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In Virginia, a move to lift the veil on state spending and contracts

SO HOW MUCH, if anything, does the state of Virginia pay Howie Mandel, anyway?

Mr. Mandel and the NBC game show he hosts, "Deal or No Deal," feature in some of the Virginia Lottery's scratch-off tickets and advertising ("Win Up to $75,000!"). We figured it stands to reason that the lottery is paying him, or NBC, or both, for the use of their good names; after all, when the lottery used Donald Trump's image on its tickets a few years ago, it paid a licensing agency representing The Donald $249,000 for his services. But woe to the Virginian who might like to find out: If the information is available online, it must be buried pretty deeply; we couldn't find it.

Unfortunately, that's the rule, not the exception, when it comes to facts, figures and line items generally relating to budgets and spending in the commonwealth, and plenty of other states besides. Virginia disgorges reams of budgetary data online, but not necessarily with enough transparency or detail to allow residents, interest groups and others to figure out how their taxes have been spent. Congress took a useful stab at making the federal budget more user-friendly in 2006, passing legislation requiring, among other things, that information on all contracts over $25,000 be easily accessible online. Since then, nine states have followed suit, and a handful more, including Virginia, are considering similar steps. In most places, such measures enjoy bipartisan support.

Still, while it would be nice to find more about where the state's money goes, and which contractors get it, it would be even better to know more about the return on taxpayers' investments, as Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's administration itself has acknowledged. To that end, the state is pursuing what it says will be a state-of-the-art information and accountability system -- one that will allow the public to measure state expenditures against long-term goals, much as a private-sector firm would attempt to assess the return on investments in terms of profits.

Oh, and this postscript on Mr. Mandel: A spokesman for the Virginia Lottery helpfully called us back to explain that it paid $861,000 to a licensing agency for the rights to use "Deal or No Deal" and its host, and for a promotional campaign including TV advertising spots for the lottery. No word on how much Mr. Mandel himself might have received. And no, said the spokesman, a citizen would not have been able to discover that online.