State auditor’s office presents West Virginia Checkbook; council signals support for local adoption
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Summary
A representative of the West Virginia State Auditor's Office demonstrated the West Virginia Checkbook transparency platform and Vienna council members expressed interest in adopting it, with a plan to follow up during the next meeting and align implementation with the city's budget year.
Jacob Lindroth of the West Virginia State Auditor's Office demonstrated West Virginia Checkbook at the Vienna City Council meeting on April 10, 2025, and described it as a free, state-backed platform that publishes municipal and county financial data.
Lindroth said the site is voluntary for local governments and currently hosts data for 30 counties and 24 municipalities. "If counties and municipalities... were able to put their data out publicly for people to view that this would not only increase public trust, but also increase overall transparency statewide," he told the council.
Council members asked about setup time, staff burden and interactivity. Lindroth said integration typically takes about two weeks and OpenGov, the platform partner, handles remote data integration; municipalities can choose daily, weekly or monthly uploads. "OpenGov has the technology to pull the data from whatever software you guys have and get it up on-site remotely," he said.
Council members who spoke described the tool as a way to address public perceptions of limited transparency. Councilman Morrison said the platform would "fully address" citizen concerns about accountability; Councilman Sassen described the platform as a proactive budgeting and reporting tool. Several council members said they would pursue adding Checkbook to a future agenda and that implementation could begin when the new budget year starts.
Lindroth showed examples from other municipalities, including reports, stories (a web-page-style summary) and dashboards that can display expenses by department, vendor payments and compensation. Council members noted the platform is read-only for the public and said that feature reduces repetitive requests to staff. "It's cut down on a lot of answering of calls and emails," Lindroth said.
No formal adoption vote took place at the meeting; the mayor and councilmembers said they plan to revisit the presentation at the next council meeting and consider placing the item on a future agenda for a formal decision tied to the city's budget cycle.