This paper addresses the relationships between “smart growth,” a fiscally motivated anti-sprawl policy movement, and public finance. The analysis, which is based on the entire continental United States and uses a series of spatial econometric models to evaluate one aggregate (total direct) and nine disaggregate (education, fire protection, housing and community development, libraries, parks and recreation, police protection, roadways, sewerage, and solid waste disposal) measures of spending, provides the most detailed evidence to date of how sprawl affects the vast sum of revenue that local governments spend every year.