Ohio Makes Big Move to Boost Municipal Spending Transparency
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The Buckeye State already gets high marks on making information available. Those efforts will now expand to the local level.
The Office of the Ohio Treasurer has announced that it is willing to pay for all 3,962 local governments and districts in the state to make those jurisdictions’ checkbook-level spending data publicly available online.
Full state sponsorship is unprecedented for OpenGov, the Redwood City, California-based company. The Treasurer's Office launched the state-level OhioCheckbook.gov database on Dec. 2, allowing users to search, filter and drill through $408 billion in spending over seven years. That’s 112 million transactions.
Ohio vaulted from 46th to first in the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s annual budget transparency rankings released in March, the only state to receive a perfect score—and it’s looking to keep things that way.
“We’re ready to take this step-by-step over years or for a deluge of local governments or anything in between,” OpenGov co-founder Zac Bookman said in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s not like this is legislation or a mandate. It’s an invitation.”
State Treasurer Josh Mandel reached out to 18,062 local and school officials on Tuesday to begin the onboarding process for any takers.
A contract hasn’t been negotiated yet and will likely consist of an upfront fee to get things off the ground with additional billing depending on how many local governments come onto the platform, but Bookman said he hopes to start by July 1.
“I believe that this new transparency effort will breed innovation and build trust with the community,” Dan Unger, Northwest Local School District board president, said in the state treasurer’s announcement. “By making our expenditures easily accessible to the public, a thousand sets of eyes can help to encourage good spending decisions.”
OpenGov users in Sausalito, California, can see how much their police department spent on individual office supplies and those in Oak Harbor, Washington, can examine the costs of fire department uniforms and where they were bought.
Mandel wants every local government and district in Ohio with a checkbook site at the very least.
“Ohioans have a right to see how their tax money is being spent at every level of government,” he said in a statement. “My vision is to create an army of citizen watchdogs who are empowered to hold public officials accountable.”
Already Ohio cities like Cleveland Heights, Monroe and Huber Heights use the complete OpenGov platform, and Bookman said others may be offered a discount on that functionality.
Boasting 275 government customers across 37 states, Bookman said OpenGov is looking forward to a “great deal of work” in the Buckeye State.
“This is really a historic, bold move by the state, and I suspect where Ohio goes, so goes the nation,” Bookman said, echoing a common saying about the role Ohio plays in presidential elections. “They’re doing something that should serve as a model as many other states consider how to engage everyone from voters, citizens and administrators themselves with top tools. And from our perspective, this is customer and public validation.”
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