Most people think they have a good sense of what their local governments are doing. It’s the town, the county they live in, often for years, sometimes for their entire lives.
They use the services — well, at least some of the services, anyway — that the local governments provide. They certainly pay the taxes. But do they really understand what their local governments are up to?
The media in general, and newspapers in particular, consider themselves to be the guardians of the public interest in government. And to the media, this oversight is built upon access to documents and meetings, transparency by being in the room when decisions are being discussed and made.
Call it the newspaper version of open government. And it’s certainly critical for citizens to understand what their local governments are doing and, just as importantly, why they are doing it.
But there’s also another type of local government transparency. Call it the accountant’s version of open government. It’s about understanding the finances of local government. Show me the money, or at least where the money was spent and where it comes from.
This is the sort of thing the news media typically has difficulty dealing with. Many journalists don’t handle numbers well. And even when they do, editors tend to think that readers can’t process all those numbers and all that data.
The news media’s lack of interest, though, doesn’t mean that citizens have to be uninformed about local government finance. The information is out there, and it’s more accessible than you might think.
One source of that information is the John Locke Foundation’s annual “By The Numbers” report, which calculates the cost of local government for each of the state’s 100 counties and more than 540 municipalities.
The report also offers a wide range of other useful financial and demographic information about the state and local governments. Compiling BTN is possible because North Carolina does a very good job of giving the public access to information on the finances of local government.
Counties and municipalities, regardless of size, are required to file audited financial statements with the Department of the Treasurer. The fiscal year for local governments (and the state) in North Carolina runs from July 1 to June 30.
Audited financial statements are due to the treasurer’s office by Oct. 31 following the end of the fiscal year. The treasurer makes these audited results available several different ways. One is via a separate Web page for each locality that contains six years of data. The pages are typically updated about mid-March to include data from the fiscal year that ended the previous June. The information also can be downloaded.
A few months later, the treasurer makes available summary spreadsheets with data for all counties and for all municipalities for the fiscal year in question. Or at least all those local governments that turn in their audited financial statements in a timely manner.
Sadly, this is a problem in some places. Take Princeville, a town of 2,200 in Edgecombe County, which last submitted a report back in 2003. Similarly, Greenevers in Duplin County has submitted a report for only one of the past six years.
With those notable exceptions, you really can know much more about what your local government is doing. Spend some time looking over BTN and what’s on the treasurer’s Web site, and you’ll have an easier time keeping track of the politicians who make decisions about how to spend your money.
Michael Lowrey is an associate editor of Carolina Journal and author of the John Locke Foundation’s annual “By The Numbers” report. The latest version is available at http://www.johnlocke.org/policy_reports/display_story.html?id=194.