About LGAI
About LGAI
Local Government Accountability (LGAI) is an independent research organization dedicated to forensic analysis of local government finances.
We investigate how local governments manage public money by examining budgets, audits, debt, contracts, compensation, and tax policy. All findings are drawn from primary public records and presented in a clear, verifiable format.
Neutral at the Start. Honest at the End.
Unbiased going in. Accountable coming out.
LGAI does not begin with a verdict. Every investigation opens the same way: no position, no target, no assumption about who is responsible for anything. We pull the records — adopted budgets, annual financial reports, board minutes, contracts, campaign finance filings, and the responses to our public-records requests — and we run the same seven-pillar analysis on every jurisdiction, regardless of who governs it.
Then the record speaks. When it shows discipline, we say so. When it shows abnormal spending growth, ballooning debt, sole-source contracts clustering around campaign donors, or service costs decoupled from service demand, we say that too — plainly. And because public spending is not weather, findings carry names: every dollar in a public budget was proposed, voted on, signed, or administered by someone. Identifying who is not bias. It is the entire point of accountability research.
Neutrality is our starting posture, not a permanent vow of silence about what the documents ultimately show. A conclusion earned from the public record is the opposite of a prejudice. When the record shows problems, the officials responsible for the decisions in that record are almost always the incumbents who were in office when the spending, debt, or contracts were approved. That focus is a structural feature of examining the public record of past decisions; it is not evidence of partisan targeting.
As a 501(c)(4) we exercise the full range of First Amendment rights available under the law. We reserve the right to communicate with candidates and campaigns, to create awareness of our findings (including through paid and unpaid channels), and, when the fiscal record warrants, to state clearer positions or make endorsements. We accept no funding from candidates, parties, or government. Our only client is the citizen.
Past descriptions of our approach on this site or elsewhere are not fixed legal constraints. We retain the right to refine our language, methods, and public posture at any time consistent with applicable law.
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Intake
No position, no target.
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Records
Budgets, minutes, FOIA.
- 3
Seven-Pillar Analysis
The same test, every jurisdiction.
- 4
Findings
What the record shows.
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Accountability
Responsibility attaches to names.
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Publication
Sourced, public, corrected openly.
Identifying who is responsible is not bias. It is the entire point of accountability research.
The Raw Material
Every finding LGAI publishes starts here — in records the public already owns.
Why You Can Trust Our Work
LGAI operates with structural safeguards designed to maintain independence and accuracy:
Exhibit 1
Trust is a structure, not a promise
Four safeguards built into how LGAI operates.
How LGAI is built
The usual arrangement
Funded by citizens
No candidate, party, or government money.
The usual arrangement
Paid by the government being examined.
Method published in full
Anyone can replicate our work — or check it.
The usual arrangement
Proprietary methodology. “Trust our judgment.”
Corrections logged publicly
Errors are posted, not buried.
The usual arrangement
Quiet edits. No record of what changed.
Numbers before names
We start with no target. The record decides who is responsible.
The usual arrangement
Conclusion first. Evidence assembled to fit.
Our credibility comes from method, not from claims of neutrality. We start every project without political assumptions and follow the evidence wherever it leads. When the record shows poor financial stewardship or conflicts of interest, we report it directly.
What We're For
Exposing waste is only half the work. The point of accountability is a government that performs — what we call Citizenship Value.
Increasing Citizenship Value
Citizenship Value is the measurable value residents receive from local government through reliable services, responsible taxation, transparent decisions, efficient operations, accountable leadership, and public institutions that perform as promised.
Who We Are
LGAI is powered by a team of professionals with deep experience across finance, law, data analysis, and public policy. We keep individual identities in the background because our credibility rests on the rigor of our research and the transparency of our methodology — not on personalities.
LGAI was founded by veteran investment bankers, credit analysts, and operators with decades of combined experience across public and private financings, private equity, municipal and debt capital markets, media, and politics at the federal, state, and local levels. They share a common observation from careers spent on both sides of the table: the same pattern repeats, community after community — candidates campaign on fiscal restraint, get elected, and then spend, adding budget on budget and debt on debt, while the efficiency disciplines that govern every serious private enterprise are never applied to the governments citizens are compelled to fund.
LGAI’s work is grounded in the American founding’s central premise: government exists by the consent of the governed and works for the people — not the other way around. The founders designed a government of limited, enumerated powers because they understood how readily public authority expands and how easily public money finds new ways to be spent. Two centuries later, local government spending, debt, and authority have grown beyond anything the founding generation would recognize — and the local oversight meant to check that growth has withered. We hold with Bastiat that the state too easily becomes ‘the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else,’ and with Jefferson’s standard of ‘a wise and frugal Government’ that ‘shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.’ Our work is driven by records, not rhetoric.
How to Reach Us
Local Government Accountability
1250 Connecticut Avenue NW
Suite 700 PMB 5459
Washington, DC 20036