The Refund Calculator

How this is counted

A place's number is the sum of the entries located there whose cost is on THE TAB: reported public money paid because a system failed, was misused, or had to be abandoned. Ordinary contract spend on a system still in use is shown on the entry but never added. A state's number includes its cities; national and federal items sit in a "United States" bucket of their own and are not added to any state. Nothing is estimated.

Per-resident figures are approximate. City populations come from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and are of mixed vintage (mostly 2010–2020 counts), or from the U.S. Census Bureau's ACS where the geocoder added a place — row-by-row sources; state populations are the 2020 Census. One town on the timeline has no population figure on file and shows no per-resident number.

The records-request letter is informational, not legal advice. This table names each jurisdiction's public-records statute, its common citation, and the response deadline where the statute itself sets one. Deadlines are counted the way the statute counts them (business or calendar days) and are the initial-response clock, not a guarantee of production; most states allow extensions. Where the statute sets no fixed number of days, or the compiler was not certain of it, `deadlineDays` is null on purpose — never guessed. Laws change: confirm against the current statute (linked) before relying on any figure.

State populations: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census, resident population as of April 1, 2020 (apportionment counts / P.L. 94-171 redistricting data, Table P1). Public domain. The 'US' row is the 50 states plus DC (Puerto Rico and the territories are excluded) and its population is the sum of the other rows. Compiled 2026-09-04 from the Bureau's published state totals; used by /calculator/ for approximate per-resident figures only.