Contact: Donald McFarland | 651-236-0494

Saint Paul, MN – Earlier today, State Auditor Julie Blaha released the 2022 Minnesota City Summary Budget Report. The 2022 city budgets, adopted in 2021, provide a snapshot of their budgeting priorities and represent a plan for the coming year.

“The 2022 city budget data reflects the tapering down of federal COVID-19 relief programs,” said Auditor Blaha. “As a result, cities adopted cautious budgets showing a 1.6 percent increase in revenues and 0.4 percent decrease in expenditures.

“While overall budgets remained flat, it’s clear that cities prioritized road and bridge construction in 2022, which is set to grow 43 percent over 2021,” added Blaha.

This report presents the 2022 summary budget data together with 2021 revised summary budget data and is best used as a tool to help review budget decisions for 2021 and 2022. The data reflects unaudited budgeted revenues and expenditures reported by cities to the Office of the State Auditor (OSA). Rarely do actual revenues and expenditures match the amounts budgeted. In addition, the data reported does not represent all cities revenues and expenditures.

Cities report budget data only for funds for which an annual budget is adopted. Cities with funds where annual budgets are not adopted would have more revenues and expenditures than reported. Also, the revenues and expenses of city public service enterprises are not included. The inclusion of enterprise funds would significantly alter the revenue and expenditure trends of cities.

Because of the limitations of budget data, the OSA recommends using the financial information provided in our publication, Minnesota City Finances, which includes the actual city revenues and expenditures.

You may view the complete report on the OSA website.