New Texas Goverment Budget Website | by Ben
I got the end-of-year email from Mark Strama, my local state representative, and I found out that the state of Texas now has a new website where you can learn about how the state's budget is allocated. There's a nice Flash rollover showing a general pie chart of the budget, and you can navigate from here into a more complex web application to find out about all of the little allocations. For example, in 2007, the state paid over $390 to winners of the lottery, or the 2008 FY includes $7724 for the International Accordion Festival (something I fully support!).
I'd be curious to see this expanded to also show a breakdown of the state's revenue sources. I expect most of the revenue to come from sales and business taxes, but there also should be some big chunks from the Federal government. It's a nice start to make our process more transparent.