Featured Website: Jeffco Public Schools - Financial Transparency

Here's a great example for what school district district financial transparency can look like. The Jeffco Public Schools district in Colorado has gone far beyond what many school districts are doing in terms of financial transparency.

Rather than just posting their check registers in pdf form, the district has created a comprehensive database detailing information for (at this point non-employee) expenditures. Searches will yield quite detailed information on what the schools have purchased and from whom, and the website is updated on a monthly basis.

Check it out, and tell your school board that you think your district should join Jeffco in providing a similar level of transparency!

Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy Releases Local Transparency Study for VA

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 8:19 AM

The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy has completed a study surveying local governments across Virginia to determine the levels of government transparency they provide.

The result: Virginia local governments still have a long way to go when it comes to providing greater accountability and transparency.

Some of the categories examined by the Institute were whether the locality posts budget documents and if so, to what extent, whether the localities post expenditure information and whether contract information is accessible through their website.

Take a look at the study here.

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New Transparency Resource for Connecticut Taxpayers

Monday, February 8, 2010 3:43 PM

Our friends at the Yankee Institute have launched a new transparency resource for Connecticut taxpayers.

Modeled after the increasingly popular template first used by the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the Empire Center for New York State Policy, the free-market think tank has created CTsunlight.org, which provides the following features:

Visit PAYROLL to review the salary expenditures for each state agency for calendar years 2007 and 2008.
Use CHECKS TO BUSINESSES AND PEOPLE to examine each line item of state government spending by agency, branch, and year.
Information about payments to RETIREES is found on the retirees tab.

H/T: Tapscott's Copy Desk

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About Those Jobs Numbers

Monday, February 8, 2010 12:57 PM

The White House has been saying that the latest jobs numbers are "encouraging," but are they really?

Sure, numerically speaking, for the number to drop below 10% certainly is an improvement. But what does that really mean? The Washington Examiner has taken a closer look, and things are not as rosy:

First, the drop to 9.7 percent unemployment does not reflect the creation of new jobs that normally accompanies an economic recovery. The number of new jobs is actually declining. Total nonfarm payroll employment, for example, dipped by an additional 20,000 positions after a December decline of 150,000 positions. The unemployment rate the day Obama took office last year stood at 7.6 percent and 134.6 million people had jobs. When he signed the economic stimulus, Obama promised the bill would bolster the economy sufficiently to keep unemployment below 8.0 percent. But the unemployment rate has exceeded 8.0 percent since last fall, and total employment stands at only 129.5 million. The stimulus has been a bust.

Second, anybody who thinks the job situation is going to improve dramatically in coming months is not paying attention to what's going on behind the unemployment rate.The Hudson Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes that “This is a better employment report than last month’s report, yet the economy is still not creating jobs. The percent of the unemployed who are out of work for 27 weeks or more exceeded 41%, an all-time high. This is unacceptable and shows that Congress and the President need to focus on job creation, rather than on expanding government, because the tax increases and borrowing used to expand government reduce overall job creation and create uncertainty." Furchtgott-Roth further notes that "the labor force participation rate is the lowest since mid-1985." This means that fewer Americans are in the labor force.

Not good. And last but not least, many of the jobs "saved and created" are public sector jobs - slowly but steadily growing the size and scope of government, not exactly the direction we should be heading towards.

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Let's Expedite Debate on Spending Reductions!

Friday, February 5, 2010 3:04 PM

The following is cross-posted at www.atr.org:

On Thursday, House GOP leader John Boehner and GOP Whip Eric Cantor sent a letter to President Obama offering their help in forcing votes on proposed spending reductions and terminations. The GOP Whip's backgrounder on expedited process for consideration of proposals to cancel spending can be found here.)

Today, ATR president Grover Norquist and Center for Fiscal Accountability executive director Sandra Fabry sent a letter to the President urging him to work with Boehner and Cantor to achieve these reductions and terminations.

The text of the Norquist/Fabry letter is pasted below, and the PDF is here:

Dear Mr. President:

We write to urge you to take up House GOP Leader John Boehner’s and GOP Whip Eric Cantor’s offer to help you force a vote on your proposed spending reductions and terminations.

In their letter to you, Leader Boehner and Whip Cantor alluded to the possibility of invoking the process under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which would allow a minority of the House to bring the discretionary program terminations and reductions contained in your budget to the floor.

According to the stipulations of the Act, you can send up in the form of a discrete, specific message asking that the funds be rescinded. One-fifth of the House can bring a motion to discharge spending reduction and rescission proposals if the relevant committee of jurisdiction fails to act on the proposals. While not agreeing with all your suggested cuts and terminations, Leader Boehner and Whip Cantor have vowed that they will introduce each of your proposals as stand-alone legislation, and we urge you to take them up on their offer.

Taxpayers are fed up, and they have made their dissatisfaction clear over the course of the past few months – in town hall meetings, protest marches, and recent elections. As they are struggling to make ends meet and are forced to tighten their belts, they demand that their government do the same. Unfortunately, however, rather than seeing their elected officials work on meaningful legislation to reduce federal spending, taxpayers have had to witness drastic increases in the same, and just this week yet another massive hike in the federal debt ceiling.

The crisis is now – and so is the time to act. While much more remains to be done, your termination and reduction proposals are a first step in the right direction.Consequently, we urge you to prioritize your spending cut proposals and work with Leader Boehner and Whip Cantor to ensure that they be debated by Congress in an expedited manner.

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Bipartisan Reform Commissions - a Comparison

Friday, February 5, 2010 3:01 PM

The following is cross-posted at www.atr.org:

There has been a lot of talk about various ideas to set up bipartisan reform commissions to address our fiscal problems. However, as we have been pointing out, not all commission proposals are good ones. In fact, some of them would be extremely damaging if implemented.

In order to help you discern which commission proposal is pro-taxpayer, and which one is not, we have put together a brief comparative analysis of six different proposals that have been floated. Click here to view the chart.

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