Frequently Asked Questions
The Taxpayers Accountability & Transparency Project and the Local Government Report Card will empower Floridians with real data about the performance of local governments and help people compare their city and county governments with others across the State of Florida. The collected data provides a visual representation of the overall performance of your city and county governments as well as an opportunity to see how you stack up against 400 plus other cities and 66 other counties. To keep the rankings fair, cities and counties have been grouped into “small” or “large” categories.
What is the purpose of this project?
The Taxpayers Accountability and Transparency Project is designed to show residents exactly how effective, both in performance and cost, their local government is when compared with other counties and cities – in areas like government spending, debt, and size. We hope the project will inform taxpayers about how their local governments are spending, saving — and more.
How was the data collected?
The grades and rankings uses data submitted to the state by counties and municipalities or collected from other official public sources. Raw and per-capita data was considered without any value judgments regarding the relative importance of any one category over another.
What do the data buckets include?
The government spending category includes data on a county’s six-year average per capita spending and total dollar increase in spending.
The government debt category includes data on the county’s six-year average per capita debt and total dollar increase in debt.
The government size category includes data on the percent of government spending on salaries and benefits, full-time employees (FTEs) per 100,000 residents, and average public employee salary.
The crime category includes data on violent crime rate, property crime rate, and total crime clearance rate.
The education category includes data on average school grade and graduation rate.
What do the grades and rankings mean?
The grades (A-F) are used as comparative scales to help Floridians understand a city or county’s overall performance in each category. In this ranking system, not every city or county can get an “A,” because grades A through D are evenly distributed based on how cities and counties compare against others of their size.
- “A” represents the top-performing 25% of ranked cities or counties
- “B” represents the second-best performing 25% of ranked cities or counties
- “C” represents the third-best performing 25% of ranked cities or counties
- “D” represents the lowest-performing 25% of ranked cities or counties
An “F” grade does NOT indicate “failing,” but rather that the county or city did not fully report its data to the state. These cities are labeled non-compliant in the data. For this project, 100% of counties delivered their data, so no counties received an “F” grade.
Small cities that are compliant but do not have data to report are labeled data unavailable.
What constitutes “large” and “small”?
Large city = at least 25,000 residents; Small city = less than 25,000 residents
Large county = at least 150,000 residents; small county = less than 150,000 residents
Are special districts included?
No, only cities and counties are included in this project.
Who is responsible for this project?
This project was directed by The Florida House of Representatives under the leadership of Speaker Jose R. Oliva.
How can I view all of the city and county report cards?
Does this project require data submission beyond what counties and municipalities are already required to report?
Data on spending, debt, public employment and public salary and benefits is already submitted to the state directly by cities and counties. Crime and education data has been collected from additional public sources, including the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Department of Education.
Could we accomplish the same thing by comparing an individual county or city’s debt per capita to the statewide average?
That type of comparison – showing how any individual jurisdiction compares with the state average for that type of jurisdiction – can be provided through this data. However, the specific comparisons included in this Report Card show taxpayers precisely where their city or county stands against others of its size.
Some cities or counties may show more spending or debt per capita, but also have better infrastructure or quality of living. How does this analysis account for actual differences in quality from one county or city to the next?
This project does not attempt to rate or compare the quality of life, infrastructure, or any other qualitative factor for cities or counties. Rather, it is up to local residents to view how their city or county compares with others of its size with those types of value judgments in mind. If local residents are satisfied with their county’s or city’s spending and debt levels and believe funds have been properly and effectively spent, that is a positive outcome for this project. On the other hand, if residents believe their county’s or city’s spending is relatively high and believe their quality of life or infrastructure is unfavorable, this analysis may influence future funding decisions and choices moving forward. We provide the data and make value judgments such as; high crime is negative, high debt and spending is negative, great schools are positive, and others. But this is a transparency project so the data is available for you to examine. Make your own judgments and hold elected officials accountable.
What terminology do I need to know to fully understand this project?
Category - one of five areas that we looked at to rank local governments on their performance. The categories are: government spending, government debt, government size, crime and education.
Factor - individual data points that make up each category. For more information about what factors were included in each category, click here.
Ranking - a ranking is a position, order, or standing within a group. In this project, a letter grade represents the ranking of the county or city in each of the five categories. Learn about how rankings work here.
Grades - the grades are rankings, and the rankings are grades in this project. The grades represent where a city or county falls among others: “A” represents the top-performing 25% of ranked cities or counties; “B” represents the second-best performing 25%; “C” represents the third-best performing 25%; “D” represents the lowest-performing 25%.
Non-compliant - counties or cities that did not fully report their data to the state received an “F” grade and non-compliant labeling on the website.
How did you arrive at each grade/ranking?
To calculate rankings for each category, first, each factor that makes up the category was ranked. The ranking of each of the factors were then averaged together, and then that average (which makes up the score for the category) was ranked.
Grades were then assigned to the final ranking so that “A” represents the top quartile of performers, “B” the second highest, “C” the third highest, and “D” represents the bottom quartile of performers. “F” was reserved for counties and cities that failed to deliver their data. For this project, 100% of counties delivered their data, so no counties received an “F” grade.
Some cities are too small to have certain data points – for instance, a small beach town might not have any schools within its borders. This comparison process does not penalize any city that may lack some of the data points being addressed. Instead, such a community is left ungraded and unranked in the category for which it is missing data, and the information shows up as “N/A” on the report card or “data unavailable” on the website.
Learn more about our methodology here.