SCM-US-1.0
How Civitas positions a U.S. local government — and what it declines to say.
There is no composite score and no letter grade. This product reports a position per dimension, against a named set of peers, alongside an index of how much of the entity was actually measured.
1. Why there is no single number
A composite would require a ruler. In the United States there is no federal one, and that absence is statutory rather than accidental.
The three constraints
| Authority | What it establishes | Consequence here |
|---|---|---|
| 15 U.S.C. 78o-4(d)(1) — Tower Amendment | Bars the SEC and the MSRB from requiring documents from municipal issuers. | No federal collection means no federal ruler. The comparison against peers becomes the ruler. |
| 15 U.S.C. 78c(a)(60) | Defines a credit rating as an assessment of creditworthiness. | A percentile among peers is an arithmetic fact. A composite would be an assessment. |
| MCL 141.1544(1)(r) — Michigan | Makes a "BBB or equivalent" grade a statutory trigger for state intervention. | A letter scale would insert this product into a state enforcement mechanism. |
A composite also hides coverage. One dimension may be measured for every entity in the country while another is measured for a quarter of them; averaging the two publishes a number whose reliability the reader cannot see.
2. The four dimensions
Each is reported on its own. None is weighted against another — there is no arithmetic that combines them.
| Dimension | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Fiscal position | Total expenditure over general revenue. Not a deficit: the Census measures revenue and expenditure on different exercises, and the ratio includes capital, which is lumpy by nature. | Census · Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances |
| Accountability | Federal funds passing through Single Audit examination, per resident. A high position means more money under external scrutiny — not more irregularity. | Federal Audit Clearinghouse (2 CFR 200.501) |
| Federal dependence | Federal assistance received per resident. More resource and more exposure to a policy change decided elsewhere. | USAspending |
| Hazard exposure | Expected annual loss from natural hazards, per resident. | FEMA National Risk Index |
Every money dimension is a ratio, never a total. An absolute dollar figure is not comparable between a town of 800 and a city of 8 million — a percentile over totals would rank entities by size and call it something else.
3. Who counts as a peer
A percentile that does not say what it compares against is not verifiable. Every position on this product carries its peer set in words, always.
Three mandatory axes
| Axis | Why it is required |
|---|---|
| Type of government | Powers and budgets are not comparable between a county, a township and a school district. |
| Population band | Scale changes what a ratio means. Six bands, chosen against the real register. |
| State | Dillon's Rule makes local authority and tax structure a matter of state law. |
Fewer than 30 peers means no percentile. With no legal ruler the comparison is the ruler, and a percentile computed over a handful of peers looks rigorous and misleads. The dimension returns insufficient sample instead of a fragile number.
Measured against the real register: 96.8% of the 91,438 governments fall into a peer cell that reaches the floor. Counties reach it least often (50.3%) — with 3,031 counties spread across 50 states and six bands, many cells simply do not fill. That is the floor working, not failing.
4. The evidence index
How much is known about an entity is itself information about the entity. The index travels with every position rather than sitting in a footnote: it states how many of the four dimensions were measured, and what share of the underlying values the source itself imputed.
The Census surveys a sample of local governments in years that do not end in 2 or 7 — 26.8% in the most recent intercensal year. An entity outside the sample is not an entity with zero revenue, and this product never treats them the same: treating absence as zero would place whoever was not surveyed at the bottom of the ranking, as though they were the worst in the state.
5. What the product refuses to state
| Situation | What is shown | What is NEVER shown |
|---|---|---|
| Entity not in the Census sample | Outside the sample, with the reason. | A zero, or a position at the bottom of the ranking. |
| Fewer than 30 peers in the cell | Insufficient sample. | A percentile over the peers that happen to exist. |
| Entity absent from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse | Outside the sample. | "Not subject to audit" — the entity may be below the $1,000,000 threshold OR may have been audited under a name that did not match, and this product cannot tell the two apart. |
| A city that spans several counties | Absence, declared, naming the counties. | A county-level figure presented as the city's own. New York City sits in five counties; the register stamps one. |
| A source that lists what exists (health centers, permitted facilities) | A measured zero — an actual finding about the territory. | Silence that a reader could mistake for missing data. |
6. Inherited values
Several federal sources measure only at county level. Rather than leave 88,407 of the 91,438 governments blank, this product lets an entity inherit the figure of the county that contains it — and every inherited value says so, naming the county it came from. Inheritance is legitimate; silent inheritance is not.
Two things are never inherited. Land area, because the area of a city is its own — Los Angeles covers 1,216 km² and the county containing it covers 10,510. And crime, because it belongs to the territory of the reporting agency; spreading a sheriff's figures across every city in the county would multiply their crime.
7. Corrections
Every number on this product carries its source and the period it refers to. If a figure attributed to a local government is wrong, the correction path runs through the source that published it — and the product states which one that is, on the number itself.