Bastrop County - At the Touch of a Key
Bastrop County has posted budget and other financial information online for two years. The current Web site has a complete copy of the Fiscal 2007-08 Budget, which includes a tax rate history from 2001 to 2007, pie charts of revenues versus expenses, and the recently approved budget for Fiscal 2008-09.
County Auditor Lisa Smith and her staff update budget data at each phase of the budget process, from the initial proposed budget through the final adopted budget. They prepare the reports and forward them in hard copy to the county’s information technology department, where they are scanned into an electronic format and placed on the Web site. This in-house process costs nothing extra as salaries are already included in the budget. In return, Smith says, it saves staff time in answering phone inquiries and printing costs.
Smith plans to add monthly expenditure reports to the Web site in the near future. Having this information online is a great plus when taxpayers, staff, other counties, or other interested parties call with questions on the budget. Smith said she can inform them that this data is already available online “at the touch of a key.”