Updated 8:30 pm with new information from the CFO of Lake County Schools.
Tavares, FL - May 24, 2011 - A South Carolina blog just reported that South Carolina last year required that School Districts disclose their budget details and spending details, and now, all but two districts are doing so. One of the two holdouts has a $195-million budget, but refuses to pay the $2000+ setup and $2000+ annual costs to produce the reports unless the State Controller pays the costs.
In comparison, until last year, Florida had not implemented any such budget or spending transparency requirement of School Districts, although a pilot program was being planned. Before March of this year, the last time I asked, the Lake County School District's (LCSD) CFO refused to even provide us
I wrote an earlier article on the lack of local School District transparency and provided examples of other Districts that WERE doing so, even in Florida.
You will also notice in the SC article that some districts also post their entire check register, similar to Texas schools and some other Florida School districts, which we have written about in earlier posts.
Today, after I posted the original version of this document, CFO Carol MacLeod sent me the following email, which indicates a significant improvement in transparency for Lake County School District budget and spending information, and they should be congratulated.
The links to the new, detailed payments and other financial reports are HERE on the LCSD webpage, however my cursory glance indicate they are not as useful formats as ones posted on other agency websites, such as lack of year to date totals in the "monthly bills paid reports", etc. The print formats provided by LCSD are not conducive to external user analysis of payments or patterns of payments.
For instance, the LCSD check payment register is sorted in check NUMBER order, which is NOT useful for analysis. A more useful order would by by vendor name or vendor code, with sub-totals. If you wanted to see total payments through last month for a specific vendor like Century Link which was sent numerous LCSD checks for different account numbers on April 1, plus others later in the month on different dates, you would manually have to read each month's report. You would also have to skim THE ENTIRE REPORT for each month to find all the checks to the vendor, then write down the payment to them for each month, and then manually add them altogether to see total year to date spending with that vendor.
Other agencies provide better formatted cost analysis reports that are sorted by both vendor and other sort codes ( i.e. fund, function, object, center or project codes) to show cumulative totals for the year, and they might compare it to the same period for the prior year and calculate a percent change calculation. Some agencies provide an online "query engine" that allows the user to download the entire database or specify select and sort codes to get computed pdf reports in a format they want, rather than provide canned report views. That way, if you want to see all expense report payments to a specific manager from a specific fund, or charged to a specific expense code, you could do so online or using your own database engine.
I will write a future article to more clearly show examples of other reports that could be used as an example. It seems payment report formats are being chosen by the State not for ease of use for public analysis, but because they are easy to provide, or just that Schools never do the in-depth analysis a business would do.
However, LCSD is now providing links to many more sources of information than before and should be applauded for that.
vj
Email Received today, May 24, From Carol MacLeod, CFO
In March, we presented (see attached memo below) to the Board a redesigned “Financial Transparency” link on our website which presents information in excess of that suggested by FLDOE. Your article instead should state that Lake County Schools is one of the Florida School Districts leading the way in providing clear and easy links to CAFRs, financial statements, investment reports, internal and external audit reports, check registers, budgets, and budget amendments. We have been working with other districts to design a standardized presentation format for use by all Florida School Districts.
Carol MacLeod, CPA
Chief Financial Officer
Lake County Schools
Phone 352-253-6566
Download Financial Transparency 031111
vj
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http://scthenerve.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/only-two-s-c-school-districts-don%E2%80%99t-post-finances/
Only Two S.C. School Districts Don’t Post Finances
Financial transparency continues to spread among South Carolina school districts.
Nearly a year after a budget proviso went into effect requiring that school districts post the spending details of their budgets online, all but two of the state’s 85 districts have done so.
Only Lexington 1 and Richland 2 have failed to post their check registers on the Internet. And Lexington 1 is in the process of purchasing a new software program and plans to upload its check registers once the new system is in place this summer, district offices said.
In the meantime, the district has been posting monthly budget summaries on its website.
Putting registers online is seen as an inexpensive and effective way to improve school district transparency. Check registers enable taxpayers to review monthly school district expenditures in detail, and once a register is online taxpayers no longer have to wait for information or pay for records.
The S.C. Legislature passed the proviso two years ago that required that all school districts to post the spending details of their budgets online by the end of the 2009-10 school year.
Richland 2, however, has been adamant that it will not do so until it receives funding from the state.
“The district has requested but has not received funding from the Comptroller’s Office,” Richland 2 spokeswoman Theresa Riley said.
An official with the S.C. Comptroller General’s office said the agency hasn’t provided funding to any district in the state to assist with transparency efforts.
“It defies logic for one school district to say it would cost them thousands while just about every other school district does it with no additional costs, ” spokesman R.J. Shealy said.
The legislation didn’t require the comptroller’s office to fund the transparency push, and there is no money in the agency’s budget to pay districts to put their check registers online.
Last year, Richland 2 officials said there would be an initial one-time set-up expense of $2,650 related to putting its check register online, and an annual recurring expense of $2,030.29 – money they said would have to come from the comptroller’s office.
As a side note, Richland 2’s board of trustees recently approved a budget for fiscal year 2011-12 that includes an anticipated revenue boost of more than $4 million over 2010-11, to nearly $195 million.
While Richland 2 continues to hold out, other districts have stepped up. Over the past school year, Dillon 2 and Orangeburg 4, for example, have joined the 80-plus school districts already posting financial information online.
In addition, a number of other districts have improved the timeliness of their postings, including Lancaster, Dillon 3, Hampton 2, Chester and Florence 2.
Reach Dietrich at (803) 779-5022, ext. 110, or [email protected].
