Government Spending Records Should Be Free and Open to the Public
Read the full document (PDF)The government's ability to tax the public imposes not only a responsibility of stewardship—to spend that money wisely—but also a responsibility of transparency. Patrick Ishmael and Phil Oehlerking started the Show-Me Checkbook Project to determine how difficult it is to obtain spending records from Missouri government bodies, with an emphasis on local government, and to find out how government spending transparency can be improved.
In this essay, Ishmael and Oehlerking detail the difficulty they encountered in trying to get a full accounting of spending records from Missouri local governments. They then detail possible reforms that would help make local governments more transparent.
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