Municipal Financial Risk Score

Open screening of local government Single Audits · live at civicauditlens.org

Free and public. Covers all 50 states, DC and the U.S. territories.

Local governments that spend federal awards above the Single Audit threshold must file an audit with the Federal Audit Clearinghouse (FAC). The GAO found that the FAC cannot identify entities that should file but do not (GAO-24-106173), and the findings it does hold are hard for oversight bodies to use at scale.

This project:

1. Scores every local government Single Audit on a transparent 0–100 scale built only from what the independent auditor reported (going concern, opinion, internal control weaknesses, compliance findings, repeat findings, questioned costs, late filing).
2. Flags apparent stopped filers: governments that filed in recent years but have no audit on file for the latest year that is past due.
3. Publishes everything (code, scoring rules, and data as CSV/JSON) so anyone can check, reuse or cite it.
4. Explains the findings (site version 0.2): which compliance requirements and federal programs generate findings, which pass-through entities fund governments with findings, how late audits arrive since 2016, which governments have findings year after year, and common themes in the finding text.
5. Gives every government its own page (/gov/{STATE}/{UEI}/{name}) that can be shared, cited and found in search, plus a printable brief for each state, a batch lookup for pass-through entities, and a weekly "What changed" page with RSS feeds.
6. Compares up to three governments side by side (/#compare/IL:UEI1,IL:UEI2): score and its four parts, peer percentile, findings, filing timeliness, warning signs, programs, pass-through entities and score history since 2016, with a shareable link, CSV download and suggestions of similar-size governments in the same state.
7. Finds governments by audit firm (Insights → Audit firms, /#insights-auditors-IL-sikich): the governments whose latest Single Audit a firm signed, with each government's score. A lookup only: it does not score, rate or rank firms.

Scores are screening indicators, not audit opinions and not findings of fraud or wrongdoing.

Project components

Component	What it does	Where
Municipal Financial Risk Score (national)	Scores every U.S. local government Single Audit from FAC data and flags apparent stopped filers; public website	pipeline/, site/
Illinois fiscal pilot	Fiscal-stress screening from financial-statement ratios (reserves, operating margin, debt service) for Illinois municipalities	illinois-fiscal-pilot/

Both share the same aim: open, explainable methods that help oversight bodies find local governments that may need a closer look, earlier.

How it works

FAC API (api.fac.gov) ──weekly GitHub Action──▶ pipeline/build_dataset.py ──▶ site/data/*.json, *.csv
                                                                                    │
                                              Cloudflare Pages (free) serves site/ ◀┘  → your domain

• pipeline/scoring.py: the scoring rules (all point values in one place)
• pipeline/build_dataset.py: downloads FAC data, scores it, detects stopped filers, writes the data files
• pipeline/analytics.py: the additional analyses (requirements, programs, pass-through, timeliness, persistence, themes, peers, weekly changes, RSS, sitemap). Each one is optional: if it fails, the scores still publish and the site says that analysis is unavailable that week
• pipeline/test_scoring.py, pipeline/test_analytics.py: tests that lock in the rules
• src/worker.js, src/gov.js: the Cloudflare Worker (feedback form, one page per government, sitemap and feeds); tests/gov.test.mjs tests the government pages (node --test tests/gov.test.mjs)
• site/validation.json: results of manual spot checks of the stopped-filer list (edit by hand; shown on the Data quality page)
• pipeline/make_sample_data.py: fictional data for previews (shows a SAMPLE banner)
• site/: the web app (plain HTML/CSS/JS, no build step)

Run it locally (from the repository root):

pip install pytest && (cd pipeline && python -m pytest -q)
FAC_API_KEY=your_key python pipeline/build_dataset.py   # real data (history from 2016; ~20-30 minutes)
python -m http.server -d site 8000                        # open http://localhost:8000

Setup steps for hosting, the API key, your domain and a DOI are in SETUP.md. The methodology is on the app's Methodology page and in pipeline/scoring.py.

Feedback

Use the Give feedback button in the app, or open an issue. Auditors, oversight agencies, pass-through entities, finance officers and researchers are especially welcome.

License

Code: MIT. Data: derived from FAC public-domain data and released under CC0.