There was a victory for our own House member Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, and for transparent government yesterday with the passage of House Bill 3430 through the House. The bill establishes the Searchable State Expenditure Database, an online tool that will allow people to search through the whole Texas budget and find out who is spending how much on what.
For those fearing the comptroller will be able to hide data behind a bad interface and ugly search tools, the bill specifically prohibits the comptroller from designing a Web site that requires a tax attorney and six CPAs to understand. It must be “searchable and intuitive to users” and must present the data in useful forms like pie charts.
One particularly juicy search tool for government-watchers that the bill mandates is that the user may “ascertain through a single search the total amount of state funding awarded to a person by a state agency.” So, finally, it’ll be easy to see who is making out like a bandit from state contracts, without having to search through each agency budget individually.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where (like all legislation) it will hear the ticking clock of the imminent end of the session.
This article appears in April 27 • 2007.
