I like this Sarah Palin more and more - this just adds to it!
We had Peyton Wolcott on Meet The New Press a while ago to talk about check registers (e.g., check manifests, check book, vendor check lists - pick a name). Her mission in life, given the advent of and the ease of use of the Internet, is to promote greater openness and transparency of government run school districts by posting their check registers on their websites.
Well, imagine my surprise and my delight to see that Gov. Palin of Alaska has actually done this for the Alaskan Department of Education!
She writes (emphasis mine):
Lately, when changes have occurred in public education, the speed has often been stunning.
We had decades and decades of school finance being a closed book; school costs went up while enrollment numbers and quality of education went down. Superintendents seemed to forget that it was our money and our children that we'd entrusted to them. When some of us started asking for financials, they showed us pie charts and the Taj Mahal high schools and natatoriums they'd built.
Then in February 2007 Texas' now-Commissioner of Education (then deputy) Robert Scott, an early advocate of transparency, posted our state DOE's check register online, first, ahead of any other state. A few months later, state representative Scott Hochberg succeeded in getting his HB 189 passed, which put a muzzle on superintendents' honorariums from vendors. And exactly a year later Alaska's governor put her state DOE's check register online, which is when I learned who Sarah Palin was. You can see Alaska at the far left on my national roster.
Putting words to paper. Putting rhetoric to action.
Now if only more of the local government entities would follow this lead...
Comments
Posted by: doug | September 8, 2008 10:45 PM