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New website reveals state spending

By Tim MacVean

Senior Staff Writer

ELKINS — Randolph County Commissioners heard from the West Virginia State Auditor’s Office Wednesday regarding the implementation of a new website aimed at making government more transparent.

J.B. McCuskey, West Virginia state auditor, made the presentation during the commission’s bi-monthly meeting and talked about the website — www.transparencywv.org — which shows expenditures by state employees as well as information about revenue generated in the state.

“What we’re trying to build is a statewide accounting system that we buy and build for you, that you then have access to. … What we would like to do is build something that works for that you have access to through our office,” McCuskey said.

“The great benefit to us is as a cloud-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) accounting system that will give us access to all your accounting information all the time, which means we will be able to do our audits for you from any computer that is internet enabled in the whole country and you guys will have then have the most up-to-date and the best accounting system you can possibly imagine,” he continued. “Then, we can start providing data to the legislature about what all our counties are doing. It really works for everybody involved because this is a collaborative effort and what we find is we ask you all to do all this stuff that we don’t support you in doing.”

He noted the website allows the public to make their own decision on how they feel about how money is being brought in and spent.

“Have any of you ever sat through the governor’s revenue call? They do a monthly revenue call. You are lucky (if not) because it’s really boring. What they do is they go through and explain if we are up or down. If we are down they essentially try to say why it’s somebody else’s fault and if they are up, they try to explain why they did it,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s what politics is, right? But, what this website gives you is the ability to make that decision on your own. It removes the filter so you get to see how our revenues are coming in. If you are a small business owner, you get to decide whether you need to lay people off, buy more inventory or whatever it is. All of this information is relevant to you.”

He added the site will give the public access to money the state spends within roughly 12 hours of the expenditure.

McCuskey explained individuals can search businesses and see if transactions have been made by state employees using their State Procurement Card (P-card). Two search examples performed by McCuskey showed a $195 clothing expenditure at Macy’s made by a West Virginia Supreme Court employee in fiscal year 2016 as well as thousands of dollars — many deemed acceptable under state P-card guidelines — at Pizza Hut this fiscal year.

“Have you all ever been to the mall in Charleston? Name a place you wouldn’t want a state employee buying a Christmas present with their P-card at the mall, we will just check and see if anyone from the state has bought anything from there,” McCuskey said.

“Macy’s,” Randolph County Commission President Mike Taylor responded.

“OK, let’s try Macy’s. The way this works is this top bar is just a Google-like search and you can pick any vendor you want. (In 2016), we’ve spent $195 at Macy’s. I don’t know how that’s possible, but we did. It appears the Supreme Court, of course, is buying clothes as Macy’s. I don’t know why they are doing that. It appears they realized they shouldn’t have been spending money at Macy’s and got refunded.”

McCuskey said only two counties — Monongalia and Berkeley — have their own websites in the system but 13 others are scheduled to be done by the end of the year and 30 more next year. He said this service could benefit county governments in finding the best products and services for the lowest price.

“The hope is we can get 55 of these websites up, and you can go see what Harrison, Lewis, Kanawha, Putnam or wherever are paying for toner or brakes because it doesn’t matter. The lines that separate all of these places are basically irrelevant and all that really matters is getting a good product at the best price,” he said. “If you know that one county is contracting with them you can pretty much assume it’s a good product and if they are getting a better price than you, you can call them and hopefully get that price, too.”

The cost of the computer software will be $3,000 for the first year and $1,500 each subsequent year, McCuskey said. With the addition of the website, McCuskey said West Virginia was voted as the No. 1 most transparent state government this year.

“Something that we’re really proud of is we actually got ranked as the No. 1 most transparent state government this year and this is the No. 1 transparency platform in America,” he said. “We are actually No. 1 in something that’s good, which doesn’t happen all the time but this is really a testament to the folks in our office who put this together. I think it’s an awesome technology and I’m really excited about how many county governments are getting on board.”

He noted the state has collected $368 million in severance tax already in the 2018 fiscal year.

“We haven’t even finished half the year and that is $20 million less than all of last year,” he said. “It’s more than all of 2016-2017 and we are only halfway through the year.”

Randolph County Commissioner Mark Scott said he believes programs like this are important in sharing data with the community.

“Over the years, there has been a lot of government agencies who have taken criticism because either they didn’t have that information available or they would not share the data that they had,” he said. “As a result, they took a lot of heat because they weren’t willing or able to share what they needed. Having the ability to do that is really important and can save a lot of headaches.”

No action was taken during Wednesday’s meeting regarding the potential of the Randolph County Commission purchasing the computer software of becoming involved with the website.

In other business:

• Commissioners unanimously approved the re-appointment of Frank Koenig, Gary Clay, Bonnie Serrett and Mark Doak to three-year terms — running form July 1 through June 30, 2021 — on the Randolph County Development Authority board of directors.

• Commissioners unanimously approved the re-appointment of Genevieve Brosky to a five-year term — running from July 1 through June 30, 2023 — on the Pioneer Memorial Library board of directors.

• Commissioners unanimously approved the 2019 holiday schedule for county employees and officials.

The final Randolph County Commission meeting of 2018 is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 in the Randolph County Commission room of the James F. Cain Annex.

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