James Quintero first launched Texas Budget Source back in 2008.
Altogether the database tracks the spending of around 4,000 governmental entities in Texas.
“Texas Budget Source was an effort to kind of catalog every local government’s budget, financial statement and check register in one location so that a person wouldn't have to go searching for this information,” Quintero said.
Based on the group’s work digging into local budget last year the Texas legislature came through SB 943 and SB 944. The bills closed public records loopholes and allowed authorities to more easily capture the communications of state employees on state devices.
Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) authored those bills after Quintero and Empower Texans joined a broader coalition to bring more sunshine into local spending.
Quintero said the larger jurisdictions were easy to work with when compiling data but many of the smaller ones took more effort.
“It seems also to be purposeful that you're not getting information from people,” Bill Peacock, vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said. “And it's hard to get not just because of the system, but because people don't want to give it to you.”
Quintero said having spending information and laws that allow for easy access to that information from local governments is important to voters.
“You know, public information really is about arming people with the knowledge they need to hold their elected officials accountable, right?” he said. “Without that data and information, the public really has no avenue by which to me to say that local officials or state and local officials are doing a good job.”
Empower Texans joined the bi-partisan 18-member Texas Sunshine Coalition last year.
“We set about trying to reformat the Public Information Act in a way that would strengthen the public's ability to access public data and information,” he said.
Quintero said smaller governments have a tendency to delay requestors and hope citizens requesting information go away.
Quintero said it was like pulling teeth to get the smaller governments to respond — saying some didn’t even acknowledge their existence. He said dealing with these smaller governments he learned a lot about the Public Information Act.
Peacock noted that it seemed to be purposeful that the smaller governments were refusing to provide information.
“And I know over the last couple of years you've been involved with a coalition, with newspapers and other organizations that have been trying to change the system because some people just don't want to give up their information,” Peacock said.
Quintero said another problem that needs to be addressed is local governments using non-profits and public-private entities as shields against the Public Information Act.
“But I really do think at some future point we need to address the problem of local governments using either quasi-public-private entities or nonprofits and the like as shields against the PIA, because it really creates some huge problems from the government's standpoint,” Quintero said.
