Background
The ongoing struggle to bring greater clarity to government spending marked a huge victory when President George W. Bush signed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) into law in September 2006. Cosponsored by Senator Tom Coburn and Senator Barack Obama, this bipartisan legislation requires that all federal grant and contract funding data appear in a searchable website (www.usaspending.gov). Given that Washington issues hundreds of billions of dollars to various entities every year, it’s a great stride forward that taxpayers now have an easy-to-use tool to help make sense of where and why their money is parceled out.
Of course, state and local governments also disburse large amounts of grants and contracts, along with other outlays such as bond funding and regular appropriations. However, problems of inaccessibility and unwieldiness often plague the typical taxpayer’s efforts to better understand spending that takes place closer to home. In order to improve taxpayer access to spending information, we are working to enact state databases similar to the federal website.
Click here to read an editorial by Americans for Prosperity's Phil Kerpen on why injecting transparency into state spending is so important.
CostThe Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementing S. 2590 and creating a single comprehensive searchable Web site on the federal level that would include information on all grants, contracts, and other funding awarded to public and private organizations would cost $4 million in 2007 and about $15 million over the 2007-2011 period. Click here to read the entire cost estimate.
Oklahoma has a state budget of $7 billion, and they expect their spending database to cost up to $300,000. Read more here.
According to this Stateline.org article, Kansas will spend $40 million to replace their entire accounting system. A small fraction of those funds will be used to "include a site for the public to see how taxpayers' dollars are spent."
50 States Overview
For those interested in getting any overview of what's happening in all 50 states, you can read a report on current legislation.
Read a letter from Americans for Tax Reform to all governors on the need for transparency in state spending.