The proposal
By Lance McNeill, MBA, MPAff
One Austin nonprofit agreed to serve 907 clients in a year. It served 573. It missed six of its seven performance goals, and the City paid the contract in full.
That example comes from the City Auditor's July 2026 report on nonprofit contract performance management. Auditors reviewed 25 family and social service contracts worth about $30 million. In 19 of them, the nonprofit missed at least one performance expectation. Across 151 annual output and outcome targets, 67 went unmet. The report is careful about the cause: most of these contracts use a cost-reimbursement model, so the City pays for salaries, travel and other program costs whether or not the results arrive, and it "does not enforce consequences" when goals are missed. That is a design problem, and it can be fixed.
The audit did not name the organizations. This insight piece asks why not. A resident trying to identify the sampled contracts, what they promised, and what the City did about the gaps may have to file a public information request. Then comes the wait. Auditor working papers may also be withheld under §552.116, although that exception does not automatically shield the same information held in other records.
I file a lot of those requests now. You learn which department holds what, how to word a request so it can't be read too narrowly, and what it means when the City asks the Attorney General for a ruling. It works. It is also a strange way to find out what your city bought and whether it got it.
Austin got the money part right, and got there early
I spent nearly seven years at the City of Austin, and I'm proud of how early this city moved. Work on the Contract Catalog began in November 2009. In December 2011, Council adopted an open government resolution committing the City to transparency, efficiency and collaboration. By 2012, Austin Finance Online let anyone look up payees, payment requests and purchase orders, and Route Fifty reported at the time that it had become the City's second most visited site and was cutting down on information requests. The eCheckbook dataset was refreshed as recently as October 26, 2026.
So Austin already publishes the money. What it doesn't put in one place is the rest of the story: the invoices behind the payments, the deliverables, the performance reports, the monitoring findings, the corrective action plans and the evaluation at the end. The auditors found that departments usually don't evaluate nonprofit performance when a contract ends, and when they do, "they do not share results with other departments." Residents should be able to find those evaluations without reconstructing the record department by department.
Texas already calls these records public
Texas Government Code §552.022 lists categories of information that are public unless made confidential by law. One is "a completed report, audit, evaluation, or investigation made of, for, or by a governmental body." Another is "information in an account, voucher, or contract relating to the receipt or expenditure of public or other funds by a governmental body." Completed reports also remain subject to the law-enforcement exception in §552.108. Texas already says these records belong to the public, subject to those legal limits. Austin only has to decide to publish them without being asked.
The state leaves the door open, too. Under §§552.371–552.372, contractors covered by the $1 million contract-value or annual-spending thresholds must preserve covered contracting information and provide it to the City on request. Section 552.375 says nothing in that part of the law prevents a governmental body from writing stricter accountability or transparency terms into its contracts. Austin can turn "on request" into "routinely."
Others have shown how
Washington, D.C., uses nearly the same words as Texas and then takes the next step. D.C. Code §2-536 makes "information in or taken from any account, voucher, or contract dealing with the receipt or expenditure of public or other funds" public without a written request, and requires covered records created on or after November 1, 2001, to be available online.
New York City builds publication into the workflow. In PASSPort, a prime contractor records a payment to a subcontractor, the subcontractor confirms it, the agency validates it, and the validated payment goes to Checkbook NYC. Austin's small business compliance staff already review subcontractor payments in the City's compliance system. The open question is whether residents can see them too.
Ireland shows how ordinary this can become. Under a 2012 national circular, Irish local authorities publish purchase orders over €20,000 every quarter, subject to freedom-of-information exclusions. Limerick, one of Austin's sister cities, posts its reports with the supplier, the amount and a description.
What Council should require
I'd keep it to four things.
A public file for every contract.
One place to move from the agreement to its amendments, budget, invoices, payments, deliverables, performance reports, monitoring findings, corrective actions and closing evaluation, tied together by the same contract and vendor numbers. Finished contracts stay searchable, and each contract's targets sit next to its actual results. The auditors found no consistent consequences for missed goals, and public targets next to public results make consequences far more likely.
Structured submissions with deadlines you can measure.
Contractors report standard fields once, and the City uses them for payment, monitoring and publication. Invoices go up within 30 days of receipt by default, and payments within 30 days of disbursement. Performance reports can go up quarterly. Every required record shows where it stands: not yet submitted, under City review, or withheld under a cited legal exception.
Shared costs and subcontracts in plain view.
Many nonprofits run one program on several funding streams, which is often a sign of good fundraising. A hypothetical: a program with $10,000 in shared monthly costs charges $6,000 to its City contract and $4,000 to a federal grant. Publish both shares and the $10,000 total, and anyone can check the math. For federal awards subject to these cost principles, shared costs must follow proportional benefit when those proportions can be determined without undue effort or cost. A reasonable documented basis is allowed when the proportions cannot be determined because the work is interrelated. A public allocation summary would make that work inspectable. The City Manager's own audit response promises "reduced duplication of services and dollars." The same file should list subcontractors, the work handed to them and what they were paid, which fits the May resolution's push for better subcontractor reporting.
Privacy built in, and the rules measured.
Client names, health information, shelter locations and other protected details never go up. Contractors submit a proposed public version, the City makes the final call, and any withholding cites its legal basis. Then the system reports on itself: late submissions, late reviews and late postings, with contractor timeliness and City timeliness tracked separately. A City publication backlog should never hold up an undisputed payment, and small organizations should get templates and real help.
The timing is right
On May 21, Council voted 9-0, with Council Members Fuentes and Harper-Madison absent, to adopt Resolution 20260521-052 (minutes), a comprehensive review of procurement and grant management. It asks the City Manager to consider a procurement dashboard "to track City contract performance and outcomes" and calls for an initial report to the full Council in the fall of 2026. In the audit response, management committed to updating the Grants Standard Operating Procedures by January 1, 2027, and the Procurement Manual and related documents by February 1, 2027. The response also warns that the Procurement Manual timeline could extend into late 2027 if related projects are delayed.
Those rewrites are a natural moment to add publication terms, and newly elected Council members take office in January. Council should ask that the updates make room for routine publication, and direct the City Manager to return within 90 days with ordinance language, standard contract clauses and a budget. Austin Financial Services is the natural lead. The audit response centralizes contract compliance there, and its predecessor, the Financial Services Department, built Austin Finance Online in-house. Grant agreements would also involve Austin Government Relations, where the response centralizes grant compliance. Start with a six-month pilot covering social service contracts, the category the auditors studied, and management and advisory consulting contracts, the focus of the May resolution. Count what arrives on time, what gets posted on time and what it costs. Then expand.
This will take real staff time, and it deserves real funding.
Go back to that contract with 907 clients promised and 573 served. In the system I'm describing, nobody would need to file a request to understand it. A resident would open the contract file and see the target, the result, the reasons the nonprofit gave, and what the City decided to do next. That's transparency built into the job, and Austin is closer to it than it thinks.
Lance McNeill, MBA, MPAff, is Founder & CEO of Arclight Action PBC, an Austin public benefit corporation focused on government accountability. He spent nearly seven years at the City of Austin.
Sources
Austin City Auditor, Nonprofit Contract Performance Management, July 2026 (listed on the Auditor's report page). Highlights p. 2; Finding pp. 4–9; Exhibit 5 p. 8; management response memo dated July 14, 2026, pp. 11–16.
Austin Finance Online Contract Catalog
Austin Resolution 20111208-074
Route Fifty, "Austin opens its books via financial portal," Oct. 29, 2012
Austin Finance Online eCheckbook dataset
Texas Government Code Chapter 552, §§552.022(a)(1), (a)(3); 552.108; 552.116; 552.371–552.372; 552.375
NYC Mayor's Office of Contract Services, Subcontractor Payment Validation overview
Austin SMBR, compliance overview to the Water and Wastewater Commission
Waterford City & County Council, procurement publications under Circular Fin 07/2012
Limerick City and County Council, Accounts Payable and purchase orders over €20,000; Austin international relations page
2 CFR 200.405, Allocable costs
Austin Resolution 20260521-052; approved minutes, May 21, 2026, p. 18