PolicyGuy

Tuesday, December 19, 2006


States Should Develop Web Site for Financial Disclosure.
Who would have thunk it? A solid reform proposal to come out of this Congress.

Looking to the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Brandon Dutcher (vice president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs) call for a state-level database.

Writing in the October 18 edition of The Oklahoman, the two argue that "Taxpayers deserve to know the name of every recipient of state dollars, as well as the amount received in each of the past 10 years, and an itemized breakdown of each transaction, including the state agency dispensing the money and a description of the purpose of the funding."

Sounds like an idea that should be replicated across the states.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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