Public checks
The technical counterpart to Methodology. Same validators the site uses when it loads archives — formulas, pinned OSC figures, a remote hash watch against osc.ny.gov, and known residuals — so you can see what still holds before you trust a number.
Current build
AdvisoryAll critical checks passed. 5 advisory findings are listed below — known source residuals, not silent failures.
These are why the live verdict is Advisory rather than Pass. Each case spells out what still holds and what to treat as approximate.
CATEGORY_PARTS_EXCEED_SPEND · ME
REVENUE_TYPE_SUM_MISMATCH · 4 years
Every check, and the live verdict at the top of this page, uses one of three labels:
Advisory is not a soft fail. It means we saw an inconsistency in the source material (or an OSC remote change to review), recorded it, and still consider the critical integrity rules intact. Fail means stop trusting the build.
State rankings are built from archived New York OSC Excel workbooks. We periodically hash those files against the live downloads on osc.ny.gov. A match means The Ledger still reflects the current published workbook for that year. Drift is a review signal — we do not auto-replace archives.
Remote vs archive
PassAll 6 archived OSC workbooks match osc.ny.gov. Last checked Jul 30, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC.
| Year | Local hash | Remote hash | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| FFY 2016 | bee458cc0943… | bee458cc0943… | Pass |
| FFY 2017 | 0633f9558c2d… | 0633f9558c2d… | Pass |
| FFY 2018 | 3bc6cb508abd… | 3bc6cb508abd… | Pass |
| FFY 2021 | 2116c5f27e81… | 2116c5f27e81… | Pass |
| FFY 2022 | 9c1dd3c80cba… | 9c1dd3c80cba… | Pass |
| FFY 2023 | d816c6ca2d76… | d816c6ca2d76… | Pass |
This watch compares byte hashes of published Excel files to the in-repo archives. A match means the site’s state rankings still reflect the current OSC file for that year. Drift does not auto-update The Ledger — rebuild after human review. Probing unpublished years: FFY 2019 (not published) · FFY 2020 (not published) · FFY 2024 (not published) · FFY 2025 (not published).
These run when the app loads the JSON archives. A critical failure stops a broken dataset from shipping as a page.
6passed
2advisory
0failed
state-count
FFY 2023: 50 states · FFY 2022: 50 states · FFY 2021: 50 states · FFY 2018: 50 states · FFY 2017: 50 states · FFY 2016: 50 states
Rulestates.length === 50
derived-metrics
Net balance, per capita, return per dollar, and status are recomputed from revenue, spending, and population on every load.
Rulenet = spending − revenue; perCapita = net / population; return = spending / revenue; status from net sign
ranks
Rank 1 is the lowest (most negative / strongest net contributor) net balance; ranks are unique 1–50.
Rulesort by netBalance ascending → rank = index + 1
categories
CATEGORY_PARTS_EXCEED_SPEND: Category parts exceed federal spending for ME (2016) by $5,427,822,708
RulesocialSecurity + medicare + medicaid + defense + other ≈ federalSpending
congress-deficit
Holds for all 64 historical CBO years (± $2B).
Rulerevenues − outlays ≈ deficitOrSurplus (± $2B)
flow-schema
REVENUE_TYPE_SUM_MISMATCH: FY2018: byType sum $3,324,242,420,390 vs totalReceipts $4,107,741,496,584 · REVENUE_TYPE_SUM_MISMATCH: FY2021: byType sum $4,040,349,490,934 vs totalReceipts $6,818,157,647,017 · REVENUE_TYPE_SUM_MISMATCH: FY2022: byType sum $4,889,824,615,926 vs totalReceipts $6,271,507,596,876 · REVENUE_TYPE_SUM_MISMATCH: FY2023: byType sum $4,432,379,961,193 vs totalReceipts $6,134,432,040,451
RuleZod parse on import + critical integrity rules
golden-pins
All 5 pinned OSC figures match the shipped archives.
Rulerevenue, spending, population === pinned workbook cells
osc-source-watch
All 6 archived OSC workbooks match osc.ny.gov. Last checked Jul 30, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC.
RuleSHA-256(local archive) === SHA-256(osc.ny.gov Excel)
State pages never trust precomputed derived fields from the JSON alone. On load we recompute:
For FFY 2023, the sum of state net balances is $1.3T. A large positive national sum is expected in deficit years and is not treated as an error.
These ingested OSC figures are pinned against the shipped archives. If a rebuild silently swaps a column or year, the pins fail before the site updates.
| Year | State | Revenue | Spending | Population | Implied net | Pin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | California (CA) | $589.5B | $601.4B | 38,965,193 | $11.9B$1.02 / $1 | Pass |
| 2023 | Minnesota (MN) | $76.7B | $79.7B | 5,737,915 | $2.9B$1.04 / $1 | Pass |
| 2023 | Mississippi (MS) | $22.2B | $58.5B | 2,939,690 | $36.2B$2.63 / $1 | Pass |
| 2022 | California (CA) | $679.3B | $664.3B | 39,029,342 | −$15.0B$0.98 / $1 | Pass |
| 2022 | Texas (TX) | $381.5B | $478.4B | 30,029,572 | $96.9B$1.25 / $1 | Pass |
Ends of the ranking — strongest contributors and strongest recipients — with recomputed expectations side by side.
| Rank | State | Net | Return | Status | Recompute |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strongest contributors | |||||
| #1 | New Jersey | −$17.7B | $0.88 | contributor | Pass |
| #2 | Massachusetts | −$3.6B | $0.97 | contributor | Pass |
| #3 | Washington | −$808.9M | $0.99 | contributor | Pass |
| Strongest recipients | |||||
| #48 | Texas | $76.9B | $1.20 | recipient | Pass |
| #49 | Florida | $79.6B | $1.26 | recipient | Pass |
| #50 | Virginia | $139.7B | $2.18 | recipient | Pass |
Integrity here means each series is internally consistent and matches its own archived source rules. It does not mean every federal dataset equals every other.
2016:ME where OSC program parts already exceed total spending before the residual other line is floored at zero. That is flagged advisory, not silently ignored.Those boundaries are editorial rules, documented in Methodology. The verdict on this page reflects the archives shipped with the current site build, not a live scrape — plus the last committed OSC remote hash check. If a critical check fails, a golden pin disagrees with the published OSC workbook for that year, or the source watch shows drift you have not reviewed, treat the numbers as under review.