Financial Transparency Requirements
School districts are expected to comply with the financial transparency requirements of Section 1.43 of Part I.B of the Appropriations Act of 2009 (Act No. 23 of 2009). This legislation directs school districts to post monthly searchable expenditure data on their websites for public viewing and downloading.
It also directs the Office of the Comptroller General to distribute to the districts a methodology for compliance.
Process
Each school district should develop a process to extract all expenditures from its general ledger accounting system above $100. The data could be exported (extracted) from the school district accounting system using existing software so that an Adobe Acrobat “PDF” file can be created for the report.
Concerning credit card transactions, Act No. 23 requires districts to scan and post each monthly statement on all credit cards maintained by the district, including those issued to employees and officers, with the account numbers redacted.
Posting Periods
The school districts should post this expenditure information (including credit card transactions) on a monthly basis. The month-end report should be posted to the website as soon as possible after each monthly closing.
Website
Once the monthly report is prepared, each school district should post the Adobe Acrobat “PDF” file on the school district website to make it available for public viewing and downloading. Each month a new file should be made available and the previous files retained as separate files so that a minimum of three years of files will be accumulated on the website.
Any files older than three years will be kept on file and may be made available to the public at any time via a Freedom of Information Act request.