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New West Virginia Website Aims For Financial Transparency

WHEELING — The public soon will be able to track state spending in West Virginia online as the Mountain State seeks to increase financial transparency.

Also, the same website also should provide legislators with more accurate and up-to-date financial and revenue estimates pertaining to tax collections.

West Virginia is partnering with OpenGov, a software firm specializing in government performance, to craft a website to detail West Virginia’s expenditures. The website will have a search engine for the user to look up specific information, and it is expected to go online this summer.

“There’s some technical stuff that still has to get done,” said West Virginia Auditor J.B. McCuskey. “I think Aug. 1 is a good goal date.”

Taxpayers and constituents will be able to see how state money is being spent, and this will help them to speak intelligently to their representatives about state spending priorities, McCuskey said.

“And the legislators, as they work to build a budget, will have much more accessible information in real time. They will be more accurate with budget estimates,” he said. “This gets as close to checkbook level spending as possible. People will be able to see spending down to the lowest levels.”

The State Auditor’s Office and the office of State Treasurer John Perdue are working with OpenGov to establish the website.

West Virginia’s move toward financial transparency follows that of Ohio, which contracted with OpenGov in December 2014 to put state spending and financial information online.

At the time, Ohio was ranked 46th among the 50 states in terms of its financial transparency by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s “Follow the Money Report.”

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel orchestrated a partnership between the state and OpenGov.org, and two years later the same publication ranks the Buckeye State at the top. Ohio has a grade of “A+” and a score of 100 percent from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Information about Ohio’s state spending can be found at ohiocheckbook.com, and the site’s home page shows data pertaining to spending this year compared to the last 10 years.

Ohio’s spending is listed at about $54.8 billion for 2008, and for 2016 it came in at about $67.4 billion.

Also on the home page is a listing of the companies receiving the biggest payouts from the state of Ohio, and topping the list is the Shelly and Sands asphalt company with offices in Rayland, Akron and Zanesville. The information indicates the firm has received more than $235 million from the state of Ohio this fiscal year.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group presently gives West Virginia a “B” grade for financial transparency, and a score of 83 percent.

Lawmakers in the Mountain State are still trying to craft a budget for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins July 1. The general fund budget for the current year is about $4.2 billion.

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