My last post on municipal transparency noted that most, if not all, Massachusetts cities and towns post financial information such as annual budgets on their websites. Budgets help residents understand how their municipality plans to spend their tax money, but circumstances may change during the fiscal year and budget modifications often occur. Most of us don’t learn of these changes until the next year’s financial statement is posted, showing the actual amounts spent over the previous year.
For residents, tracking municipal expenditures online can increase their engagement with local government. It can also help them better understand the scale and scope of the work involved in running a municipality.
For city and town officials, providing this extra layer of transparency builds trust and enhances communication between themselves and the communities they serve.
OpenCheck, one of several financial transparency platforms, can help.
What is OpenCheck?
OpenCheck LLC is a local company that offers a software platform tailored to municipalities. The interface is easy to navigate and gives users ready access to how and where tax dollars are being spent. Helping local governments with fiscal transparency is its primary mission.
While researching this subject, I ran across some Western Massachusetts municipalities featuring the OpenCheck system: Northampton, Chicopee, and East Longmeadow. I decided to give the fiscal transparency section of Northampton’s website a spin.
Clicking on the “Open Checkbook” link brought me to a user-friendly page with dropdown boxes that allowed filtering the results by Category, Department, and Date. A handy pie chart to the right of these options displayed the chosen department’s spending with each vendor. Mousing over each section identifies the dollar amount spent and its corresponding percentage of the total budget.
Northampton’s OpenCheck webpage is up-to-date, with the latest entries dated March 1, 2024, when I visited on March 11, 2024. The detail of this publicly available information is amazing. Not only are departments and vendors identified and transactions given a brief description, but the check amounts and numbers are listed for each entry. Users can also export the data if they choose.
Compared with simply reviewing the annual expenditure totals listed in year-end reports, the OpenCheckbook allows residents as well as town officials to drill down into municipal spending and track how and where their tax dollars are being spent.
A Brief Chat with Mike Olkin of OpenCheck LLC
Wanting to learn more, a friend and I spoke with Mike Olkin, founding partner of OpenCheck LLC. Mike gave us an overview of the platform and answered our questions. Here are the highlights of our conversation.
Q.: Does OpenCheck showcase only municipal expenditures or does it include revenues, too?
A.: The platform shows only expenditures (accounts payable). For municipalities wanting accounts receivable and/or open budgeting capabilities, other providers such as OpenGov and ClearGov can be used.
Q.: How many cities and towns are currently using your product?
A.: We serve the municipalities of Arlington, Chicopee, East Longmeadow, Gardner, Leominster, Northampton, Oxford, and Wakefield.
Q.: What are the benefits of using OpenCheck for municipalities? What reasons do they give for their interest in purchasing your product?
A.: They see transparency and trust building with the public as primary motivators. The platform also increases accountability among those making and carrying out procurement decisions. Saving staff time is another benefit. With a user-friendly interface, staff outside the finance department who may need this information can access it easily and quickly. Public records requests regarding finances decrease as citizens find their questions answered with a few mouse clicks.
Q.: What are the steps to set up an account with OpenCheck?
A.: The platform is customized to each municipality. The categories and departments, for example, are chosen by the customer. During account setup, we work with the municipality to create a weekly report that is automatically uploaded to the server and stored in the cloud. This keeps the data fresh.
Q.: Are there specific types of municipal finance software needed to use your platform?
A.: We have worked with both VADAR and Munis, but we can adapt to any system.
Q.: Can you give an estimate of what such a platform would cost for the town of Shutesbury?
A.: Pricing is correlated with population size. A rough estimate of pricing for Shutesbury would be around $6,000 for the initial setup and an annual maintenance fee of about $1,200.
For municipalities that want to offer financial transparency and foster trust and confidence between local government and the public, OpenCheck’s platform offers a user-friendly and affordable solution.
Checkbook image courtesy of ClipArt Library
