KUHF has the story. The 30 largest cities were graded and only Chicago and New York received A's.
For years, TexPIRG has graded entire states on how clearly they lay out their spending habits. This is first time the group has examined cities for how easy it is for the public to find out where their money goes.
Houston earned a grade of C-plus, putting it roughly in the middle of the pack of 30 major cities. TexPIRG's Ryan Pierannunzi says Houston deserves credit for making it easy to download spending information on what he calls the "checkbook level."
"By having checkbook-level spending data, you're able to see exactly the vendor, the recipient of a certain amount of money. And, usually, that's also incorporated by information on what was purchased, or what the city got for that transaction."
Pierannunzi says the websites of many cities do not divulge as much spending detail as Houston does. But he says with a grade of C+, there's always room for improvement.
We'll file this away for now and get back into it when we discuss budgetting at the local level. Try to contain your excitement.
