Nobody wants crooked government, especially when it comes to spending tax money.

Taking steps to make sure government is always on the up-and-up is something else. Some people are willing to go to great lengths to oversee what their elected leaders are doing. Some people, on the other hand, don’t even vote.

The people on the "watch ’em like a hawk" side of that spectrum actually have some support from top officials in Texas, including Gov. Rick Perry. In fact, the effort has been given its own buzzword: transparency.

Transparency in government is good. We don’t want them to hide anything from us.

Political buzzwords are like that. They’re fashioned by image-makers to evoke just the right feelings.

Since transparency became politically popular a few years back, elected leaders on that bandwagon have made several attempts on the state and local level to make it happen. The most popular has been posting check registers online so taxpayers can see exactly where their money is going.

The transparency champion in Texas, by a country mile, is Comptroller Susan Combs. She held that banner high when she was elected in 2006, and she’s been running hard with it ever since. That’s good — she is, after all, the person in charge of paying the state’s bills.

She’s done a stellar job on transparency. On her "Where the Money Goes" Web site, www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/expendlist, you can search and sort every way you want. You can find out how much individual vendors have been paid and for what. You can find out how much individual employees have been given for in-state and out-of-state travel, even how much they spent on lodging and meals.

Combs has dozens of other state agencies on the same Web site, and you can get the same information from all of them. Under instructions from the Legislature, her staff has been working on ensuring that each of those agencies uses the same accounting methods and standards.

She gets an A+ for all of that.

She’s been pushing local and county governments and school districts across the state to do the same. Most of them haven’t done anything — they get an F.

Some cite the cost of setting up a system. Combs volunteers her staff to help.

Some say they don’t see the need. That may be, because your average Joe probably won’t spend his weekends examining government check registers in search of something wrong.

But some will devote time to it. Beyond that, taking steps like posting government check registers online creates an image that you’re not afraid that there is anything wrong to be found.

Others say it stirs up the potential for trouble, and I guess that means somebody might find something. Well, there’s the point.

In Tarrant County, only a few school districts post check registers: Arlington, Fort Worth, Grapevine-Colleyville and Keller (in July, the Keller district paid $632 to Blue Bell Creameries — mmmm). The postings can’t be sorted, which limits their usefulness. You can see that XYZ Inc. got a check for $5,000 on a certain date, but you have to search to find out if the company got any other checks and what the total might be.

Not a single city in the county posts a register, nor does the county itself.

Nearby, probably the best posting is by Collin County, http://public1.co.collin. tx.us/transparency. It’s an Excel spreadsheet that shows not only how much was paid and to whom, but also what goods or services were purchased. Still, you can’t sort the information unless you go to a lot of trouble to convert it to your own format.

If this type of thing intrigues you, that makes you a government watchdog. Happy hunting.