Treasurer Josh Mandel Announces Launch of the Perkins Township Checkbook on OhioCheckbook.com
6/16/2016 Press Release — Ohio Treasurer’s Office
SANDUSKY – Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel announced today the launch of the Perkins Township online checkbook on OhioCheckbook.com.
In December 2014, Treasurer Mandel launched OhioCheckbook.com, which sets a new national standard for government transparency and for the first time in Ohio history puts all state spending information on the internet. The Ohio Treasurer’s office was joined at today’s announcement by Perkins Township Trustees Tim Coleman, Jeffrey Ferrell and James Lang, Fiscal Officer Diane Schaefer and Township Administrator Gary Boyle.
Perkins Township is the first township in Erie County to post their spending on OhioCheckbook.com. Perkins Township’s online checkbook includes over 38,000 individual transactions that represent more than $23 million of total spending over the past four years.
“Perkins Township is proud to be the first township in Erie County to join OhioCheckbook.com,” said the Township Trustees in a joint statement. “Our township officials are committed to transparency, and this website is a great tool for citizens to see how their tax dollars are used to make the community great.”
On April 7, 2015 Treasurer Mandel sent a letter to 18,062 local government and school officials representing 3,962 local governments throughout the state calling on them to place their checkbook level data on OhioCheckbook.com and extending an invitation to partner with his office at no cost to local governments. These local governments include cities, counties, townships, schools, library districts and other special districts.
In 2015, 2016, and 2018, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) released their annual “Following the Money 2015” report and Treasurer Mandel earned Ohio the number one transparency ranking in the country for providing online access to government spending data. Ohio was prominently featured in the report after climbing from 46th to 1st in spending transparency as a result of Treasurer Mandel’s release of OhioCheckbook.com.
In November 2015, after receiving the invitation to participate, the Perkins Township Board of Trustees passed Resolution 2015-235 to join the OhioCheckbook.com program.
Finally in May 2016 the Township’s website went live making Perkins the first township and the third entity overall in Erie County to participate.
OhioCheckbook.com has been such a success that now our accounting program (UAN) which is provided through the Auditor of State’s Office has an option to post our expenditures directly to OhoCheckbook.com annually. However, since we like our information to be current we update the data monthly.
In May 2017 the OhioCheckbook.com site was linked directly to our www.perkinstownship.com site.
