Derek Monson

With a recently announced $340 million decrease in the estimated surplus available to fund legislation, some of this year's bills have recently found themselves on the chopping block. One piece of legislation that should not only be spared but receive priority for funding is Senate Bill 38 -- Transparency in Government Finance -- sponsored by Senator Wayne Niederhauser.

S.B. 38 would add a new dimension of accountability for the state, allowing Utahns to see just how their tax dollars are being spent through a user-friendly, state-operated financial Web site. A Transparency Advisory Board will determine what information gets posted on the site, giving consideration to costs, privacy and security concerns.

James Madison once wrote in a letter to an associate, "a popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy." S.B. 38 preserves representative, popular government, thus strengthening our liberty and freedom by providing to citizens and taxpayers information and the means of acquiring it. Support for S.B. 38 should come as a no-brainer, but apparently it's not so.

Some groups still oppose this legislation, arguing that financial transparency already exists. Any regular citizen, however, who has attempted to glean useful information from budget or appropriations summaries, or by requesting public information through the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), will tell you financial transparency does not exist in any practical sense.

For instance, while we can find out through budget summaries that $4 million in taxpayer dollars was spent on "education contracts," that gives us absolutely no idea of where that money actually went. If we used GRAMA to request this information, it may take five to ten days to get a response. In the light of these impracticalities, it seems clear that government expenditures are not very transparent.

S.B. 38 has potential to generate significant savings. Texas has used its financial-transparency Web site to save $2.3 million to date by cutting printing costs and consolidating government contracts. Further, S.B. 38 should virtually eliminate government employee time spent on financial-information requests, except time required to refer citizens to the Web site. Last year, for example, the Utah Tax Commission received 160 requests for financial information, each requiring an average of six days to complete.

Savings from reduced government fraud should also be very significant. Fraud can cost Utahns millions of dollars. How much quicker could such scams be uncovered if transactions could be posted online?

Current transparency policies are outdated and inefficient in today's world of the Internet and electronic documentation, and Utah is by no means pushing the edge by considering this legislation. Since the federal government passed its own transparency Web site legislation in 2006, over half of the 50 state legislatures have either created their own financial-transparency Web sites or have legislation pending to do so. Utah has the choice to either follow the leadership of other states in this area or be left behind in an antiquated paper-based system of information dissemination.

The Utah Legislature should fund S.B. 38 -- Transparency in Government Finance. For, as Thomas Paine wrote, "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must ... undergo the fatigue of supporting it."

Derek Monson is a policy analyst at the Sutherland Institute, a public policy think-tank in Salt Lake City. S.B. 38 has been approved by the Senate. A House committee approved the measure Monday and sent it to the House floor for consideration.