We often talk about transparency and accountability, but it’s so nice to have a Governor who actually follows through on his promises in that arena (if very very late in his second term in this case). The Montgomery Advertiser editorial board also praises Governor Riley today for his specific action of opening up the state’s checkbook to inspection:

Gov. Bob Riley is keeping a promise to make much of the state’s financial dealings more easily accessible to taxpayers.

The records will include the salaries of employees in state agencies, K-12 school systems and two-year colleges, the Associated Press reported. State colleges and university records will be available soon after Oct. 1, Riley said last week.

He said members of the public will be able to type in a name and view all checks, leases or contracts associated with that name.

I took advantage of what is already available online to see what I could see. First, interesting fact is that starting Thursday you will be able to search for individual employee payments. As of right now, the historical data in the checkbook has most payrolls coded to one payee “Payroll”. So, it will be interesting to see what it looks like later in the week.

Next, I looked at overall state expenditures for this fiscal year…just over $27 billion. This may be a shock to some people who are used to the much smaller figures that are thrown around each year in the state budgets…Education Trust Fund and General Fund. It was a shock to me too a few months ago when I first started looking into expenditures. This is what it really means when people talk about the amount of “earmarking” that goes on in Alabama. There are many funding streams that are never touched by the legislature during their annual re-shuffling of the figures.

So who has spent the most this year? Here’s a rundown of the top agencies as the http://www.open.alabama.gov website was reporting today:

Education – $4,888,913,044.44
Medicaid Agency – $4,869,931,391.38
Retirement Systems – $2,432,843,783.45
Transportation – $1,759,055,158.46
Human Resources – $1,716,260,285.84
Public Education Employees Health Insurance Program – $1,136,762,156.01

That’s well over half of what the state spends tied up in 6 agencies/programs. It’s important to remember that the RSA expenditure here is solely for the benefits going out and the expenditures for administration. It’s also interesting to note that the payrolls for the state education department and state Medicaid Agency are very, very low in comparison to the size of their overall expenditures (whereas agencies like public health, public safety and others are almost exclusively payroll driven agencies, with much smaller overall expenditures).

One of the first things I wanted to do was see where the Medicaid money is going (I imagine large chunks go to the major hospital chains in the state, but was interested to see the figures). Unfortunately, the way the payments are coded, we only see lump-sum payments to the vendor who processes Medicaid’s claims, EDS Inc.

So, the next thing I took a look at was overall payments out of ADECA, just to see who has benefitted the most from the funds flowing through that agency. And when you look solely at federal pass through dollars, you find:

Mobile County Commission: $12,316,717.20
Jefferson County Commission for Econ (JCCEO) – $9,385,313.17
Mobile Community Action – $8,886,529.95

No one else had more than $4.8 million. I’m sure the Mobile County Commission acts as a pass-through fiscal agent for many agencies, but still found that figure interesting. It’s not surprising that the community action agency’s for the two largest counties are numbers 2 and 3 on the list (if I recall correctly those funds go out by a formula to those two agencies)…with many of the CAAs (Community Action Agencies) following behind them. I also found it interesting that the Jefferson County Commission (so much the topic of discussion lately) was well down the list at $2.334 million.

I certainly encourage you to use this important resource and let us know what you find or offer your comments and questions below. I’d love to hear from you!

UPDATE:  Individual employee’s pay information is now posted, if you’re interested.  One that leapt out at me right off the bat:

Greg Pappas, Clerk of the House: $7,764.10 for one pay period (multiply by 24 for annual of $186,338)

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