Devon Sanders /LSU Manship School News Service
While Louisiana has a website ranked among the nation’s best in providing access to spending data, Republican lawmakers said on Tuesday that they would like to improve it as part of negotiations to solve the state’s impending budget shortfall.
The site, the Louisiana Transparency and Accountability portal, nicknamed LaTrac, ranked seventh among the 50 states in providing online access to spending data, according to a report in 2016 by a non-profit group in Washington, D.C.
But House Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, said in a letter to Gov. John Bel Edwards Tuesday that the site needs to be improved “to enable citizens to engage in a much deeper level with both state and local spending.” He said that expanding the site could help the state save money in the long run.
Barras called for adding more details on salaries of state employees, individual expenditures, and contracts and providing information beyond the 20 state agencies now covered. He said the site should include more data on the Legislature and the courts, state boards and local governments.
He also suggested using more charts and graphs to improve the visual quality of the site and tailoring the presentations for mobile phones and tablets.
LATrac earned an “A” rating in the 2016 report, which was prepared by the United States Public Interest Research Group (US PRIG). The report described Louisiana as a “leading state” in offering an easy-to-use website and providing data on an array of expenditures.
The report studied the spending websites for every state to determine how transparent reaching the standards of the rest of the nation in providing attainable information on government spending in a user-friendly way.
The report ranked Ohio’s website, ohiocheckbook.com, as the most transparent and easily usable state website. Republican legislators in Louisiana have cited Ohio’s website in recent days as a possible model for Louisiana, and Barras suggested in his letter to Edwards on Tuesday that LaTrac be turned into the “Louisiana Checkbook.”
The PIRG report cited Ohio’s user-friendly measures, such as a search bar that offers suggestions upon typing, vibrant visuals that make the data easier to understand and a button to share the data on social media.
Michelle Surka, the author of the US PRIG report, said that while LaTrac has scored well, usability remains an issue. “Navigating state spending should be just as easy as navigating any other website,” she said. “When you think about transparency in the 21st century, standards are constantly moving forward. Just putting data up is not enough anymore.”
Jacques Berry, the policy and communication director for the Louisiana Department of Administration, which created and maintains LA TRAC, said before Barras released his proposal on Tuesday that creating a new site like ohiocheckbook.com “is a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Berry said he has looked a lot at Ohio’s website, and that “the biggest difference is that they paid a ton of money” to build it, while Louisiana created LaTrac in-house. He said that data is added every day, though there is no law requiring agencies to provide the data.
He also contended that while he could see some changes to make information more easily searchable, “the way it is now is already very easy and attainable.”