Last month, the South Carolina Comptroller’s Office began work on the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or the “CAFR,” for the fiscal year we recently ended. The CAFR is a yearly report prepared by my staff that summarizes the state’s financial condition and addresses economic matters. It’s used by legislators, state agencies, credit rating agencies, taxpayer organizations, or anyone interested in the state’s fiscal condition.

Since coming into office in 2003, I’ve focused attention on ways to provide better transparency into how government operates — by giving citizens better access to information about how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. As part of this effort, I created a spending transparency Web site last year that reveals detailed spending by state agencies, with details like you would find in a checkbook register. Earlier this year I launched a campaign to encourage local governments — cities, towns, counties, school districts — to post their spending records on the Web so anyone with Internet access can see how public dollars are used.

But I believe another important part of better transparency is to make financial information and reports available in a timely way. So after I came into office in 2003, my staff took on a project to cut the time it takes to prepare and distribute the state’s CAFR. As a result, South Carolina now has the best record in the nation for improving this time, and we’re the only state to improve it every year. In keeping with our commitment to transparency, we compiled and released last year’s CAFR in just 135 days, as opposed to 241 days for the year before we took on our project.

In addition to improving the issuance time, we’re also posting the CAFR on the Comptroller’s Office Web site, www.cg.sc.gov, to make it more available to everyone. And because it’s nearly hundred pages long and can be very technical, we also produce a much more manageable and easier-to-read 16-page summarized report, and an even more streamlined four-page report. They’re all on our Web site.

This past April, the Government Finance Officers Association of the U.S. awarded South Carolina its “Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting,” an award given to governments that significantly exceed the minimum requirements for financial reporting.

While I’m enthusiastic about soon releasing this year’s CAFR, unfortunately it won’t contain much good news. The state ended last fiscal year overspending its budget by $98 million, because revenues declined dramatically with the recession and some officials hesitated to adjust state spending accordingly. But hopefully there’ll be at least some good news, as South Carolina will remain a national leader for the availability, quality and timeliness of its financial information and reports.