Updated April 2026 · U.S. Census Bureau data
Kansas City Spending Rankings
Kansas has 9 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 1.3M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 75/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Kansas's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 75/100 (grade B). On the whole, Kansas cities run balanced budgets, manageable debt loads, and adequately funded pension systems. Individual cities still vary, the rankings below show which are pulling above and below the state average.
Kansas Fiscal Profile
Across all covered Kansas cities, the largest aggregate spending categories are parks at $1.3B and fire protection at $320.0M. That mix reflects Kansas's overall service-delivery model, in some states police and fire dominate; in others, education or roads take the largest aggregate share when cities operate their own school districts.
Healthiest and Most Stressed Cities
Top Fiscal Performers
Most Fiscally Stressed
All 9 Cities in Kansas
Wichita, KS
Pop. 396K
Overland Park, KS
Pop. 197K
Kansas City, KS
Pop. 155K
Olathe, KS
Pop. 142K
Topeka, KS
Pop. 126K
Lawrence, KS
Pop. 95K
Shawnee, KS
Pop. 68K
Lenexa, KS
Pop. 57K
Manhattan, KS
Pop. 54K
How These Rankings Are Calculated
City Fiscal Health Scores combine budget balance and reserves (25%), debt burden per capita (20%), pension funded ratio (20%), spending efficiency (15%), revenue diversity (10%), and three-year trend direction (10%). All inputs come from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. For the largest cities, we cross-reference the Lincoln Institute's Fiscally Standardized Cities database to adjust for school-district and county overlap. Pension data comes from the Public Plans Database. Best-practice weighting follows guidance from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). Read the full methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many cities in Kansas are covered by CitySpend?
CitySpend covers 9 cities in Kansas with 50,000 or more residents, totaling 1.3M in population. Smaller municipalities, towns, and unincorporated areas are excluded from the dataset.
What is Kansas's average Fiscal Health Score?
Kansas's 9 covered cities post an average Fiscal Health Score of 75/100. The score combines budget balance and reserves, debt burden per capita, pension funding, spending efficiency, revenue diversity, and three-year trend direction. Each city is benchmarked against population peers, so a 200,000-resident city is compared to other mid-size cities, not against the largest cities in the country.
Where does Kansas city spending data come from?
Every figure on this page is drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, with population estimates from the American Community Survey. For the largest cities, we cross-reference the Lincoln Institute's Fiscally Standardized Cities database to adjust for school-district overlap. Federal grant flows come from USASpending.gov; pension data, where available, comes from the Public Plans Database.
Which Kansas cities have the strongest fiscal health?
Wichita (A), Lenexa (A), Topeka (A) rank among the top fiscal performers in Kansas. Strong scores typically pair balanced budgets with low debt-per-capita and well-funded pensions. See the rankings below for the full list.
Which Kansas cities are most fiscally stressed?
Lawrence (D), Kansas City (C), Shawnee (B) rank toward the bottom of the Kansas fiscal health distribution. Common stress signals include pension underfunding, elevated debt service, and revenue concentration in a single tax source. A low score is a screening signal, not a verdict, always read the city's audited Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (ACFR) before drawing conclusions.
Kansas has 9 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 1.3M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 75/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Kansas's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 75/100 (grade B). On the whole, Kansas cities run balanced budgets, manageable debt loads, and adequately funded pension systems. Individual cities still vary, the rankings below show which are pulling above and below the state average.
The this entity record above pulls directly from the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. What follows is the per-entity context — how this entity sits in the broader U.S. municipal and county government finances distribution and which underlying factors drive the headline numbers.
The methodology behind every numeric value on this page is publicly documented on the the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances portal and described in detail on this site’s methodology page. Refresh cadence varies by underlying series; the page surfaces the as-of date for each number so readers can trace any figure back to the source release.
For readers using this page as a decision input, the related-entity pages elsewhere on the site provide the comparison set. The most useful comparison for this entity is typically a peer within U.S. cities, counties, and states with similar size, similar exposure, or similar geography — not the national-level summary alone.