Oklahoma is doing a better job of providing public disclosure of economic development subsidies being paid out to companies but still has considerable room for improvement, according to a new report from Good Jobs First.

The report, titled Show Us the Subsidies: An Evaluation of State Government Online Disclosure of Economic Development Subsidies, evaluates the performance of all 50 states in making available online information on companies receiving state and local tax breaks, cash payments, and other subsidies.  In the press release accompanying the report, Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy points out that the state fiscal crisis has provided an impetus for increased disclosure of subsidy programs in many states:

With states being forced to make painful budget decisions, taxpayers expect economic development spending to be fair and transparent… Claims that sunshine would hurt a state’s business climate have been discredited, trumped by people’s rising expectations about government information being online.

In addition to giving states overall grades, the study rates the reporting practices of 245 key economic development subsidy programs from around the country based on the online disclosure of information such as company‐specific dollar amounts, job‐creation and wage‐rate numbers, and the geographic location of subsidized facilities. Programs are also evaluated in terms of how easy it is to find and use the online data.  Across the nation, nineteen subsidy programs received total scores above 75 out of 100. Nine of the top 13 rated programs are in Illinois, North Carolina and Connecticut. Read the rest of this entry »

If, as Judge Louis Brandeis famously stated, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”, the Oklahoma Legislature seems to be on a bit of a cleaning frenzy. Several bills making their way through the legislative process this session HB 3422, SB 1633 and HB 3253 – would expand the amount of information on public expenditures that is made available online to the public.

The measures all build on the 2007 Taxpayer Transparency Act, authored by Sen. Randy Brogdon, which led to the state’s OpenBooks website. The site makes available data on expenditures by each state agency by year and purpose, including detailed payroll and vendor information. OpenBooks also provides information on individuals and businesses who claimed tax credits against the income tax (see our post on this subject). Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of news about stimulus reporting the last few weeks. A lot of it has focused on jobs created or saved; that’s understandable since that was a major point of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is the stimulus’ grown-up name. The federal stimulus web site, Recovery.gov,  has posted the first compilation of stimulus grants, loans, and contracts, which covers the first six months under the act. The reports exclude funds allocated directly to individuals through such mechanisms as increased food stamp benefits, extended Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid payments, and tax cuts.

The STAR Coalition of organizations promoting accountability in the recovery praised this effort:

Our groups can now follow the money in ways they never could before and will use it to engage their policy-makers and build a recovery that benefit communities. We will also use the data to actively engage the public to better understand how the Recovery Act is impacting our communities, and how taxpayers can advocate to improve the Recovery Act and other government investments in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

In October, federal agencies, grantees, and contractors who are getting some of the stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA) money are required to submit six month reports. This post points you to places you can see reports or summaries of them and includes some analysis and further thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

As the debate about the speed and impact of stimulus spending rages on, Good Jobs First is taking on the less glamorous but equally important task of assessing accountability in state spending of funds from the stimulus bill (more formally, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA). They’ve launched the STAR (States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery) Coalition, a national web site that assesses state efforts to inform citizens about ARRA spending.

Accountability is essential for any government program. Taxpayers cannot determine whether their resources are being used appropriately unless they can tell what is being spent, where it is spent, who is benefiting from the spending, and what is being accomplished. Congress and President Obama built unprecedented accountability tools into ARRA. If carried out faithfully, these tools will help us determine not just if the stimulus money is spent fast, but if it is spent right.

This week, STAR released a report that gave states two grades – one for a state’s main ARRA website and one for its reporting on transportation spending. Results are mixed.

Some state ARRA sites support the President’s promise that the $787 billion stimulus plan will be carried out with “an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.” Other state sites are half-hearted efforts that provide residents little useful data on the largest federal stimulus since the New Deal.

Oklahoma comes out below average in STAR’s ratings. Oklahoma’s main site does a good job of centralizing program information and showing how funds are allocated in the state, but falls short in showing where money is being spent, which projects are being funded, and who is getting contracts. To this, we’d add that the site has an excellent compendium of news releases on the stimulus, but the site is  not always kept up to date.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) site fares better in STAR’s rating, but still lags behind other states. It provides detail on individual projects and contracts, but offers no summary information on how much is being spent in a county, with a single contractor, or even how much is for new roads vs. resurfacing.

Also this week, OK Policy released its  second Stimulus Update, which evaluates over $700 million in ARRA infrastructure funding in Oklahoma. Nearly $400 million in Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT)  projects, mainly resurfacing of state highways, are under contract and spending has topped $40 million. Federal, state, local, and tribal governments will be replacing buses, rehabilitating airport runways and dams and flood control structures, and expanding water and waste water systems. Infrastructure programs, which make up eight percent of all ARRA spending, can help Oklahoma’s economic recovery and pave the way for economic growth and lower costs in the future. With improvements in our accountability efforts, we’ll be able to tell when and where projects are being funded, who is building them, and what they are accomplishing.

Our stimulus page includes the previous Stimulus Update, as well as our earlier stimulus issue brief and fact sheet and links to valuable ARRA resources.

It’s taken me awhile, but I finally made it to the White House blog, which has been up and running since President Obama’s inauguration. For those interested in paying attention to what is going on in the White House, the blog, which is updated several times daily and includes a wide range of contributors, is an invaluable source of materials and information. In addition to entries tied to press releases coming from the President or members of his Administration, the blog includes transcripts and videos of press conferences, public speeches, town hall meetings, and the President’s weekly radio address, along with lots and lots of pictures. When the President makes a major announcement, as with last week’s commitment to cut $17 billion in federal spending as part of the FY’10 budget, the blog provides a space for the Administration to lay out its case and guide the public to more detailed information.

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If you are thinking about doing most anything in Oklahoma that could possibly be seen as encouraging economic development, chances are you’re eligible for a tax credit. The state offers tax credits for everything from  investing in small business venture capital companies and film production companies to purchasing poultry litter. Until very recently, however, public information about who is claiming these credits and in what amounts was all but non-existent. (The Oklahoma Tax Commission publishes a bi-annual tax expenditure report, but that provides only aggregate amounts and provides no data for many credits.)

The state of disclosure of tax credits has now taken a giant leap forward. In 2007, the Legislature passed SB 1, the Taxpayer Transparency Act, authored by Sen. Randy Brogdon and Rep. Paul Wesselhoft. The bill required the Office of State Finance to set up a website to allow the public access to comprehensive information on state government. The website was to include detailed information on all recipients of  government funds not only through direct budgetary expenditures, but also incentive payments and tax credits. Expenditure information has been available since early 2008 on the Openbooks.gov website.  Last month, tax credit information was added.

Anyone can now go to the site and either call up information by credit or search by taxpayer’s name for 35 income tax credits for the 2007 tax year, along with an unspecified “other credit” category. The database contains over 5,500 entries on both individual and corporate filers who claimed a credit in 2007. The amounts claimed range from a high of $2.4 million for the rural small business capital credit claimed by Donald and Joyce Harvey to $1 claimed for assorted credits by some dozen taxpayers. The largest corporate recipient of a tax credit is listed as Terra International, Inc., which claimed a credit of $2.1 million under the Investment/New Jobs incentive program.

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As we’ve said, we are very pleased by Governor Henry’s swift action in launching a state website to provide information on the federal stimulus bill (formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA), as it applies to Oklahoma. If you surf through the site, you’ll find various pieces of information about the multiple funding streams available to the state and Oklahoma’s expected share of these funds. What you won’t find, however, is a single document pulling together information on all the programs, grants, and funding streams that may come Oklahoma’s way as a result of ARRA. Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon at 3:00 marked the first meeting of Governor Henry’s coordinating council to oversee the use of the federal stimulus money available to Oklahoma through ARRA. All of the members of the council were in attendance for this inaugural meeting. Susan Savage will serve as the lead contact for the council. Scott Meachem will work on all aspects of the stimulus package as they relate to the state budget and will work on a daily basis to coordinate with the legislature. Steve Burrage will be the “monitoring guru”.

Governor Henry stated that the goal of the council is to make sure Oklahoma doesn’t fall into any traps and that we get the full benefit of the stimulus funds. He stressed that, although openness and accountability is a key goal of this process, it goes beyond that. The other stated goal is to identify all opportunities where Oklahoma can benefit from the stimulus package.
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We are very pleased to learn that Governor Henry has announced the creation of a coordinating council to help oversee use of federal stimulus funds. OK Policy was out front in calling for such an entity to allow for input and transparency in the distribution of funds from the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Governor previously designated the State Auditor to lead the effort to ensure oversight of stimulus funds and launched a state website at http://www.ok.gov/recovery/ to provide publicly-accessible information on the various funding streams contained in the stimulus package. Given the unprecedented magnitude and critical importance of the stimulus bill, the coordinating council is another important component of the effort to develop public confidence that funds are being spent efficiently and honestly.

The coordinating council is set to hold its first meeting on Friday, March 13th at 3:00 p.m. in the Governor’s large conference room at the Capitol.

UPDATE: Here’s the Governor’s Executive Order creating the Coordinating Council