State financial info may go online

Utah Sen. Wayne Niederhauser predicts that within five years, most states will enact laws that allow residents to access government financial data.

For the 2008 Utah Legislature, the Sandy Republican has drafted a bill — one of his three priority bills — to create a free, easy-to-use, searchable Web site for Utah residents to see where their tax dollars are being spent.

The bill, SB38, would apply to all branches of the state of Utah, state departments, state colleges and universities, counties with at least 12,000 residents and cities with at least 10,000 residents, local and special-service districts, school districts and charter schools with budgets of $1 million or more.

The Web site would provide access to financial reports, audits, budgets and other financial documents, many of which are public, but normally are sought after by the public with a formal request under the Government Records Access and Management Act.

Niederhauser, who says he's "always willing to talk about transparency," said the idea behind the bill is to allow taxpayers to view and understand public revenue expenditures.

That means not just endless electronic reams of raw data, but Web tools that will allow people to make sense of the data they view.

The bill would also create a Utah Transparency Advisory Board, which would determine which financial records could be accessed by weighing the cost of providing the information against the public's benefit of having the information available.

The advisory board will be charged with making sure private records stay private, Niederhauser said.

Niederhauser said he has encountered some concerns about the cost of his proposal and the time it will take to make the data available online.

But most agencies already store their data in an electronic format, Niederhauser says.

He points to Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, who enacted similar legislation by executive order.

Blunt did it without appropriating any money, Niederhauser said.

Similar moves are afoot in Oklahoma and Kansas.

The U.S. government has a Web site, www.usaspending.gov, that allows Web users to see that Boeing received the most money in federal contracts in 2006, or to see that controversial private-security firm Blackwater Inc. received $573 million in 2006 for diplomatic protection, or to see a plethora of other information.