Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Jan. 30 editorial "Tell Us More," highlighting difficulties with interpreting publicly available fiscal data in Virginia, came as no surprise to us. The story is the same with federal, state and local government agencies across the country.

We believe that accountability and transparency are essential to a healthy democracy and should be priorities for every elected official. Often, however, this is not the case, perhaps because our leaders do not understand the scale of the problem.

In the interest of the taxpayer, let's hope that other states can be persuaded to follow Virginia's lead.

RELMOND VAN DANIKER

Executive Director

Association of Government Accountants

Alexandria