Saline County ranks #9 out of 75 Arkansas counties in how much information is revealed to the public on their website, according to a study done at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). The Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE) at UCA released its inaugural Transparency Index on Monday. This index ranks all Arkansas counties by how much financial, political and administrative information their website contains.
The County ranks #6 for administrative info, #12 for fiscal info and #13 for political info. The cumulative score puts them at #9 overall. There’s still room for improvement – the overall transparency score was 0.318 on a scale of 0 to 1. The study says Saline County can improve its score by publishing current and previous budgets and audits.
See the full study at http://uca.edu/acre/files/2018/09/2018_Index_WEB.pdf. Read more about ACRE at http://uca.edu/acre.
The top ten counties are ranked in the following order overall and in three categories:
| Overall Rank: |
Overall Score: |
Admini- strative: |
Fiscal: | Political: | |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY | 1 | .836 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| PULASKI COUNTY | 2 | .621 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| BENTON COUNTY | 3 | .619 | 2 | 8 | 2 |
| GARLAND COUNTY | 4 | .537 | 4 | 9 | 3 |
| BAXTER COUNTY | 5 | .415 | 5 | 3 | 7 |
| CARROLL COUNTY | 6 | .405 | 18 | 5 | 8 |
| SEBASTIAN COUNTY | 7 | .378 | 7 | 12 | 13 |
| FAULKNER COUNTY | 8 | .365 | 10 | 4 | 5 |
| SALINE COUNTY | 9 | .318 | 6 | 12 | 13 |
| SEVIER COUNTY | 10 | .313 | 18 | 10 | 17 |