Collin County opens finances up to the public

by Staff of McKinneyNews.net

Collin County has become the first county government in the nation to post its check registers for online viewing and inspection, part of an aggressive fiscal accountability program to open up its ledgers to the public.

Posted by the Collin County Auditor, the Financial Transparency Project includes a listing of checks written by county government for its daily operations since October 2007, the beginning of the current fiscal year. Only checks that involve protected privacy information about employees or private citizens receiving county services will be excluded from the register.

The project also includes postings of:

· County financial trends for the last five fiscal years;

· Year-to-date total revenues, tax revenues, cash and investments for county operations in easy-to-read graphs;

· A newsletter highlighting county government financial operations and projects; and,

· Utility costs and consumption for county facilities, by month.

For more information, contact Collin County Auditor Don Cozad at 972-548-4641.

Pegasus News content partner - McKinneyNews.net

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Scott Doyle, says:

Umm, hate to be the skeptic of their FIRST EVAR ACCOUNTABILIBUDDY PROGRAM, but does private citizens receiving county services will be excluded from the register not sound like a huge loophole to anybody else?

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Mike Orren, says:

First, here's the link to the program:

http://public1.co.collin.tx.us/transp...

To ScoD's question: They're covering themselves by not including anything that might be construed as protected info on private citizens:

http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/...

On closer inspection, like many public info initiatives initiated by government, this really isn't much use. Not only is it in PDFs instead of a database, but without any backup legend to explain what the entries mean, it's a lot of noise and little signal.

And a bump for my rant on the topic of public info release by local governments:

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/...

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Scott Doyle, says:

That's terrific, Miko. Still allows public monies to make their way into "private citizen" accounts via unethical means. Gonna have to bust out my grumpy old man squinty eyes on this one.

What's so private about a check? It's made out to someone - big deal. Your name itself is protected, private info?

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Jeremy Dunck, says:

Yeah, loophole.

It does seem like Grandma getting a pothole fixed on her street shouldn't result in having her info posted online, though.

What's the solution? Best I can think of is a consistent but anonymized ID, and access to real identity upon FOIA request (or maybe a registration process where people registered get access to the un-anonymized data, but also are culpable for misuse).

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Bill Baumbach, says:

The redacted "private citizen" money is mostly forwards of child support payments. Those should be protected.

I'd be more concerned as to why they feel they need to redact employee payroll and expense checks, since that is all public information.

The signal to noise is somewhat mitigated by the form on the site inviting open records requests on any check(s).

I'm not pleased about the list being a non-searchable pdf, but I've been told that will be upgraded. I think they hurried to get something online because it's an election year and both commissioners have opponents.

Bill Baumbach The Collin County Observer www.collincountyobsrver.com