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Legislative Fiscal Division debuts interactive local government data tool for counties and cities
Summary
The Legislative Fiscal Division demonstrated a new interactive dashboard that links six years of trial-balance local government accounting data to BARs chart-of-accounts codes, allowing lawmakers and the public to compare revenues, expenditures and per-capita metrics across Montana jurisdictions.
The Senate Local Government committee on [date not specified] heard a demonstration of a new interactive local government data tool from the Legislative Fiscal Division intended to give lawmakers and the public clearer, comparable views of municipal and county finances. "For the record, Nick Van Brown...with the legislative fiscal division," said Nick Van Brown, who introduced the session. "This data is new data that we've been getting...from the local governments."
Ethan Bergen, who led the live demonstration, described the dataset as trial-balance information derived from local governments' general ledgers and standardized by linking accounting strings to the BARs chart of accounts. "This is trial balance data...a summarized version of this," Bergen said. He showed visuals that separate revenues (taxes and assessments, intergovernmental…
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