of Philadelphia’s tax revenue comes from property taxes?

MIT knows the value of good data! Not only are they current Govistics subscribers, MIT and the Mass. Governor’s office now are teaming up to help grow the state’s data processing industry.

“BOSTON—Gov. Deval Patrick is set to join Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials to announce an initiative they say will help establish the state as a hub of so-called “big data” research.”

Mass. governor, MIT announce big data initiative – Associated Press

The Govistics team has an exciting announcement about enhancements to the site.

We’ve added the percent of children living in poverty for every school district and have made available population data for every location.

In addition, we’ve made our interface even more user friendly. We’d previously made exporting data to Excel simple and fast, and now we’ve made it just as easy for you to download graphics.

Access to spending, revenue, employment and payroll data for all states and the nation’s 3,000 counties is available free at www.govistics.com. Subscriptions allow visitors to unlock the full power of the database, putting information for 54,000 local governments and school districts at your fingertips.

To quickly and effortlessly view, compare, and trend data for all local governments and school districts in Govistics –  based on U.S. Census of Governments and other relevant data – you can upgrade for as little as 99 cents.

Thanks for your continued interest, and please be in touch if you have any questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,

The Govistics team at CGR

Over the past decade, lottery revenues have solidly outpaced inflation in New York State. But in bordering Ohio, they’ve drastically declined. Are the Buckeyes just not feeling lucky? Or do the New Yorkers keep dreaming bigger and bigger?