I'm traveling and can't find the article but I recall reading recently in the local paper about someone in local government in Montana who was either being fired or prosecuted for failing to keep accurate records about transactions. This was revealed in some audit the state requires, iirc. Anyway the gist is that it isn't the case that city government people simply don't have to keep proper financial records.

> Anyway the gist is that it isn't the case that city government people simply don't have to keep proper financial records.

That's one local government of tens of thousands. I'd be less optimistic about, say, a rural county in West Virginia, or something like that, having anything like proper financial records and the motivation to provide them.

The kind of governments I'm skeptical about aren't hugely important for a top-down analysis of the country's finances simply because they're financially the least wealthy. What I'm surprised about is how optimistic everyone is about the nation's recordkeeping and how everyone assumes that every government works roughly the same way. I've heard horror stories about counties that cannot even keep track of who owns what land/mineral rights, and sometimes have their own corrupt reasons for not trying very hard. The world will need to change before some of those places are motivated to improve.