News flash • The president of the commissioner announces a new transparency program

Today, Bucks County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Diane Ellis-Marseglia is announcing new transparency measures regarding the county’s budgets, contracts and campaign finance reporting with the following statement:

“Since taking office in January 2020, this administration has sought ways to lift the veil on county government to make it more accessible to residents, taxpayers and voters.

The reorganization and restructuring of our communications department to make it more proactive and more open to the public; livestream our commissioners’ meetings using state-of-the-art equipment; to use and expand social media platforms to an ever-growing audience; In order to completely rebuild our website to make it more responsive, intuitive and accessible, we worked to make government more transparent at every level.

Today, I’m proud to continue the mission of being more transparent in a major way. Normally, contracts, detailed budget documents and campaign financing are only accessible upon request or by appointment. In 2024, this information should be simple to retrieve, making this process prohibitive and obsolete. That’s why I have asked our senior leaders to eliminate red tape so that the public can easily access the information to which they are entitled as quickly as possible.

To start, we will now make all county contracts accessible and searchable on Buckscounty.gov. We will explore potential grant opportunities to enable the addition/analysis of historical contracts, making them available as well.

Additionally, we will make the entire county budget more detailed on Buckscounty.gov This way, the public and the press can find exactly the information they are looking for without having to overcome any obstacles.

Finally, I have directed staff to make campaign financial records available on the Board of Elections website. Once activated, candidates and committees will be able to file reports online and the public will be able to view and search these reports. As with contracts, we will determine the feasibility of including historical documents.

While implementing these guidelines may take some time, I am confident that our dedicated staff will work as quickly as possible to make these transparency measures a reality.

Once the county clears all technical and legal hurdles, these three initiatives will be rolled out immediately.

Media Contact: James O’Malley, 215-348-6414, (email protected)