As part of his continued efforts to make public finance information more readily available, California State Controller John Chiang on Thursday added more than one million fields of fiscal year 2013-14 financial information from California cities and counties to his open data Web site, www.ByTheNumbers.sco.ca.gov .
“Maybe the most troubling takeaway from this last election, which set records for voter apathy, is that Californians feel disconnected from their governments. To reverse course, California must not only restore public confidence that their governments are responsive and accountable, but provide the necessary information and tools to empower citizen participation in local decision-making,” said Chiang.
“Opening up the ledgers for public scrutiny is why we continue to upgrade our Web site,” Chiang said. “By allowing Californians to track, analyze, and make their own discoveries about how taxpayer money is being spent, we want Californians to feel that they have an important role to play in making government work.”
The Web site allows individuals to track revenues, expenditures, liabilities, assets, fund balances and even basic statistics about each city and county.
Users also can look up data, download raw numbers, create charts and graphs and share the results of their research.
The numbers from Thursday's update show that statewide property tax revenues totaled $12 billion in fiscal year 2013-14, an increase of $569 million over what counties collected in the prior year.
The county of Los Angeles reported the largest increase in property tax by dollar value (climbing $265 million to reach $4.2 billion) while Yolo County property tax saw the largest rate of growth (climbing 22 percent to reach $49 million).
In addition to city and county figures, the site also includes 11 years of data – or more than one million fields – provided by California’s 130 state and local government pension plans, including assets, funded and unfunded liabilities employer/employee contribution levels, investment income, retiree benefit payments and much more.
In recent months Chiang has added University of California and superior court employee wages to the Web site as well.
The controller invites users to visit www.PublicPay.ca.gov to view public employee compensation, as well as www.trackprop30.ca.gov , which helps taxpayers track every dollar raised by Proposition 30 for public schools.
State controller adds latest city, county figures to open data site
- Lake County News reports
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