Open the Books -- Pass HB 1233

It's the last week of the Legislature. There's lots to do, and in the mix may be a push to save HB 1233, a bill sponsored by Rep. Hal Wick (R-12/Sioux Falls) and others to create a searchable online database where you and I can look up any and all state financial information, including budget expenditures, state employee pay, tax revenue, federal grants, and bonded indebtedness (see the full list in Section 2 of the bill). The House gave this bill a thumbs up (good call, Russ!), but five Senators -- Knudson, Hanson, McCracken, Heidepriem, and Dempster -- voted to kill it in committee on Wednesday.

KELO reports that the bill's supporters are going to try to revive the bill in the Senate this week. PP shares my hope that they will succeed. For us bloggers in particular, an online state ledger what would be a spectacular resource for research and links to keep folks informed on how Pierre is spending our money. PP notes that the senators who deferred the bill to the 36th day cited concerns about declining revenues, but on the very same day, those same senators voted to pump $768,004 into subsidizing the State Fair (see HB 1179).

I'm spitballing here, but I'm thinking even if we couldn't produce this financial database -- a South Dakota version of the 2006 "Google for Government" act successfully pushed by Senators Obama and Coburn -- with existing staff and equipment by shifting record-keeping to an online database, we could probably take $100K out of that State Fair subsidy, spend it on an ambitious programmer and a couple new servers and have us a workable site by the July 1, 2009, implementation date.

Let's get that information online. It's our money: we have every right to know where it's going. And the Internet is the fastest, easiest, and I would argue cheapest way for the government to let us know how it's spending our money. HB 1233 -- one of the best ideas this session! Bring on the smoke-out!