Government Transparency Reporting, the 1-2-3 way it must be!
by Walter Burien - CAFR1
11/12/17

Every State should compile an excellent report such as what the State Government of Texas puts out called the Texas State Cash Report

CAFR1 wrote an article back when the State of California Government a decade ago was crying financial troubles and in the article noted the TX State Cash Report - http://cafr1.com/ASmeetSC.html

There are archive links at the bottom of that article to view several of the Texas State Cash Reports and suggestions on how to view side by side the differences between then and now. An example of how to compare a 2002 and 2017 side by side is given.

For easy reference here is the 2005 report - http://cafr1.com/STATES/TEXAS/CashReports/Archive/TX_cash_report_2005.pdf

I suggest that you download several of the reports to your research directory for viewing over trying to read them online. The pages display slowly online and very quickly after being downloaded and saved. Also after downloading you will be able to use the search feature to find any key word or phrase quickly and you can save it to DVD for sharing..

The differences between the TX State Cash Report and CAFR can be viewed on page 19 of the 2005 report as when viewing the document or page 37 as shown by the .pdf reader.

The report gives a detailed listing of every fund held by the TX State Treasury by assgned number (excludes funds held "outside" of the State Treasury).

The detailed listing of each fund by assigned number can be referenced through the index at the beginning of the report and found by that assigned number within the report.

I also note that the report only covers "State" fund accounts held. Within the State of Texas, non-state government operations, the thousands of all City, County, School District, other local government operations,  are separate entities and not part of the TX State Report. If other local governments "within" the State of Texas were totaled, that total would be substantially greater (by a factor of at least 30X) over total funds held by the TX "State Government" agencies.

I am bringing this forward at this time being that every State and "local governments in each State" should be REQUIRED to produce a detailed Cash report such as what the State of TX shown herein publishes.

When CAFR1 made the TX State Cash Report visible to the public a decade ago, the "open disclosure" displayed was counter productive to those within government who's primary interest was wealth building outside of the public view of those funds under their control. Pressure nationally was exerted on the State of TX government to convolute visability of their Cash Report to show significantly less detail. The listing of the detailed data from each fund that the cash report is compiled from was pulled from being linked on the internet. Archive.org though did a capture snapshot of the "detailed data" used to compile the CASH Report and that can be viewed here: https://web.archive.org/web/20051029005544/http://www.window.state.tx.us/fm/pubs/cashrpt/01/ The detailed data listing shows over 7600 fund accounts. When on that page click on the group of numbers link displayed to see each individual fund account in that grouping.

The bottom line of ethical transparency, as was the case from Texas State Government, a forerunner of transparency well over a decade ago even though outside pressure was exerted on them. This outlined TX State Cash Report should be the Standard for every State and ALL local governments within, NJ, NY, CA, MS, MA, FL, etc. today.

Have your legislators make it happen! There is no ethical or valid excuse for them not doing so, and again you can give them the exact guidelines for doing their local government Cash Report by providing the 2005 or 2017 Texas State Cash Report to them. Make sure not to let them throw in one exclusion after another into their Cash report. Also a Cash report shows gross balances of all funds and NOT accounting tricks played to reflect just substantially diminished NET balances as is now done with CAFRs.

Use the 2005 TX State Cash Report that you download as the example for specific and required guidelines that all local governments must comply with in a Cash Report they publish and make available for public viewing.

** Getting this done to allow for clear transparency as a requirement will determine if ownership of government is: The People's, Our Government or the Inside wealth building Players, their Government.

Please share this communication with your email list and publish where available for you to do so.

Sent FYI and Truly Yours from,

Walter Burien - CAFR1
P. O. Box 2112
Saint Johns, AZ 85936

Tel. (928) 458-5854

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