Last night the House passed an amendment that is a huge victory on the issue of tax credit transparency. This has been in the works for a little over a year (see earlier posts by myself and Sen. Eldridge on the subject) and included passage of a comprehensive website for full financial transparency in state government.
This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but sadly the Republicans voted as a block against this transparency measure. A vote against this provision is essentially endorsing the view that businesses have the right to taxpayer money without any oversight. That is completely contrary to principles of open government and fiscal accountability!
I am proud that Speaker DeLeo embraced not only the tax credit transparency proposal, but also the budget website legislation. And the Governor deserves credit for initiating the dialogue on tax credit transparency, which he filed in his budget last year and again this year.
Passing this amendment will mean everyone will be able to go to a single website and view ‘checkbook-level detail’ of every dollar spent in every state agency, including the quasi-public agencies, and after a year-long fight, that will also include transparency of the tax credits. If you’d like to see an example of what this could look like, take a look at the Missouri Accountability Portal.
This isn’t transparency just for the sake of transparency, it will also mean savings and jobs. Right now we are mostly-blindly throwing money into tax credits without being able to measure their success. By shedding light on how well this money is being spent and where it’s going we’ll be able to make the credits work better, and ensure we get the most number of jobs created for the least cost to the taxpayers in the form of subsidies.
In short, this is public money, and the public should have a right to know where it’s going!
Now on to the Senate, where I know Sen. Jamie Eldridge and others are working on securing support there.
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Sat 4 Feb 5:44 AM