BuckeyeBlog

Ohio Auditor of State Mary Taylor points out that if state laws for local government fiscal transparency were applied to the state itself, she would have to declare the state ‘unauditable’.

It should come as no surprise that the state has exempted itself from the expectations it has of others, and so Auditor Taylor asks of the Strickland Administration:

“How will the governor know where to go fiscally if he doesn’t know where he’s been?”

We second this. And add that while it’s only a matter of managerial competence for the governor to be in the dark about the state’s fiscal condition and future, it concerns the freedom of Ohioans when the electorate cannot learn the truth of the state’s stewardship of their tax dollars.

After all, the kind of government a free people deserve is constitutional, transparent and accountable. Which is to say, a government that is ‘auditable’!