TEXARKANA, TEXAS–The City of Texarkana, Texas has been awarded a 2014 Platinum Leadership Circle Award by the Texas Comptroller Susan Combs office. This award designates the city’s finance department as going above and beyond to provide financial transparency to the public.
Chief Financial Officer, Charles Bassett commends staff on the award.
“I am pleased that the Comptroller has recognized the City with this award,” Bassett said. “It is recognition that all of our departments should be proud of, because we have all worked hard to make the City’s business operation more transparent as we were charged to do by the city manager in the year of transparency for 2013.”
Texarkana is only one of forty-four cities in the state to be awarded this level of the Leadership Circle program. The award is a result of newly implemented strategies for financial transparency spearheaded by David Orr, Administrative Services Manager.
“I think this state recognition demonstrates that the City values the importance of financial transparency by opening our books in order to provide a clear picture of spending, Orr said. “By sharing information in a user-friendly format taxpayers can more easily understand how their tax dollars are spent.”
As part of the city’s year of community in 2014, the finance department has made many additions and improvements to the finance webpages and changed up the audit presentation as well as the budgeting process. Website features include the city’s annual budget, check register, financial policies, financial reports, links to financial transparency sites, purchasing procedures with bidding opportunities, hotel occupancy tax details, and tax rate and debt obligation information.
The Comptroller of Public Accounts launched the Texas Comptroller Leadership Circle program in December 2009 to recognize local governments across Texas that are striving to meet a high standard for financial transparency online. For more information about the award, visit http://www.texastransparency.org/Local_Government/Leadership_Circle/.
