COLUMBUS – Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel announced today a national transparency partnership with Open the Books which will further empower Ohio taxpayers to hold their elected officials accountable.  This exciting collaboration between Open the Books, a project of American Transparency (www.openthebooks.com), and the Treasurer’s office has allowed for even more local government salaries to be posted on the Treasurer’s office transparency website as well as a new transparency "app" for smart phones and tablets.

 

This transparency partnership includes the posting of salary information for 2,000 local governments and schools, representing more than 562,000 public employees.  In total, taxpayers can now view over $66.5 billion in local government salary information from Fiscal Year 2009 to 2015.  The new OhioCheckbook Mobile App, available for free on iTunes and Android stores, allows taxpayers to search spending and salary information from their smart phone.  

 

This fully searchable salary database is also accessible at OhioTreasurer.gov and contains salary information for state workers, teachers and local government and education employees.  Posting local government employee salaries online is a part of the Treasurer’s Transparency Project launched by Treasurer Mandel in 2011.

 

"I believe the people of Ohio have a right to know how their tax money is being spent," said Treasurer Mandel.  "By posting local government spending online, we are empowering taxpayers across Ohio to hold public officials accountable." 

 

"Josh Mandel is a founding father in the modern transparency revolution," stated Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-F-Ski), Founder and CEO of Open the Books.  "Few in national or state office have done more to help ‘We the People’ hold government accountable.  Mandel is a proven leader not just in Ohio but the nation.  His work is a template for elected officials across America."

 

Open The Books is a leading non-partisan, non-profit organization whose mission is to capture and post online all disclosed spending at every level of government across America – federal, state and local.  The transparency organization has compiled the largest private database of government spending in the world; capturing over 3 billion public expenditures in federal, state and municipal government since its inception.

 

For more information or to view your local government salary information, please visit www.OhioTreasurer.gov.