In the three months since the John Locke Foundation launched NCTransparency.com, a Web site connecting North Carolina citizens with information available online from state agencies, school systems, and municipalities, some governments concerned over their low grades have taken concrete steps to improve them, while others have simply complained.

“Even the media are using the site to retrieve data,” said Joseph Coletti, fiscal and health care policy analyst for JLF. Coletti noted a recent complaint from someone at the Greensboro News and Record that the City of Greensboro’s grade was “misleadingly high” because government officials have too often been unresponsive to the newspaper’s requests for information.

With advanced communication technologies, individuals have grown accustomed to having all types of information available almost instantaneously. The idea for NCTransparency.com grew from the need for North Carolinians to have a single point of access to information on governmental entities, Coletti said.

“The report we did last year on transparency in government, where we examined the availability of information online as well the ease and speed of retrieving information through government and school Web sites, highlighted the need for this Web site as an important first step in improving transparency,” Coletti said.

Now instead of requiring North Carolinians to call or e-mail state agencies, schools, or other government entities to request specific information, they can use the Web site to download documents and link to other available resources on the departments and agencies that interest them.

Defining transparency

When applied to government, JLF defines transparency on the website as meaning “citizens should be able to see how their tax money is used by elected representatives and what bureaucrats are doing with the tax money they take from citizens.”

JLF scholars have created a scoring mechanism that assigns points to entities based on the availability of 24 important baseline documents or reports. While some resources apply only to certain governmental entities, every department is expected to provide their budgets, capital improvement plans, and employee salaries, for example.

Two of the most important grading criteria, Coletti said, are whether a document or report is available online and if it is in a usable format. A local government might receive 1 point for having a particular item available online and an additional point if that document or report is in an easily searchable format.

“If, for example, a budget is available online, the entity receives a full point but would not receive an additional full point if the budget is available only as a picture instead of a searchable word processing or PDF file,” Coletti explained, “because the deeper and easier one can drill down into the data, the better.” And some items are weighted differently according to importance.

The Transparency Web site also recalculates an agency’s score as documents or reports are added.

Making or missing the grade

Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, top-scoring governments include Wake and Mecklenburg, with an A. While no county government is graded F, many are rated D, including Ashe, Avery, Caswell, Lenoir, and Vance.

None of the 118 public school systems listed has a grade of either an A or an F. Wake County Schools is the top-scoring system, the only one to receive a B. Some of the school systems graded D are Gaston, Johnston, and Harnett County Schools.

Among the 22 state government entities listed, none has an A or a B and only the Department of Public Instruction has a C. Most state government entities are graded D. The worst-performing with a grade of F are Judiciary, the Office of State Auditor, the Office of State Controller, and the State Health Plan.

Of the 549 local governments listed, only Columbus (population 992) earned an A but that was not initially the case. When Tim Holloman, the town’s mayor, first learned Columbus had been awarded a D, he and other members of the town council began working with JLF to improve the grade.

Responding to JLF’s recommendations, the town has since revised its Web site (http://www.columbusnc.com), sporting a “Transparency Initiative” section. With just the click of a mouse, citizens and visitors alike can review documents detailing expenditures, revenues, contracts, number of employees and their salaries, transportation improvement plan, employee health care liabilities, audited financial statements, and other items.

In his newsletter to Columbus residents, Holloman wrote: “The John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh think tank and government watchdog, has rightly identified that in the age of the Internet and digital technology, citizens have an increased expectation for transparency in government.”

Wake County improved its grade by adding a Web site to show expenditures by category, and New Hanover County’s school district and municipalities have improved their grades by adding a new salary database, said Coletti.

In contrast, Mayor Keith Weatherly of the Town of Apex expressed concern about making the salaries of town employees available online. In a phone interview with Carolina Journal, Weatherly stressed that he and other town employees are responsive to any request for information, but they prefer that people ask rather than have it online. Apex is rated D.

“I also take issue with the criteria they [JLF] are using to grade us. Take salary. Yes, that’s public information, but I just don’t think it does justice to an employee to have salary information online,” Weatherly said, “nor did they ask for our input. Our town manager confirms that residents rarely ask for the types of information being used to grade governments.”

“We’re not trying to hide things. We do intend to reconsider the issue, but we have other priorities,” Weatherly added.

In the meantime, the Apex Town Council has formed a task force to examine how to redesign the town’s Web site to include transparency as a feature.

Coletti reports that a Wake County commissioner also objected, saying that posting some of the recommended documents online would make it too easy for the public to request more detailed information.

Karen McMahan is a contributor to Carolina Journal.