The Mankato Free Press

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

Without much fanfare, Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration unveiled a new website last week that tracks state spending and offers detailed explanations of the budget with the goal to help government be more transparent and accountable.

So far, the site holds promise to do just that.

It occupies space on the Minnesota Management and Budget website at http://mn.gov/mmb/transparency-mn/ and offers a broad range of information on government that most importantly is communicated without the budget jargon that often comes with these sites. It also provides details on budget policy and some historical context.

You can get there easily by doing a Google search on the terms “transparency Minnesota.”

There are several sections of “frequently asked questions” and the state Budget Director Mary Kelly has a particularly good page for such questions. They include questions such as: How large is the state budget? What’s the state’s primary source of revenue and is it growing? How has the share of the budget for major areas changed over the last decades?

The explanations can be revealing. For example, K-12 education and health care have continued to grow in terms of the percentage of the total state budget they take up. In 1990, for example health and human service spending made up about 20 percent of the state budget. Today, that spending is over 30 percent of the state budget.

The “Ask the Budget Director” feature also answers the question on the level of state reserves or its “rainy day” fund. Here we find out Minnesota has a reserve of about $811 million and a “cash flow account” of $350 million. We find out that our current reserve is about 3.7 percent of current annual spending, far below the recommended 5 percent by the National Governor’s Association and 8 percent recommended by Standard & Poor’s.

A brief review of the new website suggests it will have myriad uses for policymakers, elected leaders and regular taxpayers who want to keep tabs on how their money is being spent.

The Transparency MN website is the best we’ve seen for government information in some time. It will be a valuable tool for all Minnesotans.