Comparing MSA Fiscal Outlooks

Scope and What Is Deliberately Left Out

This page uses two headline measures on purpose. Credit ratings are current, free to verify and already blend economy, governance, reserves and liabilities; the liability measure isolates the long-term promises on a comparable basis from audited statements. General Fund reserves were considered as a third headline measure and demoted to the explorer: the General Fund is a different share of each city’s operations (Boston’s includes the schools, New York’s excludes its reserve funds by charter), and the balance is a snapshot that swings with one-time money (St. Louis’s 92% reflects settlement and federal-aid cash parked in the General Fund; Riverside’s 67% is a committed contingency), so it is a useful secondary read, not a ranking. An unassigned-only version was dropped entirely because it mostly measures labeling policy (Portland classifies all of its reserve as committed and shows zero). Pension funded ratios, revenue mix, property-tax dependence on office values, transit-agency finances and the expiry of federal pandemic aid are all real drivers of city fiscal health and are listed under What to Watch For; each would need its own primary-source pull and is left for a later page. Muni bond yields and spreads, the market’s real-time verdict, were also considered and deferred: spreads to the AAA benchmark are subscription data, and the free substitutes (EMMA trade prints, Bond Buyer new-issue pricing) are not yet comparable across 35 cities.

Balance-Sheet Measures

Liabilities: net pension liability plus net OPEB liability of the primary government (governmental plus business-type activities), as reported on the government-wide Statement of Net Position or, for cities that aggregate them into long-term liabilities (Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis, Tampa, Denver, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Sacramento), in the long-term liabilities note. Columbus reports pension and OPEB as one combined line by activity; its totals are from the pension and OPEB notes. Pay-as-you-go retiree health plans report a “total OPEB liability”, which is used as reported. Pension and OPEB assets are not netted against liabilities. Fifteen cities report such assets; for all but one they are under 10% of the liability (Seattle 14%, Cincinnati 9%, Nashville 7%, Baltimore 7%, Los Angeles 6%, the rest under 4%), so netting would move no city more than a place or two in the ranking. The exception is Washington (net assets of $1.6 billion and no liability), shown at zero; a netted figure would be about $2,300 per resident in the District’s favor. The companion workbook carries the netted figure as a reference column. Divided by the July 1, 2025 city population; Indianapolis and Nashville use the consolidated-government “balance” population. Reserves: committed plus assigned plus unassigned General Fund balance divided by General Fund expenditures, both from the Governmental Funds statements; nonspendable and restricted balances are excluded. This is the definition the rating agencies use for “available” fund balance. The two-month (16.7%) and one-month (8.3%) markers follow the GFOA best-practice minimum. New York’s reserves are held outside the General Fund by charter (Revenue Stabilization Fund, Retiree Health Benefits Trust) and are not captured.

Extraction and Verification

The 35 ACFR PDFs were converted to text and the three statements located by heading; for four reports whose statement pages use fonts without a text layer (Atlanta, Austin, San Antonio, Portland) the pages were OCRed. Every figure was checked by column footing (assets equal liabilities plus deferred inflows plus net position; fund-balance components sum to the printed total; revenues less expenditures plus other financing sources reconcile to the change in fund balance) and against the MD&A condensed tables. The PDF page of each statement is recorded in the explorer table and the workbook, and the verbatim lines are on the workbook’s ACFR Source Lines tab.

Composite Rating

Each agency’s long-term scale is mapped to notches below AAA (Aaa/AAA = 0, Aa1/AA+ = 1, Aa2/AA = 2, Aa3/AA− = 3, A1/A+ = 4, A2/A = 5, A3/A− = 6, Baa1/BBB+ = 7, Baa2/BBB = 8, Baa3/BBB− = 9). The composite is the plain average over the agencies that rate the city; a city rated by one agency (Portland) or two (Boston, Detroit, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Nashville) is averaged over those only. The weakest single rating is also carried in the workbook. Outlooks are recorded but not scored.

Vintages and Known Gaps

Ratings are as of August 26, 2026. Balance-sheet figures are fiscal 2025 (fiscal years ending April 30 to December 31, 2025). All 35 cities now carry ratings; Kansas City’s Moody’s rating is not confirmed (blank), and the Kansas City S&P/Fitch ratings, Miami outlooks and Cleveland Fitch outlook come from an unverified summary; Riverside’s issuer ratings and outlooks were confirmed from the city’s investor page on August 27, 2026. All gaps are flagged in the explorer table and the workbook.