What are your thoughts on the county's Open Budget transparency tool?
The County of Humboldt continuously looks for ways to promote transparency and help residents better understand their government. One important aspect of that is understanding the county's budget. To help this effort, the county launched an application, “Open Budget,” a tool that is designed to let you easily explore the county’s budget with the hope that you will gain a clearer picture of how the county is spending money, and where those funds come from.
The county is looking for your feedback about how useful this tool is, and what kind of information you would like to see here.
You can access Open Budget at http://openbudget.humboldtgov.org or check it out below.
Open Budget is a powerful program that presents financial information through an interactive, on-line platform. It displays revenue sources and expenditures for the yearly operating budget down to line item details. In addition, the county is committed to ensuring that you know how funds are spent from Measure Z, the half-cent sales tax passed by voters in 2014, and we have dedicated a portion of this application to that effort.
Take a look at this short video to see how it works:
Open Budget gives users the ability to easily convert data from graphs to tables and to download raw data for further analysis. You can choose the level of details you’re looking for, from finding out how much an individual department or division spends on an item, to the entire county. The application also allows you see how that spending has changed over time.
This new tool is only one of many ways citizens can interact with Humboldt County and the budget process. You can also attend or watch the yearly Humboldt County Roadshows, which take place in February/March. You can also submit comments at the county’s Open Humboldt discussion forum.
Share your thoughts on the new tool. Let us know what you like, dislike and how we can make it better!
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