June 25, 2010

Sara Talbert

Texas Budget Source

Last month, the University of Texas at Austin released a report on Texas financial transparency. The 57-page report highlights current transparency practices by the state and local governments, while also giving recommendations of how those entities might effectively further their financial transparency efforts.

Gary Chapman, Senior Lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, contributed to the report. He says the school had initially started working at the federal level when transparency was promised by the Obama administration. He says after a year or so, the focus turned to the state level.

“We turned our attention to Texas because it’s easier to work one-on-one,” said Chapman. “We started making relationships with the Legislative Budget Board and the Comptroller’s Office about what could be done to increase transparency of the appropriations process in the legislature and help local governments increase their transparency.”

Officials with the comptroller’s office, which serves as the state’s clearinghouse for fiscal information, thinks the school has helpful ideas.

“It’s a good report they put out. It’s actually helped provide us a roadmap to use. We’ve already been working on some recommendations,” said Allen Spelce, communications director for State Comptroller Susan Combs. “We made some initial enhancements based on the feedback.”

Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney) says he’s been pushing for statewide transparency since he took office in 2003. Paxton and Rep. Mark Strama (D-Austin) successfully pushed legislation for the Comptroller’s Office to make it easier to find and view state contracts on its website. Paxton says although he did not provide input for the school’s study, he has several ideas for more transparency and was pleased to see the report come out.

“Anything that allows taxpayers to know more about what’s going on in the budget, especially with a very large budget is good,” said Paxton. “It makes it easier to search and access and for the taxpayer to look at.”

Some recommendations listed in the report include adding charts and graphs to the state’s financial data and also allowing users to download and manipulate a broader range of data sets, such as monthly retail sales tax collections, so that taxpayers will have a better understanding of the state’s finances. Spelce says the comptroller’s office is looking at how to incorporate those additions.

Chapman says the report’s recommendation of online posting of budget documents used by legislators during appropriations hearings would expand the participation of citizens who are not attending the hearing in Austin.

“If you don’t have access to decision documents, you don’t have access to numbers that committee members have access to,” said Chapman. “Committee members look at that information during the process and it’s [currently] not available to the public. It puts a significant barrier on participation.”

Another recommendation would expand taxpayers’ ability to access hearings online. Currently, if videos are posted online, a viewer must watch until they find the part of the video they’re interested in, and many hearings last for several hours. The report recommends the legislature “tag” the videos by topics or chapters so citizens can easily view them.

“It would not only help taxpayers, but also the staff of the government,” said Chapman. “It’s difficult for people to sit through hours of video to see information.”

Paxton says a recommendation he saw and really liked was an appropriations database for tracking state expenditures.

“An appropriations database available to the public is almost unheard of,” said Paxton. “They can track every dollar being spent; where it comes from and where it goes.”

Chapman says most if not all government entities they worked with were receptive to the report, but some, including local government representatives, did have their questions.

“There was a little concern about the cost of what was recommended and the hiring of additional personnel to do it. But I don’t think that’s a big problem,” said Chapman.

Another recommendation is for the state to consolidate local budget information into a one-stop shop online resource.

“There are different technological challenges because local governments have different systems they use for reporting information. Some are sophisticated, some are not,” said Chapman. “And some don’t do any reporting more or less. We’ll have to spend some time getting a pretty good handle on what is being used and bringing that together into one format.”

Chapman says many local governments are concerned the state will eventually mandate posting budget information online but says this report does not propose doing so. He says many local governments that are already facing budget woes are worried such a mandate would be costly.

“They don’t want to have the state government come in and tell them to do something they feel is not a necessary requirement right now,” said Chapman. “Many feel they don’t have the technological capacity to take the steps in this direction or that they don’t have enough skilled personnel.”

Despite this concern, local entities, even smaller ones such as the City of Tyler, tell Texas Budget Source they successfully implemented financial transparency reforms at little cost and with great benefit.

Paxton authored an amendment during the last legislative session requiring tollway authorities to post their budgets and check registers online. The amendment passed the House but was blocked by legislative maneuvering in the Senate. Paxton said the public deserves access to government financial information at all levels – state and local.

Paxton’s district includes Collin County, the first in the nation to post its check register online. Paxton says his county did so without spending a lot of money and says other counties can do the same. His county has even offered to show other counties how to post budget information online at low cost.

“It’s just good public policy,” said Paxton. “Transparency creates bigger accountability for us in how we spend money.”

One recommendation from the university’s report to help address cost concerns is for the Comptroller’s Office to design and issue a web template for local government entities to use when posting budget information online.

When addressing if these recommendations are feasible, the Comptroller’s Office says they haven’t ruled anything out yet.