Ray of Sunshine Review: Site of the Day

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Sunshine Review's editors honor a Ray of Sunshine Review: Site of the Day each non-holiday weekday. The chosen site is listed on Sunshine Review's front page. This page is a list of the sites that have been chosen.

[edit] April 2009

April 9

The California School Finance Center is a transparency tool created by the Pacific Research Institute and Just for the Kids—California for providing transparency, comparisons, and improvement on California's public school districts and charter schools. It compiles publicly-available information on public school revenue, achievement, and student demographic data in order to help school districts become more efficient and for educating citizens, parents, and students.

[edit] March 2009

March 12

Open Alabama is a new website launched by Alabama Governor Bob Riley. The website has a section on state spending, a list of all active statewide contracts and awarded bids, a database of all leases held by state departments, and information on the Riley Administration's requirement for state agencies to link their budget requests to measurable objectives.

[edit] February 2009

February 9

School's Open Montana is a new website sponsored by the Montana Policy Institute that provides spending detail on Montana school districts.

[edit] January 2009

January 29

Colorado Spending Transparency is a new website sponsored by the Independence Institute that focuses on legislative, policy and outreach to require that Colorado school districts, Colorado counties and Colorado cities exercise full spending transparency.

January 20

Dupage County, Illinois is taking further steps to government transparency. The county has formed an Ad Hoc panel to discuss new tools and process to provide more information to residents.Check it out.

January 16

Nevada Spending.com will go live this week and reveal information on actual expenditures for fiscal years '06, '07, and '08, along with the Governor's budget recommendations for 2010 and 2011. Check it out.

January 12

Dupage County, Illinois Auditor Bob Grogan announced the county will be posting its checkbook register online. The three new reports posted on the Auditor’s website will include: a detailed listing of county payments made by each elected office and department along with payments grouped by vendor.Check it out.

January 8

Jason Zandri of Wallingford, Connecticut built his own website with information about Wallingford (like minutes of meetings and the town budget) when the town itself wouldn't post the information on its official website.

January 7

Open Georgia was launched and is a searchable database of expenditures, including salary and travel, professional services, financial reports, and program reviews.

[edit] December 2008

December 22

The U.S. Conference of Mayors would like to crowdsource 2009 projects into wiki-like pages that would allow residents to say whether or not they support the spending of the money.

December 17

Iowa's Public Interest Institute announced the launch of Iowa Transparency.org which will focus on the spending habits of the state legislatures.

December 12

The Brandywine Heights Area School District, Pennsylvania posts it's checkbook register, which is updated monthly.

December 4

The Alabama Policy Institute has endorsed the “Alabama Right to Know” legislation which will be introduced by State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) and Rep. Mike Ball (R-Madison) in 2009. The website will provide a searchable database of state expenditures; contracts; legislative grants; and state grants. It would also require electronic filing of campaign contributions and expenditures and disclosure of relatives of politicians if they have contracts with the state.

December 3

Texas Comptroller is having a Susan Combs is holding a audio conference on her spending transparency initiatives, including the "Where the Money Goes" - Window on State Government" website. The four major search functions on the website include state agency search, vendor search, spending category search and purchasing code search (which allows for drilling down to the "pencil-level" for the biggest agencies. Make sure to tune in.

December 1

The Washington Governor has signed bill SB 6818 to create a government sponsored searchable budget website for Washington.^[1]

[edit] November 2008

November 24

The Washington Coalition for Open Government works to protect and expand Washington's open record and open meeting laws.

November 13

The Citywide Data Warehouse is a centralized access point for operational data from multiple agencies built to support government transparency in Washington, D.C.

November 7

The Empire Center for New York State Policy released a report in 2008 examining contract negotiations between the state and public employee unions showing that the tendency to keep details of such negotiations under wraps as long as possible is costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

November 6

The Missouri Accountability Portal (MAP) is a reference site produced by the state of Missouri where citizens can track government expenditures, state employee pay, the distribution of tax credits, and how government programs are being enforced.

November 4

The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives is an independent, non-profit, research and educational institute based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The foundation develops and advances public policies based on the nation’s founding principles of limited constitutional government, economic freedom, and personal responsibility for one’s actions.

[edit] October 2008

October 30

The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission is nearing the end of the busiest year of its existence. More FOIA complaints have been filed with the Commission in 2008 than in any other year.

October 27, 2008

The Better Government Association of Illinois has released their 2008 Integrity Index, an examination of state level transparency and government accountability.

October 24

The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government's mission is to help the general public, students, educators, public officials, media and legal professionals understand, obtain and exercise their First Amendment rights, and their rights and responsibilities under the New Mexico Open Meetings, Inspection of Public Records and Arrest Record Information Acts.

October 23

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is celebrating its 30th year of defending the freedom of the press, openness in government and First Amendment rights this October.

October 21

Californians Aware is an organization in CA working to foster confidence in the use of transparency laws by the public; and the compliance with those laws by the government.

October 17

The RISC Foundation of Rhode Island has created The Money Trail, a clearinghouse of information from public records, and a platform for taking action to require governmental compliance with the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act.

October 15

Georgia launches new transparency website aimed at helping citizens track where their tax dollars are being spent.

October 9

The Buckeye Institute is developing a wiki devoted to transparency and good government in Ohio. Check out Ohio Sunshine and see what you can add to the wiki today.

October 8

The Ocean State Policy Research Institute have an ongoing project to find the budget and spending records for every city, town and school district in Rhode Island. Jump aboard the Transparency Train!

October 7

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is backing a new transparency site called Kentucky's Open Door to be launched January 2009. Ideas and feedback for making the site the best it can be are currently being solicited here.

October 1

Open South Dakota is a review state government spending, current salaries of individual state employees, financial documents, vendor information, and listings of job classifications. The site provides information for over 106,000 financial entries.

[edit] September 2008

September 26

Maine Open Government, a new website hosted by the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

September 22

South Carolina Spending Transparency, a site run by the comptroller of South Carolina, who is posting annual and monthly spending of pending reports under its Statewide Accounting and Reporting System (STARS).

September 19

Michigan Transparency.org is a site developed by the Mackinac Center that will reveal Secretary of State and Governor expenditures. The site also features revenue and spending data for Michigan public school districts as reported by the state Department of Education along with categorical grant data and school checkbook registers.

September 17

Empower Texans is a new organization that launched to give video on why Texans should be asking how their taxpayer dollars are being spent.

September 16

Nevada Policy Research Institute launched Transparent Nevada providing a searchable database of state expenditures to Nevada residents.

September 15

Citizens for Responsible Government, an organization in Wisconsin, has created a state expenditure databases called the Government Accountability in Spending Project (GASP).

September 10

The College of DuPage became one of the first taxing bodies in Illinois to post teacher salaries online.

September 9

Smith County, Texas earned the coveted Ray of Sunshine Review today for being the second county in Texas--there are 254 counties in that great state--to post its checkbook register online.

September 8

New York:Project Sunlight, a state run website posting information related to campaign finance, legislation, lobbying activity, and recipients of state government contracts.

September 5