Julie O’Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
Louisiana intends to make the salaries of state government employees available through a new, searchable database that will go public some time in the next two weeks.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ budget chief, Jay Dardenne, on Friday said the state is still working out one or two kinks in the database, but it should become available before the end of month.
It will be hosted on the Louisiana Checkbook website, which already includes a database of state contractors and information about those who receive state tax breaks. At first, the salary database will only include information from agencies the governor oversees. The salaries of legislative staff and courts employees are expected to be added at a later date.
The government transparency website called Louisiana Checkbook is required by a law approved in 2018. At the time, Republican legislative leadership was pushing for more accessible information about state spending, though the portal has taken years to build out.
State agencies, universities and courts use different technology and accounting systems to track their spending, making it difficult to consolidate all the information on one website, according to the state technology staff.