Residents of Brunswick, New Hanover, and Onslow find it relatively simple to find key fiscal and performance data on their communities on the web. According to JLF’s NC Transparency site, these counties all earned Bs for online openness.

Columbus and Pender, on the other hand, aren’t looking so good. They earned Ds.

What difference does transparency make? Well, consider the issue of unfunded liabilities. North Carolina state and local governments have promised tens of billions of dollars in health benefits to their future retirees for which these governments have no assets set aside. In other words, either government retirees won’t get their expected benefits or future taxpayers are going to have to shell out big bucks to finance them.

If you live in the B-graded counties, you can quickly find out what the liability is:

$49 million-Brunswick
$18 million-Onslow
None-New Hanover (their retirees may purchase the benefit if they wish)

These are important figures. What are they for Columbus and Pender? That ought to be easy for citizens to find out.

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