Taxpayers Deserve a More Transparent View of Tallahassee

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, a bill that created a searchable online database that the public can use to research federal grant and contract expenditures greater than $25,000. Now, with the click of a mouse, citizens are able to track where their federal tax dollars are spent.

Following the passage of this legislation, state governments across the country began creating similar databases for their own expenditures. As a result, taxpayers in nearly a dozen states have the ability to search and sort out millions of dollars in spending. Passage of House Bill 181 would add Florida to that growing list of states and could bring our government into a new age of accountability.

HB 181 would bring transparency to Tallahassee by creating a Web site similar to that of the federal government. The site would contain detailed information on how state contracts are consuming your tax dollars, the purpose of such outlays, and what agency or entity approved those expenditures.