Evaluating Whether the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Transparency Database Includes the Required Information (Limited-Scope) [December 2024]

In 2019, state law mandated the creation of an online "transparency database" for the purpose of providing the public with information about economic development programs and recipients. The law also requires the transparency database to have certain functional features. The Department of Commerce is responsible for developing and maintaining the transparency database. The Department of Commerce’s transparency database does not contain some required economic development programs and is missing certain program and recipient-level information. 13 of 60 incentive programs we expected to find were missing from the transparency database. The transparency database also lacked about half of the 11 statutorily required program-level pieces of information for 5 incentive programs we reviewed. Further, the transparency database contained most statutory information for 24 recipient records we reviewed, but benchmark information was inadequate. The transparency database contained all 3 statutorily required functionalities.