Pennsylvania Transparency Law Clears One Hurdle

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:59 AM

A spending transparency bill, the Pennsylvania Government Accountability Portal Act, HB 1880, has cleared an important hurdle in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.  HB 1880, sponsored by Reps. Mirabito, Christiana, and others would mandate the creatiion of the Pennsylvania Government Accountability Portal (Penn-GAP), which shall be configured as a fully searchable database to allow users to earch and aggregate the following:

• a database of all current Commonwealth expenditures except for minor purchases under $1,000 and disburesements under public assistance and Medicaid programs,
• a database of all expenditures for state agencies,
• a database of all tax credit programs administered by the Dept. of Revenue (note that we don't like the fact that they lump tax credits under the definition of "expenditures," because unless they're refundable tax credits they're not spending)
• a database sof business that failed to pay or underreported sales and use tax
• a database of all revocations and suspensions of professional and occupational liceses, registrations, or certificates,
• a searchable database of all state contracts,
• a searchable database of all investments of public funds,
• a searchable database of completed audit reports of agencies prepared by the auditor general,
• a listing of all state agencies' full-time positions, average compensation in each class and acutal compensation for each position (above $50,000 annually)
• a searchable database of monthly credit card statements for each state agency,
• links to each agency website,
• and a counter to show the number of times the website is entered.

The bill was passed out of the State Government Commitee yesterday.

H/T: @NathanBenefield

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