Some Colorado school districts aren’t waiting for the General Assembly to mandate financial transparency. Greeley Evans School District Six in Northern Colorado has placed its check reigstry online.
But most impressive is what Colorado’s largest school district Jeffco Public Schools has provided for taxpayers on its financial transparency Web page. Interested taxpayers set the date parameters, and then search Jeffco expenditures by vendor, account number, fund or department number. The search results can be easily downloaded into an individual xcel file. For instance, in just a matter of minutes COST determined that Jeffco spent $313,199.46 on meals/refreshments from July 1 to December 31, 2009. It’s not up to COST to make a judgement on those expenditures. That is the responsibility of Jeffco taxpayers.
We will however make a judgement on Jeffco’s transparency Web site, and we have yet to find a better one in the country. COST believes Jeffco is on the cutting edge of transparency. We encourage other school districts to take Jeffco’s lead and provide the same type of detailed financial transparency.
The state of Colorado should take lessons as well. Governor Bill Ritter’s transparency Web site TOP is an embarrassment.
[...] money courtesy of the transparency movement we have championed. Using transparency Web sites from Jeffco and Douglas County Schools as well as information from Denver Public Schools, the Denver Post found [...]
[...] Web sites in the country. Check out Missouri, Texas, and Kansas for better examples. Even Colorado school districts and some municipalities put the state to shame. Until the state proves otherwise, COST thinks [...]