I'm not American, so forgive my ignorance, but what are the budget responsibilities by level of Government? In Australia, there are really clear divides.
Country -> defence, welfare.
State -> Education, roads, public transport
County (council) -> parks, local infrastructure, approvals (for building).
Same with taxes, where the federal government is the only body allowed to apply most taxes (like income tax), which they then pass through to the states. In Australia, the Federal government raises the money, and the states spend it.
Without having any idea how the US system works, what are the budgetary responsibilities of the City of Orlando vs the state of Florida vs the federal government of the USA? It seems weird to an Australian that the police are funded at such a low level. Is that in addition to state spending? Is there no state spending on police?
Without knowing what the budgetary responsibilities are, I have no idea how to contextualise "31.6% of its budget", and I wonder if many Americans could either, as knowledge of this level of government funding arcana would be, well I'd think pretty rare.
The short answer is that it's a huge mess and very different everywhere. Any gov layer could be collecting taxes or not. You could have sales tax, or not. You could have property tax, or not. You could have excise tax, or not.
You won't even have consistent definitions for boundaries. In other parts of the country, you won't find much in the way of towns/cities and the county is a very important government function. In Massachusetts every bit of land belongs to a town and "counties" are really only there to define court districts, nothing more.
NY is a really weird nesting doll of bureaucracy. You'll have state > counties > cities/towns > villages. All with their own leadership, boundaries, tax structure, etc. Speaking as a Bostonian, New York looks insane ;)
Country -> defence, welfare. State -> Education, roads, public transport County (council) -> parks, local infrastructure, approvals (for building).
Same with taxes, where the federal government is the only body allowed to apply most taxes (like income tax), which they then pass through to the states. In Australia, the Federal government raises the money, and the states spend it.
Without having any idea how the US system works, what are the budgetary responsibilities of the City of Orlando vs the state of Florida vs the federal government of the USA? It seems weird to an Australian that the police are funded at such a low level. Is that in addition to state spending? Is there no state spending on police?
Without knowing what the budgetary responsibilities are, I have no idea how to contextualise "31.6% of its budget", and I wonder if many Americans could either, as knowledge of this level of government funding arcana would be, well I'd think pretty rare.