Transparency Site Lets Idahoans Track State Spending

The Bivings Group this week launched OurIdaho.com , a site by the Idaho Freedom Foundation aimed at increasing government transparency in Idaho by displaying the state’s expenditures.

The site is broken into state expenditure records and employee salary records. State expenditures are documented for the 2008 and 2009 fiscal years, with backlogs to come.

The salary data includes state annual, weekly and hourly salaries from various cities, counties and school districts across the state. Data is added as it is gathered.

Ouridaho.com has gotten press coverage in Idaho based on one city’s refusal to include employee’s first names in salary records. Officials from the city of Coeur d’Alene claimed including first names reveals employee gender, a detail not required by the Freedom of Information act.

“Idaho code indicates very clearly that gender doesn’t have to be disclosed,” city attorney Mike Gridley told the Coeur d’Alene Press, according to 2News.tv. “We’ve honored that statute.” The city eventually agreed to release the first initials of employees, but the matter has not yet been settled.

Although this is the first government transparency site developed by The Bivings Group, other states have taken the lead.

Other private companies run the research and development behind the Kentucky and Nevada sites, while the state governments themselves in Kansas, Missouri and Texas run their own sites.