For use Sunday, March 15

Start state’s stimulus watch

Gov. Crist is such an advocate of open government that one of his first acts was to create the Commission on Open Government Reform to help his office and state agencies “serve Florida with integrity and transparency.”

The commission has its own Web site (www.flgov.com/og_home). But the governor’s office has failed to create another Web site that, at this moment, is crucial to open government in Florida.

As The Post reported last week, Florida has not set up a Web site to let the public check up on how the state is spending our share of the federal stimulus package. The Web site is required if Florida is to claim the roughly $13.4 billion allotted to the state over three years.

Today is Sunshine Sunday, when news organizations do an annual checkup on government openness. It’s ironic that Gov. Crist’s office was saying so little about why the site wasn’t operational and when it would be. Calls and e-mails produced no information. A little sunshine, please, for a Web site so in keeping with Florida’s commitment to open records.

But there’s a bigger issue than the timing of the stimulus Web site. When it is running, it has to be complete, up-to-date and easy to navigate. Congress and President Obama were right to require states to keep track of stimulus spending online and to set up a federal stimulus-tracking Web site as well (www.recovery.gov). As that federal site explains, “This is your money. You have a right to know where it’s going and how it’s being spent.”

Of course, it’s a bit much to expect any individual to keep track of $787 billion in spending, or even Florida’s smaller portion. That’s all the more reason for the information to be available to the general public.

There is a chance that if the sites honestly report, for example, that fewer jobs than expected are being created, the public will lose confidence in the stimulus. That’s a risk of open government.

But it’s better to take that risk than for government to attempt to turn the stimulus Web sites into spin machines. If the public got a whiff of that happening, all faith in the stimulus would be shot. But unless Floridians can see how the state is spending the stimulus, there won’t be any faith to begin with.

Reproduced courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
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