In the United States, all governmental agencies are supposed to understand that they are subservient and not superior to the people. That is to say, that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and when citizens are compelled by law, compelled by the force of government, to provide tax dollars to the aforementioned government, than that government has an absolute obligation to disclose in detail, all pertinent information about where those tax dollars are allocated and thereby how wisely and efficiently that they are spent.
In any business, there is a requirement to provide the government with actionable taxable information, to which this is reported yearly to the appropriate government agencies, by said corporation. This rule holds forth for not only publically held corporations but applies as well to privately held corporations or proprietary businesses in one form or another, to which all are obligated to provide the necessary information so that tax authorities can appropriately process their respective tax obligations.
In addition, citizens of the United States are obligated to submit their personal taxes each and every year to the appropriate State and Federal authorities, to which numerous tax forms for income, for dividends, for stock appreciation, are all provided by various employment or securities agencies to the government, so that an individual in many respects, is by definition, transparent with governmental authorities, from the get-go.
This means that the citizens and the businesses of the United States have done their part to provide transparency to the government; a government which in theory is there to serve them. Therefore, it behooves all governmental agencies and departments, to provide to all of its citizens in return, audited and complete information about where and how much tax monies have been allocated and spent during each particular fiscal year. It simply isn't good enough to show generalities, because generalities do not show enough in order to form a respected opinion or analysis of the efficiency of a particular governmental entity.
All governmental entities from local to county to city to State and to Federal, should be required by law, to break down expenses and income in such a manner that these statements would meet with the expectations and requirements of General Accounting Standards. This is a necessary requirement and the only possible way that citizens could monitor how their tax dollars are spent within the hands of our governmental servants.
The upshot is that the more that the government is able to obscure, hide, obfuscate, and distort the financial and fiscal budgets of various agencies, the less that the people will be able to judge the efficiency and effectiveness of their tax dollars at work. For too long, governmental officials have received a free pass, with little benefit to the population as a whole, and by virtue of the terrible state of our current fiscal house, there must be fundamental changes implemented that require true and complete transparency of our tax dollars. It is high time that the darkness and murkiness of governmental financial chicanery be exposed to the light of honest and thorough review.