Birmingham introduces finance transparency portal

The city of Birmingham announced this week the launch of an online user-friendly transparency portal that provides the community with detailed information about various city funds and departments, tax rates, overall city property values, and retirement funding levels.

According to Birmingham Communications Director Marianne Gamboa, the in-depth financial information portal can be reached at birminghammi.opengov.

Gamboa also noted that the city’s finance department last summer entered into a contract with OpenGov to provide a more efficient budgeting process and an online budget book, available at bhamgov.org/onlinebudgetbook. Additionally, the contract provided the ability to create the transparency portal to provide both basic and in-depth financial information.

“Understanding the intricacies of city finances can be complicated and confusing. We wanted to offer a transparency tool that features graphs, charts and other visual aids to better understand the inner workings of city government finances,” said Birmingham Finance Director Mark Gerber.

New visitors to the site will have the option to take a tutorial when they visit the site for the first time. Various topics of interest—from the Birmingham Ice Sports Arena and golf courses to the parking system and roads—are located on the left side of the screen, and there are frequently asked questions to help guide the user to filters and additional information. For those looking to delve deeper, most charts feature a clickable column to drill down into more detail, according to Gamboa.

Those interested in the new online finance information can watch a presentation regarding the portal at bhamgov.org/portalpresentation.

The introduction of the transparency portal follows an overhaul of the city’s website in late 2021 to provide a number of enhanced features.