Transparency Spotlight
Steps for Transparency Success:
Smith County
When launching your city’s or county’s transparency initiatives, start small, says Smith County Auditor Ann Wilson.
“Rather than trying to display everything, just start with what your core operating funds are,” Wilson says.
On its Web site, Smith County has opted to show the check registers for three of its major funds: the General, Road and Bridge and Facility Improvement funds.
“Those are the ones that are most frequently looked at or requested,” says Wilson. “There are certainly other funds in the county, such as health insurance claims that are not being displayed.
“There is a valid concern about displaying private or confidential information when implementing the transparency project,” Wilson says. “Smith County addressed this concern with the development of the modified report to display the ledger account name associated with the expenditure rather than the detailed description of the expenditure itself. In our case, this provides enough descriptive information for the public to understand the nature of the expenditure.”
Cost-Saving Transparency
Posting financial data online cuts costs for Smith County
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of Texas Rising.
Transparency is not just a buzzword in Smith County, where officials have posted the county’s budget and financial statements online for several years.
But starting in January 2009, the county aggressively expanded its transparency efforts, posting check registers for its major operating funds online at www.smith-county.com. Within the first three weeks, the check register portion of the site had more than 300 page views.
Posting information online follows the Comptroller’s recommendation to open its books to the public, providing clear and consistent pictures of spending, says Smith County Auditor Ann Wilson. It also saves money.
“In the past, we would print more than 100 budget documents for distribution,” Wilson says. Posting the budget documents online has saved Smith County several thousand dollars, Wilson says.
Wilson posts the annual budgets and financial statements online herself. Each week, a staff member updates the online check register by converting financial documents into PDF format and posting them to the Web site. Affiliated Computer Systems, which provides Smith County’s financial software, charged $900 to modify the official check register to exclude personal or confidential items. Other than the initial implementation cost, it takes a staffer about five minutes each week to update the check register, Wilson says.
The county promoted the availability of its financial data in a news release, as well as on the home page of its Web site. While posting the budget and check register information online has saved printing costs, Wilson says it’s too early to tell whether having this data publicly available has saved any other taxpayer dollars.
Smith County’s transparency efforts have earned it a mention on the Comptroller’s Transparency Check-Up Web site. TR
For more information, visit the Comptroller’s Transparency Check-Up site, which provides which lists Texas local governments that are setting the standard in their transparency efforts.
Read step-by-step tips on how to launch your transparency efforts.
View Smith County’s budget, financial statements and check registers.