Website to give access to state financial information
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HARRISBURG -- State government will soon begin putting together a website that will provide one-stop access to state financial information.
Starting in 2013, residents will be able to search a single website and find out how much their senator's secretary earns, or the amount spent to repave a highway, what agency that money came from and who beat out their brother's construction firm for the contract.
House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, had identified this government transparency bill, which passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate, as a priority earlier this year.
Sponsored by Rep. Jim Christiana, R-Beaver, the act also is supported by Gov. Tom Corbett, who said in his campaign he would like Pennsylvanians to be able to search easily for financial information online.
The Governor's Office of Administration will be in charge of developing the database, called PennWATCH, which supporter Barry Kauffman of Common Cause Pennsylvania said will allow residents to monitor state government as a whole and individual programs they are interested in. Pennsylvania will be the 27th state to have such a database.
While Mr. Kauffman recognized that many Pennsylvanians either don't care to or don't have the time to keep tabs on the government on a daily basis, he said he expects a "substantial number of citizens," as well as journalists and special interest groups, to use the database.
Unless, of course, the database is not user-friendly -- and not in the "computer geeks ... user-friendly" kind of way -- he said.
Mr. Christiana said he is committed to making the database as easy to use as possible.
While the data that will be compiled on the site is already available from individual state agencies, Mr. Christiana said he worked on the legislation because constituents asked him to.
Mr. Kauffman added that various agencies provide information in different formats, often making it hard to compare. Mr. Christiana said the new system will display all data in the same format.
Compiling the information into one free-of-charge source "should make government more transparent" and will mean "taxpayers will finally get to see how their money is being spent and to provide a set of eyes on the taxpayers' checkbooks," said Matthew Brouillette, CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Mr. Brouillette, Mr. Kauffman and Stephen Herzenberg, an economist who works at the Keystone Research Center, agree that PennWATCH is a good first step to government transparency. Mr. Brouillette said he hopes the system will be adopted by boroughs and municipalities, while Mr. Herzenberg said he is looking for PennWATCH to provide more information.
First Published July 11, 2011 12:00 am
