Harris County's Web site recieved top honors -- a Sunny Award -- today from Sunshine Review, a non-profit organization dedicated to state and local government transparency. The Harris County Web site was one of the few that received a perfect score from the organization.

From Sunshine Review:

Award winners are among 39 out of 5,000 government websites to earn an "A" transparency grade. Sunshine Review’s “Transparency Checklist" analyzes websites for information about budgets, meetings, elected and administrative officials, permits and zoning, audits, contracts, lobbying, public records, and taxes. The “Checklist” measures what content is available on government websites against what should be provided.

“Sunny Award winners deserve recognition for making information available to citizens and for setting a transparency standard that all governments can, and should, meet,” said Mike Barnhart, President of Sunshine Review. “Access to information empowers every citizen to hold government officials accountable for the conduct of the publics’ business and the spending of taxpayers’ money. Official accountability is the corner stone of self government and liberty.”

Since its inception in 2008, Sunshine Review has analyzed the websites of all 50 states, more than 3,140 counties, 805 cities, and 1,560 school districts.

Another Texas county that came close to a perfect score was Keller, a city in Tarrant County.

Of course, not all Texas government Web sites make the grade. For example, Sunshine Review provides some interesting facts about how much information county officials provide to their residents.

Of the 254 counties in Texas:

123 Texas counties put their budgets on their websites.

45 counties include information on their websites about public government meetings.

177 include information about the county's elected officials.

56 include information about the county's administrative officials.

6 give information about permits and zoning in the county.

55 of the counties put information on their websites about audits that the county government has had performed.

25 one county provides information about its contracts with county vendors.

4 of the county websites disclose whether or not they belong to any taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

17 provide information on how to request public records using the Texas Public Information Act.

86 county websites provide some information about county taxes.

According to Sunshine Review, as of late February 2009, 27 Texas counties had no website.

Full disclosure: Texas Watchdog works very closely with Sunshine Review and Texas Watchdog editor Trent Seibert is a member of its board of directors. But we encourage you, too, to work closely with Sunshine Review. One of its best features is its wiki, where people interested in government transparency can essentially become reporters working for better open government using Sunshine Review as a platform.

Here's more inofrmation and make sure to splash around the Sunshine Review website to see how your city, county and state rate.