Transparency Key to Fixing State Budget Crises

Millions of average Americans made history in 2009 by launching a non-partisan burst of activism demanding more accountability from Washington and more transparency about Wall Street bailouts, stimulus spending and health care reform. In 2010 and beyond, that same energy is urgently needed closer to home.

State and local governments across America are broke. At least 10 states, including California, Florida, New Jersey Michigan, Arizona and Illinois, face bankruptcy, according to a recent study by the Pew Center for the States. New York, Georgia and Colorado are also in the race to the bottom. In total, states in imminent danger of going belly up account for one third of the U.S. population and economic output.

The weight of collapsing real estate values, joblessness and vanishing real wealth that crushed American families last year now buckle the fiscal structures of state and local governments. Costs spiral up as revenues spiral down. Observers are calling this crisis point “the cliff.”

At “the cliff,” however, there is hope for change.

Reform is needed now, state by state and community by community, to fundamentally transform how taxes are raised and spent and to reduce the costs, structure and scope of government. Jobs, quality public schools, police and fire protection, roads and streetlights, trash collection, health and safety regulation can be preserved without massive tax increases, if, and only if, an informed and energized group of citizen engages.

Without citizen scrutiny and action, officials may resort to budgetary tricks and tax hikes that will only exacerbate the fiscal problems. According to the General Accountability Office, many state and local governments are stalling reform–using federal stimulus money to temporarily plug holes in operating budgets. According to the Wall Street Journal, some states, including California and New York are formulating schemes to sell debt to foreign investors.

Just as citizens marched for transparency and accountability in Washington, they must also now demand ready access to state and local government budgets, regulations, contracts, and contacts. The quest for information too often requires overly complex open-records requests and the time and savvy to navigate a bureaucratic maze. But absent transparency, there is far greater risk of continued failure, corruption, fraud, waste and regulatory abuse.

The Sunshine Review (www.sunshinereview.org) developed a Transparency Checklist to evaluate and score the Web sites of every city, county, school district, and state agency in all 50 states. The Transparency Checklist measures what content is available on government Web sites against what should be provided. The evaluations produce credible data easily accessible to citizens, journalists and activists.

The old bureaucratic dodges that transparency is too expensive, too time consuming, too taxing of government copy machines just don’t hold up in the age of the Internet and social networking.

Long before Google searches, the Founders crafted the Bill of Rights precisely because freedom of information and an informed, engaged citizenry is essential to self government. In the coming weeks and months, citizens can forge truly historic change in state and local government by; reforming the budget process, privatizing services, returning professional full time legislatures and councils to more traditional part time bodies, among many other worthy initiatives.

Citizen engagement is crucial. Success depends on transparency, accountability and the ability of informed citizens to secure the information they need to participate in reform and hold elected officials accountable.