Turbeville posts financial information online

By JASON WERMERS
Item Staff Writer
jwermers@theitem.com

TURBEVILLE — If you want to know how much money the town government took in and spent in April, and who it wrote checks to, all you have to do is go online.

Turbeville became one of the first local governments in South Carolina to put its financial statements, its check register and its budget drafts on its Web site on May 15.

Visitors to townofturbeville.com are greeted by messages from Mayor Ginie Turbeville and state Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom explaining the site’s newest feature.

Eckstrom called the town leaders “pioneers” for “helping usher in a new era of government transparency.”

“By voluntarily putting their financial information online, Turbeville leaders are demonstrating that they understand it’s not their money their spending; it’s the people’s money,” Eckstrom wrote. “And people deserve easy access to details about how it is spent. Transparency is the backbone of good government. When spending is done in full public view, public officials are usually more accountable. And spending transparency empowers taxpayers.”

Turbeville said she got the idea during the Municipal Association of South Carolina’s annual Sunshine Week meeting, when local governments are encouraged to be more open about their practices.

“I think people, especially in a small town, see things going on they have questions about,” she said. “And they question not only me, but other council members. I think they just like to know what’s going on. We encourage the questions because lots of times, things aren’t as they appear to be.”

So far, only five local governments in South Carolina are publishing financial information online. The others are the cities of Aiken and Cayce, the town of Irmo and Anderson County.

In the tri-county region, only the city of Sumter has plans to put its financial information online, sometime in fiscal year 2009-10. Officials in Sumter County and the city of Manning could not be reached for comment Monday, and the town of Summerton does not have an official government Web site.

“Our plans are to put our comprehensive annual financial report, along with our fiscal year budget, online and add our financial statements as they become available,” said Linda Patterson, the city of Sumter’s finance director. “We don’t have an exact timetable on it yet.”

Clarendon County Administrator Bill Houser and Lee County Administrator Bobby Boland both said tough economic times make upgrading to software that would allow financial information to be posted online cost-prohibitive.

“We’re so poor, we’d have to lay off 1,000 people to start a Web site like that,” Boland said.

Lee County doesn’t even have an official government Web site. The site leecountysc.com is run by the Lee County Economic Development Alliance and primarily provides information on business and economic development.

Clarendon County does have its own Web site, clarendoncounty.sc.gov, but it’s in a similar financial position to Lee. Houser added that although Clarendon has made its annual audit report available in the Harvin Clarendon County Library for the past 20 years, even some of the library staffers were not aware of that.

“Right now, our software doesn’t allow for that,” he said of posting financial information online. “We’re transparent. We’re glad to give (the information) to you. We have nothing to hide here. ... But to spend taxpayer money to get that (online) capability, I don’t think is feasible right now.”



Contact Staff Writer Jason Wermers at jwermers@theitem.com or (803) 774-1295.