Olathe News: “JCCC to establish public database that tracks spending”

Johnson County Community College is taking transparency to a new level.

The college will make available next year a searchable database that will allow users to see how it spends its money.

Former Kansas Rep. Ben Hodge, a member of the college’s board of trustees, who pushed for the database, said the it will be similar to KanView, which can be accessed at www.kansas.gov/kanview, and allows residents to see the state’s expenditures.

Theoretically, the Kansas Open Records Act would allow someone to access the college’s spending information, but there were two hindrances to it, Hodge said.

“The law doesn’t require that it makes sense,” he said. “When it makes sense, it takes time, money and resources to access the expenditures list. … This will cut through all the red tape and allow people to have at it.”

The Kansas City Star: “College to make spending data open on Web”

Terry A. Calaway, college president, said it is a way to make college spending more transparent for taxpayers.

One state legislators who pushed for the creation of this service was former Kansas Rep. Ben Hodge of Overland Park.

Hodge, a member of the Johnson County Community College Board of Trustees, left the Legislature in May, but he pushed the concept at the college.

The state took two years to develop its site, Calaway said, and the college has been working on its project only a few months. He said officials want to be careful about the content it puts online so no one’s privacy is invaded.

For example, he said, many students pay college tuition and fees with credit cards. It wouldn’t be appropriate, he said, for those credit card numbers to show up on a Web site. The site eventually will show sources of revenue as well as spending.

“The next best thing to a smaller budget is more sunshine so that taxpayers can begin to see where their money is going,” Hodge said.

Hodge believes the community college is the first local government in Kansas to provide this service. The college will spend about $143 million in its current fiscal year. General budget information is already online at the college Web site, www.jccc.edu, but is not searchable.

Gardner News: “JCCC’s finances to appear online”

When Johnson County Community College writes a check for products or services, Ben Hodge wants local taxpayers to have the ability to find out to whom and where that money is going. Early next year,taxpayers will get that chance when the college creates an online searchable, itemized database for expenditures.

As a former Kansas state legislator and member of the Johnson County Community Board of Trustees, Hodges has pushed to make government more financially accountable at the state and local levels.

“You usually have to drag governments into doing this,” Hodges explained.

However, when Hodges presented the idea to the board of trustees, the college’s president, Terry A. Calaway, “picked up the ball and ran with it,” Hodges said.

The initiative will cost taxpayers an estimated $25,000, but Hodges said that’s a small slice of JCCC’s $143 million annual budget.

“I’m of the opinion that before any new tax should be raised or created anywhere that we should justify current expenses,” Hodges said. “… I believe this is a service to the taxpayers. With technology the way it is today, this is very doable. It’s a doable project.”

KansasLiberty.com: “JCCC offers ‘transparency 101”

Johnson County Community College is creating a new tool that will allow Kansans to look at how their tax dollars are being spent.

The portal will be a website, set to be available to the public by early next year. The site will allow taxpayers access to a searchable, extensive funding database that looks into JCCC finances.

The tool will be a vast improvement of the funding information that is currently available for JCCC, said JCCC trustee and former state representative Ben Hodge.

Hodge, a fiscal conservative, said he had been working to get the database available to the public for the last five months.

Johnson County Sun: “College will put expenditures on Web site”

Most of the information should be searchable online by mid to late January, JCCC President Terry Calaway said. The goal is to be as transparent as possible about how tax dollars are spent, he said.

“We’re headed down the path of doing the best we can,” Calaway said. “We hope someone will be able to see just about anything they are looking for. We hope to get there and we think we can.”

Right now some information about the budget is already online, but that information cannot be searched. What will not be available is much of the school’s revenue information. Most of that information would include details about student tuition and fees, Calaway said.

“We wanted to protect their privacy rights,” Calaway said.

The site is being developed with help from the information technology and public relations department at the college. KanView is being used as a model. KanView allows searches of state expenditures and revenue.

JCCC Trustee Ben Hodge suggested the college develop such a Web site.