Transparency in state government only a good thing

• Published June 30, 2009

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Have you ever wondered how much the Department of Labor and Industries spends on travel? Or how much the Liquor Board spends on salaries and wages?

Thanks to the actions of state officials last year, the answers to these and other questions are simply a mouse click away.

By visiting fiscal.wa.gov, the state’s new budget transparency Web site, within minutes I had the answers to both questions. Through March, L&I had spent more than $9 million on travel and the Liquor Board paid out $80 million in salaries and wages during the 2007-09 biennium.

Unanimously adopted by legislators and signed into law last year, the bill authorizing fiscal. wa.gov tasked the Legislative Evaluation and Accountability Program Committee with its creation and operation. Providing taxpayers with this accountability tool was a top priority of Washington Policy Center and other government transparency advocates. In December LEAP launched the Web site ahead of schedule with the assistance of the Office of Financial Management at a cost of $300,000.

This transparency resource is starting to catch on. According to LEAP, as of May 31, fiscal.wa.gov “hosted more than 35,000 visits, provided nearly 119,000 page views, and approximately 95,000 reports had been run.” Not bad numbers for the first six months of the site’s existence.

Not surprisingly the greatest monthly traffic occurred during the heat of the budget debate in March.

Although OFM warned LEAP that it should be prepared to staff a help desk in response to user questions (possibly full-time), this has not been the case. LEAP reports “that despite this level of activity, staff support answering questions – telephone calls and e-mails – has been almost nil.”

For advocates of government transparency reforms, this result comes as no surprise. When you provide citizens with the ability to directly access the information they desire, staff time can be freed up for other activities.

Among the information originally required to be included on the Web site are details on: state expenditures by fund or account; expenditures by agency, program, and subprogram; state revenues by source; state expenditures by budget object and subobject; and state agency workloads, caseloads, and performance measurements.

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