Education Spending Transparency

– Local Districts Putting Check Registers on Line

Transparency in government is a current hot topic here at the Bluegrass Institute and around the country. Not long ago, we were a sponsor for a Mercatus Center presentation on transparency to the Kentucky legislature and others are also very involved with improving the openness of government.

One area that is getting special attention is the better availability of education expenditures. As recently reported, more and more school districts are starting to put their checkbook registers on line to the wide approval of citizens.

According to one national Web site collecting information on open check registers , two Kentucky school districts, Floyd County and Lyon County have placed at least a part of their registers on line.

We also have obtained the Covington Independent School District accounts through open records requests (which isn’t the way real transparency should operate – districts should publish voluntarily), and that is on line here.

Anyway, the Kentucky Department of Education indicates we currently have 174 operating school districts, so we have a lot of openness yet to achieve.

If you know of other Kentucky districts that have opened their books to the public, please let us know.