logo
logo
Sign in

Do special districts fail to show how they spend their money?

avatar
dta
Do special districts fail to show how they spend their money?

Special districts are known for a lot of things but lack of transparency is not among them. A new report found that special districts across the country fail to provide online, accessible and comprehensive information on how they spend their money. Special purpose districts are usually created to provide specific services such as medical care, fire protection, housing, and transportation for a designated area that would otherwise be provided directly by a county, city or state.


In Colorado, there were over 2300 special purpose districts in 2012. This is according to the US census bureau. Not every special purpose district in Colorado reports spending information to this bureau but of the ones that reported, they spent about $4.8 billion in Colorado.


Denver regional transportation district was one of the seventy-nine special purpose districts that were analyzed in the report titled following the money 2017. This report was released by the Colorado public interest research group foundation and the report showed that the Denver regional transportation district was the most transparent district better than other districts analyzed.


In the report, the district earned points for having financial and budget information on their website but lost some points for not having enough checkbook-level information on spending on their website or for having this information easily downloadable and for a great period of time. The special purpose district earned a D and this means that it was better than most of the special purpose districts analyzed but fell short of the leaders.


There are a lot of reasons why are special districts created. Some of the reasons include special purpose districts for hospitals, fire departments, transit providers, toll roads, housing authorities, and wastewater management entities.


They exist outside the traditional state, county and city governments and are intended to provide various public services in an efficient manner than they would be offered otherwise. It is difficult to measure whether they are providing effective and efficient services and to build engagement and public confidence without a high level of transparency about how money is spent where the money comes from taxpayers.

The report indicated that technology allows for a high level of transparency of the spending by the government. Therefore, to get a good grade or ranking, special purpose districts should be comprehensive, one-click searchable, downloadable and comprehensive. This means that the public should have access to a web portal that is user-friendly. The web portal should have financials, budgets, and checkbook level information that you can search based on common amounts, categories, and checkbook level information that you can search based on amounts, common categories, and spending recipients over the last year as well as a way of accessing downloadable data.


The report also found that only 7 special districts that were reviewed had an online detailed spending checkbook. The checkbooks allow citizens to see how their money is spent. Only thirty special purpose districts had their most recent budget online. The report also offered recommendations to ensure special purpose districts are not left behind as city and state governments move towards better transparency.

collect
0
avatar
dta
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more