NPRI’s Transparent Nevada Now Features CCSD Vendor Payments

(Victor Joecks/NPRI) – For the first time, Clark County School District payments to vendors are publicly available and easily searchable on the Web.

The district — to facilitate transparency and public understanding — worked with TransparentNevada, a public service of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, to make its information easily accessible to taxpayers.

Payment warrants on the site cover the period from January 2009 to May 2011, number more than 114,000 and detail more than $2.4 billion in expenses.

On the Web at http://transparentnevada.com/ccsd-warrants/, the data is fully searchable by several categories, including vendor, fund name, general ledger account, functional area (number or name) and CO object (cost center, grant, WBS element or internal order numbers).

“For the first time, Nevada’s citizens, news media and policymakers will be able to easily see exactly how the Clark County School District, one of the largest government agencies in Nevada, spends its multi-billion-dollar budget,” said Steven Miller, NPRI’s vice president for policy.

“I want to applaud the district for agreeing to make this information available in a usable format,” said Miller. “CCSD personnel worked graciously with our staff in service to the larger cause of public access and accountability.”

The warrants show that by far the district’s two largest categories since January 2009 were the Teachers Health Trust, which received $323.6 million, and the district’s PERS contributions, totaling some $304.9 million.

Miller said that the increased public openness that Superintendent Dwight Jones and his staff have brought to the district’s relations with the larger community augurs well for the future of the district and Clark County.

TransparentNevada was first launched in September 2008 and serves as a unique source of government finance information. The site’s motto is “Making the public sector truly public.”

Tens of thousands of citizens, journalists and elected officials each year search public-employee salaries, State of Nevada Contracts and many other finance-related categories.

Miller said that TransparentNevada will continue to add CCSD vendor payments on a periodic basis.

More details and background on the warrants are available at http://transparentnevada.com/ccsd-warrants/intro/.