Your City's Finances Are Public--Make Them Actually Public

Every dollar our city government spends comes from We the People. Our property taxes, our sales taxes, our labor.

And yet for most people, finding out exactly where that money goes — how we understand and actualize priorities – which departments are growing, which officials are paid what, structurally where does spending go – how a city compares to the one next door — requires navigating bureaucratic portals designed, intentionally or not, to discourage curiosity.

That's a problem of power. When civic information is technically available but practically inaccessible, it doesn't serve the public — it serves those already inside the system.

Transparent Cities is built on a simple premise: sunlight is a democratic right, not a privilege for policy wonks. 

Data Intensive… Transparent Cities takes official California state records and turns them into something any resident can actually use — charts, comparisons, department breakdowns, decade-long trends — with no spreadsheet required.  It is a way of wading through hundreds of pages of arcane budgetary diagrams and rationalizations.

This is what accountability looks like in practice. Not press releases. Not annual reports written by the people they're supposed to evaluate. Raw numbers, in plain view, year after year.

Social Liberty depends on informed people, to the actual Consent of the Governed. 

We cannot meaningfully consent to how we're governed if the basic facts of governance are hidden behind friction.

We cannot push back against decisions we can't see being made.

We cannot organize our neighbors around problems we can't name or quantify.

This is the information we need to show up to a city council meeting and be heard — not dismissed. To organize with our neighbors around something concrete. To ask the questions local officials and government agencies can't wave away.

We're starting with all 15 cities in Santa Clara County. The data is from the California State Controller's office and other data sources — official, public, and updated annually. We just made it impossible to ignore.

Look up your city.

Share what you find.

Ask your council members why these are the priorities.