What is there to hide about North Dakota education spending? A North Dakota Policy Council policy paper recently suggested that school budgets be posted online. For this fundamental, progressive idea of transparent government, a North Dakota Democratic Party–NPL Blog contributor made an ad hominem attack on the policy paper’s author and used straw men arguments to divert attention from the point: open government.

The Policy Council’s Sunshine on Schools proposal would merely “require all school districts to put all of their budgeting information on a searchable website.” Why? “Because understanding how schools are spending money is essential to understanding how much money they actually need, more people need to gain that understanding.” This radical idea – giving citizens more information about their government – helped get the author called “Right wing blogger extraordinaire”.

Interestingly, a June 27, 2007 Say Anything blog asks, “And why the bitter attitude toward this sort of transparency from the Democrats? With school spending up 23%, or about $672,687,034 in 2006 dollars, while student enrollment is down some 16,000 or so students I think the taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going. And why it’s costing over half a billion additional tax dollars to educate thousands of fewer students.”

The simple question remains: Why do some people want to make it more difficult for citizens to learn how their tax dollars are spent? What is there to hide?