NY Benchmark

BenchmarkUSA exposes its local government finance dataset through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets AI tools query structured data directly. Financial data covers local governments in New York, California, Florida and North Carolina, from each state’s official collector. Census population and demographics cover places in every state.

Example questions

• “What is Syracuse’s fund balance as a percentage of expenditures?”
• “Show me NYC’s revenue sources over the last 10 years”
• “What are the 10 most populated towns in New York?”
• “Which New York villages spend the most on public safety?”
• “Which New York school districts spend the most per pupil?”
• “Which New York cities are late filing with the State Comptroller?”
• “Rank California cities by per-capita spending”
• “Which California and New York cities have the highest debt service burden?”
• “Which Florida cities are behind on their annual financial reports?”
• “Which North Carolina counties collect the most revenue per resident?”

What you can query

Coverage as of November 2026:

State	Local governments with financial data	Years
New York	62 cities (including NYC), 57 counties, 933 towns, 561 villages, 689 school districts	1995-2025 for cities; 1995-2024 for counties; 1997-2025 for towns and villages; 2015-2024 for school districts; NYC FY 2016-2025
California	482 cities, 57 counties	2003-2024
Florida	267 cities, 123 towns, 20 villages, 66 counties	2013-2025 for cities and towns; 2013-2024 for villages and counties
North Carolina	77 cities, 453 towns, 20 villages, 100 counties	2012-2025

• Revenue, expenditures and balance sheets in each state’s own account categories
• Census demographics for places in every state (population, income, poverty, housing, education; 2010-2023)
• Fiscal stress scores for New York (OSC FSMS, 2012-2025)
• Computed metrics available without manual calculation: Per-Capita Spending and Per-Capita Revenue in all four states; Debt Service % and State Aid Dependency % in New York and California; Fund Balance % in New York
• Rankings — rank any entity type by any metric, within one state or across states, including cross-type rankings (e.g. all cities, towns, and villages together), top/bottom N

What makes this different

Most government data APIs return raw numbers and leave interpretation to the user. Our MCP server includes domain-aware caveats that travel with the data:

• Comparability notes flag places with unusual reporting structures. NYC is a consolidated city-county-school district: its General Fund includes K-12 education (about $34B), courts, district attorneys and public welfare, functions handled by counties or school districts elsewhere. Plattsburgh operates a municipal electric utility, whose revenues and spending inflate its totals next to cities without one. Very small places (a Florida resort city with 19 residents, an Adirondack town with 54) get a warning that their per-capita figures are unreliable. The server attaches these automatically so the AI doesn’t produce misleading comparisons.
• Filing status identifies governments that haven’t filed recent reports with their state’s collector, so the AI doesn’t silently present stale data as current
• Data quality rules sum only the lines that add up to a total, and exclude New York’s custodial pass-throughs (T-funds) and interfund transfers that inflate apparent spending
• Citations name the sources behind every answer from get_data and rank_entities
• Anti-hallucination directives prevent the AI from fabricating benchmark thresholds or interpolating missing data

This approach follows progressive disclosure: session-level instructions set the ground rules, and response-level notes provide entity-specific context on demand.

Connect with Claude Desktop

Tested and supported. Add this to your Claude Desktop config file, then restart Claude Desktop:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nybenchmark": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "https://mcp.benchmarkusa.org/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Requires: Node.js (for npx). The mcp-remote package proxies the remote MCP endpoint to your local client. See Anthropic’s MCP setup guide for detailed instructions.

Other MCP clients

MCP is an open standard and our endpoint (https://mcp.benchmarkusa.org/mcp) should work with any MCP-compatible client that supports remote servers. We haven’t tested these, but they may work:

Client	Notes
Cursor	Add the same JSON snippet to .cursor/mcp.json
Windsurf	Add via MCP Marketplace or ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json
ChatGPT	Requires Developer Mode (Pro, Team, Enterprise, or Edu — not available on Plus)
Gemini CLI	Command-line only, not the Gemini web app

If you get it working with another client, let us know.

How it works

The server provides five tools in a sequential workflow:

1. discover_data — overview of available data sources, entity types, and year ranges
2. find_entities — list cities, counties, school districts, towns, or villages by kind, state, or name, with each one’s population and filing status
3. find_metrics — explore available metrics by source, account type (revenue, expenditure, balance sheet), category, or keyword
4. get_data — retrieve time-series data for specific entities and metrics
5. rank_entities — rank entities by any metric, within one state or across states (top/bottom N, cross-type rankings like all cities + towns + villages together)

Place names repeat across states (several states have an Albany), so find_entities, get_data and rank_entities take a two-letter state code, and every row names its state. When no year is given, rankings use the newest year with near-complete reporting for that kind of government in that state.

Domain rules are applied automatically. You don’t need to know about T-fund exclusions, interfund transfer adjustments, or GASB 54 fund balance classifications — the server handles them and attaches explanatory notes to responses when relevant.

Data sources

All data comes from official government sources:

Source	Coverage	Link
NYS Office of the State Comptroller	New York cities except NYC, counties, towns, villages and school districts (1995-2025)	osc.ny.gov
NYC Comptroller ACFR	NYC (FY 2016-2025)	comptroller.nyc.gov
OSC Fiscal Stress Monitoring System	New York stress scores (2012-2025)	osc.ny.gov
California State Controller’s Office	California cities and counties (2003-2024)	bythenumbers.sco.ca.gov
Florida Department of Financial Services (LOGERx)	Florida cities, towns, villages and counties (2013-2025)	logerx.myfloridacfo.gov
North Carolina Department of State Treasurer, Local Government Commission (Annual Financial Information Report)	North Carolina cities, towns, villages and counties (2012-2025)	nctreasurer.gov
U.S. Census Bureau ACS	Population and demographics for places in every state (2010-2023)	census.gov

For detailed methodology, see the Methodology page on the app.