Combs: Transparency In Texas

Comptroller Susan Combs has been a strong advocate for fiscal transparency in Texas. http://EmpowerTexans.com to learn more about the Texas budget and how to get involved. In this interview, she says that Texas has not only saved money, but thanks to new levels of transparency, is spending the taxpayers' money better.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Texas
• Comptroller
• Susan
• Combs
• transparency
• budget
• expenditures
• spending
• state
• agency
• Empower
• Texans
• for
• Fiscal
• Responsibility
• Capitol
• Report
• legislative
• session
• legislature
• house
• senate

[nakessling]

"Transparency" in public school financial accounting isn't possible because school districts maintain many checking and banking accounts which are not part of a district-wide database. School district financial auditors do not examine local internal control structures and the Texas Education Agency's head of audit review LAUGHS at the suggestion that  auditor tests on local internal control structures are necessary to the integrity of the entire statewide database.

[nakessling]

You cannot have "transparency" in government when multiple checking and banking activities occur outside of the bookkeeping systems and there is no requirement that district-wide database include all financial activity.

[nakessling]

Posting check registers online is a RUSE because school districts have multiple checking accounts and these are not "fund specific" which means that they cannot be reconciled against the school's bookkeeping systems. Use of PEIMS coding is mandated by the Texas Administrative Code and there is no oversight of local compliance - which means that there is no integrity in the system and there are no internal controls in place to prevent and/or detect local abuses.

[nakessling]

The Texas Education Code created PEIMS (Public Education Information Management System) coding in 1984 as directed by the Texas Administrative Code. Posting check register pages is a RUSE because not all check registers are part of the school district's database or bookkeeping system - and many campuses maintain their own accounting systems. Kessling v. Hanks asks the Court to mandate use of local PEIMS coded details to prevent and detect local fraud and abuse.

[nakessling]

Posting check register pages is a RUSE. The Public Education Information Management System is MANDATED by the Texas Administrative Code and PEIMS coding should be used at the local level.

This is NOT a concern of the Texas Education Agency because TEA does NOT look at local details. Kessling v. Hanks is a lawsuit asking the Court to MANDATE local detailed PEIMS coding so that information can be extracted from the DISTRICT WIDE data base and used efficiently by everyone.

[coderguy64]

I am glad someone remembers that tax dollars are from the tax payer and should be managed in a responsible way!

[GoTransparent]

Good Job Empower Texans! Susan Combs is great!