Fiscal Impact Assessment: Calculations

Much of the data for a fiscal impact assessment will come from the local government itself, and from the project developer. In addition to these two major sources of information, Burchell & Listokin (1978) have developed tables of regional multipliers for local government services for the various methods, based on information from the Census of Governments. These tables represent considerable effort by the authors, and are a great convenience for the analyst. However, they do have their drawbacks. The information is dated (although they have revised the Fiscal Impact Handbook, even those tables are based on data that are now old and may not adequately reflect the shift in service demands created since the Reagan administration). It is also (of necessity) grouped into crude categories by region and (especially for cities over 100,000) by size. If you will be calculating fiscal impacts for a single jurisdiction, or a group of similar jurisdictions, it is probably advisable to recalculate those portions of the tables to represent current local circumstances.

Each of the three models will be discussed in turn:

Service Standards method
Comparable Cities method
Employment Anticipation method
Federal Reserve Fiscal Impact Tool (alternate employment anticipation method)

MSU