Transparency Progress in Oklahoma

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 8:00 AM

In 2007, Oklahoma was one of the pioneer states when it came to spending transparency. One of the first states to pass transparency legislation, the state's website Open Books has since been surpassed by other states' websites. 

Consequently, lawmakers, joined by Oklahomans for Responsible Government have been pushing for improvements. Yesterday, a bill that would provide such improvements passed the House of Representatives unanimously.

According to the Sunshine Review blog:

House Bill 3422 by Rep. Ken Miller (R-Edmond) passed unanimously and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The bill requires that the state’s current Open Books website be upgraded to include all expenditures no matter how small. It would also make the raw data available for downloading so that anyone can look through and sort the data as they see fit. Open Books would also become an archive of all past spending so that data from one year to the next can be compared.

But this bill wasn't the only one that passed. House Bill 3253 by Rep. Gus Blackwell (R-Goodwell), requiring that school district expenditures be posted on the Department of Education's website, also made it through the House unanimously.  In the Senate, Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) has sponsored a similar measure, SB 1633.

The fact that both measures met with unanimous support leaves us hopeful that they will pass through the Senate and Oklahoma taxpayers will soon stand to benefit from these transparency improvements.

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