The Bluegrass Institute has made no secret of its desire to see more government operations made available to the public via the internet. This has primarily involved advocating timely publication of government expenditures to a searchable database for everyone to see.
While we wait for that, another opportunity may be at hand.
House Bill 187 would allow county governments to spend less money buying newspaper advertising to announce proposed ordinances. Why not, however, save even more money by removing the newspaper publishing mandate completely and require instead posting to the internet?
The bill is expected to pass the House easily on Friday.
Friday, February 13, 2009
An easy opportunity to see transparency work
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The problem with posting everything on the Internet is that not everyone has access to the Internet. That's just as bad as restricting such announcements to newspapers.
Saving money is not necessarily the best option. Money must circulate. It doesn't matter the source of the money. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 30,
"Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions."
Hamilton understood the importance of the circulation of money and how often it circulates. In Federalist Paper 12, he wrote:
"The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates."
Post a Comment