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Open Spending Plan

Los Angeles city, CA > Voting, Elections & Civic Engagement

#fiscaltransparency

Adam Richeimer

Proposed Nov. 9, 2017

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This would be like Mint for government. It would be a public website that is easy to navigate. You would see how every dollar the City of LA spends gets spent at the greatest level of detail possible. You'd start out with broad categories like Payroll, Pensions, Office Expenses, Legal Settlements, etc. Then, you'd be able to drill down in each category. For example, you could drill down into Office Expenses and see how much is spent by each department, then how much is spent by the LAPD, and then see how much the LAPD spent buying staplers last month. You could also search for individual expenses and share your search results with others. On each expense, people could submit suggestions on how the city could eliminate the expense or save on the expense (e.g. a cheaper place to buy staplers). Those suggestions would be funneled to the appropriate people and acted upon. This would be like a crowd sourced controller.

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Amend & Discuss

Liz Amsden (12/08/2017)
The real issue is how to stop line item budgeting. And drilling down just gets you to those figures. How does a City establish goals across departments and budget to those needs? This would mean drastic cutbacks in some areas and significant expansion in others, splitting some services between a number of departments while combining a variety of issues under one roof. What is better for a bureaucracy? What is better for we-the-people?

Lee B (12/05/2017)
Amend it to include how much each neighborhood council district brings in and where it's spent.

Noah Mercer (11/14/2017)
If you haven't already, you should take a look at https://controllerdata.lacity.org/ . It sounds like you're looking for something very similar. (And if it's not similar, it might be helpful to describe how what you want is different.)