With the first budget of his administration, Mayor Peter Carlisle is offering the public -- number crunchers, spreadsheet devotees and open-government advocates alike -- a chance to examine the figures and come up with ideas he might have overlooked.
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The entire operating budget for the city and county will be available to the public, as will the budget for the soon-to-be-formed Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit. Financial disclosure forms for Carlisle and his Cabinet already are posted.
"We'll provide an opportunity for the citizen to review this data and provide comment back to us that we will forward on to the appropriate parties to then look at ways that we may be able to save money, reduce costs and come up with any other ideas that we possibly missed," [city Information Technology Director Gordon] Bruce said. "I'm sure we'll come up with some great ideas."
Hopefully this increased transparency will help Honolulu improve its operations, budget allocation, and spending. It will be interesting to see what kind of responses the city will get - as well as what kind of action (if any) they take after hearing suggestions from the public.
