States with spending online
From Sunshine Review
The idea that it is highly desirable for governments to disclose their spending online was given its first major victory when President George W. Bush signed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) into law in September 2006. Sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn and Barack Obama, this bipartisan legislation requires that all federal grant and contract funding data appear online in a searchable database.[1]
Federal lawmakers issue hundreds of billions of dollars to various entities every year. The Coburn-Obama bill has therefore been lauded by transparency advocates as a great stride forward. It gives taxpayers a simple way to make sense of how legislators and agencies allocate funds.
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States with Spending Online
Since S. 2590 was passed, different states have begun to implement their own transparency sites to disclose information about state government spending. The states that do disclose their spending online vary in how much they disclose. Some sites are comprehensive, while others are limited in their disclosure.
These states provide some degree of online budget and spending disclosure:
- Alaska Checkbook Online
- KanView
- Check It Out Kentucky! and V.I.E.W.
- Louisiana LaTrac
- Missouri Accountability Portal
- NebraskaSpending.com
- Nevada Open Government
- New York: Project Sunlight and Open Book
- Oklahoma OpenBooks
- South Carolina Spending Transparency
- Texas Window on State Government
- South Dakota Open.sd.gov
States with legislation to publish a spending database
- Georgia (January 2009)
- Hawaii (January 2009)
- Maryland (January 2009)
- Minnesota (January 2008--not yet launched)
- Nevada (January 2009)
- Mississippi (to be determined)
- Washington (January 2009)
- Utah (to be determined)
Criteria for evaluating databases
The following table is helpful in evaluating the level of transparency provided by a state spending and transparency database:
| State Database | Searchability | Grants | Contracts | Line Item Expenditures | Dept/Agency Budgets | Public Employee Salary | Exemption Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checkbook Online |  |  | | | | | $1,000 grants & contracts |
| KanView | | | | | | | -- |
| Check It Out Kentucky! | | n/a | | | | | None |
| V.I.E.W. | | | | | | | None |
| LaTrac | | | | | | | |
External links
- Show Me The Spending
- Washington Policy Center, "Creating a Free, Searchable Website of State Spending," Jason Mercier, 2007
