Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Government Spending Transparency Databases

By Tamara Thompson
Contributing Author to PI Magazine, www.pimagazine.com -- All Rights Reserved

The governor of Alabama signed an executive order that creates an online database of all state government spending and legislators’ relationships with lobbyists. This will go online later this year, but many other states have already made available government spending, salary and revenue databases, often in a site dedicated to issues of transparency in government.

Review the Nevada state budget by general revenue, expenditures, departments or function at Nevada Open Government. Also, lookup vendors with state contracts.

Open Georgia includes a searchable database of state employees and their salaries.

South Carolina gathers together links to their various online databases including, state expenditures and salaries.

Similar sites have been assembled by Kentucky, Rhode Island (also see, Transparency Train) and South Dakota.

Transparency rankings and states with spending online are listed at Sunshine Review.

Track transparency in government spending issues reported by independent organizations in Colorado and Illinois.

Legislation, citizen activism and current news on state government transparency can be found at the Center for Fiscal Accountability.