When Yadkin County commissioners developed this year's budget proposal, they set aside money to revamp the county's website and post more information about the county online.
The new website is expected to debut early next year, but in the meantime the county has added a "Transparency" button to the current site. Users can go to www.yadkincountync.gov and click to see information such as which county employees earn a salary of more than $50,000 a year or what checks the county wrote last month.
"I think the overall attitude of the public right now with government is accountability," said Yadkin County Commission Chairman Kevin Austin. "As this economy has tightened up, they want to know what's happening with the tax money."
The county budgeted about $20,000 for the new website, which is being developed by a contractor, but did the work for the transparency issue in-house.
Officials decided to adopt guidelines of www.NCTransparency.com, a website of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian policy-research group in Raleigh, started in 2009. County workers developing the transparency documents went down the checklist from the John Locke Foundation, earning an A rating from the group.
That's one of only four A ratings statewide as of Friday: Yadkin, Chatham, Wake and Mecklenburg counties. Forsyth County scores a B on the website, which also includes grades for municipalities and state agencies.
Yadkin County Manager Aaron Church said the county is trying to post all spending online.
"It allows the public to see what you're doing and it gives them some confidence you're spending wisely," he said. "We're printing off our whole checkbook monthly and posting it to the website."
They're working on developing a live streaming checkbook feature that will show when and where money is spent as it happens.
"Our goal is, when I buy pens or pencils, you're going to see it on (the website)," Church said. "You're going to see the type of pen and where I bought it."
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