Knox website wins transparency award

The Sunshine Review today announced today that Knox County is one of only three Tennessee governments to win a “Sunny Award,” something that honors “the most transparent government websites in the nation,” according to the spin release.

The Virginia-based nonprofit, which analyzes government transparency, looked over more than 1,000 qualifying government websites and graded each one on a 10-point transparency checklist. Editors looked at available content, including budgets, meetings, lobby, financial audits, contracst, academic performance, public records and taxes. The winners of the fourth annual award received an “A” grade.

The top dogs were Florida (25), Virginia (19), Illinois (19), California (12), Georgia (12), Kansas (11), Oklahoma (10) and Colorado (9). Click right smack here for the full list, and right smack here for the Knox County, which received an “A-.”

This is kind of funny considering the Metro Pulse slammed the county's website last week (although some of the reasons were kind of stupid, but whatever). 

On a side note, Knox County was apparently docked because the website didn't provide information on taxpayer funded lobbying. It also didn't include a list of employed lobbyists, blah, blah, blah.

That's probably because the county doesn't have a lobbyist, Oh well, so much for accuracy.

Shelby and Wilson counties also each scored an A-.