Calhoun County has received the Gold Leadership Circle Award from the Texas Comptroller’s office. This award is given to local governments across Texas that are striving to meet a high standard for financial transparency online; opening their books to the public; providing clean, consistent pictures of spending; and sharing information in a user-friendly format that lets taxpayers easily drill down for more information.

The Leadership Circle has three award levels – Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The Gold designation highlights those entities that are setting the bar in their transparency efforts. Silver encourages those who are making progress, while Bronze inspires those who are just beginning their transparency efforts.

The County received a perfect rating in the major criteria of: Official Adopted Budget; Annual Financial Report or Comprehensive Financial Report; Check Register; and Financial Transparency Webpage. The minor criteria for the award included twelve categories: local government contact information; contact information for elected officials; public information request contact and instructions; easy access to financial documents in three clicks or less; budgets for three most recent fiscal years; annual financial reports for three most recent completed reports; check registers for three most recent fiscal years; searchable check registers; descriptive check registers; visual representation of financial data; current tax rates for local option taxes; and raw format budget. The County received 8 out of a possible 12 points for these minor criteria.