Updated April 2026 · U.S. Census Bureau data
Wisconsin City Spending Rankings
Wisconsin has 12 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 1.6M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 77/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Wisconsin's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 77/100 (grade B). On the whole, Wisconsin 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.
Wisconsin Fiscal Profile
Across all covered Wisconsin cities, the largest aggregate spending categories are police at $2.9B and parks at $2.3B. That mix reflects Wisconsin'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 12 Cities in Wisconsin
Milwaukee, WI
Pop. 573K
Madison, WI
Pop. 269K
Green Bay, WI
Pop. 107K
Kenosha, WI
Pop. 99K
Racine, WI
Pop. 77K
Appleton, WI
Pop. 75K
Waukesha, WI
Pop. 71K
Eau Claire, WI
Pop. 69K
Oshkosh, WI
Pop. 66K
Janesville, WI
Pop. 66K
West Allis, WI
Pop. 60K
La Crosse, WI
Pop. 52K
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 Wisconsin are covered by CitySpend?
CitySpend covers 12 cities in Wisconsin with 50,000 or more residents, totaling 1.6M in population. Smaller municipalities, towns, and unincorporated areas are excluded from the dataset.
What is Wisconsin's average Fiscal Health Score?
Wisconsin's 12 covered cities post an average Fiscal Health Score of 77/100. 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 Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin cities have the strongest fiscal health?
Oshkosh (A), West Allis (A), Madison (A) rank among the top fiscal performers in Wisconsin. Strong scores typically pair balanced budgets with low debt-per-capita and well-funded pensions. See the rankings below for the full list.
Which Wisconsin cities are most fiscally stressed?
Waukesha (C), La Crosse (C), Milwaukee (C) rank toward the bottom of the Wisconsin 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.
Wisconsin has 12 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 1.6M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 77/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Wisconsin's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 77/100 (grade B). On the whole, Wisconsin 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.
Every number on this page links back to the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances; the methodology page describes the inputs, refresh cadence, and known limitations of the underlying data product.
Practical use of this page is in combination with the comparison and ranking pages elsewhere on the site, which surface the same data for this entity’s peers within U.S. cities, counties, and states. A single-entity reading without peer context can be misleading when an entity is an outlier on one axis but typical on another.