Getting your hands on the financial statements of your local government can be frustrating. And sometimes when you do track it down the document is not formatted in a way you can search the text, Judi Willard at Truth in Accounting says, “It can be really frustrating, sometimes they literally put a picture of a number, it’s a jpeg that looks pretty on the document but where did you come up with that number.” This is why Senator Mark Warner of Virginia introduced the Financial Data Transparency Act. Which would require state and local governments to submit their financial statements in a machine-readable format. Marc Joffe from the Reason Foundation says, “This type of disclosure has been required by the Security and Exchange for corporations for years, and it's time the government follows suit.” LISTEN HERE