Welcome to the Kent County Open Government Project, a public awareness campaign organized by Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility, a taxpayer advocacy organization in Kent County, Michigan.
Our mission is to promote improved transparency between local government and its citizens.
Our government was designed to be of the people, for the people, and by the people. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each and every citizen to watch over his/her government. Often, it is difficult to find information about how various government agencies are spending tax revenue. Sometimes, our own government demands that we file FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to get basic information such as budgets or payrolls.
This lack of transparency makes it difficult for people to perform their duty to verify that their government is performing its duties successfully and as efficiently as possible. We do not believe that most local and county governments mean to hide their finances from the public but that they often forget who its owners are.
Therefore, we look towards you, the citizens of the various townships, cities, school districts, and Kent County at large, to help us improve everyone’s access to what our government is doing. We at KCOGP are calling on you to help us ‘open up the books‘ of our government.
We are pleased to announce the 2011 results of our open government survey. Please click here for details!
Please browse the menu at the top of the page for transparency information on our local government units.