Gov. Inslee: We will provide efficiency, effectiveness and transparency. We will introduce performance metrics where it counts, giving us the data we need to fix what's broken, cut what we don't need and replace rhetoric with quantifiable results.

And it isn’t just individuals who must reconfigure budgets, the states are looking at smaller “paychecks” as well.

A coalition of good government, media and business groups are encouraging state lawmakers to adopt the Washington Policy Center's proposed legislative transparency reforms.

The latest Illinois pension reform proposal, the Nekritz-Biss plan, proposes that the state, and by extension taxpayers, become the guarantor of the state's pension systems. That means funding pensions could legally take priority over all other discretionary spending.

Benefit calculations are an integral part of understanding how public pension fund dollars are disbursed to retirees. Starting in April of this year, details of those calculations used by Michigan’s public employee retirement systems will be exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

Just as state spending should identify performance outcomes, tax preferences should as well.

Reports have estimated California’s unfunded public pension liability somewhere between $400 and $500 billion dollars. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s (CalPERS) latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for fiscal year 2012 shows the extent to which the state’s pension problem continues to grow. 

Retiring Washington State Auditor Brian Sonntag eleased his final annual report highlighting the need for ongoing open government reforms.

State and local politicians may think they can relax as third quarter tax revenues showed 12 consecutive quarters of growth year over year. But that would be a mistake in light of pension investments that again failed to erase any of more than $5 trillion owed to government workers.

What better way for legislators to kick off the New Year than by ensuring the people have a seat at the table as laws are being drafted and debated?