Despite the abject failure of my Cardale to Carolina Campaign, I’m still willing to look to Columbus, Ohio, for helping in improving conditions in North Carolina. That’s why I was happy to read Alex Adrianson‘s description of Ohio’s latest transparency tool. Adrianson provides details in the Heritage Foundation’s “Insider Online” blog.

Last month, the Ohio Treasurer put all of the state’s checks online in a searchable database. The site, Ohio’s Online Checkbook, allows anybody to see what the state is spending its money on and who is getting that money.

First, what’s great about the site: It lets you easily drill down to the transaction level and see who is getting what and for what purpose. You can search by receiving entity, agency, and expense type. You can compare expenditures across agencies and across years. You can find out, for example, how much business “the Shelly Company” or “Beaver Excavating Co.” has received from the state in each of the past eight years. Also, every transaction listed comes with contact information for the person or agency in the government who is supposed to know the purpose of the transaction. This kind of information should prove to be very helpful to citizen watchdogs and journalists trying to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse in Ohio state government.

The data is up-to-date through June 30, 2014. Greg Lawson of the Buckeye Institute tells us that the Ohio Treasurer is developing the capability to provide monthly updates as well as include expenditure data for local governments, too. Reporting on local government would be a “big deal,” he says, because they are “legion and expensive” in Ohio.

Adrianson goes on to detail some of the site’s drawbacks but concludes by labeling the Online Checkbook “a huge service to Ohio’s taxpayers.”