According to Government Bytes, the official National Taxpayers Union blog, South Dakota governor Mike Rounds recently placed the state’s budget and expenditures online on a new Open South Dakota website. According to the site, citizens can
review state government spending, current salaries of individual state employees, financial documents, vendor information, and listings of job classifications. You can also follow easy links to local government information websites.
Sounds great… but here’s an interesting little background nugget from NTU…
Back in January, State Representative Hal Wick, who received the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Legislator of the Year Award in 2006, had introduced transparency legislation. The legislation gained approval from the house and senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Mike Rounds in March (even then, the house still overrode the veto, although the senate did not). Why would Governor Rounds veto this bill, and then decide to launch a transparency website just six months later?
Face it- transparency is a great issue for the predictable crowd of taxpayers, ethics gurus, citizen journalists, government wonks, and anyone wanting to do business with the state… but it’s also a political goldmine. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do, easy to accomplish, somewhat insulates candidates on ethics issues (whether they need it or not), and it pays political dividends for years to come.
