The Daily Signal - Series Pt. 2: Do You Know Where Your Tax Dollars Go? Now You Can.

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Open the Books was founded in 2011 on a simple principle: Taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going and how it’s being spent.  Americans are paying “property taxes to fund local education, so wouldn't you like to know where that money is going?” asks Matthew Tyrmand, deputy director at large of the Florida-based nonprofit Open the Books.  Working at the federal, state, and local level, Open the Books files thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests every year with the aim of obtaining and publishing government spending records.  For every state in the U.S., Open the Books publishes a “checkbook” detailing how much the state spends annually and on what.  Tyrmand joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” as part of this week’s money and transparency series. He share the history of Open the Books and takes time to honor the organization’s founder, Adam Andrzejewski, who passed away unexpectedly in August. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's week three of Canadian tires early Black Friday sales. These prices won't go lower this year. Maybe too long. Freezing. Save up to 50% November 20th to 27th. Conditions apply, details online. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, October 3rd. I'm Virginia Allen.

You deserve to know where your money is going and how the government and businesses are using those funds. Today, I am sitting down with Matthew Triamond. He serves as the deputy director at large for Open the Books, an organization that's all about transparency and making sure that as a taxpaying American, you do indeed know where your money is going. This is part two of our three-part money and transparency series here on The Daily Signal. If you miss yesterday, make sure you go back and listen to the conversation on ESGs, what they are, and why that ESG movement is actually really harming states and really strangling practical things

within states, like how they use their land. But today, stay tuned for my conversation with the deputy director at large for Open the Books, Matthew Trimond. Live from Indiana syndicated nationally from the Daily Signal, it's the Tony Kinnett cast. Man, you've got me hook, light and sinker. Now I want to tune into your program. Interviews from the border. Coverage from inside leftist riots. Exposing those targeting children. From the guy leaving liberal journalist speechless. It's the Tony Kinnettcast. Join us live on the Daily Signals, YouTube and X-stream every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern or anywhere you get your podcasts.

It is my pleasure today to be sitting here in Alaska, of all places, with Matthew Trimond. He serves currently as deputy director at large for the awesome organization, Open the Books, critical work you guys are doing. And I want to begin, Matt, by talking about really the mission. and the vision of Open the Books. And I feel like we can't do that without talking about your founder. So about 15, 15 years ago, correct? 2010. 2010.

Okay, so a gentleman named Adam Angie Fiske. Good pronunciation. Well done. On his business card, he had a phonetic. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's a tricky name.

Polish. Great Polish name. Well, he was in the first. field of business, but he looked at kind of what was happening as far as the transparency within government and said, hey, there should be more transparency. We should actually know what our dollars are going towards. What state was he from? Key to this. Illinois. Illinois. There you go. So talk about this vision that Adam had. Adam ran with this vision. He unexpectedly passed away just about a month ago. And his legacy is continuing to be spread.

through the work that you and so many others are doing it, Open the Books. But in order to really understand what open the books is, I think we have to go back to Adam. So share what his vision was. So Adam grew up in a small town in Illinois, Hersher, no stoplights, stop signs. He used to joke, you know, trudging barefoot in the snow to school. Seven kids, who's the oldest. Wow. And Hersher, small town.

His father was politically interested in Kankakee County, which was about, two hours south of Chicago and actually made a run in 1979 for state rep and lost to George Ryan, who later went to prison, one of the three governors of the last five that served, and two of them, maybe three of them at once, were in the clink at the same time. Wow. Lagoevich Ryan. And out of N.U., Northern Illinois University, he and his brother founded a business called Homepage Directors, which was a local phone book in an sort of advertising marketing business

and grew it just through grit. He used to joke that it was a 10-year overnight success. and never took a penny until his employees got paid, but they built it into a profitable venture and sold it at the top right ahead of 2008 in the crash to private equity. And he said, you know what, I did well. I'm living the American dream, but I'm really concerned, first in Illinois and nationally writ large,

but really Illinois, which he called the Super Bowl of Corruption, if anything happens for the good of the people, it's entirely by accident. He had so many great lines and talking points that I'm adopting and going to continue to spread. And he ran for governor in 2000. 10. When he ran on a simple platform, forensic audit the state of Illinois, you never saw so many R's and Ds get together to marginalize him, label him a gadfly, and make sure that he did

not penetrate and succeed. But his message did resonate. And this was during the Tea Party era where grassroots was building and fed up with taxes and fiscal policy, especially coming out of, 2008-9, the bank bailouts. And he drove this message in his campaign. He came. He came. within five points of winning the primary as a Republican primary so the Dems still won at that point rounder one and 14 but he said you know what I'm going to continue this work he had energized the grassroots and he built a C4 for the good of Illinois and he was working with an activist at the time named Craig Majeris who was working in the private sector technologist a big data guy a programmer

who is motivated also by what was going on in Illinois and Adam hired him to start building a text Act, first on Illinois-based spending. So statewide, countywide, and especially school districts. You know, there's something we've always said that if you really want to drive political engagement on the grassroots, go to moms. They're the most engaged political citizen in any locality, especially if their kids are in public school. But in general, moms and dads, you're paying your property taxes to fund local education. So when do you like to know where that money's going? So he started to build that out. And at the same time, he fell in love with Tom Coburn and

Tom Coburn's mission, the wastebook, Senator Coburn. from Oklahoma, who is a legendary fiscal warrior, who he stopped here in Alaska, the legendary's Ted Stevens Bridge to Nowhere, which came at political cost to Senator and Dr. Coburn. But Adam was inspired by that, and the big data revolution nationally writ large was made possible by a 2006 piece of legislation, the Google Your Government Act, that was written and sponsored by two senators, Tom Coburn from Oklahoma on the our side, and Barack Obama, a first-term Illinois Senator NAD. And John Hart, who's here, who's on the board of SFOF, where we're doing this and this conference

is going on. He was Tom Coburn's communications director as well as chief aid strategist who had also had sort of brought this legislation to the forefront, had penned it, and made it possible. And Adam had got a meeting with Senator Coburn and John Hart, and they were very encouraging. They'd always thought that if they did this, somebody in America, or hopefully multiple people in America would run with this, the ability to really enforce. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which says that a periodic review and transmission of receipts of fiscal expenditures will be furnished to the population.

To actually know where our money is going. To know where the money is going. And so Adam built the C4. Not only the technology for the data common that he was building, the largest public – private repository public sector spending data, but also pushed it to a smartphone. In 2013, he penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed launching the mobile app so that you can hold all the spending data in the palm of your hand. We're in the technology revolution, the data revolution, and the personal mobile telephony

revolution, and sort of all this dovetailed together. And this started to get attention. I met him right around this time, and I've been coming out of a Wall Street career I was fed up with. Again, bank bailouts, fundamental analysis matter not. So I was consulting and doing this and that and fell in love with him and the mission. And so I joined him initially. Craig was still in the private sector.

And we built a 501c3 called American Transparency. to further this work and put out the Open the Books project, build the web tools, the mobile tools, and keep them updated tens of thousands of foias a year. We're now up to about $60,000, $50,000,000, $60,000 a year, every unit of government, federal, state, local agency, school district. We're talking arcane districts, mosquito districts, sewage districts.

They all have tax and spend authority, and every one of those dollars in cents is taxpayer money, and the taxpayer does have a right to know. So in joining him initially and then starting to raise a budget, We were able to hire Craig away from the private sector. So Craig and Adam really co-founded it. I joined. And John Hart then was the first person we brought on as Tom Coburn left office.

And John Hart came on and worked with us in communications and strategy. And it was a small team initially. And we continued, much like Home Pages and his private sector career, it was a 10-year overnight success. There was certainly fits and starts, personnel, getting people he wanted people in Chicago. We hired people from Hillsdale. Craig ended up moving to Florida and managing the data and technology. team from there. But now we're almost 30 people, 20 sort of on the technology and data side,

and 10 doing the journalism, oversight, forensic accounting, communications to get the stories out. Because the data is very important. But if you don't have the stories that let people know there is this data comment and that is accessible and that you too can become a watchdog. And along with that, we did incubate a watchdog model. We had a pair of guys, retired guys in Illinois in Edgar County. I mean, we're talking downstate, middle of nowhere, Illinois. And They're the Edgar County watchdogs. And using the data that we built initially in Illinois, they forced out hundreds of public officials, elected on the local level, city managers,

all the people who were allowing the fiscal profligacy to continue as they benefited. The taxpayer subsidized it, unbeknownst to them. And they highlighted it, and they used the data to actually create actionable results. So there were so many sort of multilateral different directions that we went in and doing these stories, doing and we can talk about some of the stories, but getting a lot of national attention on the stuff. So if I go to Open the Books website, I live in the state of Virginia, I'm a taxpayer in Virginia, and if I want to say, okay, let me see where my taxpayer dollars are going in the state of Virginia. What can I find on Open the Books? Well, you can drop down and look based on

a state checkbook. You can look at the federal checkbook and what is being funded federal employees, federal agency spend. Farm subsidies, for instance, is always a favorite. Look at, you know, we did a early report in 13 or 14 about farm subsidies going to big cities. How many Manhattanites and Chicagoans and Los Angeles living in the urban jungle are getting farm subsidies, milking that program because they own some land, which is really an investment strategy, not an agricultural security strategy, which is what farm subsidies was created to be. It was, you know, coming out of the dust bowl especially, was a way to, you know, preserve the marketplace, sometimes subsidized, sometimes do some of the things they do where they, you know, try and keep

prices competitive. But it was a mechanism that was trying to really focus on food security so that we can always maintain our independence. Instead, it became a wealth diversification strategy. Buy some land, milk the government for some federal farm subsidies. And Virginia is full of them. On the local level, I mean, the cities, whether it's Richmond or Alexandria, we've got those data points. We've got the local school districts and the salaries and pensions of teachers, for instance, and administrators. We did very germane to you and UPA.

We did a very strong investigation in the last six months at University of Virginia. It's a public university focused on their DEI budget. And it was many, many millions of dollars. And that's money that could have been going to professors in teaching or facilities. But it was going toward the new socially engineering buzzword type strategies that are, at least there should be a public debate about the value out of them. And there wasn't. It was just another program that was mushrooming. off of taxpayer money.

And in fact, UVA has now reversed course on that. And then UNC also seeing the UVA investigation, UNC's board and trustees, they also reverse course on University of North Carolina's DEI spend within their entire budget. So the power of transparency, just by shining the light, it does curtail bad practices. And at a very minimum, even if that curtailment

doesn't happen immediately, the debate is galvanized or catalyzed. And then people can start to weigh in. op-eds, county and local board meetings, things like this, engage people because if they have the data, then they can actually defend their own sovereign rights as citizens against what Leviathan tries to do exploitively with taxpayer money. Yeah, it's critical. Let's look back for a moment and look forward. What would you say has been one of the greatest successes of Open the Books since its founding?

And what's to come? And a new, really, air without Adam at the helm, but so many of them. amazing people like yourself who are saying, all right, we're going to continue this legacy. We're not going to stop. We're going to keep holding government accountable and making sure these American people know where their taxpayer dollars are actually going. So talk as well a little bit about what the future holds. Sure.

I mean, Adam always said that we in America as citizens, the citizen is sovereign, that our rights come from God, not government. Another great saying he had was, in God we trust, politicians we must audit. So the government watchdog model has always been important. But with the data now in the information age, it's that very. more robust a reactionary force to what Leviathan does. We've had so many big stories, big, you know, resignations and terminations and laws that were re-evaluated or restructured to be better, better government, better lawmaking.

You know, that's one of the powers of doing this fiscal analysis and oversight work and forensics. I mean, some of the stories we've done did of late, I mean, we're the ones who exposed that Dr. Fauci was the highest paid federal employee. That went everywhere. And from that, we started digging into NIH. And this is something we've been working on the last couple of years. And we've had to sue. We've worked with judicial law.

We've worked with other public interest law firms because there are too many black boxes in the government spending complex. Obviously, you know, there's a fair debate to be had over law enforcement, budgets of, you know, certain military programs and Secret Service or CIA and FBI. They are right for reprisal if those information flows too freely. We understand that. But NIH redacting all the royalty payments from Big Pharma to NIH scientists, you know, sending us, okay, a date and a name, and that's it. You don't know the company or you don't know the facility that it came from. You don't know what the drug was. You don't know.

And we discovered in these thousands of lines of NIH royalties that were redacted and we sued to open up business deals between NIH scientists and researchers with Chinese concerns, Russian concerns, you know, stuff that does have security implications. So that's an ongoing battle. I mean, there's so many investigations, I mean, stuff into the EPA, into the federal agencies that we've done. I remember in Oregon, just pops into my head, Kate Brown, who is governor. And just by using constructive foying, knowing how to foyer, knowing how to fight back on the obfuscation of FOIA officers who do not comport with the law with public records requests, you know, Kate Brown was using her staff during her campaign, which is a big no-no. Yeah. You know, taxpayers don't get to pay for your campaign, your campaign staff, your efforts.

And so we uncovered that. It's been just a steady stream. I remember during the VA crisis in Ford, Crisis and Confidence, we discovered that one of the VA medical centers specifically focused on blind veterans was spending millions on art, on sculpture and paintings for blind veterans. It was just another slush fund and another way to spend money wantonly with no oversight. By giving an oversight, we catalyzed to debate on it. And this has been going on for 10 years. I mean, we're doing investigations across the country. You know, we have a great team of auditors and forensic analysts and investigators.

On the go-forward basis, you know, Adam certainly, this is very unexpected. This has been heartbreaking and devastating for all of us. He was my best friend. I mean, we spoke 20 times a day since 2012, 2013. But, you know, I know him, knew him so well and knew that this was his legacy. And that his vision was not just to live and die with him, not just to, you know, be a facility for him to go on media. of speeches and talk about it, he wanted to catalyze a transparency revolution. And by building this data common and building the mechanisms to investigate what's in that data common, we're creating

something that's way bigger than any of us. And the team gets that. The team, as I said in earlier comments today, are the most incredible group, the team that Adam and I had dreamed of assembling from 2013 and a cross-section of people with different skill sets who are multi-role utility players, who everyone does everyone else's job, even if they have roles, because we're a team. And to do this work, there has to be synergy and cohesion and discussion and idea iteration. Adam used to call it mind mapping things. And everybody's self-actualizing, self-starting, self-confident, self-motivated. And we're certainly going forward.

Our donors believe in this mission. They did not support us because of his personality or my personality or Craigs or anybody else as they believe in this mission. So they're standing by us. And we want to continue to grow and do more work and use the technology more constructively and creatively to be more effective at this mission. So we will go forward. We are in the midst of a succession strategy,

sort of structuring strategy and talking to candidates and key opinion leaders in this policy area who we know were with us and viewed what we do favorably, many of whom are people that have worked closely with us as advisors. We're having those conversations now, and we're hoping that by the end of the year

we have somebody in place that will take the baton and move forward and go in new directions as well and continue on things like legislation. You know, force open some of the books that have been closed. Federal pensions and bonuses is still a battle. Committee staffers are not even when we had great Congressional representatives on great committees like OGR who wanted to work on this committee staffers would block it under things like privacy. Our argument's always been simple.

If you're taking government money, you waive your right to privacy, at least on that line item. It's taxpayer money. If you're taking it, especially in retirement, the taxpayer has a right to not. And so we're going to continue to move forward on these battles and hopefully continue to grow and make Adam proud and honor his legacy and the vision he had and the mission that he created with Craig and myself and John Hart and just move forward in a big way. Critical. And thank you at Bailey Signal and Heritage because you guys have been great allies at Fullner's Honor Advisory Board. As is Bridget Wagner. We've done a lot with Rob Bluey over the years and the Signal team.

So thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you for the work that you guys do want to encourage all of our listeners to check out your website. tell us how we can find all of your stuff. www.com. And then in terms of breaking news and exposés, we used to have a Forbes column, but then Forbes was bought by the Chinese

and when Adam was doing a lot of work and we were doing a lot of work on Fauci and COVID and NIH, they canceled the Forbes column, which Adam went on Tucker that day to discuss that conflict. So we launched a substack, so it's substack.com slash open the books. We break stories there regularly

and with outlets like you as well. Absolutely. Well, Matt, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us for our Money and Transparency series here at The Daily Signal.

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