Use The Internet

For Greater Transparency

To the Editor:

An interesting article in this week’s New York Post described the moves that Governor Eliot Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo are taking to expand the accountability and transparency of the government in New York.

Having attended the recent meeting concerning Fairfield Hills, I was appalled, as most people were, that a $1 million fee was paid to a consultant on a $2.5 million project. One can only imagine what other pork-barrel appropriations may have been made over the years.

The intent of the governor, in order to achieve real transparency, requires exploiting the full potential of the Internet. To open a big, clear picture of the state’s finances. The article goes to say that the federal government and other states are already moving to post their contracts and expenditures on line. These come under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.

The law creates a Google-like search engine and data base, tracking grants, contracts, earmarks, and loans. An interim website is already up and running at federalspending.gov.

The governor of Texas has proposed an even broader transparency rule for his state. He put his own office’s quarterly expenditures online and the state comptroller has posted a detailed list for the eight state agencies.

As the governor stated, “If taxpayers are picking up the bill, they ought to be able to look at the receipt.” Beyond that sensible principle, web-based transparency can have an added value as a deterrent to rip-off artists in and out of government.

Web posting of contracts and expenditures would transform the Newtown taxpayers into an auditors. An effective Accountability and Transparency Act for Newtown would create a searchable Internet data base of all groups getting funds, including the purpose of each grant and the names of those involved.

This should be expanded to the development of a system for quarterly online postings of all expenditures on a department-by-department basis.

Greater openness won’t come free. It will require many dollars for computer programming work, but it would be a fraction of the costs we are currently bearing in the assigning of unidentified million dollar fees.

Richard J. Cole

72 Main Street, Newtown                                             March 15, 2007