Patricia Buscher                                            CB02-75
Public Information Office
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e-mail: pio@census.gov

              State Government Spending Tops $1 Trillion,
                          Census Bureau Reports

  State governments spent $1.1 trillion in Fiscal Year 2000, exceeding the
$1 trillion mark for the first time in U.S. history, according to state
government revenue and expenditure tables released today by the Commerce
Department's Census Bureau.

  (FY 2000 ended in June in all states except Alabama, Michigan, New York
and Texas.)

  The same state governments took in $1.3 trillion in revenues, showed an
outstanding debt of $548 billion and reported cash and security holdings
of $2.5 trillion. The latter includes assets of state-administered public
employee pension systems.

  While most state government spending was for direct current operations
($523 billion), about 30 percent ($328 billion) went to support local
governments. States also spent $76 billion on capital projects, more than
$105 billion on insurance benefits (including unemployment benefits and
pensions) and more than $30 billion on interest on debt.

  The 2000 Annual Survey of State Government Finances also shows that
spending on education continued to be the largest function of state
expenditures, $347 billion or 32 percent. Other major categories of state
spending were public welfare (22 percent), highways, health and hospitals
(7 percent each) and police and corrections (4 percent).

  Tax collections made up the largest share of state revenues, $539 billion 
or 43 percent. Intergovernmental revenues totaled $274 billion or 22 percent, 
most of which came from the federal government.

  The data in the tables are derived from administrative records from
state government agencies and are not subject to sampling. Quality
assurance procedures were applied to all phases of the collection,
processing and tabulation of data to minimize nonsampling errors. However
the data are still subject to possible error from miscoding, omission or
difficulty in identifying the agencies included in the report.