Report: True transparency makes budget trimming easier

Fiscal Policy — By Online Editor on August 2, 2010 at 8:47 AM

(Kansas Policy Institute) Identifying potential savings is critically dependent upon full transparency. Taxpayers and government officials need easy access to information that is uniformly tracked and reported. Local governments may understandably prefer to decide these matters for themselves but their desire for local control must be balanced against taxpayers’ rights. Also, local governments accept aid from the state and federal governments, which is money collected from taxpayers and redistributed; those taxpayers are the true source of aid to local governments and they have a right to know how their money is spent. (Read more…)


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