Last Thursday’s Transcript-Bulletin was all about how the government plans to spend your money: The Tooele County School District approved a $117 million budget, Tooele City approved a $32 million budget, and Grantsville City approved an $8.1 million budget. Add those numbers to the $51.8 million budget the county rolled out last December, and you have a fair amount of government spending: $208.9 million.

You’d think with that kind of money on the line taxpayers would be clamoring to get their hands on the budget breakdown, pouring over the numbers and showing up in droves to ask questions of their elected officials during public meetings.

Nothing could be further from reality.

At last week’s meeting of the Tooele County School Board, there was not a single concerned citizen present to discuss the biggest budget in the county. At Tooele City’s budget meeting, one citizen asked for a copy of the budget but no one questioned the way funds were to be spent. And at Grantsville City Council, of a crowd of about a half dozen people, only one asked any questions related to the budget.

Reasons abound as to why the public doesn’t care about budgets. For one thing, the budgeting process is often simply too obscure and inaccessible for the average citizen. There’s also the problem of obtaining a copy of the proposed budget, since many taxing entities require people to physically come to their office to view a copy. Even for people who get their hands on the budget and have the financial acumen to understand it, there remains the challenge of coming home after a long day at work, attending a public meeting, and quizzing or confronting elected leaders on their turf about a budget they helped put together. That’s daunting — and still doesn’t mean your input will help shape the final budget.

We would like to see the budgetary process made more citizen-friendly. In this day and age, all budgets should be put online for public perusal with a section for open public comments. We’d also like to see taxing entities make a good faith effort to explain budgets in layman’s terms, so average citizens can understand where their money is going.

In the end, however, public participation in government spending must begin with the public. More of us need to care about budgets and realize we’re entitled to question them. When it comes to government spending, an ounce of scrutiny during the budgeting process is clearly worth more than a pound of outrage when tax dollars get used in ways we don’t approve of down the road.