ABQ posts more information online

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Albuquerque's city government is opening its books to the public online, continuing a trend in New Mexico toward improved transparency.

The city's new website, ABQView, details spending with pie charts and other breakdowns showing where tax dollars go and how departments spend budgets.

It includes 10-year spending trends, audits, the city's checkbook with payments to vendors, ongoing construction projects, employee salaries, travel expenses, political contributions, payments to lobbyists and even the mayor's credit card bills.

With the national economy continuing to struggle, there's a growing demand to see more government information online because the Internet is such a powerful tool, said Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

"There's kind of a reform-in-government movement because we're facing budget crises all over the nation so people are beginning to ask where their money is going," Welsh said.

Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry already has drawn questions about his credit card since online statements for January through July show only one charge — for the Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C.

Berry said he usually pays for his own lunch, and his staff found less than $200 in lunch reimbursements since he's been in office. He said he's spent about $4,000 of his own money on various items but he'll probably seek reimbursement for future expenses.

Everything posted on ABQ View already is public information, Berry stressed. The site simply makes it easier to find, and he hopes that will encourage people to bring ideas and concerns to City Hall.

"We're not looking at this as a gotcha situation. ... This is about all of us working together to make a better government. And I think it is a team sport," he said.

Berry said some material, such as audit information, was consolidated. The website also includes a way to send suggestions.

"It doesn't offend me as mayor if someone wants to bring something to our attention that we could do better," Berry said.

Meanwhile, New Mexico's state government also is developing a sunshine portal, set to launch next July under legislation passed earlier this year.

The sponsor of the measure, Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, said a state portal is much more complex than a city one, but today's technology makes it possible to create and maintain a user-friendly, searchable database.

"For us not to embrace that technology and begin to open these processes up, we would really be laying down on the job," he said.

The Albuquerque City Council adopted transparency legislation last October, before Berry took office Dec. 1.

Albuquerque officials showed Welsh a rough version of the website months ago. She said it had department-level information but not much below that. She suggested more detail and a way for people to download raw data since advocacy groups do their own analyses.

She hadn't seen the finished product before Berry announced it and was "pleasantly surprised how far they had gone."

Kristin McMurray, senior editor of the Alexandria, Va.-based Sunshine Review, saw the Albuquerque site before launch. The nonprofit group offers a checklist of what governments should post, and Sunshine Review gives the site an A-plus.

Albuquerque "took our essential points on our checklist but they also took all our suggestions," McMurray said.