COMMENTARY: Delaware 1st
state to pass law requiring all school districts to post check
registers online
By Peyton Wolcott
www.peytonwolcott.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Delaware takes the lead
in public school financial
transparency; Texas drops
to second place
It's altogether fitting that our
nation's first state would today also be the first state to take
a step towards another sort of freedom -- freedom for taxpayers
from having to shoulder skyrocketing public school
administrative costs -- by requiring all of its public school
districts to post their check registers online.
By stroke of a pen later today
Governor Jack Markell (above left) will sign Delaware's HB 119
which includes the following commendable non-wiggly language: "HB
119: §1509. Transparency of District Finances. Each district and
charter school shall post on its web site by September 1, 2009
and every three months thereafter a check register indicating
the recipient of each check issued by the school district or
charter school, the amount of the check, and identifying
information regarding the check sufficient to permit members of
the public to seek additional information regarding the payment
in question. The only information excepted from inclusion in
this database shall be records that would not constitute public
records…and records for which the disclosure would violate any
federal or state law." (Of course no HIPAA laws should be
violated with any public documents posted, including check
registers.)
How Delaware reached this
point: a road map for the rest of America
In every other state, including
here in Texas, although many legislators have written laws over
the past several years proposing that school districts post
their check registers online, in almost every case the proposed
legislation has fallen by the wayside for one simple reason:
Having become accustomed to little oversight regarding the
details of their spending by either the public or their school
boards, superintendents either directly or through their
lobbyists voiced opposition to being made to do so, often citing
local governance issues. Although they were willing to ask for
and accept state and federal dollars in addition to local
property taxes, they wanted to continue 100% local control of
oversight of their spending.
The Delaware
road map for the rest of America
Both the governor and his
lieutenant governor campaigned on an education platform which
included greater transparency, then delivered on their promise,
starting with a dozen Back to School Briefings suggested by
Markell and hosted by Lt. Gov. Matt Denn (top right) and
Delaware Secretary of Education, Lillian Lowery. In this way,
both public education professionals and citizens were invited to
share their goals for the state's public schools. It helped that
Delaware House Education chair Terry Schooley (lower right, and,
yes, that really is her name) who wrote the bill is former
president of the Delaware School Boards Association. So the
strong leadership on this has come from the top in Delaware.
Although individuals with whom I have spoken this past week
pointed out that Delaware's small size probably helped -- there
are only 19 school districts in the entire state -- as anyone
who has ever participated in a local school board race can
attest, accomplishing something in a small venue can be just as
difficult if not more than in a large one.
Markell, a former Nextel
executive who is also a McKinsey alum, previously served as
Delaware's State Treasurer from 1998 until his election last
year, and it was in this capacity that I first learned of him.
Several years ago while doing some research one of his
lower-rung employees insisted over my protestations words to the
effect, "You don't understand. Our new state treasurer really is
serious about reforming Delaware spending." As his
Communications Director Joe Rogalsky confirmed late yesterday,
"Gov. Markell's administration is committed to open, transparent
government. He believes the public has a right to know how their
tax dollars are being spent. He has already put the executive
branch's checkbook online, and believes taxpayers also deserve
to know how their tax dollars are being spent by school
districts. Governor Markell's reforms are giving school
districts greater flexibility in making spending decisions, but
with that flexibility comes greater accountability to the
public." Those reforms include redefining the state's Unit Count
school funding.
As Denn has said previously, HB
119 is part of his own continuing effort to "put procedures in
place to direct more public dollars into the classroom and less
into administrative overhead." Again, the carrot: While
enforcing tighter internal controls at the same time give
schools more financial flexibility.
Other states
Texas of course took the early
lead in school spending transparency with Governor Rick Perry's
executive order in 2005 requiring all school districts to post
their check registers online if they failed to reach a 65%
spending level; then-commissioner Shirley Neeley diluted the
import of this by inviting fellow school superintendents to
Austin to help rewrite the already-generous NCES formula; last
time I checked fewer than a dozen districts were posting their
check registers online as part of the resulting SchoolsFIRST
plan. That over a third of Texas' 1031school districts are
voluntarily posting is a testament to individual school
superintendents and their boards. It helps that new Commissioner
of Education Robert Scott has also been a long-time proponent of
transparency, starting with his posting the Texas Education
Agency's check register online in February 2007, and by so doing
becoming the first state DOE in the nation to do so. More here
www.tea.state.
While all of TEA's checks are
online, last year then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin put
everything over $1,000 online for all Alaska state government
including their DOE.
Alabama has taken a different
tack towards transparency; Governor Bob Riley signed an
executive order this past February requiring all state
government checks to go online, and the Alabama State Board of
Education followed suit this summer by voting to require all
Alabama school districts to post their checks online if they
wanted state funding. In one fell swoop, both carrot and stick.
I like what he told the Public Affairs Research Council of
Alabama: “Taxpayers will know where their money goes and to whom
it goes. You shouldn’t have to be an investigative reporter to
find out how the state spends tax dollars. This reform empowers
taxpayers to become fiscal watchdogs." Individual efforts in
Illinois (Adam Andrzejewski) and Michigan (Mackinaw Center) have
resulted in several districts voluntarily posting online in
those states. .
School financial
transparency: conservative or liberal issue?
The great thing about
transparency is that embracement of it can cut across all party
lines. I note with rue as a conservative that by getting a law
passed requiring all school districts to put their check
registers online, three Democrats in Delaware -- the governor,
lieutenant governor and house education committee chair -- have
accomplished what has eluded their Republican counterparts here
in Texas. Terry Schooley’s Texas equivalent, Rob Eissler,
pointed out by phone yesterday from San Angelo where he was
speaking at an education conference that HB 3, passed earlier
this year, “has a significant part in terms of transparency
where our state comptroller is charged with looking at and
ranking districts in terms of efficiencies. So I think we‘ll get
similar results, maybe even better.” Not quite so, as many
transparency seekers would point out. Aggregated numbers --
whether they’re efficiency percentages or pie charts -- do not
constitute transparency but rather the ability to manipulate
statistics according to arcane formulas few understand. And such
aggregates certainly don’t show how much a superintendent is
spending on his monthly credit card for travel and meals,
another mentioned reason for some administrators‘ opposition to
putting checks online for all to view. Instead of serving us pie
charts, let us see those tax dollars spent on servings of pie at
fine dining establishments.
National roster
Once again I'm in the process of
updating the national rosters I maintain (see the links on my
website
www.peytonwolcott.
Bottom line
As one state employee told me,
"We're streamlining things because we have no money." There is
no surer or faster way to streamline than to publish all
expenditures, see which stand up to scrutiny by folks out of a
job and struggling to make their mortgage payments. Given that
all other states are in the same boat -- except for Texas and
Alaska, thanks to governors Rick Perry and Sarah Palin -- the
three folks in this picture at top have a lot to smile about, as
do their schoolchildren and voters. That federal stimulus money
isn't going to last very long, and with half of all U.S.
mortgages scheduled to go underwater next year, governmental
entities spending beyond their means must learn to self-regulate
their spending in order for our great nation to survive the
tough times ahead. Thank you, Delaware, for leading the way for
the rest of us -- again.