For the first time in the City of Atlanta’s history, the public can now review individual city expenses on the internet.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms at a press conference on Tuesday unveiled her "Open Checkbook" — an online portal for the tracking of individual city expenditures.
The public can now search for payments by vendor, department and time period from January 2017 through June of this year. The mayor said that the portal would be updated quarterly and that her administration would put other prior years’ expenses online as well.
Credit: CITY OF ATLANTA
Credit: CITY OF ATLANTA
Bottoms acknowledged that the announcement about the portal occurred during an uptick of activity in a federal corruption investigation at City Hall.
Last month, Bottoms’ former Deputy Chief of Staff Katrina Taylor Parks — a holdover from the previous administration of Kasim Reed — pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting a bribe.
But Bottoms said the timing of the press conference had nothing to do with the investigation.
During her campaign for mayor last year, Bottoms said she heard from many people who were interested in a more transparent government.
“This is something that was talked about very early on in the administration,” Bottoms said.
